So I have something that I've written to try and get people's input and see what they think. I was going to post it in r/dating but that subreddit seems particularly toxic to anyone with any sort of opinion other than "men evil". So I'm going to try to post this here as it was suggested by another Redditor. It is insanely long, and I'm sorry about that but I wanted to present everything that I've been thinking about this topic for many many years. I cannot really provide a TLDR but if I did, it would basically boil down to "Men and women have problems dating today because of societal changes and technology developed during the 20th Century"

The Way it Used to be

Dating in America prior to the 1960’s was much like dating across the whole history of humanity, and it this likely had its roots in a time prior to the actual emergence of Homo Sapiens. While there were many things that were unfair about the dating paradigm prior to the 1960’s, generally speaking, this paradigm worked to maximize the amount of men and women who could find each other and form relationships. At this point in time, women were often excluded from the vast majority of jobs which were openly available to men. Whether through laws or something being considered “not lady like”, women had very few opportunities for employment. This meant that a woman would have to locate and marry a man to be successful in life. Men, on the other hand, had access to many different jobs. It was considered “manly” to have a job and to be as successful as possible to attract the best mate. The reason that this particular paradigm maximized the amount of people who could find mates is that, because it was so rigid, it had very clearly defined rules that everyone could follow to find the best mate possible. A woman knew that the only thing she had to do was to pretty herself up with makeup, show that she could be a good homemaker, and show that she was ultimately compliant and submissive to a man’s authority. For a man, all the had to do was work as hard as he could, save and make as much money as he could, and display stereotypical masculine traits to the best of his ability, things like hunting, fishing, and playing sports. If men and women did these things, most would find someone eventually, and they would not be lonely.

Why Did Things Change?

During the Twentieth Century, during World War Two, there weren’t enough men to fulfill the jobs required to support a major war while also having enough men to actually fight in the war. This was a worldwide phenomenon but had a distinct impact on Western cultures. Western cultures had been set up to be more free by default. One of the last arenas where they weren’t all that free was in gender equality. There were also problems with racial equality, obviously, but that is an entirely different issue. Without the necessary men required to perform the labor to support the war effort, many Western countries turned to women to fill those positions. For other countries in other parts of the world, this was not a problem later on because those countries were either already significantly egalitarian, rare, and more common, they simply reverted to their older work paradigm when the war was over because their countries weren’t as free as Western cultures.

For Western cultures, however, a significant question arose as to how egalitarian they ought to be given that they were founded on principles of individual liberties. The impact of this was not immediate as, for the most part, the working paradigm did shift back to the idea of man working with woman at home caring for kids. This continued to be the paradigm until the 1960’s but women working in World War Two had finally raised that question, and it had never been satisfactorily answered as to why women should not be able to work whatever jobs they wanted to in a system that considered itself to put a high value on individual liberties.

This came to a head in the 1960’s when women decided, with sufficient numbers, that they no longer wished to be in the home all the time. Many women viewed their lot in life as almost an ornament or trophy for their husbands. It is also fair to point out, though, that not all women were comfortable with the idea of changing this paradigm. It would be fair, as well, to say that most men were against the idea of women now being able to work wherever they wanted, though not all men agreed on this point. As with most social movements, though, in a society that does value individual liberties, this movement would eventually gain steam and see significant laws put into place to both prevent discrimination based upon sex, and there were also laws put into place to encourage the diversity of sexes within the work place. Even though much of this happened in the 1960’s and into the 1970’s, it would be fair to say that many men and women clung to the older paradigm well into the 1980’s and even 1990’s in some cases. But by the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the majority of the population had shifted its working paradigm so that the idea of diversity of sex in the work place was the more prevalent opinion. But what happened to the dating paradigm that was heavily based upon this working paradigm?

Technological and Social Changes Cause Dating Hysteria

Historical evidence shows us that some things that we believe to be more modern issues have actually always been issues. There is a belief in modern society that people cheat on each other far more than they did in the past. While this may be true, to an extent, historical evidence has shown us that the phenomenon of cheating wasn’t as rare in the past as we always believed it to have been. In the early half of the Twentieth Century, there were already a few ways of determining that a child might not belong to a particular husband, but aside from having the wrong blood type or coming out with an appearance, such as mixed race, that made this apparent, there weren’t a lot of things that could be used to correctly determine if a baby belonged to a particular man or not. Additionally, given that having a child with someone of a different race was usually viewed as wildly inappropriate and even sometimes illegal, most people would’ve and did keep their cheating within racial groups that would not allow for this to be apparent. This goes for men and women, where a man who was sleeping with someone else’s wife would probably have chosen to cheat with someone where this would not be readily apparent should she conceive a child with him.

But by the latter half of the Twentieth Century, the advent of DNA testing meant that someone could be absolutely assured, if they wanted to know, whether a child was theirs or not. This particular technological shift along with the shifting of social attitudes towards freedom to be with whatever race one chooses to be with, meant that many men were now catching their wives cheating, and many men who were cheating with other men’s wives were being found out as well. But the biggest problem there, and the reason that this has been particularly hard on women, is that not all women were completely sure who the father of their child actually was as they were cheating with multiple men. For those men, however, they could claim they did not cheat, even if they had, and when the baby turned out not to be theirs, because we could give a DNA test, it gave credence to their claim that they had never cheated. Because of this, it has become more burdensome on women to not cheat on their partner than men, in most cases.

Another problem that has arisen, as a result of technology, is counter to the burden that women now face to not cheat. In our society now, we have many options for birth control. In the early Twentieth Century there were no options for birth control so a major deterrent to sexual activity outside of marriage and to cheating even while married was the fact that a woman could get pregnant or that a man could get a woman pregnant. Because of the development of so many different kinds of birth control, though, men and women both have at least some control over whether or not they can create a child together. This has led to a distinct change in how men and women view sexual relationships. Sex has become, in large part, divorced from personal affection and is viewed as a compliment to romantic relationships but not a cause of them. Most people feel as though they can have sex with people without it needing to be a romantic relationship. This has led to the advent of the hookup culture. With hookup culture being so prevalent in our society, we have come to a point whereby it is very easy to see why a woman might not know who fathered her child since there could be multiple sexual partners at any given time, especially if she was not formulating any sort of romantic relationship with a particular partner. But it also allows for the possibility that a woman has formed a romantic relationship and is cheating whereby she is having her partners that she is cheating with to use condoms and not using condoms with her boyfriend or husband. It is also worth noting, however, that many men and women simply throw caution to the wind and use no protection knowing that the vast majority of intercourse does not result in pregnancy. The fact, though, that it is unlikely that you get someone pregnant even by having sex with them a few times while not using protection, this completely ignores the fact that with sex being so readily available in hookup culture, this negates the idea that pregnancy is not likely to occur given that the more you have unprotected sex, the probability that you will get pregnant increases exponentially to eventually become near certainty if you are a woman and are capable of conceiving a child.

The last development that has greatly impacted the dating paradigm is the creation of online dating websites and dating apps. After the destruction of the dating paradigm that had preexisted the 1960’s, not much was done to create a new paradigm. There were already men and women who felt left out because there were no longer strict rules to follow to locate a partner. As a demand for dating increased, the free markets of many Western societies responded by creating applications and websites where one could locate a female or male that would be interested in dating them. The draw here was that most of the people who felt the most left out of the dating market had specific issues that made it a problem for them to “just meet someone in public.” Where before, these men could simply get a good job and have that speak for itself, and these women could pretty themselves up and show themselves to be a good homemaker and have that speak for itself, these people now needed to speak to one another. This could be a serious issue from someone who is introverted and who does not enjoy social interactions. Online dating offered an opportunity to find someone who was already looking and already interested in finding someone which served to lower the anxiety over speaking to them. Additionally, as with anything done behind a computer screen, there was at least a degree of anonymity where there would probably be few if any people who actually know you on that particular dating application or website. There was also a view that where you might pine for weeks over that one lady or guy you finally talked to, since being able to speak with so many different people was very easy, you could just move on from that one person you spoke to and try to find another that might be interested.

Where Do Things Stand Now?

At current, our dating paradigm seems to be largely based on “wing it”. Most people can do this just fine, and that is why most people are still able to locate a partner. But it does leave some men and women out in the cold because they cannot simply wing it. Those people need a particular paradigm with some semblance of rules to follow so that they can attract a mate. The afore mentioned societal and technological changes have had specific impacts on our current wing it paradigm that are particularly destructive to society as a whole but are especially difficult for some of the people in the lowest tier of the dating market.

Hookup culture along with the various forms of birth control have had a distinct and negative impact on society and on dating markets. One particularly negative impact to society is that, given that women have many options for birth control including a last resort of abortion, where men only really have two, don’t have sex or hope a condom is sufficient, this has led to a great deal of toxicity in dating markets and toxicity in general in our society. There was, at one time, a point where if a woman got pregnant and said it belonged to a particular man, if that man had nothing tying him to anyone else, he would’ve likely just accepted that and married her. But today, given the dynamics of hookup culture and the belief that she could’ve had multiple partners, it makes it harder to believe that claim for most men. Additionally, given that she has so many options for not having a baby and is choosing to have one, many men who are not interested in any sort of relationship with the woman that they’ve assumedly impregnated will insist on a DNA test to determine paternity. All of this has served to cheapen relationships. Relationships were already cheapened by the advent of hookup culture but have further eroded due the view from men that women are after them for their money, and it has eroded from a view from women that men are not interested in them and are only “after one thing.” This has harmed culture as a whole as it represents a toxic attitude that is likely untrue on both fronts. This, in many ways, represents a self-fulfilling prophecy because many times the disinterest shown by men is based on a belief that “most women are gold diggers”, and the view from women of men “only wanting one thing” leads many of them to only be concerned about the support aspect.

The final aspect that I will talk about is the effect that dating websites and dating apps has had on the dating paradigm. This effect, though perhaps well intended, has been decidedly toxic. Most of these websites and apps view dating as almost a buffet of possibilities. They also place a heavy burden on aesthetics as it is very important to be extremely attractive on these websites. But this runs counter to how most women view the potential for a relationship. If a man wants to rely only on his looks to attract a female, statistical evidence shows that he must be in the top 20% of men in terms of average attraction. For men, however, they will generally consider anyone except the lowest 20% of women. This means that attractiveness ought not to be a primary focus of dating websites and applications given that it is fundamentally incompatible with how men and women determine mates. Because of this, what you typically end up with are men who will send messages to anyone from the upper 80% of women in terms of attractiveness, where women would only naturally send messages to the upper 20% of men but often don’t even bother to do that given that they’re getting so many messages from so many people. This is where the toxic nature of these applications begins to become very apparent. For many women, because they are getting messages from so many different men, they will also get messages from some men in the upper 20%. This should always be a red flag to anyone on any dating website or application. If he or she looks “too hot” to be interested in you, proceed with caution.

What this tends to do is to convince women that they can attract a much “hotter” mate than they probably actually can. It isn’t as if all of these very attractive men are all fake. Some of them are fake just as there are many fake profiles for women out there. But many of these very hot men who are interested in less attractive women, particularly if they would be considered in the upper 20%, they are the men who are actually only interested in that one thing. For many of them, they already have someone and are looking for a side piece. For others of them, they have no intention of settling down to be with anyone. This tends to further convince women that all men are only interested in one thing while simultaneously convincing them that they “deserve a hotter guy”.

For men, the effect is decidedly different from women though no less toxic. It begins to convince them that regardless of how attractive they actually are, they begin to feel that they aren’t very attractive. This is because they send out hundreds of messages and get almost no replies. For the few replies they get, they often don’t get further than a few short conversations. These men are not in the upper 20% in terms of attractiveness. Further, the other aspects that women look for in a man, they might not be the best at those either. Women do typically still seek out a partner who is very successful. If a man’s looks would be 6/10, and he’s making $200K a year, he’s probably going to get a few looks from the women he is talking to. But if he is only making $65K a year, while still a very good living in most places, he won’t be looked at nearly as much. This tends to drive men to look for the least attractive woman that they feel they could find desirable. Given that most of these women will still not be interested, because they will still be getting hookup interests like any other women, many of these men will come to the conclusion that there is no one who finds them attractive.

Given that both sexes are experiencing toxicity that tends to push them to believe things that aren’t true and prevents them from finding meaningful relationships, both sexes are often left feeling lonely after online dating. Even worse, because of the toxicity, the few that do find someone will often end up with a relationship that is not fulfilling and leaves them feeling used. This only further fuels the toxicity.

These are the things that I’ve noticed about how our dating paradigm works, or in many cases fails to work, in our society. I’ve no idea, personally, what ought to be done about them. I think one particular thing that would be helpful would be to go back to a paradigm whereby meeting people in public was the norm with interactions online still being acceptable but just not the norm. I also think that it would help if we would quit criticizing men and women for their biologically earned traits. I do realize that every person is different, but by and large men and women have particular traits that are based on evolution. I feel that it would be most helpful if we try to view those traits in a way that is as non-toxic as possible. Instead of “he’s only interested in a hot girl”, maybe we could say “he’s interested in a lady who takes care of herself and wants to be sexy for him”. Instead of saying “she’s just a gold digger, she just wants my money” maybe we could say “she wants someone who can take care of her and the kids, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” Lastly, I think it would help immeasurably if we began to once again raise our children, both boys and girls, by teaching them to have respect for the good men and women in their lives. Okay, so those are just my general thoughts, and kudos to anyone who made it through all that. Let me know what you think.