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by Anonymous User on Friday February 15, @01:30PM EST (#1)
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"After all, a marriage-age man who lives at home is considered undesirable, but did you ever see a man turn down a promising date because she lived with mom and dad or drove an old junker?"
If he wants a wife who'll be able to pull her own weight, he should. Someone living at home, driving an old junker and working part-time at Denny's is not going to be able to afford to go out very often. After marriage, she certainly won't be able to afford her half of the mortgage, utilities, and so on.
I hate to say it, but I don't think marriage or dating between the wealthy and not wealthy is feasible. The wealthy person will grow resentful about the other's inability to pay their half. Like should marry like. Execs should not date waitresses.
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While I, personally, would tend to agree with you and am not inclined to date outside my socioeconomic class, I also see the flip side of the coin: opposites do attract. My wealthy executive brother-in-law seems very happy playing the knight-in-white-satin role to my damsel-in-distress sister, who used to be his secretary and who was divorced and raising two boys on her very modest income when they met. Some men truly like being the protector and breadwinner, their masculinity and/or personal identity is wrapped up in it. And some women want to be protected and provided for. Takes all kinds.
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Some men (and probably a few women too) seek out unequal economic partners. This is what they prefer. If so, there is no point whining about having to pull more of the economic weight in dating or in marriage.
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by Anonymous User on Friday February 15, @08:27PM EST (#10)
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Some men (and probably a few women too) seek out unequal economic partners. This is what they prefer. If so, there is no point whining about having to pull more of the economic weight in dating or in marriage.
Of course, the same applies to women who incessantly whine about doing more than their fair share of child-care and household domestic duties. This is what they prefer.
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To a degree yes. However, one doesn't know up front how one's parnter is going to contribute to child-care and household duties etc before the fact. People SHOULD discuss this and define the goals before marrying or having kids, but it it not the same as income.
If you are a person making 300,000 a year and you prefer to date a waiter/waitress with a high school education, you know up front what to expect in terms of economic contribution and parity in the relationship.
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by Anonymous User on Saturday February 16, @10:31PM EST (#16)
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If you are a person making 300,000 a year and you prefer to date a waiter/waitress with a high school education, you know up front what to expect in terms of economic contribution and parity in the relationship.
I don't know too many men or women who make 300,000 a year. I do know many men and women with average incomes, where the man is almost always expected to be the primary economic provider in a relationship.
Regardless, if you are a person who keeps a tidy home and likes to cook, and you date someone who doesn't cook and lives like a slob, you know up front what to expect in terms of household contribution and parity in the relationship.
The point is that people do know what they are getting into, or at least they should. Men "whining" (as you put it) about the economic disparity is no different than women whining about a disparity in domestic duties.
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Maybe I'm a little out of step, but this seems like a tired issue. If someone is unwilling to date outside their "class", then that's their loss in my view. If I were to resent the fact that my wife has to come to me for cash every now and again, or even every day (as has been the case), then my priorities as a husband are screwed up. Likewise, a woman who judges a man by his ability to contribute to the family coffer is not someone I want to be involved with anyway.
My advice is to avoid people altogether who consider this a major concern. They'll probably select you out of their preferred pool of potential dates anyway, so there's no sense whining over the rejection. I chose to marry someone who had no such preconcieved notions about my role in her life, and I advise everyone else to do the same. If you choose someone who has those expectations, you deserve whatever you get. Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of women around who don't care what your bank account looks like. Even if it is a statistically small proportion, and who the hell knows if that's true, then my suggestion is to be more discriminating!
I take the same attitude toward women who choose controlling or abusive men to date or marry. Sure, plenty of men have ego issues to contend with, but it's entirely within the realm of possibility to find one who isn't that way. If gold-diggers bother you, fellas...well, I say avoid them like the plague and don't give the rest of the female population a hard time about it. That's all we ask of gender feminists: judge us as individuals, not by the sins of a few.
In sort, avoid shallow, greedy wenches and you'll never face this problem to begin with.
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Bravo! This was an exceedingly practical and level-headed post.
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Awww, now I'm blushing...he he he :D
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by Anonymous User on Friday February 15, @05:43PM EST (#7)
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If more people thought like you, there wouldn't be so many jaded, desperately unhappy people walking around.
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Unfortunately it is neither possible to simply beat the market by an act of will nor to change one's own preferences by the same means. If the potential partners you find most attractive are also found attractive by most of your competitors, and these potential partners have standards you find difficult or degrading to meet, then you have a problem that wishing doesn't make go away.
sd
Those who like this sort of thing
will find this the sort of thing they like.
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by Anonymous User on Friday February 15, @09:35PM EST (#12)
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Nazgul, your comments are logical but I believe you're misinterpreting the real issue. I think the real issue isn't a question of who should pay on dates, but rather, the real issue is one of hypocrisy.
Many women call for equality only when it benefits women. They want rights without responsibilities. They want preferential treatment. The dating ritual is simply a well defined example of this attitude. It's this hypocrisy that motivates frustration from men. Above all else, men believe in fairness. A real problem is that this hypocrisy goes well beyond the social scene (e.g., dating) and extends into government policy.
In another forum, men objected to humorous depictions of domestic violence against men in greeting cards. Their complaints were met with, "it's just a joke" and "you don't have a sense of humor." My response to this is, "I think jokes about violence against men are just as funny as jokes about violence against women." Men weren't complaining about the jokes themselves, they were complaining that the allowable humor was so one sided. They were complaining about the hypocrisy.
The same is true with dating. Personally, I think the majority of men enjoy picking up the dinner tab for a woman. What they don't enjoy is for that same woman to complain about how she's being treated unfairly and unequitably in society.
That's what seems tired.
Shawn Larsen
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The domestic violence against men = humorous reminded me of a thread on a list I'm on. A young lady posted she'd seen a pin with a picture of a little girl holding a pair of scissors with the phrase "if you cut off my reproductive choices, can I cut off your's?" I asked if that meant she'd cut out of uterus of a pro-life female. It went on to the "evils" of backally abortions, with "women putting knitting needles or coat hangers into their uterus, not a pleasant thought, huh?" I added almost as pleasant as a small child cutting some guy's testicles off. She hasn't replied yet. Before I replied another girl said she wanted one of these pins.
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but I'd feel rather weird if my boyfriend paid for EVERYTHING... Considering we're both usually broke, it just wouldn't make much sense. Oh, well.
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I tend to prefer sharing the expenses of dates and relationships. I'm seeing someone long-distance. If I travel his way, I buy my plane tickets and rent a car. I stay at his place, and he buys dinner out.
When he comes my way, he buys his plane tickets. I do the driving here (he doesn't drive at all), and I will do the feeding. This time around, I plan to take us out to dinner at certain places, and will also inflict my cooking upon him. ;-)
I think it is more fair if the woman shares at least some expenses. But not everyone feels that way. I have also had a couple of relationships with men who made less money than I did--which wasn't an issue with me *unless* they also expected me to do most of the housework as well as pay more than 50% of the bills.
I have also asked men out on occasion. I'm not all that comfortable with rejection... I think men have to go through a lot of rejection in the initiation department. No wonder most women prefer indirect initiatives!
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That North American males are expected to make the first moves in a relationship between the sexes, pay for dates, and support a female in and/or outside of marriage is a clear example of the accepted socio-economic exploitation of males by females in North American culture. That men accept this is intolerable. It is as unacceptable as a slave accepting his slave status without a fight. It is a sign of cowardice. The same reflects and is indicative of the fact that women, at least North American women, have little tolerance for any male with any kind of self respect and/or character. They will denigrate, discriminate against, and demean the same. Rather, they seem to only tolerate males who are weak and/or base. It is North American socio-political-economic laws and customs which promulgate the same oppression. Such laws should be changed to require males and females to have the same responsibilities concomittant with the same rights. I, personally, have found ,while traveling overseas, that foreign females often make the first romantic move and often either want to pay for the date and/or share expenses. These same women tend to be much more interesting and attractive personally and to be much less materialistic than American women, in general. They seen to prefer, in general, the same characteristics in men which american women dislike. You have heard this same theme of foreign women being much more respectful of men than North American women many times, I'm sure. In my opinion, this is generally the case.
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I have a long-ago ex-boyfriend who had the ex-girlfriend from hell. She used men like Kleenex. I believe she was an evil bitch. She tried to use me. She had five kids, all by different guys probably, and an untold number of abortions. I know several men who were involved with her (libertarians to boot), and none of them was ever the same after having been through the wringer with her--and not in a good way either.
But you know what? She was short, busty bottle-blonde, blue-eyed, and extremely sexually aggressive with men. She had guys lining up to hook up with her. She treated them like shit, but it took them some time before they clued in to the fact that she was crazy and not to be messed with... but by then she was often pregnant.
But you know what? As long as her looks held up, she was able to go through men like Kleenex. Relatively few men were able to figure her out far enough in advance to realize that they should avoid her.
She put my ex-boyfriend through hell. He was raising her first kid, a child he knew to not be his biologically. He ended up having to go to court to preserve his right to parent that kid.
IMO, I think guys should pay more attention (than they currently do) to things such as serious character flaws and craziness. Because in this case, she may have looked like a good choice at first--I'm sure some of those guys thought they have found sexual nirvana at first because she was aggressive--but she was really bad news, and she almost literally grabbed men by the short hairs and yanked.
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by Anonymous User on Sunday February 17, @11:00AM EST (#18)
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The Real Issue—Young Women Have It Easier
Although it is rarely mentioned in the media, the fact that young women have a tremendously high relative romantic market value and that younger males have almost no romantic market value must cause men a tremendous amount of psychological problems that last permanently. Young women can easily find decent boyfriends, but young males have a much, much harder time. I have seen few women, even lower quality women, who have difficulty unless they are significantly obese or very shy. However, I have known many good, high quality male who had large amounts of difficulty just finding a half-decent girlfriend.
Men’s being expected to pay and initiate is just a manifestation of the large differences in romantic market value. One problem is that this initial difference leads to more inequalities in quality of life. Women seem more mature and perhaps more emotionally stable because they can obtain more relationship experience sooner than males and don’t have to deal with the pains of rejection. Women are getting married when men their same age are still having their first few serious relationships.
I’m not sure anything can be done to ease the pressures on young males or to improve the situation other than to allow the mass immigration of young women to the exclusion of young men. The ultimate solution is to convince people to just date within their own age range. Of course, women would want to date up in order to have more mature, confident, economically successful men and men will date down in order to have women that are easier to psychologically dominate. (I mean, women want men who are mature and in control of themselves and who aren’t afraid of them—a man a woman can psychologically surrender herself to—a feeling for which men have no introspective reference.) The problem is that the age-gap in dating creates man-shortages and women-shortages because birthrates vary cyclically over time. [Ie—if women generally choose men who are three years older than they are, it’s possible that for some age ranges there will be fewer women three years younger than the men (woman shortage) and in others more women than men three years older (men shortage.)] Sadly, I, a male, was born to a decreasing population trend (fewer people a few years younger than me).
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The Real Issue—Young Women Have It Easier
Or maybe we should just say that for most men (of a wide range of age groups) young women are the preferred partner, or perhaps that women in the first bloom of youth are the most desired by men.
I will say that by the time a single woman gets into her forties and beyond, her "value" to men in her own age range has dropped significantly, whereas I have heard the claim that single men in this age range have a wider range of possible females to choose from (over a wider age range, for one thing).
I have an uncle who is around 70 years old and newly divorced. I can tell you that he's not looking to date anywhere near his own age group... they'd better be at least 20 years younger than he is, or he's just gonna pass 'em by.
Heh... from my point of view, maybe we should encourage immigration from men who are old enough to know better but not so old as to be geriatric cases... I'd hate to think that at 48 the only guys available are the ones who are senile!!
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Women seem more mature and perhaps more emotionally stable because they can obtain more relationship experience sooner than males and don’t have to deal with the pains of rejection.
I can assure you that women do indeed feel the pain of rejection. Maybe not from the process of initiation of a relationship, but being dumped isn't fun no matter what your gender.
Women are getting married when men their same age are still having their first few serious relationships.
Well, keep in mind that most women do want to have children, and also that women's fertility comes to a screeching halt, usually by a woman's early fifties if not sooner.
So, if a woman wants kids, and if she wants to raise them with a husband and father, she doesn't have as much time to do it as a man does. You guys may die off sooner, but most of you are still fertile until the end (though perhaps not as fertile as when you were a teenager).
So, the women have to "get while the getting's still good" if they want to have kids.
If a woman doesn't get the urge for kids until her late 30s or early 40s, and if she waits too long before getting married, she may be out of luck in the mating and family game... because it gets harder to find a husband in one's own age group as the woman gets older, and because the woman may have more trouble getting pregnant.
If our fertility lasted as long as men's, and/or if men found mature women just as attractive as teenagers, this would be much less of an issue for women.
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by Anonymous User on Monday February 18, @04:13AM EST (#21)
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Sadly, I, a male, was born to a decreasing population trend (fewer people a few years younger than me).
I don't know what age group you're in, or whether or not you want children, but the younger age groups aren't your only possibility, you know. What about women your own age or even a few years older? I'm not saying you have to date a woman old enough to be your mother. But dating someone a couple of years older might just be an okay possibility.
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