Summary: As a break from our usual fare, today’s post gives advice to men. Here is advice from an expert for men too awesome to attract a woman. It is rich with lessons about our future.
After eight score posts describing the gender wars and guessing about their end, let’s do something different. Here is advice — hot from the manosphere — for elite men about finding the right woman. The full article is even more awesome. Read this post to the end to get the rest of the story, the surprising pearl in this clam.
“You’d think that being an all-around awesome person would make it easier to find a great girl to be with, but the opposite is often true. It might seem contradictory at first, but these are some of the reasons why being an amazing man often means spending a lot of time single.
- “You’re often seen as being out of someone’s league. …It’s not that they don’t think you’re amazing – they just think you’re TOO amazing …
- You’re a lot to handle – in a good way. Truly awesome men are often a mixture of a lot of things, and the result can be a bit overwhelming for some girls. …even a lot of great women can’t handle that kind of brilliance.
- You don’t settle for mediocre. …You’re great enough to deserve the woman of your dreams, and you’re smart enough to know that settling for anything less than that would be a disservice to yourself. …
- Your confidence is intimidating. …You know that you’re pretty darn great. …
- You’re not scared of being alone.
- You know what you want. Truly awesome men have their act together, and they know what they want out of both life and love. …
- You attract the wrong people. The great thing about being amazing is that a lot of people can see what a catch you are. …
- You have seeming infinite patience. Once you do get into a relationship, your forgiving nature is usually a large part of what helps it last for so long. Your patience is part of what makes you such a beautiful person …
- You’re always busy. …The reason your life is so fulfilling is because you have so much going on …
- You expect as much as you give. You’re generous in just about every aspect of your life …When you’re as amazing as you are, though …”
This is an excerpt from “The More Amazing You Are, The Harder It Is To Find Love” at Bolde.
“Bolde is a platform for single men to express themselves about dating & relationships. Our editorial mission is to inspire open and uninhibited conversation about what it’s like to be single and dating today, how to lead fulfilling lives as single men (because a partner is NOT a requirement for an amazing life), and how to have the healthiest and most satisfying relationships. We are not one person with an agenda but a platform for hundreds of amazing, brilliant and opinionated writers to share their perspectives on a variety of topics.”
These guys are big wins for the California Task Force to Promote Self-esteem. This article reads like a pre-written plea for help by someone smug, lonely, and baffled. Such men deserve our pity (although it would take a saint to give it). But this article does not help them. These guys are being rejected, and being too amazing is probably not one of the reasons. They need help from a buddy, parent, or grandparent. Someone to explain what they are doing wrong. Perhaps too much self-esteem?
Now, the rest of the story
As you have probably figured out, this article is not real. Even in the extreme reaches of the manosphere, nobody would write approvingly about such self-absorbed, vain, and arrogant men. But the article is real, and people do write approvingly about such people — when they are women (I reversed the genders in the article). It’s an exciting new genre in chick lit.
My favorite example is “Where have all the good men gone?” by Alana Kirk in the Daily Mail – “Five single women share why they’ve struggled to find men worth dating. These sassy, sophisticated, solvent women say they are struggling to find other halves that can measure up.”
Another example, with great quotes, is “Shortage of eligible men has left women taking desperate steps” by Laura Donnelly in The Telegraph.
“Women tell us frequently that they are freezing their eggs because the men they meet feel threatened by their success and so unwilling to commit to starting a family together.”
— Professor Geeta Nargund, Medical Director of the clinic Create Fertility (bio here).
“These are highly educated, very successful women and one after another they were saying they couldn’t find a partner. How could it be that all these amazing, attractive intelligent women were lamenting about their ability to find a partner?”
— Marcia Inhorn, Professor of Anthropology at Yale and former President of the Society for Medical Anthropology (her website).
None of these articles, at least those I have read, ask the opinion of any men who know these women. Their answers might help these women. Lacking those insights, these women are Going Their Own Way. More stories in what might be one of the big stories of our time: the decline in marriage rates.
The Bolde article given above is by Averi Clements. She is described as a “Brazilian jiu jitsu blue belt. …currently hanging out in Costa Rica with her cat ….” She also wrote “I Wouldn’t Appreciate My Boyfriend So Much If I Hadn’t Dated So Many Toxic Guys” (aka, “I found a nice beta before hitting the wall, after a decade of dating exciting bad boys”).
Although the article is about women, not men, they still deserve pity. These women are on a path leading to a lonely future. And cats. If there are many of them, our society has a serious problem. It is another factor in the decline of marriage.
“Your sex thinks beauty and good nature are the highest claims a woman could possess.”
— Emma’s insight in Jane Austin’s Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
, starring Gwyneth Paltrow.For more information
Hat tip on this to Nick Mgtow’s comment at Dalrock’s website.
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about society and gender issues, about feminism, about marriage, and especially these …
- Men are going Galt. Marriage is dying. — A review of books from the cutting edge of the revolution.
- Men are abandoning the rat race, & changing American society. — See the data.
- Why men are avoiding work and marriage.
- Part 1: Will young men break America’s family structure?
- Part 2: Will today’s young men marry? America’s future depends on the answer.
- The coming crash as men and women go their own way.
- The coming crash of marriage: why, and what’s next.
An important book about marriage in the 21st century
.By Helen Smith.
Smith is a psychologist specializing in “forensic issues” in Knoxville TN. She has a PhD and two MA’s. From the publisher about this book…
“American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going ‘on strike.’ They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this “man-child” phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility simply because they can. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them?
“As Men on Strike demonstrates, men aren’t dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development. They are instead acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers. In addition, men are going on strike, either consciously or unconsciously, because they do not want to be injured by the myriad of laws, attitudes and hostility against them for the crime of happening to be male in the twenty-first century. Men are starting to fight back against the backlash. Men on Strike explains their battle cry.”
Another example of how girls are much better than boys …
…in sports. A Tweet by a guy, because misandry is trendy today (imagine this tweet if the genders were reversed).
I’m a newcomer to association football. Where was the foul?
PAT,
Does it matter? Sven’s reaction is the significant aspect.
When male defenders are in front of the ball, they initiate a goal-saving tackle. This female defender completely whiffs on the attempt!
Some players are more prone to simulation of pain…. Because there is actual money at play in men’s soccer: anything goes when the stakes are high.
Now go watch a 15 year old boys’ select team beat our national women’s team, like they do every time they scrimmage.
Obvious after the first paragraph that it was a list for women. I’ve never seen an article about men being TOO AWESOME to get chicks, but it’s a common one for females for sure.
Dark,
I agree. But why the difference? Why is it fine for women to consider themselves “too awesome” for men, but egotistic for men to do so?
Or rather, why are these poor women fed us horrifically bad advice?
Larry,
Because men with high self esteem take over worlds. That’s not good for the upper-class.
Women with high self esteem destroy families and society. That’s great for would-be world taker-overs.
Only question I see is whether women actually believe the “I’m too awesome to attract a man” meme, or if they are just using that to avoid psychic injury by rationalizing away their own lack of attractiveness.
As for why it’s acceptable for women to do this but not for men? It’s my theory that throughout tens of thousands of years of human sexual history, with men as the pursuers and women as the pursued, that males have evolved a higher level of psychological tolerance for sexual rejection than females have.
Any time you have to ask if someone “actually believes” something, the answer is yes.
They won’t have a rational defense for their belief, but of course they have it. It’s easy to believe something. It’s why the scriptures advise us to “keep proving” the word to ourselves, to “keep working out” our salvation and righteousness, and to “have a defense ready for someone who demands it.”
Oh man, I’m just a guy on the internet, but here are two hypotheses:
1. Women have a more powerful solipsistic drive/rationalization hamster than men do. The solipsistic parts of the list are things that women find arousing in men, so they think men find them arousing in women. So they concentrate on those things (maybe to the detriment of things men actually find arousing) and when they don’t ‘work,’ their hamster starts spinning like mad to explain why they aren’t ‘working.’ This seems to be a common enough thought in the red pill community.
2. Men actually do write these articles for each other, but they’re in some part of the internet I’m not aware of. I tried searching for an male-equivalent to this article, but the only ones I found were lists of things women don’t care about, ways to be a better person, etc. Nothing in the vein of “You know why you don’t have a girlfriend? You are TOO baller.” Even when google brought me to an incel site, they seem to acknowledge that it is their FLAWS that repel women, not their good qualities.
Anyways, I assume women have been getting bad advice recently because masculinity has been elevated above femininity, even for females.
Dark,
“because masculinity has been elevated above femininity, even for females.”
That’s a powerful observation, one I’ve wanted to write about.
Look at female action heroes on TV shows: they often are shown as special because they behave like guys. Common tropes: rail-thin girls who eat lots of high calorie food, can beat up guys because they fought with their brothers, and hobbies are males sports. An extreme example of this is kensi on NCIS LA — in all respects except physical, she’s drawn as a guy. Ditto Elanor Bishop on NCIS — works out with a batting machine late at night for fun, small and rail-thin but eats thousands of calories of food day (one show contrasted her eating with her gentle beta coworkers dieting), etc. I wrote several posts about this trope in “Castle”: as the show evolved, the title character became feminized and his gal partner became more manly than most men.
It’s not just that the scripts are unisex, the leading characters are drawn as guys in action, values, and speech.
I’ve even seen this in parents. The most paternal pride I’ve even seen is when dads describe how their daughter is a tomboy (doing guy things).
What effect does this have on girls and women?
Yes to solipsism. I suspect that far fewer women than men would rcognize the gender reversal trick in the passage above. Would be a fun experiment….
“What effect does this have on girls and women?”
I don’t know exactly, but I suspect it will involve a lot of cats, ice cream, TV and cat food.
“1. Women have a more powerful solipsistic drive/rationalization hamster than men do”
Guys usually don’t tell themselves, if they aren’t having a lot of success with women, that it’s because they’re just too awesome. They react to failure with women in different ways, but they don’t generally fall prey to this particular delusion. You’re probably right about women having a more powerful inner hamster. But I’d point out that there isn’t an entire media support system telling men that they’re too awesome to succeed with women. For men, failure to attract women carries social stigma, Whether they do something useful about it depends on a lot of things.
Women aren’t stigmatized for failure to attract and keep the kind of man they want for an LTR, so if she’s 35 and the right man just hsn’t come along, well, the available choices in men didn’t come up to her expectations. Questioning whether those expectations were realistic is considered bad form.
“2. Men actually do write these articles for each other, but they’re in some part of the internet I’m not aware of. I tried searching for an male-equivalent to this article, but the only ones I found were lists of things women don’t care about, ways to be a better person, etc”
You might find something vaguely analogous to this on one of the incel boards, or a black pill type of site, but those tend to get taken down pretty quickly these days.
Oddly enough, I was reading last night and this passage stuck out:
“… Of course, she was older. In the brilliant sun of the afternoon one saw that her skin was no longer like white lilac- it had the ivory tint of gardenias that have just begun to fade. The coil of blue-black hair seemed more than ever too heavy for her head. There were lines- something strained about the corners of her mouth that used not to be there. But the astonishing thing was how these changes could vanish in a moment, be utterly wiped out in a flash of personality, and one forgot everything about her except herself.
“And tell me, Niel, do women really smoke after dinner now with the men… nice women? I shouldn’t like it. It’s all very well for the actresses, but women can’t be attractive if they do everything that men do.”
“I think just now it’s the fashion for women to make themselves comfortable, before anything else.”
” Mrs. Forrester glanced at him as if he had said something shocking. “Ah, that’s just it! The two things don’t go together. Athletics and going to college and smoking after dinner– Do you like it? Don’t men like women to be different from themselves? They used to.”
Niel laughed. Yes, that was certainly the idea of Mrs. Forrester’s generation.
From Lost Lady, by Willa Cather. 1923.
The prolific use of the word “amayyy-zing!!!” was the dead give away.
10 times in one post.
Men typically don’t self apply such an adjective.
Unless they are as gay as a picnic basket, in which case everything is amazing and awesome anyway.
I think it all stems from innate insecurity; an inferiority complex if you will. Every attractive and intelligent single woman I know, without exception, has platitudes and self affirmation signage, artwork, books, etc lying about their apartment or house. Examples: “You are loved” print in the bathroom, “You are powerful” magnet on the kitchen fridge, a copy of “Women Who Run with Wolves” on the nightstand, a typical “grrrl power” tune in the mp3 player to rally, etc. All the school indoctrination and media propaganda in the world can’t change the fundamental self-doubt women seem to possess. It’s anecdotal observation that may more reflect my choice in women but I can’t help but see the pattern.
I agree to that: if popular culture is anything of a symptom of the time (or at least of the generation of writers of the time, their personalities…. And their marketing departments telling them that “that will grab the audience we want”), then there is a massive insecurity problem, especially in girls/women these days, because most of these superficially strong characters (that are in fact implausible humans, and quite often written as “men with boobs”) apparently need to be validated, reassured and complimented an unbelievable amount of times and in any way possible, in each movie/episode. A real “Mary Sue” syndrome: even when the character isn’t in a scene, she must be mentioned with something validating/enhancing for fear that an ego, somewhere, might be destroyed, or that she be considered insufficiently put forward. That is just bad writing and bad character creation/development, made into the dominating trope of the day.
I’ve read something enlightening recently: it has apparently been measured and observed that most medias (the press/news in particular) aims more for women than for men because women interact far more on social media, by a very significant margin (tweets for almost no reason, retweets and the likes), which is where the money is now, in the very warped business model all medias seem to cling to nowadays. What is more, hysteria/fear seems to be the main driver of attention grabbing and social media interacting, far more for women than for men, also by a significant margin. Good/uplifting news come second (not so distant but significantly less), but motivate men far more than women. Therefore, infuriating women is the strategy adopted by the marketing departments who, nowadays, direct and edit the corporate news (and the “culture and society” pages). Reassuring them and confirming their biases (“you’re awesome, it the others who suck”) is the secondary market of such a strategy. Creating fear, outrage, indignation, solidarity…. Is perceived as far more interesting than talking about any form of truth or reality, especially if you target the group that is (as Jordan Peterson would put it) “higher in negative emotions” (more prone to being neurotic) and more social (aka tweets and retweets, trends and all that stuff). Panic and validation is the mix of the day! “To find them all, grab them, and in the safe space bind them”.
Larry,
A psychologist told me that men need to be needed. So when generations of men weren’t needed anymore they moved on.
Sven,
Color me skeptical about such statements by psychologists. I doubt that either men or women as genders need to be needed. Some people do. Some don’t. Probably the fraction that do depend on the society at that time and place.
Sven,
Your psychologist sounds like an empathetic individual but a poor historian and observer of nature. Women are the gender that requires the approval and desire of others. Men desire freedom and purpose.
“because masculinity has been elevated above femininity, even for females.”
True only for females and non Christian males.
I read in the links that the gap between male and female students is as great as the gap between rich and poor in number studying, with women making up 2/3 of some courses.
There is also a further complication for educated women, men are more prepared to marry down for a younger or prettier wife, especially second time round.
That is even if the student enrolment were 50:50, a percentage of men say 10% especially from poorer backgrounds will marry a non college wife. At 34 and a divorced college lecturer, I had a 35 year old college lecturer girlfriend, the ticking biological clock kept us awake at night! It became too much for me and I ended it, At 35, one year later, I met a 24 year old reception with no college after 18 and by 36 we were partnered.
It would be very hard for my ex to marry a 24 year old man with say a trade and stay in her social centre, my marriage is seen as typical of second time around guys and marrying up girls. We are 55 and 43 respectively now, with two kids 11 and 10.
My youngest brother is a Dentist, in his field as an example, most marriages first time round are two Dentists, second time round the guys often marry their younger dental nurses. The women sometimes, but less often marry say a younger Dental Technician, but more often stay single. The male Doctor female nurse or two Doctors is common, but a female Doctor and a male nurse.
Men marry down and this widens the pool, if at the same time women won’t marry down then they swim in a reduced pool (less male graduates), where male graduates can look at a large second pool (marrying down), but the female graduates will not look at that pool. If the graduate pool is say 60: 40, female to male, and the non graduate pool is 40:60 female to male (ie the half of the population who don’t do any college after 18).
The graduate female to males ratio is say 60:40 ie 3:2, so 1/3 will be left without a partner anyway. If that 40% of male graduates, further have 10% (say) that look for a younger less educated traditional housewife as a partner, then the left over female graduates are greater.
Women need to take on younger, less educated males and be the bread winners or face singledom.
“Women need to take on younger, less educated males and be the bread winners or face singledom.”
I lol’d.
Dark,
Me, too. Folks are always telling people to change their most basic behaviors. For their own good, of course. We should accommodate society as it is reshaped by our betters.
Is it really possible, not a minority situation, but as a general feature? Women are by nature picky: it is a biological/anthropological fact, as far as I have read and heard. There seems to be good evolutionary reasons for it. Which also means that even within the pool of equals (education, income, looks, status), they will still tend to be choosy, slim pickings or not (to a certain extant, they can’t help it). And the infantilization that seems to be the dominant feature of modern education, especially for women (ego flattery/validation everywhere, the “women can do no wrong” type of things, de-responsabilization, prolonged adolescence….), doesn’t seem likely to really improve on that fact.
Adding the frequently reminded point that the window of opportunity for serious relationships/marriage has been drastically reduced by these social trends (longer student years, “adulescence” and the carousel….), as well as the time during which people are supposed to learn the social cues and behaviors for life as a committed couple (aka the twenties), we end up with 30-something educated women who will have a very narrow pool to pick from, very little time to do it, and not the best baggage and dispositions to go through the motions.
Tancrède,
“Adding the frequently reminded point that the window of opportunity for serious relationships/marriage has been drastically reduced by these social trends”
By “social trends”, you mean choices. The current game is that women get a decade of dating (free dinners, chasing alphas). When they see signs of aging (the “Wall”), they look for nice betas to marry. After the last child goes into school, a third or more decide they want independence more than their husband (just his child support).
Many women are quite open about this process. It worked well for the women of the Boomers and (even more) Gen X. But there is always a counter-revolution, and it appears men are starting it.
Laughing Man said “Guys usually don’t tell themselves, if they aren’t having a lot of success with women, that it’s because they’re just too awesome. They react to failure with women in different ways, but they don’t generally fall prey to this particular delusion.”
Yes men who fail at anything general either rationally diagnose the problem looking for a solution or just give up on a problem bveyond their means.
Rarely do we actually delude ourselved. I guess because at heart we are honest with ourselves and even honest failure sits better than a psyche calming lie.
We may get back up. We may discover a work around. We may capitulate. We may whine about the injustice.
But living an obvious lie, especially one of I am too awesome for her. We may bluster in front of the guys but its usually a rationalization based in possible truth, not an outright lie.
Hence the “Wanna dance?” “No.” “Lesbian”
Versus
“Did he ask you to dance?” “No. He is intimidated by my awesomeness.”
MGTOW,
“I guess because at heart we are honest with ourselves”
Speaking for myself, I don’t believe I’m especially honest with myself. But the people around me, men and women, are quite willing to puncture by balloon with hard honesty. It’s usually considered bad form to do that with women. If considered the man’s fault if he “makes” her cry. And women tend to provide support to each other’s delusions. “You’re a special form of beautiful, not fat.”
Eve was deceived first, then Adam. Satan deceived Eve first, then he used her to tempt Adam. This has historically been taken to mean women are more gullible (Satan had to gang-up on Adam to get him to fall). Since Eve was taken out of a rib from Adam, women are more social, nurturing and consensus-seeking. This is great because, by nature, they are designed to try to take care of a husband and kids. It’s terrible in post-modernity where they have no oversight by their fathers and rely on their girlfriends who lie to them about their behavior.
People in the West think arranged marriages are horrifying, but seeing what is happening to our daughters is worse. I think we used to have systems in place to pair sons off with daughters in a realistic way when they were both young. Divorce was basically illegal and adulterers were outcast. Now…
Glad yo liked the pairing up with younger and less educated guys.
Girls could still have the best of all worlds, young virile guy, with assisted reproduction they can choose a higher IQ doner and away you go!! Epsilon guys will be fine with that, bit like Forest Grump, mine geeze, he’s not … is he?
I have a sister and a daughter and I can see it isn’t working for a lot of girls, too. My sister is never going to have kids now, and she was not too picky, she settled for less, but even he couldn’t get off his arse and get a full time job, while she worked full time. She had no issue who earned more. He is now unemployed and I believe a whizz at Nintendo.
My sister would trade her fancy career and car for a baby in a heart beat. She is great Aunt, buy she wanted more than that.
Forgive typos
Just a Guy,
Typos are a natural aspect of comments. Think nothing of it.
Just a Guy,
How odd that we spin the dials on the controls of society and find that the result doesn’t work well. But let’s blame the men! Like banging on a TV with bad reception, that will certainly work.
Just a Guy, I really thought you were joking. Don’t you see the problem with your idea? Sure, FEMALES would have the best of all worlds, but what about men?
In your first post, you hit on the reality that women are loath to marry down; it makes sense to take the next step and say they don’t find men who are “lower status” than them attractive as mates.***
I didn’t think it needed mentioning, but most (young) men don’t find older women attractive. So a society-wide solution of “hey guys, just marry some gal 15 years older than you with a good job even if you don’t find her attractive” is plain absurd. If it happens naturally, more power to them, but it’s just never going to be common. People have to be attracted to each other to pair up. Any women who “faces singledom” is unattractive to men for some reason. In your example, it’s presumably because they’ve aged out of physical attractiveness, or whatever.
I feel sorry for your sister, it sounds like she made some decisions that had consequences. Reality sucks sometimes.
*** Some of these courses that women vastly outnumber men in shouldn’t lead to women feeling higher-status than a man without a degree. I’m thinking of things like “fashion” and “interior design.” If a woman thinks she’d be “marrying beneath herself” with a plumber or electrician or warehouse worker because she has a useless degree, she is suffering from a delusion.
This reminds me of a funny story. Girl I knew was dating several men at once. This was normal for her. One of her guys invited her out to a bar with a bunch of his friends, and he introduced her as his girlfriend. She responded, “I’m not your girlfriend, I’m dating four other guys!” Obviously the man was upset at this and broke things off with her.
She was fuming about this to me, incensed that she was down to only four boyfriends instead of five. She exclaimed, “I think the problem was I am too smart for him. Men are intimidated by intelligent women!”
I thought it was pretty amazing that a woman could see herself as “intelligent” after publicly humiliating a man like this. Not to mention she accused him of being insensitive to her and “emotionally unavailable.” I’ve never heard such oblivious self-serving nonsense before, but this sort of solipsism seems commonplace now.
Javier,
I have known many women who dated multiple guys — and vice versa. That’s quite a toxic version of this, however.
I doubt many people object to that, so long as both sides know the relationship is non-exclusive (which the guy in that story didn’t). What’s annoying — and imo much more common by women — is “double dating” on a single evening. That is, having the nice beta guy buy here dinner and a film/play — then she kisses him on the cheek at the door, and waits for the booty call with her jerkboy alpha.
That happened to me in college with a date to Homecoming at my frat (an expensive event for a broke college boy). She said she had to go home early. When asked, she said it was for her second date. Being a beta, I drove her home (instead of pointing to the door).
Later she asked why I didn’t ask her out again. She explained that her girl friends all agreed that her behavior was right and proper. Forty years later I still remember my (childish) anger at this incident.