Relationships and Guilt

[Sclass]

@7 I am not too sure you should be feeling responsible for this. Or maybe I’m misreading the OP?

Using values is a more nuanced lens than simple male/female imbalances due to e.g. one-child policies.

Yeah I’ve had discussions on both sides of this from Chinese women from china. There’s this left behind phenomenon where overly successful women age out because guys are intimidated by marrying a woman more accomplished than they are. At the same time there are all these hard up guys who cannot find a wife because their parents cannot afford a dowry. It’s really confusing. Some argue it’s the result of aborting female babies and others are pointing the finger at too many loser dudes. I agree it is more complicated than too many men. The people explaining it to me oversimplify the problem to the point it makes no sense with the anecdotal evidence I pick up off the internet. In my engineering mindset “there are many knobs on this system” and it has some stable operating points that aren’t all that optimal.

Here in the states I’m seeing some really strange stuff in the young people (university kids) I meet at Easter Lunch. Kids of friends and relatives. It’s all over the place.

Are there too many guys? The ratio is still close to 50/50 right? Does a percent make that big a difference? (A loaded question here) And if there are too many unwanted loser guys why aren’t there a bunch of unhappy dissatisfied women out there who could’ve been their partners? Maybe they’re not dissatisfied?

So with all the kids around last weekend the older parents (gen x) were desperately encouraging the kids to dance. They just sat around in same sex groups chit chatting and thumbing their phones. The venue in the past was a social club for like minded families to mingle. We’ve become the old folks pushing the kids to ask each other to dance. But in the past where you’d see the young gals swaying to the music staring off in the distance or watching the mid lifers party it just wasn’t happening. A lot of hiding behind phones.

So is it tech? I spoke to an agitated dad about it and he reminded me what we’d have been doing if it was 1988. I guess he wants grandkids. He was confused his boys were in college and out of college and they were still virgins. He was confused. I looked at them. Engineering students. My guess was too much stress and too much porn. The dad said his boys don’t look at that stuff. I laughed.

One nice young gal spoke to my wife about her sophomore year at UCLA. Apparently she is unhappy because she is being shared by one guy among three other female students. She doesn’t consider him her boyfriend but that is what she has. My wife was stunned. She pointed at all the guys standing around staring at the DJ equipment and she said eww not them, she grew up with those guys and they’re “creepy”. The boys were the dad’s engineering student sons. More interested in the sound system than the females.

I turned to the dad and said he was f@#$ed. Not his boys though.

So as an old guy now I just don’t get it. Sounds like some asshole sophomore at UCLA is having the time of his life. And he’s leaving nothing for the other three losers left to look at porn. And maybe there is some myth that the females are ok with all this and they’re content with whatever arrangement they’ve come up with along with other females or their harem masters who have managed to crack the code and feast.

Like usual I’m showing my age. I’ve been out of the game so long I just don’t get it at all.

[IlliniDave]

Gotcha. I guess my perspective is fairly in alignment with what Scott Galloway and others are communicating...

I get it, not at all familiar with Galloway and really don't have bandwidth to pursue new voices at this particular juncture. Many of my ideas are outgrowths of listening to thinkers coming out of the discipline of evolutionary biology who for various reasons have encountered concerns about contemporary social forces. That general application of principles ties in with health, obviously, and in a sense I'm in a bit of an echo chamber, but one I'm apt to stay in for a while--for as long as the general application of principles continue to provide unambiguous improvements in my own well being. That's a long way of saying my present interest is less on re-engineering society as much as understanding the components of society (individual "animals" such as myself) as a way to understand what a backdrop that promotes better outcomes might look like. Not saying anyone else is doing anything substantially other than that, I've just selected a bottoms-up approach.

[7Wannabe5]

Apparently she is unhappy because she is being shared by one guy among three other female students. She doesn’t consider him her boyfriend but that is what she has.

Yes, this happens because ratio is more female on college campuses, but then this hard-flips once the same humans are out in the general population of young employed adults. Remember our young forum mate, I think he went by TopHatFox, who was so successful while on historically female East Coast college campus, but then was gob-smacked by how much more difficult dating was once he was among the smaller fish in working world? Even when my daughter was still in college, around 10 years ago, some of her classmates were dating older men on apps, because the campus pickings were too slim, although this was also considered semi-loser-ish behavior. The funniest manifestation of this I heard about was this "friend" of my daughter who was like the Casanova of Chubby Super-Nerds, because he was a Chubby Super-Nerd, but he had several Chubby Super-Nerd female partners, including one of my daughter's housemates. Luckily, even though she eventually obtained an Ivy League PhD, once out in the general population she was able to find an available male Chubby Super-Nerd peer to marry. I think it might actually be easier to find appropriate mate as top 1% IQ female than as top 10% "success" female, although you still might have to fret about your partner wandering off to attempt to talk to strippers about the utilities of Riemannian Geometry and Planck Scale Formalism.

I am not too sure you should be feeling responsible for this.

Oh, guilt is the primary motivator at Level Traditional and also for mothers at any level (sigh.) However, I really shouldn't allow the grouchy old guys to guilt me or take advantage of my tendency towards being a soft-touch, because it will only lead to exhaustion and/or resentment. The funny thing I observed when I was most actively practicing polyamory was that each of the men I was seeing would suggest to me that the other guy(s) were taking advantage of my soft-touch nature. It's sort of a semi-universal male blind-spot to believe that you are the "good guy" and every other guy, except maybe your two best buddies, is a complete dick-head. That's one reason why the "man-o-sphere" seems like such a strange space to women my age. A look of profound puzzlement is what I have gotten when I have informed female peers that there is an organization entitled "Young Men Going Their Own Way" because to women of my generation that is like "Dogs Going On Strike Against Meat." OTOH, I believe that something like Male Drum Circles combined with positive Male-on-Male Mentoring is ultimately the only way to transcend the current paradigm.

[7Wannabe5]

Not saying anyone else is doing anything substantially other than that, I've just selected a bottoms-up approach.

Gotcha. One observation made by Galloway that might somewhat split the difference between bottoms-up and top-down was that the Baby Boom was likely due to the combination of all the men coming home physically fit and in prime masculine vigor from WW2 and the gubbermint making cheap, easy loans and grants available for housing and educating the returning veterans. Not entirely unrelated note would be that the house that my daughter and her husband were able to afford to buy was one of the very small houses built just post-war for auto-workers; less than 1000 square ft. but inclusive of 3 bedrooms, a semi-finished basement, and a large backyard. IOW, just big enough to start growing a small family towards the 350 sq. ft/human happiness maximizing level of occupation. Of course, whether or not a new baby boom would be a good thing likely depends a great deal on where along the Rational Optimist/Realist/Pessimist spectrum you currently find yourself cavorting.

Galloway also goes on a bit about how terrible it is to be out of shape as a male in your 20s, because prime animal energy years. Which seems true-enough based on my hazy memories of the flat-stomached boys of my youth, but also leaves me wondering a bit how to FITB on "It is a terrible shame to be out-of-shape as a female in your 60s, because prime _______ years." Hmmm, "Easter Egg Hunt Organizer", I guess ability to crouch still necessary. How about "Grandbaby Stroller Pusher", okay, ability to walk a few miles minimum. Maybe "Sexual Partner of Man in His 70s", well probably at least one of us still needs good knees. Etc. etc. etc.

[7Wannabe5]

Each vMeme has a set of such values and expectations in terms of what they're looking for and what they think they need to do in order to get it: one for males and one for females. While there is some cross-over between values (e.g. female Green to male Orange and so on), such a fundamental incompatibility makes it all that harder to both hook up as well as sustain a relationship. It's not all about values but much of it is.

Yes, Martin Ucik, the author of a book on the topic of Integral Relationships even made a large chart outlining the sort of relationship you could have with somebody else based on their v-meme vs. your v-meme which I have found to be true-ish. I have found myself roughly in at least 6 of these boxes at varying phases in my own development with varying level of development partners. Of course, it is also true that most of us have found ourselves in quite a few of these boxes on relatively good or bad days/years within any given relationship in varying contexts. I think it is also somewhat possible for one partner to view the relationship as being in one box while the other partner views it as being in another box. For example, if a Level Orange man travels to another country to get a Level Red "trophy wife" and due to the language barrier (and maybe his ego) doesn't realize that she is actually Level Green/Yellow and higher IQ than him. Also, the pre/post fallacy may come into play. For example, as a female moves from Level Green to Level Yellow, she may initially find Level Red man sexually interesting, but then the relationship is likely to either dissolve in fights and conflict or perhaps resolve as a friendship if he also levels up to Blue. It may also be important to note that since our shared culture currently is centered on Modern/Orange, some success at Level Orange is not necessarily indicative of occupying that level; for example, somebody who invented something that makes space shuttles work could still be primarily Level Red in functioning.

https://integralrelationship.com/compatibility-matrix/

[jacob]

@7wb5 - Yes, that matrix says in all in terms of red/blue/orange male struggles when even a small percentage of females shift into orange (typically STEM education) or green (typically a humanities education). I don't know if women comprise the majority of college grads in the US yet (otherwise, it's coming), but once that happens, you'll see the complaints coming from that side instead: either about a dearth of green men or not being willing to "settle" for an orange guy who earns less than them with blue and red guys being completely out of consideration.

Add: To clarify, shifting the mean by some percentage points doesn't mean that odds have become zero. It just means they've become worse but especially so at the tail ends of the distribution(s).

[Sclass]

Remember our young forum mate, I think he went by TopHatFox, who was so successful while on historically female East Coast college campus, but then was gob-smacked by how much more difficult dating was once he was among the smaller fish in working world?

Yeah I do remember him. Forgot about his dating details but yes…he went from being quite the campus player to a grouchy young guy overpaying for dates to hit par outside the university.

I guess I’m completely confused given the few data points I’ve seen. On Sunday I saw a crowd of kids. Girls and boys…barely adults. Complaining. The young ladies were complaining there were no boyfriends and the boys were complaining no girlfriends. Yet the room was filled roughly 50/50 with these college age kids. Reminded me of the prof G videos.

Scott Galloway goes off on young guys in his videos. Maybe he doesn’t get it. Maybe this is just the new way.

[IlliniDave]

Gotcha. One observation made by Galloway that might somewhat split the difference between bottoms-up and top-down was that the Baby Boom was likely due to the combination of all the men coming home physically fit ...

Yeah, it's really just a matter of how you frame the question you are seeking to answer.

What's wrong with/changed about so many young men that they can no longer thrive in society?

What's wrong with/changed about society that makes it so that so many young men are unable to thrive?

You can substitute about any grouping and any environment where trends are going south.

What's wrong with/changed about some children to make them suddenly susceptible to the diseases of aging in a country with such a superabundance of food and top shelf medical care?

What's wrong with/changed about the country and it's superabundance of food and top shelf medical care that makes some children suddenly susceptible to the diseases of aging?

There's value in looking at the question both ways, of course, although I do think we've reached a tipping point where environment change (for humans largely societal environment and technological change) is simultaneously relentlessly continuous and too rapid for biology (physiological and psychological) to keep pace.

[7Wannabe5]

orange (typically STEM) or green (typically the humanities)

IME, this can also result in some confusion differentiating between those individuals or social-groupings which tend towards being very "central campus" or artsey&sciencey, vs. being Level Yellow in functioning. For example, the social-grouping "adult children of academics" tends to be very "central campus" and also much more towards Level Yellow than general population, but these Venn diagrams don't completely overlap. There may also be some stickiness or odd cross-overs due to Labor/Gentry/Elite ladders not exactly corresponding to Integral levels. For example, Finance, Theoretical Math, and Mechanical Engineering are all STEM, but the first veers more Elite, the second veers more Gentry and the third veers more Labor, whereas at the moment I am having difficulty coming up with an example from the Arts/Humanities that veers anywhere but Gentry, maybe History/Economics/Political-Science/Pre-Law for Elite, and Primary Education for Labor? I know many female primary level educators with college degrees who are married to men who work in blue-collar professions who likely make more money than they do.

red/blue/orange male struggles

I thought the box that indicates that Level Green male is invisible to Level Blue female was pretty sad/funny because true.

I don't know if women comprise the majority of college grads in the US yet (otherwise, it's coming), but once that happens, you'll see the complaints coming from that side instead: either about a dearth of green men or not being willing to "settle" for an orange guy who earns less than them with blue and red guys being completely out of consideration.

It is my understanding that this has already happened, so both problems are occurring at once, but the females are still suffering less from not being able to find appropriate partners. Single women under 30 are earning more than single men under 30, and are also buying their own homes more often (which to me, and I may be wrong, if combined with the purchase of a dog, may very well render them content to stay out of the marriage market entirely.) However, once women approach 30 and/or start having kids, their male peers still surpass them in income earning, but this doesn't necessarily speak to household income. For example, a 29 year old female is earning 90k in finance while her 29 year old male peer is earning 60k teaching junior high physical education. She marries 38 year old guy making 180k in finance and has 2 kids and takes part-time job at museum paying 30k, meanwhile her male peer has moved up to 80k due to seniority and getting his masters online.

I would also note that I think some of the squares located to the upper-right on the Integral Relationship diagram are pretty much purely theoretical and/or only to be inferred from some of Ken Wilber's writings related to his Tantric sexuality sessions with motivated clients.

[7Wannabe5]

Scott Galloway goes off on young guys in his videos. Maybe he doesn’t get it. Maybe this is just the new way.

Yes, I think it is entirely possible that the same trends (affluence, low-birth rate, extended life-span) that resulted in delayed "adulting" of Millennials (little known statistic being that Millennials attended and graduated college in much greater numbers overall than Gen-X) have now resulted in obviously delayed "adolescenting" of Gen Z. IOW, GenX is kind of freaky exception, because we started having sex at earlier age than Boomers, but we married and had kids at later age than Boomers, so we enjoyed an abnormally long "adolescence." The Millennials and now GenZ are exhibiting behavior that is more logical extension of these trends, because they started having sex later and are marrying and having kids later. And I guess this could just be okay, the new way, but at some point you are likely to be defying the realities of human biology/psychology by delaying too long. I mean it makes me sad to think that two 40 year old virgins having sex for the first time with each other might become the new norm, but that might be my GenX goggles influencing me in alignment with Galloway's take.

What's wrong with/changed about some children to make them suddenly susceptible to the diseases of aging in a country with such a superabundance of food and top shelf medical care?

It's also entirely possible that obesity epidemic and/or associated trends are contributory to the sexual malaise seemingly being exhibited by American youth. However, my anecdotal take would be that this wouldn't apply to my very slender (6'3" 145-ish) son who walks everywhere, and likely also doesn't apply to the Level Green/Yellow depressed young Nordic male friends of Hanzi Freinacht. OTOH, my son smokes cigarettes, drinks too much, and styles his hair and beard like white Jesus after a hard couple days on the cross, so the fact that he is extremely well-read, definitely not an allegiant to the man-o-sphere, and has the appearance of a flat-stomach fit individual with reasonably handsome facial features and broad shoulders, is not helping his cause with the ladies enough to raise my expectation of grandbabies. His current life plan is move to Texas in June with one of his buddies and/or become a hobo. Meanwhile my extremely affluent and intermittently very charming "ex" keeps going on about how he doesn't want to live anymore due to the injuries from his motorcycle crash, but I suspect this is somewhat towards a ploy to get me (and others!) to have sex with him, and my other ex-poly-partner, who is also quite affluent and quite conventionally attractive, keeps vibing lonely and complaining about the women he dates. Thus, my personal clusterf8ck of concern and annoyance and exhaustion, which may or may not have all that much to do with general societal trends.

[IlliniDave]

It's also entirely possible that obesity epidemic and/or associated trends are contributory to the sexual malaise ...

Sure. My personal take as a completely uncredentialed non book author is that human health and well being writ large is an extraordinarily complex milieu where unforeseen and unintended consequences abound (sort of the definition of complex). As an engineer I tend to say it used to work (better, at least) and now it doesn't. What changed? And since the undesired changes are numerous, I'm inclined to look for changes that could prompt a breadth of undesirable changes, rather than attempt look at every undesirable change/symptom and seek out an intervention to squash the symptom. In other words, maybe it's a system failure rather than a component failure.

Even though the genders are different, we share the same general frustration. I've come to the belief that the playing field of life has changed so much in my lifetime that all my experience, learning, and lessons from the school of hard knocks, have almost no utility for my daughters because they are navigating a terrain that is foreign to me. That's a pretty big change for human social culture, having the wisdom of parents and grandparents, maybe even older siblings, become outmoded so rapidly, and at best serving as an interesting anachronism.

[Hristo Botev]

Even though the genders are different, we share the same general frustration. I've come to the belief that the playing field of life has changed so much in my lifetime that all my experience, learning, and lessons from the school of hard knocks, have almost no utility for my daughters because they are navigating a terrain that is foreign to me. That's a pretty big change for human social culture, having the wisdom of parents and grandparents, maybe even older siblings, become outmoded so rapidly, and at best serving as an interesting anachronism.

It was this frustration that, after some periods of melancholy, led me to read the "Great Books," assuming that there was some truth in the Lindy effect; which helped with my melancholy, though in reality it just left with me some universal and timeless "truths" that aren't always very helpful when it comes to teaching my kids how to navigate a world I don't understand myself.

A somewhat relevant Twitter diatribe on the "half life of knowledge" from one of my favorite curmudgeons: https://x.com/HambrickScott/status/1847929764574621876

The biggest problem is that the half life of knowledge is so short now that human experience is continually made irrelevant.

Example, how you dated the kids mom 25 years ago is entirely irrelevant when you try to give dating advice to your 18 year old today.

This pace of change is destroying our ability to parent.

[jacob]

Insofar you guys believe that things have changed a lot over the past 20 years, try moving 2000 miles in any direction of the compass to experience the same change instantaneously.

[Hristo Botev]

Insofar you guys believe that things have changed a lot over the past 20 years, try moving 2000 miles in any direction of the compass to experience the same change instantaneously.

My kids and their experiences with the world are here, as are their potential spouses; so not really sure why it matters what's happening 2K miles from here.

[jacob]

My point was that much like the landscape, cultural expectations change as fast by delta space as they do by delta time. The analogy matters insofar one wants to give "elderly" advice. If so desired then one needs to keep up and be here in the present as well and not 20 years ago. Experience is useful to the next generations but only insofar it's used to place the present into context. If old people try to substitute their 1985s values into 2025, they're just going to be ignored.

[Hristo Botev]

I think the problem though is that a person that has been married for 20 years can't (and, of course, shouldn't, though that is probably a more judgment) "keep up and be here in the present" wrt the dating scene. The dating scene phase of our lives is over, and our experience of that scene, and the wisdom we gained from it, is largely irrelevant today.

[Hristo Botev]

To illustrate with an anecdote, I (and my closest friends) all married people that we went to high school with. This is true of DW's siblings as well, and it was almost true for my own sister. That was simply what one did in my little stretch of redneck paradise in the 90s--sure, you went to college, but even among college-bound folks from my little redneck school, you were as likely (if not more likely) to marry someone from HS as you were from college; and marrying someone from post-college career life was quite rare. Honestly, for the most part people that didn't marry someone from HS didn't do so because they had so sullied their reputation in HS that they were no longer a catch.

Now, even though we moved back home so that our kids go (or will go) to the same HS we went to, even I can see why DD looks around and says: oh, hell no.

[jacob]

The old experience is relevant for giving a perspective on the current scene. However, this requires understanding the current scene. Indeed, most people stop paying attention once they get partnered up. However, if the desire is to assist or "parent" the children, one philosophy of parenting would be that children would benefit from a degree of "informed wisdom". Another philosophy would be that the next generation should be left entirely on their own. A third would be that parents should try to substitute in ideas that were valid 20-40 years ago while ignoring how things have changed. I'd deem this "uninformed wisdom" and I think it is a bad strategy even if it is the most common one or at least the second-most common of the three.

(I think the exact same dynamics can be seen with older generations complaining about how children spend too much time on their phone or computer games w/o having made much of an attempt to actually understand what it is that their children are doing or playing on their screens. Instead parents impose ideas from their own childhood like "children ought to be outside", etc.)

Anyhoo... this is not my hill to die on.

[bostonimproper]

It seems pretty clear to me that the main drivers are pretty much the same as reduced fertility, i.e. fewer in real life interactions in the digital age (fewer meet cutes and fewer accidental babies) and high costs associated with settling down step with long term partner (read: houses are too expensive so you can’t get locked into a relationship via a mortgage). It seems to me more of a structural issue rather than “women need to settle more in relationships.”

[IlliniDave]

Insofar you guys believe that things have changed a lot over the past 20 years, try moving 2000 miles in any direction of the compass to experience the same change instantaneously.

For my part I'm talking about environment in a different sense than simply geographical culture. The types of food that have come to dominate the food supply, what a typical person (especially kids/young people) do with their bodies on a typical day. The kind of light exposure we have. The growing number of chemicals and toxins we're exposed to, the volume and pace and types of information we're exposed to. How education works (or doesn't) including, relevant to this discussion, and seems to shun a basic alignment between biological gender traits and social expectations. The frequency, duration, and nature of how we interact with other people. All those things have the potential to take a toll on our physiological well being, which necessarily includes our mental and emotional well being and our successful social functioning. I think it's a bigger and deeper thing than just being old fashioned versus modern in sensibilities but operating in basically the same world.

We're now arguably seeing changes in our human environment of a scope that warrant evolutionary biological changes to successfully adapt to that happen at a pace that biological evolution just doesn't happen at. It suggests "solutions" like reverting to whole food diets, moving more, disconnecting some, relying on the sun for a higher fraction of our light, making an effort to avoid toxins and removing as many as possible from the environment, and refraining from so much heavy-handed social engineering. That's all Pollyanna-ish stuff, but I do think well-rounded health would tend to minimize social dysfunction, and I think that breadth of health springs from matching people to as close an environment the species evolved in as possible. Maybe for different surface reasons, many of us here in this community (which could not have existed at all in 1985) are doing some of those things.

All that said, I do think there could be some advantage to disaffected young people for them to spend lengthy blocks of time in places that are a little less far down the modern lifestyle/technology continuum. Putting the fish back in water, you might say. And I'm not arguing against change and "progress", but maybe giving some more thought to how its acceleration it affects people who don't have some grounding in a slower paced world to help them develop some perspective that makes sense to their meat suit.