Relationships and Guilt

[7Wannabe5]

I am fairly up to date on the current dating scene, and I have even briefly dated a couple humans a short-generation younger than me, and I read new novels and listen to new music and take online courses taught by humans who look around age 12 to me, and I spend time 1 on 1 tutoring tweens and teens, but I still struggle to fully comprehend the perspective of the younger generations. I also don't grok why I would have to travel 2000 miles? From my current location, I could hop on my bike and find a social enclave anywhere on the spectrum from Purple-ish/Red to Yellow/Blue-ish. Actually, the fact that Integral Theory was invented by humans even older than me might be part of the difficulty I find in applying it to current generational changes. Hanzi's take does strike me as more up-to-date.

Also, one oddity in my situation is that my kids are both significantly older-soul types than me. My daughter's favorite TV shows as a young child were "Golden Girls" and "Murder She Wrote" and her favorite author was Edgar Allen Poe, and she sings in two choirs, wears very modest, tasteful clothing, and would definitely join a Bridge Club if she could find one. My son's lifestyle is not particularly phone or computer game centered; more like a re-enactment of a lifestyle of the Dashiell Hammett era. I'm afraid he is going to drop off two boxes of his favorite philosophy and linguistics texts with me for safekeeping, hop on a train, get black-out drunk in a strange town, bum a cigarette laced with meth off of a stranger in an alley, and then fall into a river. So, if Scott Galloway was running some kind of open-enrollment young-man mentoring camp, I would like to enroll him there, but I also know that this is just a ridiculous notion generated by my maternal fretting.

[Western Red Cedar]

In all these dating threads, it's usually pretty clear whether someone got their expectations and relationship values from SD:red, blue, orange, or green. 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. (Of course there are anecdotal exceptions, but that doesn't help on a societal scale.)

Applying an SD lens to the new norms of online dating and a shift away from IRL communication also explains the growing dissatisfaction and lack of long-term relationships. The most popular apps tend to prioritize physical features, and almost all communication is through text messages. It is hard to suss out values based on a single photo. In the past, at least we could feel out a baseline of compatibility with someone who seemed interesting or appeared to share the same values without committing time to a banal series of text exchanges and a potential date with someone who can't hold a conversation.

----

It is amusing that most participating in this discussion are 40-60+. I wonder why older people focus so much on youth dating culture? It reminds me of stumbling across Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up while still in high school and laughing at the prospect of someone his age (70's) intellectualizing the day-to-day life of my peers.

[Ego]

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.

While I agree that the world has changed a lot and that an increasing number of relationships are very different from those from previous eras, relationships that are NOT dysfunctional are VERY similar to one another. Those in happy marriages often have relationships that are similar to those of their parents and grandparents. It is not a coincidence that thriving relationships today share key characteristics with successful marriages of the past.

In other words, "Happy (couples) are all alike; every unhappy (couple) is unhappy in its own way."

The characteristics necessary to begin, build and maintain a happy relationship are being undermined by superficial substitutes at every juncture. The proliferation of convenient but ultimately insufficient alternatives undermines the drive for genuine connection, resulting in more unfulfilled individuals. Readily available but ultimately shallow substitutes erode the impetus for deep connection, leaving more people unhappily uncoupled with a bottomless yearning for something "real".

So, while relationship landscapes differ from previous decades, truly functional relationships remain fundamentally alike. It is the dysfunctional that differ, each in their own way. Yes, it is true that the latter, busy with their distractions, are indeed ignoring advice from 1985.

[IlliniDave]

[quote="Western Red Cedar" post_id=301902 time=1745470449 user_id=732
... It is amusing that most participating in this discussion are 40-60+. I wonder why older people focus so much on youth dating culture? It reminds me of stumbling across Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up while still in high school and laughing at the prospect of someone his age (70's) intellectualizing the day-to-day life of my peers.
[/quote]

Can't speak for everyone, but my own interest is primarily similar to the OP which is seeing in our own now adult children some types/degree of dysfunction that weren't especially common among our contemporaries and have now associated with "younger" generations in an epidemiological sense. Being a parent doesn't just stop on an 18th birthday. I am a little out of step with the mainstream in that I think the specifics of what's going on with "dating culture" and its efficacy of lack thereof is only a symptom of some more systemic struggles the causes of which were maybe not as pervasive as our cohort launched into the world. Both my daughters are just old enough to have missed Tinder and the like so contemporary app-based dating culture per se isn't really on the radar for them. It's more a matter of the promises the culture made about what adulting would be for them being hollow combined with relatively poor physical health for their age demographic, poor emotional health, and having been through an education system that placed very little emphasis on their cognitive development. Of course much of that groundwork was laid on my watch and I made the grave error of assuming the same infrastructure system that was in place that allowed me to launch with a sufficient toolkit to greet the world would do the same for them.

Of course many in my generation had their struggles, and many among the younger generations appear to be thriving despite where some of the statistics are trending, and having things hit close to home is an amplifier that can distort ones perception.

IOW, curmudgeons gonna curmudgeon. Although on a less irreverent note, the latter half of midlife cohort are entering the phase of life where our traditional social role is to distill experience into wisdom, connect it to that which was passed to us, and hand it down.

[7Wannabe5]

It is amusing that most participating in this discussion are 40-60+. I wonder why older people focus so much on youth dating culture? It reminds me of stumbling across Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up while still in high school and laughing at the prospect of someone his age (70's) intellectualizing the day-to-day life of my peers.

Actually, I started the discussion on the topic of single men of all ages being unhappy with current dating culture. Scott Galloway seems to believe that the young men are unhappy and the older women are unhappy and/or checked out, but the older men and the younger women are happy, because they are finding each other. However, Scott Galloway is a hyper-successful, very fit older man who is married to a woman 14 years younger than him whom he met by being bold enough to approach her IRL. So, my theory, based on my experience as an older female (same age as Galloway) who has been fairly happy with the new dating reality (pretty much like ordering up a pizza or shooting fish in a barrel), is that even for older men the new dating reality (and/or the new social context in which dating reality is operating) does not work that well. Whether or not it works for younger women and/or those older women who are more serious about serious relationships (because didn't already do family formation for 20 years or innately more romantic or fiscally more pragmatic or less novelty-seeking, etc.) than yours truly is more of an open question, IMO.

IOW, my thoroughly irrational (remnant-tinge-of-traditional) guilt complex informs me along the line that if I sacrificed myself to full-time relationship with one of the grouchy old men then maybe a purely imaginary wave formation would roll through the social structure and some young woman would become motivated to decrease the likelihood that my son will fall into a river by entering into significant relationship with him. So, clearly, the downside of doing family formation for 20 years, however otherwise life fulfilling, is that you may still find yourself fretting about your children from the cot in the nursing home where you lie in complete decrepitude at age 90. (I fret about my daughter too, but it's often along the lines of meta-fret "I should fret about my daughter more, she deserves just as much fretting time as her brother even though she is almost always objectively doing better than he is.") I suppose I should note at this juncture that I rarely openly fret in the presence of my adult children, because I also (since raised in center Modern) believe in respecting the independence of others. For example, when my son said "I am moving to Texas or becoming a hobo.", my response was "That sounds like an adventure."

Those in happy marriages often have relationships that are similar to those of their parents and grandparents. It is not a coincidence that thriving relationships today share key characteristics with successful marriages of the past.

So, you don't agree with the Integral Relationships chart which indicates that the structural basis of pair-bonding/marriage/similar relationships has changed along these lines over time? (I should note that this list (with some addendums from me) was composed by author centered at Integral/Meta-Modern, so obviously may somewhat favor that level of functioning.)

• Archaic/Primitive: Living side by side. Survival and procreation. Huddle in the cave and f*ck.
  Magic/Tribal: Tribal ritual. Survival-Bond. Fatten up the young bride in the tent and then trade her for 7 goats.
  Egocentric/Warrior: Fight/Flight. Might makes right. Bride of the right-hand acquired through conquest. Makeup Sex in contemporary setting.
  Mythic/Traditional: Dependence. Opposites not equals. Social duty. Bride of the left hand, ring signifying religious bond. Father walks bride down aisle and hands her off to husband. Relatives may help arrange marriage.
  Rational/Modern: Independence. Equals not opposites. Meet at work or engaged in active hobby. (everything 50/50, both partners more in masculine role, marriage formed like business contract, more power/success-couple than nesting-pair. Updike's 20th century everyman Rabbit f8cking his wife Janice on top of a pile of gold coins he purchased as inflation hedge. )
  Pluralistic/Post-Modern: Interdependence. Feminine/masculine roles reversed. Pre-post fallacy (attraction to level red sexuality to compensate for lost gender power dynamic: you tie me up and then I'll tie you up.)
  Integral/Meta-Modern: Interbeing. Equals and opposites. Learning, healing, growing, awakening. (gender dynamic, sexual dichotomy consciously re-integrated a la David Deida and similar. Acknowledgement of feminine and masculine attributes rendered most functional within and outside of relationship. Development of different selves within self a la Kegan level 5,etc.)
  Transpersonal/Post-Meta-Modern: Transpersonal inter-becoming embodied. ( I got nothing.)

My own perspective ranges from Mythic to Integral, because these are the levels I have experienced overlapping in the short course of my lifetime. From this perspective, the problem many young men, likely including my son to some extent, are having is in moving from Pluralistic/Post-Modern where they are attempting to functionally integrate their own internal feminine side and/or simple support for the notion of feminism to Integral/Meta-Modern. Young men who are still more at Rational/Modern are more likely to look back to Mythic/Traditional, and this is often manifested by marrying women from slightly more Traditional cultures than the one in which they were raised. OTOH, idiot women at Pluralistic/Post-Modern, such as myself, will sometimes reach all the way back to find men from Egocentric/Warrior cultures as partners, because Post-Modern men don't vibe masculine/sexual enough and Modern men seem ick, because that's the level we just transcended ourselves. However, I will give myself a bit of a pass, because men actually functioning at Integral level within my dating cohort age-range are likely less than .01% of the population, and I am unwilling to move to Scandinavia and/or some ideal county in the PNW to improve my odds.

[white belt]

Applying an SD lens to the new norms of online dating and a shift away from IRL communication also explains the growing dissatisfaction and lack of long-term relationships. The most popular apps tend to prioritize physical features, and almost all communication is through text messages. It is hard to suss out values based on a single photo. In the past, at least we could feel out a baseline of compatibility with someone who seemed interesting or appeared to share the same values without committing time to a banal series of text exchanges and a potential date with someone who can't hold a conversation.

I think dating apps get a bad rap by people who either dated before they were mainstream or met their SO offline. I’ve discussed this before:

For all the boomers (joking) on here talking about dating apps, I will tell you that your perspectives are a bit dated. About 50% of my social group <35 that is currently married or engaged met their significant others on dating apps. Depending on your geographic region, Tinder can be used for everything from hookups to long term dating. Outside of the largest metro centers, there usually isn't a population to support niche apps so Tinder becomes the only game in town. I met DF on Tinder; she had just moved to the area for medical school and I had just moved to the area for an Army assignment. The chances of us meeting without an app would probably have been zero since neither of us had groups of friends at the time. We also both tend to use a lot of our socializing battery at work, which makes apps a huge benefit since I didn't need to spend all my energy socializing in hopes of meeting a possible partner. I think most young people use a combination of apps and IRL activities to find prospective partners, but this gets less likely the busier and/or less extroverted you are.

Like any technology, dating apps are a tool. I think they can streamline the process to get to the part of dating where the rubber meets the road, which is in-person human connection. They are not a substitute for that, although I know some people do use them as a source of different forms of validation.

It’s possible even that perspective is dated at this point since me as a later millennial and DW as an early Gen Z have lives different lives compared to those that are now in high school or college. I’ve heard from younger Gen Z that Instagram and Tik Tok direct messages are a tool that young people use to date. I came close to making an Instagram back when I was single but ultimately decided that it would introduce too much friction in my life. Multiple times I was told by partners that not having an Instagram was initially a red flag since it made them think I was either a catfish/fake account or that I was cheating on an existing partner.

I think we are at the point where the traditional strategy of dating a “friend of a friend” is just not valid advice for the younger generation. Young people like compartmentalization of their lives. Most lack the tools to navigate the social intricacies of determining romantic interest in non-romantic settings, so they avoid it entirely. Many do not want to date coworkers because they want to keep their careers separate from their personal lives, ditto with a lot of social/recreational activities. Why risk throwing off the vibes of the friend group, yoga class, DnD group, etc? So we end up with this dynamic where most members of the opposite sex are either friend-zoned or off-limits. That doesn’t leave a lot of other options. One appeal of dating apps is that both partners must swipe right to match, which means all the uncertainty of gauging romantic/sexual interest goes out the window.

[7Wannabe5]

Young people like compartmentalization of their lives. Most lack the tools to navigate the social intricacies of determining romantic interest in non-romantic settings, so they avoid it entirely. Many do not want to date coworkers because they want to keep their careers separate from their personal lives, ditto with a lot of social/recreational activities. Why risk throwing off the vibes of the friend group, yoga class, DnD group, etc? So we end up with this dynamic where most members of the opposite sex are either friend-zoned or off-limits.

Interesting perspective. I actually find that this is also quite true for me as an older adult who has become accustomed to using dating apps. In a way this "compartmentalization' is even more magnified for older adults using dating apps, because most of our peers are already significantly coupled. So, for example, if a strange man starts making friendly conversation with me in the produce section of the grocery store, my assumption will be that he is just being friendly and his wife is over there picking up something in the deli. Also, the practice of polyamory also greatly increases my tendency towards compartmentalization; I have never been one who poaches on the partners of friends, but I feel like I need to be even more clear about that as a practitioner of polyamory. I have even fretted a bit about using conventional dating apps while polyamorous, but I decided that if I inform potential partners on first/second date and before becoming intimate, I've met ethical standard. The percentage of men who have rejected/declined to date me based on my revelation of practice of polyamory thus far = 0%, which I actually found rather surprising.

I have found some of the behavior of the few men I've dated who were approximately 15 years younger than me somewhat off-putting, but it is difficult to determine whether this was cultural/generational gap or simply due to age gap. The one behavior I would definitely assign more to cultural/generational gap would be the tendency to be super-specific about sexual contract. Almost like I was filling out a pre-appointment set of check-list documents for my annual medical exam. Very off-putting for somebody who came of age at the turn of the free-wheeling 70s. Like if I was once again walking hand in hand with a boy on the beach in 1979, and he asked me, "When we meet again tomorrow night at 9 PM, do I have your permission to attempt to insert my tongue in your mouth?"

[Hristo Botev]

This is all very well said.

It's not the "what makes a marriage work" advice/wisdom that has changed; not in the least. But, what most certainly has changed is where one finds a suitable mate to marry.

I think dating apps get a bad rap by people who either dated before they were mainstream or met their SO offline.

This Gen X'er has definitely come around wrt the utility of dating apps. I can see how, for someone like DD when she is ready to look for a husband, an app that allows her to screen for certain desirable attributes and screen out dealbreakers, could be very helpful and perhaps close to necessary in the mate-finding landscape of ~5-10 years from now.

My one concern about these apps remains, however, that I'm someone who puts a lot of value on "place," in a Wendell Berry/Port Royal way, and dating apps seem to me be largely geared towards more transient types living in big cities they likely aren't from and where they don't have any roots. I'm sure there are many exceptions to that, and I'm sure there are workarounds for that, but that remains my primary concern, and what sends me to "back in my day" thinking.

[Western Red Cedar]

I think dating apps get a bad rap by people who either dated before they were mainstream or met their SO offline. I’ve discussed this before:

Like any technology, dating apps are a tool. I think they can streamline the process to get to the part of dating where the rubber meets the road, which is in-person human connection. They are not a substitute for that, although I know some people do use them as a source of different forms of validation.

This is a good point. Most of what I've shared here are critiques I've heard from millennials or Gen Z with some "expertise" on the subject on podcasts like Modern Wisdom, Diary of A CEO, or Prof G. I mentioned the book Modern Romance upthread, in which Aziz Ansari pairs up with Sociologist Eric Klineberg to assess the perspective of young people across culture on the current (as of publication) experiences with dating. One of the takeaways there was that the abundance of choice actually made people less happy or likely to settle into a long-term relationship.

The main reason I jumped into the conversation is that I think I may be listening to some of the same stuff @7 is, but I seem to be taking away a very different message.

[7Wannabe5]

I'm someone who puts a lot of value on "place,"

I've actually found that the problem is more towards the opposite. Most of the older men I meet on dating apps are extremely well-established in "place" and unlikely to be budged. I've also discovered that there is a whole world of unique "places" to be discovered within just the south-east corner of the state in which I reside. In fact, online dating has actually served somewhat as a frugal substitution for travel for me due to this reality. On Date Zero I meet a man for coffee on neutral territory, and then on Date 1 or 2 or 3, I am whisked off on a mini-adventure tour of his "place"/lifestyle. Maybe I will be in the heart of the city attending a free concert of a punk band for which he used to be a drummer, maybe I will be out at the lake on the boat he skippered in a big race, maybe I will be at a social event where everybody is dressed in brightly colored clothing and speaking a language other than English, etc. etc. etc.

The problem is that if I stay too long in his "place", I start missing my own "place" as well as often feeling the need for more of a "room of my own" (which I also need to have in my own "place.") Of course, this is likely entirely different for young people who aren't yet as well-established in terms of "place"/lifestyle and/or "room of own." For me, it's almost like the myth of Persephone and Hades in terms of the level of establishment and compartmentalization of "his place' vs. "my place."

[7Wannabe5]

The main reason I jumped into the conversation is that I think I may be listening to some of the same stuff @7 is, but I seem to be taking away a very different message.

I'm likely not communicating very clearly. I'm pretty sure that our understanding of what Galloway and others are attempting to communicate is quite similar. I am just presenting a morphed version of their message coming out of my own eccentric experience blender into which I semi-consciously or consciously threw some stranger chunks of fruit. IOW, I am simultaneously attempting to convey the 70% I agree with Galloway & Co., as well as the 30% composition of my disagreement. The fact that I currently find myself even 70% in agreement with others who describe themselves as "moderates" (David Brooks being somebody else I've been nodding in agreement with lately) is likely both a sign of the times and the extent to which all of us (even me!) tend to veer a bit more conservative with age.

[Hristo Botev]

I've actually found that the problem is more towards the opposite. Most of the older men I meet on dating apps are extremely well-established in "place" and unlikely to be budged.

I don't doubt that is the case, but I'm talking about the utility of dating apps for people in their early 20s, a time during which (if I or DW are any indication) one typically is looking for any opportunity to be budged from their place.

ETA: Selfishly, and personally, it is a secondary but not insignificant concern of mine that I want my children to live here when they start families. So, just trying to figure out how to make that happen; and realizing that I am fairly powerless to do so.

[Hristo Botev]

The fact that I currently find myself even 70% in agreement with others who describe themselves as "moderates" (David Brooks being somebody else I've been nodding in agreement with lately) is likely both a sign of the times and the extent to which all of us (even me!) tend to veer a bit more conservative with age.

Welcome! David Brooks is a gateway drug to the right. I'm sure it won't be long before you will be referring to him as a bed-wetting liberal. (I kid.)

Kidding aside, funny that you mention Brooks since I recall @Ego brought him up one of the previous times this general subject matter came up: viewtopic.php?p=152005#p152005

Also, relatedly, I remember Brooks created a bit of a stir a few years back when he talked about the nuclear family being a mistake: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ke/605536/

[7Wannabe5]

I'm talking about the utility of dating apps for people in their early 20s, a time during which (if I or DW or any indication) one typically is looking for any opportunity to be budged from their place.

Gotcha, but would note that I think a good part of the "problem" with the youth of today as viewed from the perspective of GenX/Boomer is that they are not behaving as if they want to be budged from their place. Many of them seem to be content to live at home in the basement forever. My adult kids left home for good when they went off to college, but that is likely partially due to the fact that I also unloaded the big old house they grew up in halfway through my daughter's senior year of high school. IOW, my kids had no choice but to figure out how to survive on their own beyond the fact that I did spend approximately $500/month on their support until my daughter completed college at age 22*, and I did keep paying the family-plan phone bill as slim umbilical cord for a number of years after that.

At this juncture, I think I actually erred on the side of kicking them to the curb too young relative to their peers, but I wobble quite a bit on this take. I remember running into one of my Mom-friends when our daughters were college age, and she said, "Well, my daughter is homeless this summer." and we both just laughed. The other weird-to-their-generation thing that happened was that when my daughter was still significantly under-employed for the first year after graduation, she didn't want to live with me and my second "husband", so she shared a terrible little apartment with two boys she went to high school with and she slept in the same bed as one of them, but they didn't have sex. I mean, I have definitely had relationships with men that eventually degraded to cuddle-buddy(or colder line down center of bed manifestation), but none that started out and remained on that footing.

An odd anecdotal note related to "place" would be that my daughter and her husband both attended college in his "place", but didn't meet until he showed up in her friend circle after moving to her "place." So, they share overlapping experience/friend circles from both locales (Ivy League of the South/Most Educated U.S. Northern City.) But, this isn't entirely surprising, because "the biking realm around major university research center" is pretty much the same "place" no matter where it is located on the planet.

*My ex was kicking in $0 while they were in college, but he did pass on a chunk of money he inherited to them at a later juncture, so I wrote off my mild resentment, and we now hug and chat on the rare occasions that we meet.

ETA: I will take a look at the Brooks links you added. The recent Brooks article I found myself nodding in agreement with is definitely too much in violation of no politics to link here. In general, the overlap might be described as "liberal tradition."

[ffj]

@Ego

Thank you for stating what I was wondering: why aren't we discussing why two people want to stay together that doesn't involve manipulation or a sense of obligation? Some of this stuff is timeless, right?

@7

Ole Scotty isn't a perfect person, much like all of humanity. Be aware of his warts.


I'm Gen X, and the world has changed since I was in high school/college. I do have a fair amount of sympathy for young people today having to navigate waters I never had to swim. But I don't think the basic values that would indicate a successful relationship have changed so much. The problem is the constant noise/distractions that I never had growing up. The internet is toxic for relationships in my opinion. It's too easy to avoid the hard shit earlier people had to perform to have a chance at relationship success. And the amount of horrible advice out there is staggering, especially for young men. And women too but being male I notice the male angle more readily.

And I would posit that the old cranky people who don't have a partner don't have a companion for a reason. Some people are miserable to be around and it takes a toll to interact with them. I have a good friend exactly like this: divorced, old(60's), by himself and completely stagnant in any sort of personal development. He's a cranky old fuck. Why would anybody want to exhaust themselves around this behavior? I've trained him though, whenever the bitching starts, I'm out. Gotta go, see you later. Haha

Just be nice, and reasonable, and open to other perspectives. Pretty simple.

[Ego]

Like any technology, dating apps are a tool. I think they can streamline the process to get to the part of dating where the rubber meets the road, which is in-person human connection.

Certainly. They streamline human connection in the same way that the Amazon app streamlines connecting us with potential purchases. It commodifies the natural human yearning for love and creates an environment encouraging (many, but not all of) the users to think of relationships in transactional terms. Filter for superficial characteristics. Pay for the premium features to rise to the top of the marketplace. Avoid risking complete commitment to any one person because the app provides (the illusion of) infinite choices.

Thinking of relationships in economic terms, and using dating apps that reinforce this mentality, erodes the foundations of genuine intimacy. True connections require moving beyond the logic of markets and embracing vulnerability and cooperation. Framing human characteristics as assets and relationships as sources of utility, strips away what makes them meaningful. Reducing love to cost-benefit analysis or thinking of the opportunity cost of settling down leads to shallow connections. While apps did not invent the idea of the "dating market', they certainly weaponized and monetized it.

You obviously navigated this well and used the tools without getting used by the tools. I could be wrong, but I believe that you and your SO are outliers. How did you gain the wisdom to use them without getting used by them? Most users, even those with good intentions, end up being manipulated by the apps into unhealthy mindsets about dating. Was it trial and error or did you somehow fortify yourself against the manipulation?

[theanimal]

Certainly. They streamline human connection in the same way that the Amazon app streamlines connecting us with potential purchases. It commodifies the natural human yearning for love and creates an environment encouraging (many, but not all of) the users to think of relationships in transactional terms. Filter for superficial characteristics. Pay for the premium features to rise to the top of the marketplace. Avoid risking complete commitment to any one person because the app provides (the illusion of) infinite choices.

Not only that, the dating apps don’t want you to succeed. The business and users are playing different games and have inverse incentives. The apps are incentivized to keep you on the platform, never committing. Always dangling the carrot of the perfect date just one swipe away…unless you pay $9.99.

It’s very similar to a slot machine, built around dopamine loops and targeted algorithms . They’re no different than any other social media apps in this regard, designed to keep on the platform, not connect. Yeah, there are people who use them without issue (or establish long term relationships in this case), but the average person is phsycologically worse off than before.

Matching people isn’t where the money is. That’s why companies like Match Group push to increase revenue per user amid minimal to flat user growth. They’re monetizing lust (transaction) not love (commitment).

To @ego’s later point, McLuhan’s “ the medium is the message” comes to mind. These tools have the power to serve our desires and shape them. The apps don’t conform to us, we conform to their design.

I find it somewhat horrifying to consider the potential impacts these apps have (extrapolated ahead) on how individuals interact with one another and then more broadly how society sees/values the idea of love.

[IlliniDave]

...
Thinking of relationships in economic terms, and using dating apps that reinforce this mentality, erodes the foundations of genuine intimacy. True connections require moving beyond the logic of markets and embracing vulnerability and cooperation. Framing human characteristics as assets and relationships as sources of utility, strips away what makes them meaningful. Reducing love to cost-benefit analysis or thinking of the opportunity cost of settling down leads to shallow connections. While apps did not invent the idea of the "dating market', they certainly weaponized and monetized it.

...

The whole post was both astute and profound. This excerpt captures the spirit of what strikes me as missing the point when dating and pairing is subjected to too much analysis. While it's true that demographically and biologically speaking, people are different so that in pairs (especially the most common female-male pairing model) there does tend to be a complementary/whole-exceeds-the-sum-of-the-parts outcome, and on the reptile brain level there appears to exist a subconscious assessment that can described using transactional terms, in my mind there's an antecedent basic human need (perhaps also rooted in the reptile brain) that tends to be overlooked and maybe even undermined.

[7Wannabe5]

Ole Scotty isn't a perfect person, much like all of humanity. Be aware of his warts.

Egads, it's not like I am idolizing the man. It's just refreshing to happen upon somebody who vibes like a kid I might have known in high school on this topic, as opposed to "creepy as f*ck." Although, it is the case that because all gingers kind of look alike, and they are both tall and rangy, he very roughly resembles my ex-husband, except less artsy and less pretty and more extroverted. So, could sort of serve as psychological stand-in for a more useful version of my ex who might be of some help with my fretting about my son. OTOH, Galloway's not-well-thought-through suggestion that drinking more alcohol might help the kids-of-today with social inhibition definitely back-fired in the case of my naturally introverted nerdy son who did exactly that and is now an alcoholic.

I only very rarely drink alcohol, so one reason I prefer dating apps to the social singles environment of my youth is that I don't have to go out to a party or bar or similar where alcohol is consumed in order to meet men. It seems much more civilized to meet somebody for coffee in the afternoon and then maybe take a walk around the park and get to know each other as opposed to being in a crowded room full of inebriated others, bumping against you and trying out their crude lines such as "Hey, baby, if I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?" I mean, it is also definitely the case that men will throw out very crude lines on internet dating apps, but it is much easier to simply block/delete them. OTOH, one unexpected negative result I have suffered as a near teetotaler on the dating market is that two of my more significant relationships have been with men who completely quit drinking alcohol due to being bar-room brawlers in their youth under its influence (thus towards "grouchy.") When I have dated men who are still moderately-heavy social drinkers, they tend to fairly quickly become somewhat uncomfortable in my still-sipping-my-first-drink-an-hour-into-third-date company. I think there is a certain proportion of the male population that has never met the challenge of initiating sex for the first time with a completely sober female.

Thinking of relationships in economic terms, and using dating apps that reinforce this mentality, erodes the foundations of genuine intimacy. True connections require moving beyond the logic of markets and embracing vulnerability and cooperation. Framing human characteristics as assets and relationships as sources of utility, strips away what makes them meaningful. Reducing love to cost-benefit analysis or thinking of the opportunity cost of settling down leads to shallow connections. While apps did not invent the idea of the "dating market', they certainly weaponized and monetized it.

Yes, when Thomas Carlyle in 1849 first referred to Economics as "the dismal science", he spoke for romantics everywhere. I don't disagree that economics is not the only lens through which life in all its joy, sorrow, and complexity may be viewed. I don't even argue that it is the best lens. I just question which segments of society may be more or less well served when this lens is applied to all other realms of life, but not the domestic?
OTOH, Economics is not Finance; it is also sometimes described as "the science of human decision making", so it is not strictly necessary to sink to the level of the dollars and cents transactional when considering "human decision making" in any realm, including the dating sphere and the domestic realm. A more-socially-acceptable-for-consideration similar sort of economics problem might be a modern woman feeling frustrated because she is contributing 50% of the financial capital needed to maintain the domestic realm, but she is also doing 90% of the housework which is not being appropriately valued in the relationship equation.

IOW, on some level what is being conveyed in Ego's quote above is that the only answer to the question of "Why would a woman want to engage in marriage or other significant relationship with me?" is simply "Because she loves me." It also conveys that from this perspective, the only value she is bringing to the relationship is "her love." Like the median man in any conceivable circumstance from primitive village festival to 19th century church picnic to 1970s disco scene to modern dating app reality, surveys a selection of available females and then selects his mate based purely on "how much love she has to give." Basically, it is my contention that the matter is made blurry-with-romantic-lens in exactly the manner that best economically serves those who prefer for it to be made blurry-with-romance-lens. And, I do not exempt myself from this tendency, although my lens may be more eccentrically applied than that of median female.

However, I would note that one of the life experiences I have had which broke me free of the conventional modern western lens was that I entered into an Islamic marriage contract with my second "husband" and the Islamic contract is actually more Modern than the conventional Christian contract was until early in the 20th century. In the Islamic contract, a female has an independent legal and financial identity apart from that of her husband; by no means an equal legal and financial identity, but still some level of private property, ability to divorce, etc. The Islamic marriage contract is not a sacrament, and translates simply/roughly as "Contract for Sex" (inclusive of likelihood of offspring from sex.) and one of the provisions is that a gift of some value must be made from the groom to the bride which will form a portion of her private property within the marital sphere. Sometimes in current practice this might just be a token gesture, such as a ring, but often it is still of significant value and can be quite detailed in contract. For example, when my "ex" married the mother of his children, part of their contract was that he had to pay for her graduate school education.

Anyways, my point here certainly isn't that 600 CE Islamic level of "modernity" is appropriate for 21st century marriage or similar relationships. My point is that the Christian version which was in effect in the West until recent enough in our cultural memory to somewhat apply to our own great-grand-parents at least, was strikingly less "modern", but it is still within the meld or mode of the contracts we enter into today, and perhaps this merits some sober or dismal objective perspective before we blithely continue on simply grumbling about the "kids today", etc. For example, to what extent is our remaining discomfort with the notion of a woman overtly initiating relationship with offer of date an archaic cultural remnant?

If I ask myself "Why would a 60 year old woman in the 21st century want to get married?" and come up fairly blank, I might also wonder "Why would a 29 year old woman in the 21st century want to get married?" And the strongest answer I come up with is "because she wants to form a family." And I also comprehend that for some humans, although I think likely more men than women (or maybe more Fi than Fe, which I believe would also somewhat track to more males than females, and obviously to males with primary/secondary Te tendency such as INTJ), "a couple" feels like enough of "a family." For others, being stuck forever alone in a house with a grouchy old man is simultaneously "too much" and "too little." If I had to strictly choose, I would prefer to live in a house full of women and children, and just go out sometimes to converse, cuddle, and mate with my male partner(s) in our "couple" space(s.) I mean, in primitive times men used to go off and do stuff together, they weren't always hanging around the house pestering the women and making decisions about how to decorate the rooms.

[chenda]

Some have argued that historically the Christian no-sex-before-marriage no-divorce monogamy was a very progressive policy for womem as it meant men couldn't dump and abandon pregnant women on the street. Although a more cynical explanation is that men realised it was fairer for most of them than polygyny. Every man gets one women.