That's it!

[oberkeat]

Everyone wants what's best for themselves and they don't want to settle. So as I explained, like Darwinism, it benefits the people with the most desirable traits; the ones that are most likely to be selected. Natural selection. If you naturally have them or worked hard to acquire them, you get selected. If you don't naturally have them and/or haven't worked hard to acquire any, you won't get selected and might start complaining about how no one gives you a chance that life isn't fair. Like you have here.

 

Evolution benefits the more desirable, "better" traits. As I've said, the solution is very apparent. If you want better success, be a better person. Success, power, strength, health, beauty, and other resources are "better" and more attractive than the lack of those things. And the more you have, the better. If you want to be more successful, get more of those things. You have to adjust yourself to the environment. The environment won't adjust to you no matter how hard you complain about it.

 

You have an ideological rigid philosophy about how Darwinism applies to dating. It doesn't in any way. If "success, power, strength, health, beauty, and other resources" were the deciding factors in dating, all married or coupled people would be successful, powerful, strong, healthy and beautiful. But they are not. Evolutionary arguments do not apply.

[oberkeat]

You are going on about this escalating singles rate and declining marriage and birth rate as if it is some terrible disease that must be wiped out.

 

Not at all. I just think it's ironic that all these dating apps, communication technology, etc. was supposedly created and marketed to us to improve our access to and ability to find relationships, while the reality is it's doing the exact opposite according to all the trends I've been quoting here, and that many people do not even realize it.

[WaitingForBardot]

You have an ideological rigid philosophy about how Darwinism applies to dating. It doesn't in any way. If "success, power, strength, health, beauty, and other resources" were the deciding factors in dating, all married or coupled people would be successful, powerful, strong, healthy and beautiful. But they are not. Evolutionary arguments do not apply.

 

Your conclusion here is flawed. These traits would be the final deciding factors all other things being equal, but they never are. It in no way negates the role of evolutionary factors in mate selection.

[lilmissjava]

People are much more accessible now, more than any other time in history.

 

The sad sad truth is that we can see people at our fingertips even if they live a thousand miles away. It's all so impersonal now.

 

We don't want to deal with the troublesome relationship so we escape into cyberspace. Dealing with real life issues is becoming a thing of the past. Now we have become so intertwined with the lack of digital communication in relationships as opposed to in person communication. Why didn't she text me? Why won't he add me on Facebook? etcetera and so forth.

 

Why would we want to deal with these problems when we can click and tap our way to a new relationship?

 

And the cycle continues... smh.

[normal person]

At a certain point in the 20th century, the declining birth and marriage rate and the escalating singles rate stop being a product of gender equality and start becoming a symptom of our dysfunctional ideas regarding dating and relationships. Are you saying these converging trends are just coincidence? No way.

 

Considering it "dysfunctional" is subjective. Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work. It works for successful people, it doesn't work for unsuccessful people. If you're successful, it's functional.

 

5 percent is far less than the 22 percent you quoted for us earlier. You might split hairs over how many people that actually is, but the fact is online dating did not get the job done for the vast majority of coupled people out there. If an auto repair shop quoted a 5% success rate, they would not be in business very long.

 

Finding the perfect person is hard to begin with. People get married to the wrong person and realize they weren't selective enough in marrying that person and then opt to divorce. Hence why the divorce rate has pretty much kept pace with the marriage rate long before the current dating conditions.

 

See my batting average analogy in a previous post. An auto repair shop is expected to succeed at a high rate. Dating, while it's as efficient as it's ever been, still can't produce a 100% success rate under any format, and has never been able to. Meeting the right person still might take thousands of dollars and many years. Fixing a car can be done be done much cheaper, much quicker, and you wouldn't expect them to not have the right part because they just can't find it anywhere. If you need a new carburetor, they have it there to install. If you need a girl with a particular sensibility and look, you can't just "buy" her, not in the way we're talking about, anyways. Finding her is not akin to auto repair.

 

It's like expecting a hitter to hit a home run every time. It's not plausible given the circumstances of the environment. For an auto mechanic, a 100% success rate is very plausible.

 

Your argument wasn't that like attracts like. Your argument was that wealth, beauty, power and the fight for survival has everything to do with relationship formation, which no one dating today would agree with.

 

You don't understand. Wealthy, beautiful, powerful people intermarry because they can. Unattractive unsuccessful people surely want to marry wealthy, beautiful, powerful people, but they usually can't. Because those wealthy, better looking people can do better.

 

Money and power give you the best chance of survival. It's not that like attracts like, it's that the best attracts everyone, and the environment creates circumstances that like ends up with like because like can't do better and has no incentive to do worse. No one wants to be with a fat, unambitious, unemployed person, not even other fat, unambitious, unemployed people. Everyone would rather marry better looking, wealthier people with more desirable traits. They just can't, and that can be extrapolated to every level. The girl you went out with thought she could do better than you, so she has no reason to go out with you again. You learned that you can't go out with her even though you want to, because she has no reason to date down to your level. Better attracts everyone, benefits the best, and usually leaves like with like circumstantially.

 

As I said, I'm not the only one out there who are finding out how poisonous this dating culture has become. These boards are a treasure trove of folks who are frustrated and disappointed with dating, the statistic trends we're seeing regarding coupledom back it up. It's not just me.

 

First of all, people come to these boards to seek advice and ease their frustration. That's the point. So by design these boards are largely skewed towards people with problems. No one decides to register an account and start a thread just to say "Everything's going great and I have no problems."

 

Do you disagree that the less desirable traits you have, the less success you will have? Explain to me how that's poisonous and not just the natural order of things.

[normal person]

Not at all. I just think it's ironic that all these dating apps, communication technology, etc. was supposedly created and marketed to us to improve our access to and ability to find relationships, while the reality is it's doing the exact opposite according to all the trends I've been quoting here, and that many people do not even realize it.

 

"Finding a relationship" is not the end goal for most people. The end goal is finding a relationship with someone their perfect match, and that isn't easy. I'd rather be selective and take my chances waiting for someone I actually love than settle and get married to someone I don't.

 

Why are divorce rates so high? If people were selective enough the first time around, maybe they wouldn't have married the wrong person.

 

There's nothing wrong with selectivity. Selective people can deal with the consequences of their actions, good or bad. People who would rather not be selective are free to do as they please. I don't see what the problem is.

[elaine567]

I guess in the "good old days", many were equally frustrated with dating, plenty old spinsters and bachelors attest to that. Not everyone "chose" to be single, some did, but for others marriage just didn't happen for them.

There was no "Golden Age"" where it didn't really matter who anyone dated, or that all women settled for any guy that just showed up.

Money, appearance, education, class, family, personality all still mattered, the "best" ones were still sought after and those that did not make the grade "settled" or remained alone.

People still filtered out those they did not like or they thought unsuitable.

We may have technology to find all those "amazing" people out there for us, but the bottom line is that it is all down to human interaction in the end, and if there is no "spark" or nothing in common or no interest, then the relationship could not develop whether we are talking 1916, 1956, 1986 or 2016.

[William]

As it appears the topic has drifted to more general dating discussion, moderation conferred with the thread starter, copied (not moved) some general posts to a specific thread on general dating issues and will close this up.

 

Link to general dating discussion thread:

 

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/romantic/dating/576335-general-online-other-dating-discussion