For most people the goal is medium term relationships, interspersed with >meaningless or nearly meaningless sex, and eventually a long term relationship >with perhaps children.
I was thinking about it across people rather than across an individual lifetime. If you asked all the adults in the US what kind of romantic relationship they are most interested in, most of them will say long-term monogamous. After all, most of them are in long-term monogamous relationships. This is consistent with what you are saying, just a different way of looking at it.
I will say though that while this kind of path is very common its not the only desirable or good one. Tons of people get married as virgins and lots of other peoples have lots of other different romantic paths. I also don’t think that the involuntarily celibate path (at least up to a certain age) is the worst one available. Who would you rather be, a 24 year old nerd who has never had a date, or a 24 year old playa appearing on Maury for the 8th time to be told “you are the father!”?
Saying “it doesn’t feel that way in your early 20s” seems to imply your teens and 20s >don’t really matter if it turns out all right in the end?
Now that I am happily married the utility difference to me of one more or less relationship in my past is really small. So, in that sense my lack of romantic success between say 16 and 20 really doesn’t matter. It matters about as much as the fact that I got a C in 9th grade geometry given that I went on to kick ass at math later on in high school and in college.
That being said, 9th grade math was really frustrating for me, as was trying to date in high school and college. One way I could have dealt with that frustration was to learn PUA techniques to increase my success. I doubt that would have worked well for me. I think it would have helped me if I had known then that it was only temporary. Once I got a good paying job, spent some time at the gym, and gained a little maturity, suddenly girls started wanting to go on a second date, even though I still wasn’t a great conversationalist. In that case I still wouldn’t have gotten laid much, but I would have stressed about it less.
Now that I am happily married the utility difference to me of one more or less relationship in my past is really small.
But for the person whose present became your past, the utility difference was enormous. And that’s what really matters. Even if you’re sure you’ll be happy later, you can’t ignore being unhappy right now.
Once I got a good paying job, spent some time at the gym, and gained a little maturity, suddenly girls started wanting to go on a second date, even though I still wasn’t a great conversationalist.
It’s perfectly reasonable that you needed more skills or attributes for this success. But age should not, of itself, be one of these attributes, as long as you’re dating people your own age.
But for the person whose present became your past, the utility difference was >enormous. And that’s what really matters. Even if you’re sure you’ll be happy later, you >can’t ignore being unhappy right now.
I guess. I certainly felt back then that my lack of success with women was likely permanent. I think that if I had known then what my future was going to be like it would have increased my happiness, but I don’t know for sure.
It’s perfectly reasonable that you needed more skills or attributes for this success. >But age should not, of itself, be one of these attributes, as long as you’re dating >people your own age.
It seems like you are making the assumption that women and men of the same age have the same average attractiveness. I think that assumption is a cause of a lot of frustration among young men and leads to erroneous theories about how women date up and men date down and stuff like that. In my model of attractiveness, the average 21 year old woman is much more attractive than the average 21 year old man. Consequently, if you are a 21 year old man, and you want to date a relatively pretty girl your own age, she is probably way out of your league. Unless you have something exceptional going for you, or you get really lucky, its likely not going to happen.
Happily, attractiveness in men tends to rise in the 20s (and even into the 30s and beyond depending on career trajectory & fitness regimen) while it declines pretty rapidly for women in that time period. Even by 25 things will have converged a great deal. But especially for men who are still students, a girl who is the same age as them and in the same percentile of attractiveness as them for that age will be much more attractive than them when judged against the population as a whole.
If a man wants to date at 21 then yes, he either needs lots of charm, or he needs to go for women that are more his overall level of attractiveness. For instance, very overweight/ugly 21 year old women, high school girls, 32 year old trailer trash with 3 kids and a drinking problem, etc.
This sounds very much like an armchair investigation. Most modern marriages, i.e. today, not 15 years ago, are between couples of very similar ages and similar incomes. You’ve got an assumption that women strongly prefer older men—your conclusion that a young man will have difficulty dating at his own age requires this. This may have been true back in the day, before women could pay their own bills. It’s certainly true of some subset of women. But if marriage numbers mean anything, and I would rather think they do, women in general aren’t after meaningfully older men, which suggests that younger men are not at as strong a disadvantage as you have assumed.
I’m not sure what kind of attractiveness you mean to be talking about, but I’ll chip in that maturity tends to be greater in young women than in young men. This equalizes as much as it ever does by the mid to late 20′s.
An effect such as you describe certainly exists to some extent. I don’t know from personal experience if it’s as large as you say. (I suspect it varies a lot across different cultures.)
The question remains: when 21 year old women see that only men who are at least e.g. 25 years old are attractive enough for them, do they consciously rank attractiveness by age, or does age translate into other objective attributes like e.g. experience?
I was thinking about it across people rather than across an individual lifetime. If you asked all the adults in the US what kind of romantic relationship they are most interested in, most of them will say long-term monogamous. After all, most of them are in long-term monogamous relationships. This is consistent with what you are saying, just a different way of looking at it.
I will say though that while this kind of path is very common its not the only desirable or good one. Tons of people get married as virgins and lots of other peoples have lots of other different romantic paths. I also don’t think that the involuntarily celibate path (at least up to a certain age) is the worst one available. Who would you rather be, a 24 year old nerd who has never had a date, or a 24 year old playa appearing on Maury for the 8th time to be told “you are the father!”?
Now that I am happily married the utility difference to me of one more or less relationship in my past is really small. So, in that sense my lack of romantic success between say 16 and 20 really doesn’t matter. It matters about as much as the fact that I got a C in 9th grade geometry given that I went on to kick ass at math later on in high school and in college.
That being said, 9th grade math was really frustrating for me, as was trying to date in high school and college. One way I could have dealt with that frustration was to learn PUA techniques to increase my success. I doubt that would have worked well for me. I think it would have helped me if I had known then that it was only temporary. Once I got a good paying job, spent some time at the gym, and gained a little maturity, suddenly girls started wanting to go on a second date, even though I still wasn’t a great conversationalist. In that case I still wouldn’t have gotten laid much, but I would have stressed about it less.
But for the person whose present became your past, the utility difference was enormous. And that’s what really matters. Even if you’re sure you’ll be happy later, you can’t ignore being unhappy right now.
It’s perfectly reasonable that you needed more skills or attributes for this success. But age should not, of itself, be one of these attributes, as long as you’re dating people your own age.
I guess. I certainly felt back then that my lack of success with women was likely permanent. I think that if I had known then what my future was going to be like it would have increased my happiness, but I don’t know for sure.
It seems like you are making the assumption that women and men of the same age have the same average attractiveness. I think that assumption is a cause of a lot of frustration among young men and leads to erroneous theories about how women date up and men date down and stuff like that. In my model of attractiveness, the average 21 year old woman is much more attractive than the average 21 year old man. Consequently, if you are a 21 year old man, and you want to date a relatively pretty girl your own age, she is probably way out of your league. Unless you have something exceptional going for you, or you get really lucky, its likely not going to happen.
Happily, attractiveness in men tends to rise in the 20s (and even into the 30s and beyond depending on career trajectory & fitness regimen) while it declines pretty rapidly for women in that time period. Even by 25 things will have converged a great deal. But especially for men who are still students, a girl who is the same age as them and in the same percentile of attractiveness as them for that age will be much more attractive than them when judged against the population as a whole.
If a man wants to date at 21 then yes, he either needs lots of charm, or he needs to go for women that are more his overall level of attractiveness. For instance, very overweight/ugly 21 year old women, high school girls, 32 year old trailer trash with 3 kids and a drinking problem, etc.
This sounds very much like an armchair investigation. Most modern marriages, i.e. today, not 15 years ago, are between couples of very similar ages and similar incomes. You’ve got an assumption that women strongly prefer older men—your conclusion that a young man will have difficulty dating at his own age requires this. This may have been true back in the day, before women could pay their own bills. It’s certainly true of some subset of women. But if marriage numbers mean anything, and I would rather think they do, women in general aren’t after meaningfully older men, which suggests that younger men are not at as strong a disadvantage as you have assumed.
I’m not sure what kind of attractiveness you mean to be talking about, but I’ll chip in that maturity tends to be greater in young women than in young men. This equalizes as much as it ever does by the mid to late 20′s.
An effect such as you describe certainly exists to some extent. I don’t know from personal experience if it’s as large as you say. (I suspect it varies a lot across different cultures.)
The question remains: when 21 year old women see that only men who are at least e.g. 25 years old are attractive enough for them, do they consciously rank attractiveness by age, or does age translate into other objective attributes like e.g. experience?