The maturity myth

197 points29 commentssubmitted by moorekomMod to r/WhereAllTheGoodMenAre

Society these days mistakenly likens the maturity of a woman to be the exact same as that of a man, blissfully ignorant of biological reality. More often than not, you will see this popular myth being reinforced to girls. While this can be observed at various points in their lives, there are some key periods when this can be very blatant. For example, epiphany phase girls who finally want to cash in their chips portray one aspect of this maturity myth as them having finally grown up, matured and wanting to find a guy who is “worthy” of them.

There are a lot of reasons why girls reach their epiphany phase and their party years eventually ends up with their “wising up/ maturing” to seek commitment. Inability to lock down an Alpha Fucks (much less an Alpha Bucks), concern for her status within sisterhood, the need to secure financial stability etc. are all well discussed and explained. While the desire for settling down is usually chalked to her concerns for financial stability, hypergamy or concern for her status within the sisterhood and her concern that if she misses out marriage, she will be relegated to the lower rung of the sisterhood (since it is explained that married women outrank divorced women who outrank never married women), these are not the entire reasons why women hunt for commitment.

While these factors do play a big role, we also need to remember that women ultimately play by the rules of the society they are in, the rules of their biology and how much of their biological imperative is allowed within the context of the rules of the society they live in. Men who excuse shitty behavior of women as being because of their nature often forget the role society plays in emboldening her to feel safe in acting a certain way.

While women might act in a selfish way to maximize their own benefits they are indeed playing by the rules of society and what is allowed within these rules. Consider two different types of girls: the wealthy career girl and a broke single mom. While the case of the single mom who wants to settle down to get financial security seems obvious enough, the case of the career girl needs more explanation. Women live according to a script. Most women deliberately do things that were the domain of men in the olden days. This is done for several reasons. We will get to the reasons after considering what is the script that women usually play by: The current rules of society (for women and men) is that you grow up, become a legal adult when you turn 18, go through your youth gaining experience and maturity, you reach a certain point where you think you can handle married life, settle down and build your own family. As was explained previously, this is just an appropriation of what used to be the general guideline for a life path for men in the old days: You grow up, become an adolescent, get a job/ join military/ become a businessman, get some maturity and then start your own family. A rite of passage to masculinity.

Women, in the olden days, were expected to follow a different path. They were to learn wifely duties, find a guy (that she would feel comfortable submitting to and one that is within her league) and maintain the household. Needless to say, theirs used to be a more passive approach. Women received instruction on all this from older women in their families, who in the case of nuclear families were mothers and grandmothers and in the case of extended families, would comprise of mothers, grandmothers, aunts etc. Nonetheless, these women had themselves done what they were teaching their daughters to do. While the women were instrumental in building a girl into a girl worthy of married life, the role of the father was to help vet and screen young men wanting to marry their daughters.

With the advent of gender equality philosophy and the notion that men and women are the same with just different sex organs, we've set the life path of both the genders to be the same. We know that women actually coveted this and willingly spearheaded this via movements like feminism, but for the extent of this post let's just stick with this being made by society as a whole for now.

When men were expected to mature, their maturity was expected to come from hardship, self-improvement and attaining success leading to increased resource acquisition. This actually worked because men are expected to be the providers regardless. This maturation process often happened away from the eyes of women. Various cultures have had rites of passage ceremonies where boys were sent off to the forest for a period of time so that they can learn to survive on their own. While this can be traced back to the roots of every society, as society progresses, young men usually went through their rites of passage amidst other men: mentors who consisted of older men, brothers, fathers, uncles, family friends and colleagues.

These days, when women are expected to go through the process of maturity, they are expected to date around, define their taste by trial and error, get some maturity based on their experiences and then settle to build a family. Women, being sexual creatures (in that, that is their primary worth), define their entire process of maturity through fucking. This is true for the majority of women. Seen through this lens, a girl who goes through a series of short term relationships is not much different from a girl who goes through a series of one night stands before deciding to settle down. The minority that tries to follow the traditional male maturity process of power and resource acquisition, ends up becoming masculine and can only attract feminine men. This is the fate of career women.

The reason women usually go through this maturity process is primarily because of two things:

  1. The mistaken belief (solipsism) on women's part that men are also attracted to traits that women are attracted to. While she thinks a masculine man would appreciate a woman who is tough and who went through the male maturity process, what she does not understand is that this only applies amongst men.

  2. While every woman wants to fulfill her hypergamous objective of getting a higher value guy than herself, feminism has made it uncool to be submissive to men or to do anything pleasing to any man. The outlined maturation process serves as an act of defiance to her patriarchy defined rules to femininity. Women use this maturation process to try to prove to themselves and to men that they're as capable as men before finally settling down to be a wife. This entire process is a rebellion against being completely feminine or even desirably feminine. It's a statement of, "I can do man stuff too. Now that I've used my youth to do man stuff, which I expect impressed you, I want your respect (not as a woman but as one of your equals: a man) and I want a better contract than what I would have gotten under the oppressive patriarchy."

If you look at the ages at which Americans got married (first marriage) even four decades ago, it was around the age of 25 for the guy and 22 for the girl. These days, it's around 30 for the guys and 28 for the girls. These days, the age at which girls even start to think about locking down someone with economic potential is around 25, which if you notice is the age at which men used to get married. This is primarily because of the feminist message that women are at their peak in their thirties, but this is not possible without the acceptance for the maturation process she's supposed to go through before settling down.

When women get to the end of their maturation process, which is conveniently right after their party years, they frantically start looking to settle down not because of other women alone, but because everyone around her expects her to have become mature and capable of settling down. This is usually when friends and family members who dismissed her party years as her finding herself will start openly asking questions like when will she finally act like an adult and settle down. Girls go for betas around this time not just to extract resources but also to win social points. A beta serves the exact same purpose as that of a trophy wife. He is there to make her look good in society's eyes. She does not love him or care about his wellbeing. He is merely there to protect her and serve as a consolation prize. He is proof that she did mature and finally did become an adult. And if it does not work out, it was because he was not mature enough to make it work. It was by no fault of hers. After all, after having "made mistakes" and "maturing" because of that, she did become an adult. He just wasn't mature enough.

PS:

  1. If she is not successful in her attempts to secure commitment, she will rationalize her maturity process to be one where she has discovered inner peace after having finally figured out that she's the prize. A good example: http://archive.is/6cbwo

  2. Source for marriage age data here. https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/2018-median-age-of-marriage/ https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/us-marital-status-data-through-2017/

  3. See my comment here for a great example of how women go through life as outlined here.

  4. See here for more on the internal script women go through in their party years.