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The stable marriage problem and modern dating

arvarik.com

161–170 of 224 posts

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#161
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>See, we wouldn't know how to answer this! Certain ways our straight friends describe their love interests sound foreign to us.. That sounds intriguing. Care to elaborate at all with any examples?

GP of the thread here. Things that straight people stereotypically do that gay men stereotypically do not understand: - Treating every person you date like a potential spouse instead of a potential friend - Getting upset when your partner finds someone else attractive - Caring about how many sexual partners someone has had in the past - Remaining sexually monogamous in a relationship that has lost its sexual energy (…

I can see those stereotype applying in a lot of situations. It makes me wonder, looking at them, how does the prospect for reproduction play into it.

At a high level, one big difference is that straight couples can reproduce together. So its not merely looking for a partner in life, or a partner to help raise a child with. But for the prospect of merging your genes.

I think nowadays a lot of the behavior could be explained by values lingering. But I can also rationalize how in a more natural order, without contraception existing, the decision for two straight people to get together comes with a much higher risk/reward ratio. From this, entails that picking the best partner is much more important, and making sure they'll remain throughout the whole pragnency and afterwards to help and support, etc. All that seems to weigh on the decisions for two people to partner up in a straight relationship that doesn't seem as likely in a gay one.

Maybe those instincts remains in straight people, even though nowadays we have good contraception. Or maybe it's that values of such time still linger. Also, even with contraception, it be pretty weird for a straight couple to decide to find a suitable surrogate, so there's still that ultimate, would this be the genetic other of my child?

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#162

I'll chime in with my experience. I married a partner who gave me a strong sense of trust and we now have a child together and are a happy family. We are not very compatible in the sense that we have different mindsets and personalities but share values. We both agreed that rather than trying to change each other we should strive to complete each other instead. It is hard work, but I have the sense that marriage is n…

> We are not very compatible in the sense that we have different mindsets and personalities but share values. The way I've heard this phrased is that you don't want to marry someone with the same strengths as you, you want to marry someone who has the strengths you are lacking. You want someone who will complement you.

This is not something I was specifically looking for when I was dating. I wasn't very sure what I was looking for to be honest, I think I was trying find someone to get along with as well as be attracted physically. When I was dating I wasn't even looking for a wife and this is a bit of a problem with the dating culture, only few want to take this step. This is important because it take your life to a different level or completely wreck it if the marriage fails and end up with kids and bills

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#163

I used to work at a dating service pre-IntarWebz. Still had a matching algo. I started privately running some analyses looking to confirm or disprove my hunches. I will say this: it's still brutal out there.

A thing I think is interesting is that comparing my single friends to my married friends, there isn't really an obvious advantage the married friends have in terms of skills / attractiveness / etc. other than they decided they wanted to be married.

Someone with a mind to settle down can find someone to settle down with pretty quickly it seems. I'm sure there is more to it than that, but I'm not sure what.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#164

Schopenhauer believed that we can't control who we are attracted to, nature does, and further that the mates nature predisposes us to aren't the one most likely to make us happy, it's the ones most likely to produce genetically compatible offspring. "Love... casts itself on persons who, apart from the sexual relation, would be hateful, contemptible and even abhorrent to the lover. But the will of the species is so mu…

> Only from this is it possible to explain why we often see very rational, and even eminent, men tied to termagants and matrimonial fiends...

That's Schopenhauer demonstrating his well attested misogyny.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#166
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any data to back that up that you can share? I don't mean to call you out, it could very well be the case, people date in rather not-understandable ways to me. What you're saying does not match my experience though. Quite a few friends of mine have dated only very few people before getting married. Anecdotally, the marriages that seem to do the best are the marriages in which both partners did not have a…

I think the primary requirement for making a relationship work is that both parties are committed to making it work. The problem is: we're not, because we've been fed fairy tales about True Love and we keep looking for a Mr/Mrs Perfect that doesn't exist. Finding out what you don't want is definitely important too. Some people figure that out quickly, some go through a lot of drama before they finally figure it out.…

Absolutely, the requirement is commitment to success. I used to believe in true love and finding the right person. About 10 years ago I went on a trip across China, and at one point joined a tour group for a few days. On that tour I got to know a couple who got married through an arraigned marriage. I grew up thinking that arraigned marriage was terrible, but what I saw in this couple was a more beautiful facet of love than I had ever witnessed. Each person was committed to making it work, learning to live with and love the other.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#167
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

definitely see this in my scene. the most attractive guys have many partners while the lesser ones don't have that many. more attractive guys are fought over and rifts are created because of it. It's really funny because a lot of them consider themselves anarchists politically...yet the few attractive men seem to dominate.

I wonder how much of this is perception vs. reality. Many women trip over themselves around me, but I'm monogamous and have only chosen to be in a couple of relationships because finding a match is really hard. Just because someone gets a lot of attention, that doesn't mean they're going around having endless casual sex or unlimited girlfriends.

Just because Warren Buffet isn't spending his money frivolously doesn't invalidate the observation that economic gains tend to follow a power distribution (few winners take almost everything)

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are not very compatible in the sense that we have different mindsets and personalities but share values. The way I've heard this phrased is that you don't want to marry someone with the same strengths as you, you want to marry someone who has the strengths you are lacking. You want someone who will complement you.

This is not something I was specifically looking for when I was dating. I wasn't very sure what I was looking for to be honest, I think I was trying find someone to get along with as well as be attracted physically. When I was dating I wasn't even looking for a wife and this is a bit of a problem with the dating culture, only few want to take this step. This is important because it take your life to a different level…

> When I was dating I wasn't even looking for a wife and this is a bit of a problem with the dating culture

I can see how someone could easily get stuck in the idea of "dating" as a thing.

I got married at 23, so I guess that's a stage of my life I didn't spend much time in.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#169
post #40

Having worked on a dating app startup with a 2m seed (it's since pivoted to a brewery run by active gang members), I can say the problem of dating is looked at horribly wrong. People assume dating is about finding the person "most compatible" with you. Compatibility is an illusion. Most people tend to date until they have an idea of "what they don't want". Once they know and they find someone who checks the boxes, th…

Seems like real-life more closely resembles Kepler’s “Marriage Problem” (later reformulated as the “Secratary Problem). https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/05/15/312537965/h... Its a solvable problem from optimal stopping theory. How many people should you date before you know enough to stop and settle (for the next person who’s better than than all the people you’ve dated thus far)? The answer’s x/e, where x can either be a maximum partner quantity, or thr number of years you give yourself to be on the open dating market.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#170
post #97
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this is perception vs. reality. Many women trip over themselves around me, but I'm monogamous and have only chosen to be in a couple of relationships because finding a match is really hard. Just because someone gets a lot of attention, that doesn't mean they're going around having endless casual sex or unlimited girlfriends.

This. When you value intimate encounters with people you care about, there is an upper limit, even if you have multiple women waiting to date you. The only ways to get those numbers up without going casual is to remove other things from your life or get bisexual partners so you can consolidate, and well, even that has its limit.

The upper limit is, what, 4 or so new partners a day? That's probably how some rock and porn stars live (at least a part of their lives).

But even being far below that limit (e.g. one new partner a month for a few years) will statistically place in the extreme tail.

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