Telling someone to find a peer group is a bit harsh. Not everyone has the social skills to do so, and i know plenty of lovely college students, and my overwhelming impression is that they really don't have access to a more virtuous per group. These don't exist in college campuses, at least those that are not religious.
"Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch."
Until fairly recently it was indeed much easier for a young person without the help of the most explicit matchmaker traditions and "professionals" to connect in these social ways by finding, joining, and becoming active members in a good number of institutions that had "mingling and matching" and relationship trials, etc. as either incidental benefits or, often, with some awareness, support, endorsement, encouragement, and even prioritization of those functions by institutional leaders and the broader community, but with a kind of traditional wisdom that one had to engage in the white-hypocrisy game of the "inside joke", that is, playing dumb and naive and paying lip service to the other, "primary, public headline" functions, pretending the relationship stuff is irrelevant (even mildly unwanted as a distracting nuisance) which helps generate the kinds of cover stories, rounds of "plausibly innocent" escalations of probing for interest, alibis, face-saving exit options and socially-acceptable excuses, all indispensable to human nature to lubricate the workings of the game being played.
A very common failure mode of our particular culture - my hunch in that it is a tendency going back to the Reformation - is that we are very bad at the intergenerational transmission of our socially essential inside jokes, and do one notices the same pattern over and over causing all kinds of miserable disruption across a large number of areas of life. My guess is that this is an unfortunately nasty side effect of our (fading) tradition of free speech combined with the incentive and possibility of achieving personal benefits (like fame, status) from being a successful advocate / activist / ideological entrepreneur. What it allows one to do is to openly question the purpose or desirability of some traditional institution but without wise supporters being able to oppose such arguments in the open without ruining the inside joke and breaking the magic of people allowing themselves to believe in framework of accepted excuses.
So what happens is that the next generation will end up taking the harsh, 'pure', cover story too seriously, and instead of perpetuating and propagating them, actually start trying to push out the 'nuisance distractions' that were, in truth, just as important as any of the other functions of the institution.
And then those institutions start to collapse and everyone wonders why and only institutions that are more 'serious' ("older, smaller, deeper") survive. That is, if they aren't good excuses for marginally-interested young people mingling and matching, young people won't stay or join. And now there's nothing left.
Good question is why in Western culture we find a need for such cover stories. The Japanese just openly set up mixer parties (gōkon) with the explicit purpose of mingling and matching. This is a very popular and established institution with them, and for some decades, it worked as well as what Western countries did. (Recent TFR declines there are probably not due to a malfunction of mingling and matching, either.)
I know a 60 year-old woman--never married--who had sex in college, but then hooked up with an evangelist youth group at age 22. The religious group was very against premarital sex, so she didn't have sex for ten years, until she realized maybe it wasn't best to stay in that group. She hadn't found a husband, and she didn't have sex for ten years during the normally "high sex" years.
Men give love to get sex, women give sex to get love. For about 80%, so a good, 80% true stereotype. In casual sex, women are screwed-it’s NOT a transaction. So “why buy the cow when the milk is free?” Of course many men don’t commit to such horny, easy girls. Women, especially Black women, need to say No, not before marriage. Naturally, feminists blame men instead of the promiscuous women, who are sleeping around like sluts. (I sure enjoyed them when I was younger, tho. Now I consider my activities a mistake.)
I would also guess that lots of normal women , 5, 6, 7, & 8s are sleeping with 9 & 10s ( hot or not scales). At least rock groupies mostly know it’s just fun for the guys, little relationship expectations.
Where you write "love" I think you mean "money" - the giveaway is the "why buy the cow" trope. Maybe it's time to stop turning "love" into a synonym for "money" and be clearer about the transaction you propose.
Certainly NOT money. It's a barter, not cash (nor prostitution), transaction. I say it's not a transaction because it's not a fair transaction since women often think they're getting sex+(some) commitment, and they're giving sex + commitment. Men give back only sex, which is why the women feel bad.
Your comment did make me think a lot, including:
Most media confuse sex with love. Love is NOT just sex, but sex is more photogenic. Love is sex/lust PLUS commitment/relationship.
But studying hook-ups as kissing seems weak, to me.
I see a lot of surrendered wife / empowered wife type stuff in Caplans post. I happen to like a lot of the things in the empowered wife (it's the same book, better title, although First Kill All The Marriage Counselors probably wins for attention.)
At the end of the day, if you're going to spend your time watching TV and movies, it's not really a surprise to me that both men and women are detached from the real world.
Rob's whole referenced study is suspect because they studied hook-ups with a definition including just kissing:
>>The term hookup was defined for participants on the information sheet and consent section of the survey as ‘any sexual activity from a kiss to coital intercourse outside of a committed relationship’.<<
I'm pretty sure the regret from a kiss which doesn't lead to more is a lot less regret than intercourse (& male ejaculation) which doesn't lead to any relationship. I would have preferred a definition of hook up as: "any sexual activity stimulating either or both genitalia involving vaginal, penile, manual, oral, or anal direct contact". More than kissing.
The study also was almost explicitly against the kind of "slut shaming" which I advocate, since that's one of the specified causes of regret for the women who regret their hook up. I think had they used a more than kissing sexual definition of hook up, their findings would have been even more women regretting being promiscuous, including because of being judged to be inferior sluts (by folk like me).
The paper does note the double standard that women are a bit shamed at being promiscuous, while fewer men are. I'd say more men are admired for being successful womanizers, and many young men aspire to be womanizers. I'd say such a man is a slut-jerk (slut-cad?).
Bryan's advice for both women and men are good, and mostly long known. Both a bit long for twitter / X.
Scott's got a fine defense of dating app profiles - better filter saves time. For college students and especially recent single grads, seems very reasonable.
Rob's noting of interesting research is good but part of the issue of commitment is the timing. Plus the free/ casual sex of "sex liberation" was far far better for the many womanizing guys than the many normal women who wanted good marriages & kids; tho also fun with guys before kids'. "Start settling" is not such good advice for an 18 year old, nor so great for 23, better for 28 but especially for 38.
Note that "character" doesn't have to include high IQ. Boy Scouts used to emphasize these 12: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent. The anti-reverent atheists helped diminish the Boy Scouts, tho also the cool kids weren't there; and the feminist requirement to include girls means no "boy into men" space for that development. The loss of Boy Scout exclusivity is partly why so few boys become good men; it's very understudied and underdiscussed.
(I like the auto-post into Notes, which can happen with a checkmark for these comments on the main article, but don't seem available for replies to comments.)
Partially disagree re: neuroticism. The well-known warrior / worrier gender difference had obvious functional value in the not-long-gone world where infant mortality was high, and I claim that even today it's an efficient cognitive division of labor as long as it's recognized as such.
Marriage is a gamble. Hopefully it is one where decisions are made with information that improves the odds. My choice of a spouse was made with information that (1) she liked me sufficiently to spend a fair amount of time to show me she liked me. (2) she practiced the faith that we shared (3) she was hard working and self-reliant, having worked early morning fast food and custodian to pay for college and (4) she liked my friends and my friends approved of her. Number 5, of course, is that she agreed to be my partner.
Thirty plus years later my decision to marry her was the best decision I have ever made. That said, all along the way each of us has had to prioritize our commitment to stay married rather than find reasons to separate. What I see with people whose marriages fail is that when the couple realizes they had incomplete information they are unwilling or unable to resolve the incongruence. People can change and spouses especially can act in ways that destroy trust, so I am understanding of divorce. Successful marriages involve spouses who build a strong enough hull of trust that the leaks can be patched without skuttling the boat.
You will be judged by and be influenced by the company you keep. Also, the company you keep is your selection pool.
If you want to signal that you don't sleep around, you've got to be around other people that don't sleep around.
If you want to get married in your mid-20s, be around other people trying to get married in your mid-20s.
If you want to have lots of kids, be around people that want to have lots of kids.
I would focus on finding in-person mixed sex peer groups to join based on desired criteria and then see what happens over time.
Telling someone to find a peer group is a bit harsh. Not everyone has the social skills to do so, and i know plenty of lovely college students, and my overwhelming impression is that they really don't have access to a more virtuous per group. These don't exist in college campuses, at least those that are not religious.
"Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch."
Until fairly recently it was indeed much easier for a young person without the help of the most explicit matchmaker traditions and "professionals" to connect in these social ways by finding, joining, and becoming active members in a good number of institutions that had "mingling and matching" and relationship trials, etc. as either incidental benefits or, often, with some awareness, support, endorsement, encouragement, and even prioritization of those functions by institutional leaders and the broader community, but with a kind of traditional wisdom that one had to engage in the white-hypocrisy game of the "inside joke", that is, playing dumb and naive and paying lip service to the other, "primary, public headline" functions, pretending the relationship stuff is irrelevant (even mildly unwanted as a distracting nuisance) which helps generate the kinds of cover stories, rounds of "plausibly innocent" escalations of probing for interest, alibis, face-saving exit options and socially-acceptable excuses, all indispensable to human nature to lubricate the workings of the game being played.
A very common failure mode of our particular culture - my hunch in that it is a tendency going back to the Reformation - is that we are very bad at the intergenerational transmission of our socially essential inside jokes, and do one notices the same pattern over and over causing all kinds of miserable disruption across a large number of areas of life. My guess is that this is an unfortunately nasty side effect of our (fading) tradition of free speech combined with the incentive and possibility of achieving personal benefits (like fame, status) from being a successful advocate / activist / ideological entrepreneur. What it allows one to do is to openly question the purpose or desirability of some traditional institution but without wise supporters being able to oppose such arguments in the open without ruining the inside joke and breaking the magic of people allowing themselves to believe in framework of accepted excuses.
So what happens is that the next generation will end up taking the harsh, 'pure', cover story too seriously, and instead of perpetuating and propagating them, actually start trying to push out the 'nuisance distractions' that were, in truth, just as important as any of the other functions of the institution.
And then those institutions start to collapse and everyone wonders why and only institutions that are more 'serious' ("older, smaller, deeper") survive. That is, if they aren't good excuses for marginally-interested young people mingling and matching, young people won't stay or join. And now there's nothing left.
Good question is why in Western culture we find a need for such cover stories. The Japanese just openly set up mixer parties (gōkon) with the explicit purpose of mingling and matching. This is a very popular and established institution with them, and for some decades, it worked as well as what Western countries did. (Recent TFR declines there are probably not due to a malfunction of mingling and matching, either.)
I know a 60 year-old woman--never married--who had sex in college, but then hooked up with an evangelist youth group at age 22. The religious group was very against premarital sex, so she didn't have sex for ten years, until she realized maybe it wasn't best to stay in that group. She hadn't found a husband, and she didn't have sex for ten years during the normally "high sex" years.
Men give love to get sex, women give sex to get love. For about 80%, so a good, 80% true stereotype. In casual sex, women are screwed-it’s NOT a transaction. So “why buy the cow when the milk is free?” Of course many men don’t commit to such horny, easy girls. Women, especially Black women, need to say No, not before marriage. Naturally, feminists blame men instead of the promiscuous women, who are sleeping around like sluts. (I sure enjoyed them when I was younger, tho. Now I consider my activities a mistake.)
I would also guess that lots of normal women , 5, 6, 7, & 8s are sleeping with 9 & 10s ( hot or not scales). At least rock groupies mostly know it’s just fun for the guys, little relationship expectations.
Where you write "love" I think you mean "money" - the giveaway is the "why buy the cow" trope. Maybe it's time to stop turning "love" into a synonym for "money" and be clearer about the transaction you propose.
Certainly NOT money. It's a barter, not cash (nor prostitution), transaction. I say it's not a transaction because it's not a fair transaction since women often think they're getting sex+(some) commitment, and they're giving sex + commitment. Men give back only sex, which is why the women feel bad.
Your comment did make me think a lot, including:
Most media confuse sex with love. Love is NOT just sex, but sex is more photogenic. Love is sex/lust PLUS commitment/relationship.
But studying hook-ups as kissing seems weak, to me.
I see a lot of surrendered wife / empowered wife type stuff in Caplans post. I happen to like a lot of the things in the empowered wife (it's the same book, better title, although First Kill All The Marriage Counselors probably wins for attention.)
At the end of the day, if you're going to spend your time watching TV and movies, it's not really a surprise to me that both men and women are detached from the real world.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-022-09946-w
Rob's whole referenced study is suspect because they studied hook-ups with a definition including just kissing:
>>The term hookup was defined for participants on the information sheet and consent section of the survey as ‘any sexual activity from a kiss to coital intercourse outside of a committed relationship’.<<
I'm pretty sure the regret from a kiss which doesn't lead to more is a lot less regret than intercourse (& male ejaculation) which doesn't lead to any relationship. I would have preferred a definition of hook up as: "any sexual activity stimulating either or both genitalia involving vaginal, penile, manual, oral, or anal direct contact". More than kissing.
The study also was almost explicitly against the kind of "slut shaming" which I advocate, since that's one of the specified causes of regret for the women who regret their hook up. I think had they used a more than kissing sexual definition of hook up, their findings would have been even more women regretting being promiscuous, including because of being judged to be inferior sluts (by folk like me).
The paper does note the double standard that women are a bit shamed at being promiscuous, while fewer men are. I'd say more men are admired for being successful womanizers, and many young men aspire to be womanizers. I'd say such a man is a slut-jerk (slut-cad?).
Bryan's advice for both women and men are good, and mostly long known. Both a bit long for twitter / X.
Scott's got a fine defense of dating app profiles - better filter saves time. For college students and especially recent single grads, seems very reasonable.
Rob's noting of interesting research is good but part of the issue of commitment is the timing. Plus the free/ casual sex of "sex liberation" was far far better for the many womanizing guys than the many normal women who wanted good marriages & kids; tho also fun with guys before kids'. "Start settling" is not such good advice for an 18 year old, nor so great for 23, better for 28 but especially for 38.
Note that "character" doesn't have to include high IQ. Boy Scouts used to emphasize these 12: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent. The anti-reverent atheists helped diminish the Boy Scouts, tho also the cool kids weren't there; and the feminist requirement to include girls means no "boy into men" space for that development. The loss of Boy Scout exclusivity is partly why so few boys become good men; it's very understudied and underdiscussed.
Other relevant advice/ notes are available: One on the Orgasm gap (men have more!) https://theconversation.com/the-orgasm-gap-and-why-women-climax-less-than-men-208614
and one about: Fuckboys have feelings too
https://perspectivemag.co.uk/fuckboys-have-feelings-too/
(I like the auto-post into Notes, which can happen with a checkmark for these comments on the main article, but don't seem available for replies to comments.)
Partially disagree re: neuroticism. The well-known warrior / worrier gender difference had obvious functional value in the not-long-gone world where infant mortality was high, and I claim that even today it's an efficient cognitive division of labor as long as it's recognized as such.
Marriage is a gamble. Hopefully it is one where decisions are made with information that improves the odds. My choice of a spouse was made with information that (1) she liked me sufficiently to spend a fair amount of time to show me she liked me. (2) she practiced the faith that we shared (3) she was hard working and self-reliant, having worked early morning fast food and custodian to pay for college and (4) she liked my friends and my friends approved of her. Number 5, of course, is that she agreed to be my partner.
Thirty plus years later my decision to marry her was the best decision I have ever made. That said, all along the way each of us has had to prioritize our commitment to stay married rather than find reasons to separate. What I see with people whose marriages fail is that when the couple realizes they had incomplete information they are unwilling or unable to resolve the incongruence. People can change and spouses especially can act in ways that destroy trust, so I am understanding of divorce. Successful marriages involve spouses who build a strong enough hull of trust that the leaks can be patched without skuttling the boat.