tdarg
Iron
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2026
- Posts
- 6
- Reputation
- 4
First post, but hopefully will start to cook up some more. I feel like the dating market nowadays is so fucking cooked. I know this isn't some niche topic or a hot take, but holy fuck, it's bad. I don't think that's solely due to girls makeup frauding and having unrealistic standards for their ideal partner, but also due to the value people, and particularly men, place on sexual gratification and sexual success. Yes, girls can overestimate their own desirability, and along with that comes the mutual flattery of telling their friends that they're beautiful and therefore deserve a 6ft+ "Chad", but I think this is also reinforced by the way men value getting with women. I am currently 17 and have never had a girlfriend, let alone my first kiss, and yes, it bothers me, but not simply because I want the experience itself. A large part of it is because of the social value that we attach to it. Men who "slay" are often respected or even worshipped by other men, regardless of whether the women they get with are particularly attractive. I'm sure most guys regularly talk about their sexual or romantic accomplishments with their mates, which gives men who have more success greater value and presence among other men and, potentially, women. This makes me wonder whether part of the solution is for male culture to simply place less value on getting with women. Obviously, I'm not saying men should stop finding women attractive or stop pursuing relationships, but rather that we could stop treating sexual success as a kind of social currency. If getting with women carried little or no status among other men, would men still compete over it to the same extent? And if men collectively placed less value on female attention and sexual validation, would that reduce some of the pressure and competition that contributes to hypergamy. In a weird way, sexual success almost functions like a form of currency. It gives you status, validation and, to some extent, perceived masculinity. So perhaps part of the problem is that men themselves have created a market in which female attention is extremely valuable. This could obviously just be cope for my own inability to get with girls and social awkwardness, and I'm self-aware enough to recognise that, but I do genuinely think there is something to the idea that if men stopped treating getting with women as such a significant achievement, it could change some of the dynamics of the dating market. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I feel like there's an interesting argument here.
