59 year old white male, 30 years of marriage with kids commenting...
Get out there, and meet people. Some people stink, some are great!!
This week I had to rent a car, and it came down to Avis (old school) versus Zipcar (new school). I went with Avis on price. Now that sends you to a morning counter line where you HAVE TO TALK WITH A PERSON to get a car.
The woman behind the counter was a Black woman, and she remembered me from past rentals which was years ago. She was really funny at 8 am in the morning. We exchanged some fun repartee, and guess what? She upgraded me 2 levels of car for no charge!! I am a large man and she would not put me in the smaller car!!
God bless her.
My advice - get off the phones, and go make some mistakes with real people. Correcting the mistakes is part of the fun, and people will respect you in REAL life.
Issue of young people being lonely is runs very deep in our society. One of main reasons is that notion of family and marriage, taking next step in life with a partner has been demonized and obstructed on every corner.
For last 30 years young men are being told, that only way to measure his worth, is his net worth, and any other traditional values are worthless and useless.
Young women are told to having family and kids is nightmare from middle ages and that only way for woman to be liberated from oppressive patriarchy is to be speding 24/7 grinding in some corporate offices and to change partners more often than socks. Sadly in many cases when women realize that traditional values are not the enemy, in many cases biological clock has taken his toil.
For those, who forgoe above mentioned brainwash, they find that cards are stacked extremly against them. Buying home for young couples has become a nightmare in itself, housing is unaffordable across the country, rents are skyrocketing. Young moms in Hospitals are being called "birthing persons", further dehumanizing such important societal role.
Then daycare for children, is in some areas so expensive, that one partner has only work to pay for it.
When kids are ready for school, nightmare continues, those same forces that are telling young women not to have kids and families, for some reason are very interested in having their say what kids should learn in school (it seem that they follow old saying "get them while they are young").
Similar issues continue in university.
After seeing all this, only crazy person would want family or any kind of commitment, we have come to a situation, where all cards are stacked against young couples, while universities, social media and MSM are all yelling in one voice that any traditional values are bad.
I think Shane would be better off if he could be happy first with himself. No relationship is going to bring him that which comes from within. If he's looking for a soulmate (which is a totally BS word that someone made up 25 years ago), he would do well to be his own soulmate. No relationship is going to "complete" him.
I would tell Jeff to, yes, do exactly that. Walk up to a strange woman in a grocery store and say "Oh, you're buying bananas too?" He'll know in about three seconds whether she's interested or not. If she's not, and if he has anything approximating what could be described as half a brain, he'll know and take his leave before the concern about creepiness kicks in. I would argue further that the point is the asking, not the getting the date, which is pure gravy. Would his results be any worse? Asking a woman for a date in person is way more riskier than sitting on the couch in one's shorts swiping left. Or is it right? Some young people weren't even allowed the risk of walking three and a half blocks to grade school, so asking a girl out can be pretty scary. I get it.
As to being hurt or getting one's heart broken? What healthy person hasn't had that experience? It's a part of life. So put your big boy pants on and man up:
"Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all".
Conversations are a gift; they become magical when they are about nothing and have no other purpose than the conversation itself. Too often, it seems, we want to assign purpose to everything but the truth is not all connections or conversations need to be anything other than just enjoyable. I speak to people in stores or in bars not because they have something I want or because I want to have a sexual relationship but simply because it is social and, yes, it is connective. Many, if not most, of the people I end up briefly talking to I will never see again and if I do I nod in acknowledgment of recognizing them and say hello and that's it.
It feels as though we have somehow made relationships commodities and confused their value with purpose instead of appreciating their simple existence.
Then take it — not your earbuds and iPhone — for a walk.
I know of a beautiful young woman who some day wants a large family, something north of 1.6 kids. She’s used multiple sites, including Christian Mingle. Inevitably, the budding relationships come down to “the talk.”
This woman is traditional. Sex is special, not something you toss out. She wants to wait, ideally till marriage. If not then, at least until she and he are committed to something more than a common interest in craft beers. This is an intelligent, funny, educated woman who teaches little kids, loves baseball, good books, music, board games, politics, cooking, and people. She wants a mate, not a hookup. Needless to say, she’s still very single.
We, the Boomers and beyond, have destroyed every institution that made long-term, monogamous relationships something to be desired and nurtured. Marriage. Church. Family. Friendship. Community. Schools. All have been damaged (irreparably?) or rejiggered into machines that pump out robotic narcissists. I’ve heard one sage man say our world is now a billion little bubbles of Ego. They collide and burst because no one can understand why the other can’t or won’t do things his or her way. That old “my way or the highway” thing.
There is a way to fix this. Relegate technology to its rightful role of servant not master. Recognized you’re going to get hurt. (But, hey, the way I see it, the current system, like an opiate, is destroying you.) Then get out and meet your future face to face.
I'm so glad I missed the dating apps by a few years. I met my wife in a bar the old fashioned way. I told that to my Gen Z co-workers and their jaws dropped like I was from another planet. It was never easy working up the courage to meet people but it sure beats swiping and waiting and dwelling.
My son (26) recently explained why he has trouble dating.
Hookup culture rules the day; the ladies just disappear, and that includes actual friends of friends, which is his only dating pool. They simply say, up front, they’re never interested in actually dating.
He and his friends get creeped on social media and that’s a disturbing tale: if they are dating they get endless crap for anything that appears on their Instagram feed. One example was looking at any other girl’s post at all, another was what news item they’ve viewed.
Now that all comes after college, where the men’s sports team was required to watch a shockingly anti-male Title IX video featuring, among other things, examples of overtly inappropriate sexual harassment and clear warnings that they’ll be expelled instantly on the first complaint with no warning or recourse.
More broadly, my son has found that nearly all young women are, to him, immature, specifically they cannot hold a conversation about much of anything. Some openly say they’ll only hook up with GFs to avoid “toxic” males. (That really shocked me)
So you’ve written an excellent article (as usual) but missed all of that.
Maybe it is geographic, maybe just by accident, but find a few kids who aren’t dysfunctional, scared or just insecure and see what they’ve noticed.
The total fertility rate (TFR) is the number of children the average woman has in her reproductive lifetime. It needs to be a bare minimum of 2.1 for a civilization to survive. The TFR in the US today is around 1.6 and dropping. Sub replacement TFRs are becoming the norm around the world.
It appears that modernity is not a viable civilizational norm.
I have absolutely no issue with anything in this piece, but I do note a very persistent pattern on the subject. It starts out as a perspective about the state of being a modern young woman ("why are my peers lonelier...") but as always seems to be the case, the primary focus is on the shortcomings of men. Not a single female is profiled. Again, I have no argument with the points made here and I am very glad that I missed the modern state of things, but I would like someone of Suzy's honesty and writing ability to discuss what might be the female contribution to all the dysfunction.
Social media has exacerbated the notion that "perfection" is the only answer when it comes to relationships. It's sort of like the old high school thought process where every girl desires the captain of the football team, and every guy wants the head cheerleader -- except on steroids.
I have an acquaintance who teaches at the college level. Her observation is that sweet, decent kids (especially girls) are so driven by social media to seek out perfection that they ignore the sweet, decent guys sitting next to them in the classroom. She sees this happening at all levels, from middle school through grad school.
Now add in the social pressures promoting a hook-up culture, and the thought process spewed by mass media that long-term relationships and marriage are bad, and the result is a decline in society that's becoming increasingly evident.
In my teens I consumed a considerable amount of science fiction. A staple was the scenario where a new disease, a new technology such as nuclear weapons, a death ray, or a novel social order - think "Atlas Shrugged" - threatens to wipe out humanity, or worse reduce the Average Man to brain-dead servitude. As we head into the new fall and winter of short, cold days, I cannot escape a certain unease - a feeling that the world is careening out of control - a hellbound train locked on the rails, and that the attacks are coming from so many directions that one doesn't know which threat to fight first.
The traditional Battle of the Sexes, long the subject of comedy, is to my eye not funny anymore. I've had a little brush with it myself, and given the current social - and more importantly, legal - climate, I could not recommend marriage to any young man. Your spouse gets her panties in a wad, and bang! - no-fault divorces are trivially easy; all the prior obstacles to divorce which kept families together during the inevitable rough patches are gone. Fifty percent of first marriages fail, 65% of second, 75% of third, and if you have children - given the "family law" courts' proclivities - you have just locked yourself into supporting someone you don't like for decades, relegated to seeing your own children one evening every other week, maybe living out of your car or jailed for being a "deadbeat dad." Deadbeat? Really, or just broke? Date - or especially marry - an American woman? These days you'd have to be out of your mind.
No, the infiltration of the West's traditions and institutions by socialist/communist soreheads bent on its destruction is nearly complete. Our enemies have figured out how to use our own freedoms against us - as they said they would. Clearly the whole issue is in question. I believe we are in one of those eras that humanity brings upon itself regularly: fight for everything you are worth, or succumb. And if you must succumb, save the last bullet for yourself.
There are definitely young people who are thriving, have healthy relationships and get married. Every generation has their economic challenges. What we’re pushing is that because those challenges are there better not to do anything and give up. I couldn’t buy a house when I first got married but we managed after a few years.
This is an interesting and incredibly sad article but not every young person is locked in their parent’s basement.
I think “Phillip” really nailed it with his surprisingly self-aware commentary--the internet basically offers a cheap simulacrum of a fulfilling human existence, and for many people (especially men) it’s just enough to ward off the pain of existence. It’s a voluntary Matrix.
Article one-a Your best, M. Suzi. Very thought-provoking. I'm saddened, and wish I could say I was surprised.
AFAIK, (As Far As I Know), among other things, it's a consequence of being raised by the computer-brain of social media instead of day-to-day practice of being face-to-face human. Making mistakes. Having a heart and having it broken. And Snowplowing, indeed, has a lot to do with it.
Solutions? ... Simple, but not easy. IMO, You try something different from what "everyone" is doing.
"But it seems all the would-be husbands have been left functionally castrated by porn addictions, or slaving away at a 9-to-5 trying to pay for a tiny apartment..." So now working a regular 8 hour day to support oneself is a bad thing?? I'd rather live in a tiny apartment through my own earnings than live in my parents' basement. You have to build up one's career and buying power. It doesn't happen immediately. Sounds like she doesn't value a decent, hardworking guy or understand the work and years of effort that go into living a comfortable life. No wonder she can't find any good guys.
59 year old white male, 30 years of marriage with kids commenting...
Get out there, and meet people. Some people stink, some are great!!
This week I had to rent a car, and it came down to Avis (old school) versus Zipcar (new school). I went with Avis on price. Now that sends you to a morning counter line where you HAVE TO TALK WITH A PERSON to get a car.
The woman behind the counter was a Black woman, and she remembered me from past rentals which was years ago. She was really funny at 8 am in the morning. We exchanged some fun repartee, and guess what? She upgraded me 2 levels of car for no charge!! I am a large man and she would not put me in the smaller car!!
God bless her.
My advice - get off the phones, and go make some mistakes with real people. Correcting the mistakes is part of the fun, and people will respect you in REAL life.
Issue of young people being lonely is runs very deep in our society. One of main reasons is that notion of family and marriage, taking next step in life with a partner has been demonized and obstructed on every corner.
For last 30 years young men are being told, that only way to measure his worth, is his net worth, and any other traditional values are worthless and useless.
Young women are told to having family and kids is nightmare from middle ages and that only way for woman to be liberated from oppressive patriarchy is to be speding 24/7 grinding in some corporate offices and to change partners more often than socks. Sadly in many cases when women realize that traditional values are not the enemy, in many cases biological clock has taken his toil.
For those, who forgoe above mentioned brainwash, they find that cards are stacked extremly against them. Buying home for young couples has become a nightmare in itself, housing is unaffordable across the country, rents are skyrocketing. Young moms in Hospitals are being called "birthing persons", further dehumanizing such important societal role.
Then daycare for children, is in some areas so expensive, that one partner has only work to pay for it.
When kids are ready for school, nightmare continues, those same forces that are telling young women not to have kids and families, for some reason are very interested in having their say what kids should learn in school (it seem that they follow old saying "get them while they are young").
Similar issues continue in university.
After seeing all this, only crazy person would want family or any kind of commitment, we have come to a situation, where all cards are stacked against young couples, while universities, social media and MSM are all yelling in one voice that any traditional values are bad.
The real problem is one word: Marriage. That word is not to be found through the entire article.
I think Shane would be better off if he could be happy first with himself. No relationship is going to bring him that which comes from within. If he's looking for a soulmate (which is a totally BS word that someone made up 25 years ago), he would do well to be his own soulmate. No relationship is going to "complete" him.
I would tell Jeff to, yes, do exactly that. Walk up to a strange woman in a grocery store and say "Oh, you're buying bananas too?" He'll know in about three seconds whether she's interested or not. If she's not, and if he has anything approximating what could be described as half a brain, he'll know and take his leave before the concern about creepiness kicks in. I would argue further that the point is the asking, not the getting the date, which is pure gravy. Would his results be any worse? Asking a woman for a date in person is way more riskier than sitting on the couch in one's shorts swiping left. Or is it right? Some young people weren't even allowed the risk of walking three and a half blocks to grade school, so asking a girl out can be pretty scary. I get it.
As to being hurt or getting one's heart broken? What healthy person hasn't had that experience? It's a part of life. So put your big boy pants on and man up:
"Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all".
Conversations are a gift; they become magical when they are about nothing and have no other purpose than the conversation itself. Too often, it seems, we want to assign purpose to everything but the truth is not all connections or conversations need to be anything other than just enjoyable. I speak to people in stores or in bars not because they have something I want or because I want to have a sexual relationship but simply because it is social and, yes, it is connective. Many, if not most, of the people I end up briefly talking to I will never see again and if I do I nod in acknowledgment of recognizing them and say hello and that's it.
It feels as though we have somehow made relationships commodities and confused their value with purpose instead of appreciating their simple existence.
Get a puppy!
Then take it — not your earbuds and iPhone — for a walk.
I know of a beautiful young woman who some day wants a large family, something north of 1.6 kids. She’s used multiple sites, including Christian Mingle. Inevitably, the budding relationships come down to “the talk.”
This woman is traditional. Sex is special, not something you toss out. She wants to wait, ideally till marriage. If not then, at least until she and he are committed to something more than a common interest in craft beers. This is an intelligent, funny, educated woman who teaches little kids, loves baseball, good books, music, board games, politics, cooking, and people. She wants a mate, not a hookup. Needless to say, she’s still very single.
We, the Boomers and beyond, have destroyed every institution that made long-term, monogamous relationships something to be desired and nurtured. Marriage. Church. Family. Friendship. Community. Schools. All have been damaged (irreparably?) or rejiggered into machines that pump out robotic narcissists. I’ve heard one sage man say our world is now a billion little bubbles of Ego. They collide and burst because no one can understand why the other can’t or won’t do things his or her way. That old “my way or the highway” thing.
There is a way to fix this. Relegate technology to its rightful role of servant not master. Recognized you’re going to get hurt. (But, hey, the way I see it, the current system, like an opiate, is destroying you.) Then get out and meet your future face to face.
Get a puppy!
I'm so glad I missed the dating apps by a few years. I met my wife in a bar the old fashioned way. I told that to my Gen Z co-workers and their jaws dropped like I was from another planet. It was never easy working up the courage to meet people but it sure beats swiping and waiting and dwelling.
My son (26) recently explained why he has trouble dating.
Hookup culture rules the day; the ladies just disappear, and that includes actual friends of friends, which is his only dating pool. They simply say, up front, they’re never interested in actually dating.
He and his friends get creeped on social media and that’s a disturbing tale: if they are dating they get endless crap for anything that appears on their Instagram feed. One example was looking at any other girl’s post at all, another was what news item they’ve viewed.
Now that all comes after college, where the men’s sports team was required to watch a shockingly anti-male Title IX video featuring, among other things, examples of overtly inappropriate sexual harassment and clear warnings that they’ll be expelled instantly on the first complaint with no warning or recourse.
More broadly, my son has found that nearly all young women are, to him, immature, specifically they cannot hold a conversation about much of anything. Some openly say they’ll only hook up with GFs to avoid “toxic” males. (That really shocked me)
So you’ve written an excellent article (as usual) but missed all of that.
Maybe it is geographic, maybe just by accident, but find a few kids who aren’t dysfunctional, scared or just insecure and see what they’ve noticed.
Social media is a catastrophe for young adults.
The total fertility rate (TFR) is the number of children the average woman has in her reproductive lifetime. It needs to be a bare minimum of 2.1 for a civilization to survive. The TFR in the US today is around 1.6 and dropping. Sub replacement TFRs are becoming the norm around the world.
It appears that modernity is not a viable civilizational norm.
I have absolutely no issue with anything in this piece, but I do note a very persistent pattern on the subject. It starts out as a perspective about the state of being a modern young woman ("why are my peers lonelier...") but as always seems to be the case, the primary focus is on the shortcomings of men. Not a single female is profiled. Again, I have no argument with the points made here and I am very glad that I missed the modern state of things, but I would like someone of Suzy's honesty and writing ability to discuss what might be the female contribution to all the dysfunction.
I feel sad for the young adults of today.
Social media has exacerbated the notion that "perfection" is the only answer when it comes to relationships. It's sort of like the old high school thought process where every girl desires the captain of the football team, and every guy wants the head cheerleader -- except on steroids.
I have an acquaintance who teaches at the college level. Her observation is that sweet, decent kids (especially girls) are so driven by social media to seek out perfection that they ignore the sweet, decent guys sitting next to them in the classroom. She sees this happening at all levels, from middle school through grad school.
Now add in the social pressures promoting a hook-up culture, and the thought process spewed by mass media that long-term relationships and marriage are bad, and the result is a decline in society that's becoming increasingly evident.
In my teens I consumed a considerable amount of science fiction. A staple was the scenario where a new disease, a new technology such as nuclear weapons, a death ray, or a novel social order - think "Atlas Shrugged" - threatens to wipe out humanity, or worse reduce the Average Man to brain-dead servitude. As we head into the new fall and winter of short, cold days, I cannot escape a certain unease - a feeling that the world is careening out of control - a hellbound train locked on the rails, and that the attacks are coming from so many directions that one doesn't know which threat to fight first.
The traditional Battle of the Sexes, long the subject of comedy, is to my eye not funny anymore. I've had a little brush with it myself, and given the current social - and more importantly, legal - climate, I could not recommend marriage to any young man. Your spouse gets her panties in a wad, and bang! - no-fault divorces are trivially easy; all the prior obstacles to divorce which kept families together during the inevitable rough patches are gone. Fifty percent of first marriages fail, 65% of second, 75% of third, and if you have children - given the "family law" courts' proclivities - you have just locked yourself into supporting someone you don't like for decades, relegated to seeing your own children one evening every other week, maybe living out of your car or jailed for being a "deadbeat dad." Deadbeat? Really, or just broke? Date - or especially marry - an American woman? These days you'd have to be out of your mind.
No, the infiltration of the West's traditions and institutions by socialist/communist soreheads bent on its destruction is nearly complete. Our enemies have figured out how to use our own freedoms against us - as they said they would. Clearly the whole issue is in question. I believe we are in one of those eras that humanity brings upon itself regularly: fight for everything you are worth, or succumb. And if you must succumb, save the last bullet for yourself.
There are definitely young people who are thriving, have healthy relationships and get married. Every generation has their economic challenges. What we’re pushing is that because those challenges are there better not to do anything and give up. I couldn’t buy a house when I first got married but we managed after a few years.
This is an interesting and incredibly sad article but not every young person is locked in their parent’s basement.
I think “Phillip” really nailed it with his surprisingly self-aware commentary--the internet basically offers a cheap simulacrum of a fulfilling human existence, and for many people (especially men) it’s just enough to ward off the pain of existence. It’s a voluntary Matrix.
Article one-a Your best, M. Suzi. Very thought-provoking. I'm saddened, and wish I could say I was surprised.
AFAIK, (As Far As I Know), among other things, it's a consequence of being raised by the computer-brain of social media instead of day-to-day practice of being face-to-face human. Making mistakes. Having a heart and having it broken. And Snowplowing, indeed, has a lot to do with it.
Solutions? ... Simple, but not easy. IMO, You try something different from what "everyone" is doing.
TY again, Ma'am.
"But it seems all the would-be husbands have been left functionally castrated by porn addictions, or slaving away at a 9-to-5 trying to pay for a tiny apartment..." So now working a regular 8 hour day to support oneself is a bad thing?? I'd rather live in a tiny apartment through my own earnings than live in my parents' basement. You have to build up one's career and buying power. It doesn't happen immediately. Sounds like she doesn't value a decent, hardworking guy or understand the work and years of effort that go into living a comfortable life. No wonder she can't find any good guys.