It Gets Better For Men, Sort Of
I’m stealing the title from the It Gets Better project, an initiative to let bullied teens know that life does indeed get better for them, especially if gay, lesbian, trans, whatever. Personally, I have no issue with this initiative. Indeed, the concept that it gets better can be applied to single, straight men as well.
This post was motivated by a supremely good blogger’s post. Read it. Also, read the comments because one commenter, Greenlander, is a classic example of taking the red pill and realizing that he is the prize.
As for for those who don’t know Dalrock, it’s worth reading his well-written and extremely well-researched blog posts.
That blog post addressed the supply and demand in the marriage market. Using good research and some excellent charts, Dalrock made some key conclusions that point to the fact that it does indeed get better for single guys seeking a long.
From 2000 to 2010, the percentage of never-married women has gone up, especially for the 25 – 29 year old age cohort – by almost 10%. It shows that women are delaying marriage. By the 40 – 44 year old age cohort, the difference from 2000 to 2010 is only 1.1%. Dalrock’s chart showing this data is here.
Delaying marriage may or may not be a good idea for the individual woman in question, that’s a personal choice. Delaying marriage is not without unintended consequences and this is why I say that it gets better for single, straight guys, but not completely.
By the mid-30s, there is no longer a surplus of single men. Dalrock makes the very valid point that many mid-30s single men could have dropped out of the long term relationship game by becoming players or simply withdrawing from the dating and relationship scene entirely.
Statistics aside, as single men get older, their income rises. Single men have far more time to apply to their jobs and careers, especially if without children. Parents must juggle between work and family while the single man can be burning the midnight oil. His income will likely increase with the extra time and effort. He can also be learning Game to be working on his self-confidence. For a man in the sexual market place as the years go by, it gets better.
Dalrock makes an interesting point:
Just like a real estate market can quickly shift from a sellers to a buyers market, we could see a sea change where men see themselves as the scarce commodity and women fear being the ones without a seat when the music stops.
Before us single men start rejoicing it’s extremely important to understand that social expectations are still stuck in the rut that women consider themselves as special and perfect snowflakes in desperately short supply. To a certain extent that’s true. Attractive, truly feminine women of good character are not easy to find. Those type of women were likely snapped up quickly. Only when post-divorce trading season starts (mid to late 30s) can single men find these women with the caveat that marriage, kids, and divorce has had some often negative emotional and physical impacts. Call the porter to handle all the extra baggage and then call Weight Watchers.
There is also the dilemma of women who have spent too long working on their careers and have lost – or worse, rejected – femininity and have convinced themselves that being strong and independent is the best course of action. An extra eight to ten years in capitalistic America climbing the corporate ladder is simply not emotionally healthy for a woman who is still seeking a deep and intimate long term relationship with a man.
It’s important to make the distinction between the sexual market place and the relationship market place. For a man in his late 30s and beyond with Game and confidence, the sexual market place is amazing with many choices and many opportunities. Yet it’s slim pickings in the relationship market place. Women in their 30s and beyond are mostly not relationship material (though they could be if they also took the red pill).
To deal with this situation, there are some options:
1. Seek younger women. All hail the biological imperative!
2. Find a divorced woman without too much emotional baggage and who also has maintained her femininity. Hey, it can happen.
3. Forget the notion of a long term relationship and pursue a pump and dump or a soft harem approach while smoking fine cigars and living a hedonistic lifestyle.
In closing, I present part of a comment from Greenlander over on Dalrock’s blog post:
Now, I separate them into two categories by age. Women below about 27 are potential marriage material. Everything after that is pump & dump. I laughed to myself when you wrote about men seeking women 5-10 years younger, because that’s not young enough for me. I’m dating a 26-year-old blue-eyed blonde who is on the high side of 7. (I tap some ass on the side when I can for fun, though.)The women I know in their early thirties are just delusional. I sometimes seduce them and sleep with them just because I know how to play them so well. It’s just too easy. They’re tired of the cock carousel, and they see a guy like me as the perfect beta to settle down with before their eggs dry out. I know exactly how to tickle both parts of their alpha and beta “receptors” to get them interested and willing. I practically read their thoughts that say, “Greenlander seems like a guy I could settle down with.” Then, I bang them a few times, and when I get tired of them I just delete their numbers from my cell phone and stop taking their calls. Fuck them, they don’t deserve my respect. They overplayed their hand. When they had the upper hand they were complete cunts, and now that I have the upper hand I’m returning the favor by being a raging dickhead. It doesn’t really hurt them that much: at this point they’re used to pump & dump!
The younger ones who want to settle with an “upper beta” guy like me while they still have SMV have my respect. I can see myself marrying the 26-year-old if it continues to go well… and if I cut her loose for whatever reason then I’ll also do it respectfully. I treat her respectfully because she deserves respect.
Here is a man who took the red pill and figured out the current state of affairs with regards to demographics, life stages, the sexual market place, and the relationship market place. In the subsequent comments, a female reader excoriated him for this approach. No matter, that female reader was simply showing her abject fear of a man like Greenlander spreading his knowledge.
I am often impressed with the knowledge and writing abilities in the Manosphere. There are so many intelligent and articulate men and women to be read.
The Private Man 
That Greenlander comment is absolute money.
As for you, Private Man, I’m curious. Are you gonna keep playing around or are you looking for the One?
I actually am looking for the One. I’ve been less involved in that process recently because I need a fat writing contract and that is my first priority. When I get back into it I will be hitting Plenty of Fish regularly and start the whole weirdness again with plenty of blog posts to document the shenanigans.
Fundamentally, the purpose of my dating (online and meeting in real life) is to stop dating.
I see comments all of the time that for older men it’s a younger women smorgasbord out there, that these young late 20 early 30 year olds are there for the pickin’ for a guy in his 40’s and 50’s with a reasonable amount of Game.
If you are young, I wouldn’t base my future on this premise. It may happen to you, but it may not. I think it completely depends on the context, such as how well you have aged, how much net worth you have, how high status your job is, etc.
In other words, if you have not aged well (you’re fat and bald), your poor due to divorce, and you have a mediocre job, I don’t think you can expect swarms of young beautiful women to be available for you.
As for myself, at age 47, I can clearly see that I have more women interested/attracted to me than ever before. But 95% of them are either married or are weigh (ha-ha) too overweight/ugly/fugly to get an erection for. Although I am a former omega, I think I have been rated as a 7 in the past, and I do have considerable net worth, so I don’t think it’s completely me.
Its simply that there are just extremely few women out there over the 30-35 age range that are attractive and sane enough to be LTR material; I would say less than 2% of the women of this age. Women like these are extremely rare to find and if you do, they have 2 obese friends who cock-block you.
One problem that I have is that I am a STEM geek. I think the number of younger attractive women would increase if I was able to identify the right circles to hang out in, and introverted INTJ/STEM geeks are not good at inserting themselves in babelicious circles.
I’m seeing A LOT of women, single, married whatever, that are very much overweight. Not medically obese but certainly with the pudge. I suppose it goes along with the national trends.
Last night I was talking with my sons about “goils.” They are both tall, fit kids. They related that a lot of their class mates are pudgy. We discussed that if they keep lifting weights and maintain fitness it will go a long way to giving them initial access to the best looking girls in their social circles.
I think Roissy had a post somewhere that due to the ever increasing national waist line, thin women, no matter where they are on the scale of 1-10 are going to command a higher and higher dating premium as they become an endangered species.
Hmm, maybe I should take my ex back, 34, 7.5-8 and thin – [punches self in face for even thinking that]
One thing I will say is that there is one great advantage of waiting to marry/date: these days, it’s not enough to look at a girl’s mother to predict if your potential wife will become a heifer. I’ve seen too many nice looking guys have a dead look in their eye because they are married to a shrill womanatee. If you get married while you are young to a same-aged woman the chances are that she will age much more poorly than you will. If looks are important to you, why take the chance? At least when you are older the woman who will become cows have already done so and so it’s easier to select a woman who will age well. Or you, if you are lucky (see above post), you can get a younger woman with looks that will last as long, if not longer, than yours.
Very good points, NMH.
By the way, I did a cursory edit job on your comments to make them read a bit better. I hope you don’t mind. I’m a writer and editor at heart, it’s what I do.
NMH,
That is the dilemma I face. In 20s, there is a quality girl good for long term. The only problem is that she is my age. Sucks, eh? It’s tough at this age for me because scarcity mentality starts peaking its head. So goddamn hard to find quality girls these days. I just can’t imagine settling down right at 30.
Thus my consternation I expressed in comment to another post. I don’t want to date single mom’s etc. but since I’m 40 now, divorced and a single dad, as theprivateman said, they are my low hanging fruit. So, my first post divorce date this weekend, divorced single mom aged 40. Nice looking and all but if I had my druthers not my first choice. Also not what I would pick for LTR, which I admit is more what I’m interested in down the road I’m going to approach this as a learning experience after having been married 15 years, I need the practice.
Anyway, like NMH said, I feel that the percentage of women 30 and up that are LTR material is going to be smaller and smaller. Looking at Dalrock’s charts you can start to see that by age 35 a woman that has never been married starts to be a statistical anomaly. I start to think – “Okay, so what’s wrong with this woman that she never decided to get married or that no one was willing to pop the question to her?” Perhaps she lived with a guy for ten years, he never asked, she got fed up and they split. Have to think in back of mind if her “soul mate” should come back in the picture and pop the question she’s be all over that. Also for divorcees, sometimes they get back with their ex-spouse or at the least carry on a secret sexual relationship with them. In my mind, it would be better to take a 29 old 6-7 with no baggage for an LTR than a 34 year old 9 with an ex-husband and an elementary age child.
I think of them in categories like this:
Under 30 – never married, no kids, best LTR material in terms of baggage they bring, but I have significant handicaps due to my baggage that prevents me from having widespread opportunities there.
Under 30 – unwed single mommies, divorced girls. A sweet spot for me to get younger women, however they have their own baggage of course and likely kids much younger than mine. If I LTR one with say a 5 year old, well my kids are teenagers so I don’t know if I want to traverse the whole 1st grade kids and stuff again. Or divorced girl in this age bracket is a red flag. Consider a woman who got divorced at 28. What she lasted maybe 2 years or something in marriage? Not a horse to bet on long term. Of course, her husband could have been a lout or she could have been an uncontrollable slut or flake. Who knows.
30-35 – never been married, the statistical anomaly girls. I look at them with a jaundiced eye and I expect this group might be filled with “reformed” sluts or party girls looking to find a “nice guy”. I can work off of that but I need to keep in mind that these likely aren’t the droids I’m looking for.
30-35 – divorced women, or never married single mommies. The divorced ones are more statistically normal so this might be another sweet spot here. Might be minimal baggage as it goes, except for kids and ex-husband drama. Single mommies in this age bracket would likely be terrible LTR material but easy pickings.
36-40 – never been married. Starting to get really odd from a statistical point of view that they would have never married or had a child. I would view them as really poor LTR material on the whole.
36-40 – divorced or unwed single mommies. The stink of desperation would fill this crowd. Though they themselves would likely not be able to recognize their handicaps in the dating market. I would expect it really difficult to operate with any of them in any kind of LTR. I imagine the emotional baggage from these women would be pretty big. Also their partner count would probably tend to be pretty high in regards to the single mommies. I expect their ability to properly bond to a man is severely compromised.
Having said the above, their are exceptions in every category. I might meet a really nice woman who is divorced at 35 because her husband turned out to be a total turd like my spouse was. So I have to stay alert but also be open to the possibility that I could meet someone worthwhile in one of those groups.
Hehe, the above sounds an awful lot like a woman complaining that all the good ones are taken. But, there is some truth to that. I feel like at this age I’m mostly going to be dealing with the un-marriageables, other people’s cast offs or those who could not establish or successfully keep an LTR together (like my I guess) 🙂
Ah well, can’t get too down, like I said it’s still totally possible to find a decent prospect but I expect I will have to rummage through a lot of refuse to find one.
Its pretty much a numbers game. I broke up from a LTR about 4 years ago. After that I met a new woman about once a month, and met a total of about 30 women before I met 1 (yes, one) on Match.com that I am now with who is LTR material, the rest were not. My view is One in thirty is LTR material. She is not perfect (negatives: five years older, a chronic health issue, about 10 past sex partners or possibly more) but she is the easiest person to get along with.
You have to expect to go through a ton of women to find one that is LTR-worthy. You have a couple of choices to speed up the process: either 1.) increase the rate at which you meet women (once a week instead of once a month), or 2.) make yourself more attractive.
The problem I faced is that I have a demanding job and so it was difficult to spend the time necessary to meet women and learn game.
At some point its not worth it, and porn is a reasonable surrogate.
Yep I have the same dilemma with work and I have the custody of the kids full time. Honestly, if my friends had not introduced me to this weekend’s date it likely would have been a while until I built up a head of steam and found an opportunity on my own. I’m not signed up for any online dating yet, but I given a cursory look at OKCupid, Match and e-Harmony. Seems like it might be a bit of a sausage fest and the usual over-inflated woman egos from instant and incessant validation. How did you find match?
Well, compared to most of the male posters here:
http://www.edatereview.com/011001displayreviews.aspx
My experience appears to have been much better than average. Its pretty much what you would expect: 80-90% of them are undateable because they are overweight/too many kids/ entitlement, and the remaining attractive ones have ridiculous expectations and s their price is WAY to high. I posted an interesting comparison of men and women’s chances on Match on “Awful Profiles” on this site.
Outstanding post about getting older and not wanting to make the time to meet women:
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2008/10/yes-men-do-leave-market.html
I love this guy.
lol, I was doing my weekly blog reading and noticed that I’d been quoted.
I’m glad you liked what I wrote.
I encourage every man to take the red pill.
I don’t know how I managed to not thank you for your linkage and kind words. It is very much appreciated.
@Greenlander
I think this is not necessary:
“Fuck them, they don’t deserve my respect. They overplayed their hand. When they had the upper hand they were complete cunts, and now that I have the upper hand I’m returning the favor by being a raging dickhead.”
How do you know that these women were complete cunts in their 20s when you did not even know them back then?
“Here is a man who took the red pill and figured out the current state of affairs with regards to demographics, life stages, the sexual market place, and the relationship market place”
And became a total dick. Worthless.
Obesity is a recurring theme on virtually all the sites like this I peruse.It’s sad; I am of the opinion that if one is in shape, someone will find your face (isn’t that the physical dichotomy-face/body?) appealing.I am 59 and and have a 22 year old son, and I’ve told him when I was his age you never saw the kind of astounding corpulence that is commonplace today. Indeed, I was looking through my yearbook (’70) and NONE of the kids we considered “fat” would be so today-not one. It is terrible in the rural areas of Idaho; amny would have been in circuses in the ’70s. Tragic, soon to be a tragedy as the population ages