It is a surprisingly common belief that the dating world makes sense or that, failing that, the dating world can be MADE to make sense if you shove it hard enough and throw out enough data. It’s common among pick-up artists, of course, and the more misogynistic brand of Redditor; but Cosmo does it, self-help books do it, friends and family and coworkers do it, hell, I’ve done it on this very blog.
You would think it would make sense. That people would, more or less, all tend to like the same thing: kind, interesting, physically attractive people or, failing that, jerks/bitches. That there is some consistent behavior that people can adopt and then they will all have sex. But that’s not true! The dating universe does not make sense.
Exhibit A:
Christina Hendricks, who is basically the hottest lady alive, and her husband Geoffrey Arendt, who looks like one of my nerdy ex-boyfriends.
Exhibit B:
This is Pierce Brosnan, aka James Bond, aka the definition of masculinity and manliness and heartthrobness, and his wife, who is a perfectly ordinary person.
Exhibit C: Ferrett Steinmetz. I have to say, I am kind of fond of his writing, as I am addicted to confessional essays. (It is a SICKNESS.) He has also had quite a lot of sex, despite being (as extensively documented in his own essays) overweight, nerdy, prone to cheating, a slob, needy for affection, and a fucking Magic the Gathering writer. He is currently happily married and has a couple other partners (that his wife knows about, obviously). I am just saying.
Now, I’m not saying that whether you get a date is completely up to chance. Many people who can’t get a date with someone they find attractive have pretty obvious reasons why they can’t. “Has no friends of the appropriate gender.” “Has no friends, period.” “So passive that you basically have to stalk them to date them.” “Doesn’t ask people out.” “Has problems trusting people enough to date them.” “Only attracted to people who look exactly like the person they had a crush on in elementary school and borderline asexual with everyone else.”* None of those are bad things in and of themselves, and certainly none of them make one a bad person; however, they will make it harder to transform the X percentage of people who are attracted to you into people who will date you.
But there ARE people who can’t get a date, and there’s no reason for it except that the universe chose to shit on their heads. Congratulations, you’re today’s lucky winner of the door prize of celibacy! Come in and collect your winnings!
This is the point at which a lot of people accuse people who make stupid generalizations about dating, of the “women like jerks” or “men like big tits” sort, of not being able to get laid. But I don’t think that’s the case. Some of them might be, especially on the Internet, but not all of them are. Some Cosmo writers are fucking married.
I think, in a lot of cases, it’s just overgeneralization– either from whom you’re attracted to or from who’s attracted to you. If you like smart guys, you’re going to assume that most people are into smart guys; if you get laid by making tons of jokes, you’re going to recommend making tons of jokes as the Dating Method Par Excellance.
Consider pick-up artistry. If you try PUA stuff and you get laid from it, you’re going to assume it’s telling the truth about the dating world, even if it isn’t. There’s a huge leap from “I went out and started teasing girls and being cocky, and suddenly I started having casual sex” to “therefore all women like cocky guys who tease them.” Maybe the type of women you like, in the place you live, are more likely than average to like it; maybe it works with your style and your personality better than your previous tactics did; hell, maybe it’s a complete coincidence– that happens, sometimes, when your sample consists of one thing. (And the dude who tried PUA stuff and it didn’t work isn’t exactly going to be sticking about the PUA community selling ebooks, so there’s some pretty heavy selection bias, too.)
What it doesn’t mean is that pickup artist dogma is necessarily going to work for everyone (it won’t) or an accurate description of how dating works (it’s not). Because people are different, and the dating world is fucking complicated, and a lot of times it just comes down to luck.
Imagine dating as some very complicated system, like economics. After more than two centuries of scientific study of economics by many brilliant minds who have devoted their lives to it, we’re only beginning to comprehend how the modern capitalist economy works, and new, revolutionary discoveries are still being made. Why do you think dating would be less so?
But a lot of the scientific study of dating is shit. For one example, I do not understand why psychologists like asking people about “objective attractiveness” so much. I have seen it in seriously SO MANY papers, and it makes no sense. For instance, here is a man whom I would call objectively attractive:
Hi Thor!
Here is a man I want to bang:
Ryan North, author of Dinosaur Comics!
You will notice that they don’t look a hell of a lot alike. Thor’s got that dopey expression on his face, for instance, and Ryan North has an adorable smile lighting up his face and glasses and *sigh*… wait, I was making a point, wasn’t I?
What is objectively attractive and what I’m actually attracted to are completely different. Objective attractiveness is good if you want to talk about beauty standards or body image, less good if you want to talk about whom they get boners for, and even less good if you want to talk about whom they fuck.
*All of these are people I’ve met, stripped of identifying details, so don’t go complaining in the comments about them being unrealistic.
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51 Comments on "The Dating World Doesn’t Make Sense: A Rant"
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“Christina Hendricks, who is basically the hottest lady alive,”
What? Not from the picture you posted.
Sam,
Are you suggesting that a random distribution is the same as an even distribution? It’s clearly not evenly distributed by any measure.
Plus there are any number of variables. The probability of two people being mutually attracted to one another is a completely different question from the probability that they will ever encounter each other, and those are only two issues. Whether ‘there’s a lid for every pot” has to be considered separately(and first) before it can be determined if any particular pot can find its lid.
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In my personal experience as a female-assigned person attracted to men, barring dating websites, it is extremely difficult to get a guy to ask you out if, in fact, you don’t know any men. You’re more or less left with the dudes yelling “nice ass” at you from street corners at that point.
Trust me, you really wouldn’t. I was sexually harassed all through school *because* word got around that I was raped in the summer holidays. And on another note, guys assuming women just have to leave the house to get hit on makes the ladies who get nothing feel even more like freaks.
I really would. Sexual harassment and being hit on are two very different things by the way. Would you rather have too many people find you attractive and let you know that they find you attractive or have the whole world saying that you are unattractive? Seems pretty simple to me. Women, in almost all cases, DO just have to leave the house to get hit on. I have many female friends — more female friends than male — and every single one of them tells me stories pretty regularly about crazy situations where they are hit on.
Rapists don’t really have to find their victims attractive. They get off on humiliating people. They’ll rape men fairly readily in the right conditions. What they find hot about the situation is the power they have, and the fear the other person feels. I’m not sure why you think being humiliated would enhance your self-esteem.
I don’t see the big deal. All you white people look alike to me.
haha, nice one 🙂
I am not going to let this make me feel depressed! Maybe someday a woman will smile at me and say hello or something. I just got a nice haircut yesterday, so we’ll see. Now I just need to find a group of friends that are my own age, not married, and have women as part of the group!
Yeah, people are all different individuals, but it’s also true that people exist in widely varying social environments, which only increases the complexity. It just drives me nuts that a lot of dating advice(so called) seems to assume that things like population density and gender ratios are the same everywhere, or else don’t matter at all. They’re not, and they do.
Amen! Many people do not live in or near major metropolitan cities and/or go out to bars and clubs to meet and chat up potential dates, but that is usually the environment around which most dating advice is centered.
Yes, but if Thor had written Dinosaur comics…
Yes, but if Thor wore glasses…
True, Kaija, no one’s living in an ad, but an awful lot of us have no real world standards beyond what’s marketed to us. After all, gender itself is a kind of organic marketing, when you come right down to it.
I do think that the more help you need with the anxiety of dating, the harder it’s going to be for you. You’re supposed to overcome these things by banging your head against them, and there’s no good advice for helping yourself thru that process.
I agree, luck is very important.
However you can increase your chances by going out and doing stuff and meeting people.
Well yes. It comes down to luck but you do have the power to alter the odds. Just don’t kid yourself into thinking you have complete control, because the only way to do that would be to deny the agency of others.
I get out and do things I enjoy. My interests tend not to be the most helpful when it comes to going after women but by living a life I’m happy with without someone I’m better equipped to handle some of the emotional rigours of loneliness.
That’s probably one of the things I loathe the most in the process of “Trying to make sense in the dating world”: The tendency of people who’ve also had a couple of mishaps (and Hey! Who hasn’t?) to hand out unsolicited how-to-advice along the line of “This worked for me so it’ll most likely work for you too.”, as if they knew that person, what s/he is like and what measures already been taken…
That’s beautiful, Kara–thank you for expressing that.
This is Pierce Brosnan, aka James Bond, aka the definition of masculinity and manliness and heartthrobness, and his wife, who is a perfectly ordinary person
Wasn’t that, like, 25 years ago? He’s 60 years old, FCS. 😉
(I’m not trying to be ageist here, just reurning your “manliness” play, since I think most people are considered more “objectively attractive” in their 30’s than in their late 50’s.)
Besides, Pierce was always too elegant to be manly. His bland confidence was a plus, but he never had that atavism at the core.
I’m not seeing a big difference facially between Christina Hendricks and her boyfriend besides complexion and glasses. They both have button noses, soft eyes, full lips and fleshy cheeks. They’re surprisingly similar looking despite being different genders.
Now that I think about it, Pierce Brosnan and his wife also look shockingly similar. They both have typical dark-irish features and she’s as feminine looking as he is masculine, as in very feminine and very masculine.
It’s bizarre that Ozy chose to to illustrate the so-called nonsensical nature of dating with couples that are very well-matched appearance wise.