Settling: Up or Down?
The latest article I’ve read about the dating scene left me exhausted and inexplicably sad.
Long and winding through territory you don’t expect to cover at it’s outset, All the Single Ladies by Kate Bolick for The Atlantic, is to me, less of a news article and more of a personal journal entry.
One quote in particular struck me. “Increasingly, the new dating gap–where women are forced to choose between deadbeats and players–trumps all else, in all socioeconomic brackets.”
I’m really fascinated by this idea that women aren’t just settling down–in some cases they are just settling. Or as it is called in many articles over the past few years “the decline of men”.
Factually, empirically, women’s stars seem to be rising while men are experiencing setbacks. Of course, anecdotally your mileage may vary. More women are attending college and median wages for males have fallen 32% since 1973 while women’s wages have grown 44% since 1970. “Nearly three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs lost in the depths of the recession were lost by men, making 2010 the first time in American history that women made up the majority of the workforce. “
What all these sad statistics mean is that it’s harder and harder for women, at all ages and stages of life, to find equitable partners. Which is what my single friends and I have been feeling for quite some time now.
Despite what I write and read, I know there is no such thing as a perfect man. I’m so far from perfect myself that I think it would be more stressful than sexy to live with a perfect man anyway.
But more and more I see my female friends and acquaintances with men that only make me scratch my head in confusion. Why are they with this guy? I think that the best relationships are made when your partner’s strengths can support your weaknesses and vice versa. But when your partner can be objectively rated below you in every category…that’s just dead weight to me. Let’s put it this way, if I’m smarter than you, more social than you, more attractive than you, make more money than you, have more education than you, have better long term prospects than you, etc, etc, etc…then I guess you better be pretty fucking funny to make up the difference.
It used to be that you took all of your qualities, interior and exterior, and came up with an aggregate score. You were a six or an eight or a three or whatever. And that was the range of person that you generally wound up with. Maybe you were an eight in attractiveness and he was a six, but he was a nine in income and you were a four, so things evened out. That’s why you saw so many vapid, empty-headed but gorgeous women with rockstars. Because rockstars took their fame and money and talent (hypothetically) and cashed them in for one trait: hotness.
But if what all of these articles is saying is true and men in general are declining, then that means that all of the average guys in the middle are missing. Because there are still those guys that seem to have it all and they are still interested in women that are at the top of their scale. The guys and girls at the bottom of the scale are also still getting together. It’s the middle that’s shrinking, but only on one side of the equation. Which means that the middle average guy who is a four can now get a perfect eight because he’s got a lot less competition. Ergo, why is she with this guy.
But somehow I don’t think that’s what all of the political pundits are talking about when they mention the shrinking middle class.
