ffj wrote: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.
Ego wrote: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.