Mathematics of dating

[7Wannabe5]

@thrifty++:

Well, I am hopelessly lifelong addicted to the man-candy, so I've never dated a man I've been embarrassed to be seen with in public. Generally when I date older men, they are objectively better-looking otherwise. The oldest man I ever dated looked like a bigger, buffer James Dean when he was young. I have sometimes (often-sigh) dated men I've been embarrassed to be with in public, because they do things like swear at other drivers.

However, I know what you are talking about otherwise, and I think it is not quite right to label your feelings as "insecurity." Everybody wants to be with somebody who is head-over-heels and seriously desirous of them. I think what you ought to shoot for is somebody who is enamored enough of you to be more the partner who is usually forwarding the ball, but attractive enough to you, that beyond not being embarrassed to be seen with him in public, you are able to objectify him sexually during lulls in his forward relationship energy vector.

It's very commonplace in heterosexual relationships for females to attach their arousal to pursuit and/or romantic courtship or other manifestations of masculine energy. It's like an insurance policy for the relationship if the man look pretty sexy to you even if he is sleeping.

[Riggerjack]

find a way to address my insecurity somehow

Insecurities, in my experience, are tied to areas where I felt inadequate. My weaknesses. Which sucks, because my weaknesses are my weaknesses, because I don't enjoy, nor do I have a talent for them. But, this is also awesome, in that these are the easiest to fix.

So my advice would be to tackle the skills that you feel most uncomfortable with. Not because it will be fun, but because confidence comes more easily by eliminating weaknesses than by building strengths.

- Expect less when dating equivalents and stop being so lazy, be more giving and generous

This was something I had to work at. I found that while I would put in lots of effort at the start of a relationship, I got lazy after a while. This lead to a "how much can I offload onto my partner" type thoughts. The quality of the relationship went downhill fast after that.

I make a concious effort to make sure that each day, my wife has at least one "damn, I am a lucky woman" experience. I feel lucky and spoiled, so should she. I don't feel that way because she is hawt, though she is. I feel that way because of who she is, and all that she does and thinks. I should be putting in the the thought and effort to help her feel as good about this as I do.

This is what I mean when I say date a lot, to find your preferences, and the remaining effort should go to making yourself the person who can keep that ideal partner when you find her or him. I found my wife when I was 35. If I found her in my mid twenties, before I had a chance to fcukup enough to see the patterns, and fix my weaknesses, I would have been just another story of some dickhead she was with before she met her husband.

Now, I have a natural advantage here. Both my wife and I share traits we consider attractive, but are strongly undervalued. I'm a geek, and she's a geek. Not in the techjoy kind of geekiness, but in the honest to the point of bluntness, poorly socially adapted way. This has a strong discount on our individual, open market value, but works well for us. My wife is more intelligent than I, and I can't put into words how sexy that is, but it has been a strong negative in her past relationships.

Not everyone will have this level of specialized advantage, but nearly everyone has tastes that differ from the mean. Dating is a very inefficient market. Identify the inefficiencies that work in your favor, and select for them.

[The_Bowme]

I found this book useful in dealing with the perceived loss of optionality that can result in a relationship: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Commitme ... 483&sr=8-1

YMMV, but I found this one useful in moving towards a relatively healthy view of attracting women without falling into the sort of hypotrophied cynicism that lies in a lot of the pick up artist type advice: https://www.amazon.com/Models-Attract-W ... 1463750358

I would agree with the OP that some equivalency between partners is important, in values and perceived attractiveness between each other. One thing I believe is that while you want to put your best foot forward, you want to be open about who you are, and even emphasize those qualities, as a filtering mechanism for who is a specific fit for you. The idea of having to inhabit the role of who you thought the other sex wanted generically when you were first dating for the rest of the relationship does not seem sustainable or enjoyable.

I think online dating is great in a densely populated area. Just be willing to cycle through quickly. Don't drag it out if there isn't chemistry, or a lack of value/interest compatibility.

Also, I think shifting away from an overly pragmatic, optimization point of view past the initial dating period is a good idea. This is ultimately a relationship with a person, nto a math problem

But I am quite the contrary to someone who should be giving relationship advice. Just my two cents.

[CS]

@7w5
I second that 'don't wait' until 50 for any man wanting a serious relationship unless they want someone much younger (which brings its own problems, let me tell you). Ten years ago I was much more interested, even with now knowing how awesome long-term relationships can be.

I, too, like the man-candy. I've berated myself in the past for being so shallow, but as time goes on, I've just accepted it. But man candy is subjective. I, for one, find Adam Driver hot, but that comes from seeing him in action (partially... partially he is just attractive.)

@The_Bowme
Which also comes back to that book, attracting through honesty. I've seen advice elsewhere on the forum to just let your freak flag fly. I have to agree with that advice. Unless the person in question is just displaying anti-social, harmful behavior to others, showing quirks and weaknesses is actually more attractive, and more importantly, attractive to the right people, than not. Most people (ha!) only need to find one match...

Edit:
I agree on the cheapness of divorce these days. A lot of people don't blink an eye on cheating, etc. It's important to know what sort you're marrying into IMO... will the family support fidelity, or not?

Also, as far as people talking about how expensive it is, I have to think about a lot of the bogle forums posts where the poster talks in the singular about their assets and retirement contributions. The reader finds out five posts later there is actually a wife involved as well, but the language has always implied that it was just the poster's assets. I think this reflects the mental processes of the poster pretty accurately... so when divorce hits the fan, they have to share what they have always thought about as their exclusive property. Rage ensues! (Question - Does this make the wife a possession too? If yes, then you can understand their ire when one of their possessions runs off with half of their other possessions. )

So long story, short, prenup - and expect to share after that!

[jacob]

All true. None of those are good reasons to be in a long term relationship. For me, it's the partnership. Life is easier as part of a team than on my own. And of course, that is entirely dependant on how good a teammate you have, and are.

Agree.

To expand/expound on this ... a long term relationship is or can be significantly more than the sum of its parts---it can probably also be less than the sum of its parts and that is the situation that leads to divorce. Marriage makes it formal, but of course it doesn't need to be formal as long as the partners agree, and of course people can also be married w/o developing any systems-value.

Anyhoo ... the idea is that such a relationship is a difference in kind rather than a difference in degree. We're not talking less sex vs more sex or less financial risk vs more risk ... and so on arriving at some kind of "value-proposition" after summing up the individual line entries in a spreadsheet, but rather about things (connections) that exist outside what a bunch of "independent contractors" can established in a serial fashion.

I would approach dating in a way to see whether for a given person "developing a system with that person" >> "sum of interacting individually". For me, this takes lots of time. I've personally dated very few people (less than a handful), but those I did, I spent a lot of time. In metaphorical terms, I opted for sniping instead of carpet bombing. Preference probably depends on personality as well as culture and era. Since I've been married for 10+ years, my experience might no longer be applicable.

[bryan]

There's a season 4 Black Mirror episode on dating.. pretty good.

The state and society do not penalize individuals very harshly for divorce. I think self-filing my divorce in a no-fault state after our youngest child turned 19 probably cost approximately $241. When people say that divorce is expensive, what they should usually really be saying is that a bad marriage is expensive, but sometimes you don't know just how expensive until you get the final bill. Otherwise, the main expense of divorce is simply equal to once again assuming the separate expenses of two single people, combined with maybe a bit of a leaning curve on how best to do that these-a-days-at-this-age. As far as social costs, among my peer group, one divorce would still generally be regarded as more "normal" than "never married."

Edit:
I agree on the cheapness of divorce these days
...
So long story, short, prenup - and expect to share after that!

Tell that to my sister and her ex (or perhaps more accurately, their parents..). Both had almost no assets yet tens of thousands were spent. Battling for custody will do that I guess?

What would be reasonable causes for a prenup, assuming folks are actually OK with splitting everything acquired/spent during marriage 50/50? I thought parties already get to keep pre-marriage assets so long as things don't get co-mingled (I'm always confused by the contrast between what I read online and what I see in news from celebrity/wealthy divorces). Maybe time-delayed things like a probable inheritance.. Personally, I was concerned about 1) one person has significant debts while the other has significant assets (how is it handled w/o prenup, what would the prenup provision be? since debts get paid from marriage income) and 2) starting a business while married (from what I've heard, there should be various buyout clauses written into the business?)

[7Wannabe5]

@bryan:

I am not a lawyer, just a woman who has listened to a good many recently divorced men grousing , but one important thing to note would be that it varies, sometimes significantly, from state to state in the U.S. and across international borders. The tricky thing is even if you think you are dead clear on what kind of default contract you entered into when you married in Colorado, you might be very surprised to learn about what kind of divorce terms you may fall subject to 25 years later in Massachusetts. IOW, you need to stay aware of in what realm you are conducting your marriage, just like with a business.

Also, life itself becomes reasonable cause for a pre-nup once you get to a certain age. A lot of people choose not to marry, or marry again, past mid-life just because it's less of a hassle to make small contract where wanted than pre-nup large contract. Inheritance is a major problem, both coming in and going out. For instance, my "ex" changed his will to leave me 1/3 interest in his primary residence, leaving 2/3 interest and his rental properties to his daughters. I wasn't about to look a gift inheritance in the mouth, but I did wonder why he didn't just leave me half of one of his duplexes, rather than set up a situation where his daughters might be eager to give decrepit version of me the boot

That said, I think marriage is something that just about everybody ought to at least give a whirl once in their lives. Bob Hope was apparently a hopeless philanderer, but he came to an agreement with his wife prior to marriage, and they were happy for over 60 years, and he once said that he couldn't imagine having a better life than the one that he had. Now that we've progressed to more gender equity, females who are hopeless philanderers can hope to reap the emergent benefits of long-term relationships concurrent to short-term contracts too!

[Jason]

I am frequently amazed at how many people get divorced well into and beyond middle age.

I once asked an older divorced person why they divorced in their 60's. She said "When they used to say 'until death do us part', they didn't care because no one was living that long." I think there's a lot of truth to that.