So first let me explain. When movies say most women have decided in person in the first few minutes whether a man even has a chance, most women will nod emphatically, even me. But it's part of the patriarchy. Women for hundreds, even thousands of years, would get a chance introduction, not be allowed to have any real or meaningful conversations and have to answer a marriage proposal. Read any classic about women, particularly in the 1800's when women were finally able to write about it. Men who had only a glimpse of a woman would come to see her at her parents, maybe stroll along a garden or just sit on a porch with her for less than an hour and then propose in the next day or so. Women had to draw pictures in their minds based on these short encounters on whether or not to give their whole entity to this man. Rebuking an offer often wasn't even an option for some women. A great example is from one of my favorite books where the heroine is asked by a man only less than a couple days after meeting him to marry him. She refuses and is warned she might not get another offer. Later, her best friend accepts an offer from the man only a few days later with her friend explaining this offer is probably her last chance since she's not as strong, pretty, etc as the heroine. Okay. Got it. We have had this ingrained into us from a young age and most of us don't even think about it. It's natural after centuries of it being a cultural norm. Women make a more snap decision on men and tend to see the best qualities first.
Men, on the other hand, typically didn't have to make any decisions at all. The more money they had, the better looking, women were drawing perfect pictures of them. They hardly had to try. Just a hundred years ago men needed nothing but a large income and other men would pay them dowries to take daughters off their hands. Men could be more choosey. They could hold out for prettier, smarter if that's what they wanted, more docile, less docile.... They could hold out for decades and never be rebuked for not marrying, never referred to as a "burden" on the family because of not marrying and not being able to work. As a result, men in general are eliminating.
What do I mean by eliminating? Men tend to look at women for our faults or even what they decide makes us "out of their league". On one occasion a guy spoke to me for about 45 minutes, nice looking, good job, seemed alright. When I told him I was an engineer, he asked what my degree was in. When I told him mechanical engineering? He looked disappointed and said "oh you're too smart for me" and excused himself politely although fairly abruptly. My education level compared to his own "eliminating" me from further effort in his mind. One of the guys I grew up with "eliminated" almost every woman. She could be beautiful, smart, friendly, literally near perfect; he would find something wrong with her. He reminded me of Eddie Murphy in "Boomerang". Eddie's character obsesses over "perfect feet" and ends up played as a result. Men can become fixated on their version of perfect and eliminate near perfection.
How does this affect online dating? Women talk, text for a bit, they've got a picture, probably more like a movie short, of what a man is. Women dream up the man they've been communicating with. Often by the time they meet, if there's any attraction on the woman's part, she's got this version of who he is in her head. He could tell her anything, true or not. She really can't be sure because most things we learn about each other over time. The picture is there nonetheless after centuries of grooming. Men don't really have a picture in their minds of what she is, but rather a picture in their minds of what they see as perfect. Men are comparing to that picture, whether it's realistic or not. Online dating means they have a plethora of women to choose from. No one is measuring up, so next. Women now are forced to hedge their bets because men always have been able to hedge their bets.
Women don't usually hedge their bets. In the past women who rebuked or refused a man who was considered viable by their father was often chastised as being full of herself, warned she might not get another offer, but worse? If they had multiple suitors at the same time, society frowned on that if she seemed to take her time picking one. Men could just go house to house until someone said yes, if they were so inclined. So internet dating gives them a never ending row of houses. Let's not get into the 20 something females, some fake, some real, trolling for sugar daddies making this whole fiasco even more complicated. Or the catfish just using other people's pictures because they are bored, manipulative, lonely, whatever. Just the real people using online dating are going to have enough problems without the fakes out there pretending to be perfection.
Does this all sound jaded? Yes and no. I'm kind of sick of it, yes. But long term, not in my lifetime and certainly not with men my age, this will balance out. Younger women are better educated, generally have their own jobs, self sufficient, don't need a man to have a home. They can literally buy their own now, but in actuality, this is all very, very new in societal terms. Just 50 years ago, a young woman, never married, not living at home with her parents? Buying her own home? This was very upsetting to people usually. I'm not joking. We have come a long way, ladies. These norms have shifted and over the next 50 years so will dating. We see it already. Millennials and the Zs are marrying later and tend to have more stable marriages than Boomers have. Their expectations not the same so online dating for them to tends to work a bit better.
There's a bigger problem with online dating and it's the "addiction" of something better out there. A female acquaintance said to me once of a guy she met online, "if I could land this guy, maybe I could find even a better fit (guy)". What she meant was this guy wasn't her dream, so maybe she could start over with a new guy and a new dream of his imaginary perfection. I had a guy I used to work with just bragged how many women slept with him. He had no intention of giving that up. He eliminated women as soon as he got into their pants. In the past, at least based on the norms, we knew better than to give up on near perfection because there might not be another opportunity. In online dating, there's always another opportunity.
Now I know online dating is about the only way to actually meet anyone anymore. Most men don't talk to women in public anymore. There's no ego attachment to being ignored or rejected online. Move on to the next profile. In person, there was always that crash and burn in front of the other guys you know possibility. Women playing the eye contact game, again up until maybe 50 years ago. Can't do that with online dating. It's really taken the personal out of one of the most personal things we do in our lives.
Probably why I've never gone out on more than a couple dates with anyone I've met online. Literally, it's been a total waste of my time. I have never dated anyone seriously that I met online. This blog started with laughs over some of the most ridiculous dates I had from online dating. I've never made any real friends from online dating either. Unlike a lot of people, I can honestly say, I've never even been intimate with anyone I've met online and I figured out why. I can't dream up the perfect fit for some guy I've never met in person. I know other women can but I can't do it. Online dating let's me be more like all the guys I've worked with and am friends with over the years. I'm eliminating.
In fact, based on a recent dating experience, I'm even eliminating in person now. Not that I wasn't able to dream him up better than the guy is. But I was quick to see where he didn't live up to that. It was work trying to decide how to handle that while getting frustrated by what a total shitbag he actually is. It's one thing to watch the dream picture we see initially fade and have a guy be a good guy overall. It's a reckoning when you have realized he's actually a shitbag on top of it. Would it matter if I wasn't eliminating? I mean really. I know other women that hold onto their illusions still. I mean dream and keep dreaming. So much for my fairy tale ending.
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