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The Agony of Eros: Dating

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Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#191

Post by varjag »

smackeyacky wrote: post #151
varjag wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairytales are also pre-industrial. My point is exactly that it's not quite appstore-modern.

The modern conception of true love is very modern. Nobles used to marry to accumulate property and fairy tales were little more than the glammed up version the hoi polloi consumed. Like the Kardashian thing, tabloids etc where the story is a fabrication. I think what gets lost is that long term relationships have been more utilitarian than anyone likes to admit. Who doesn't love a love story, or want to feel the rush…

Look, just saying that "true love, nuclear family" concept is definitely not a new trend. It was a baseline expectation in the society of your grand-grandparents even if reality couldn't match that quite often.

One probably have to go back to 17th century for this expectation to become entirely alien again. The times of arranged marriages and honor killings. However there hardly was a dating scene in modern sense to think of.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#192

Post by immigrantheart »

solenoidalslide wrote: post #182
immigrantheart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is mostly for western/rich countries I think. Asian countries (rich and poor) still don't suffer from obesity.

Do you have any evidence to support that claim?

It is mostly anecdotal, as I am currently living in 3 different countries (USA, Japan, Indonesia). The latter 2 don't suffer from obesities.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#193

Post by immigrantheart »

DFHippie wrote: post #143
immigrantheart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is mostly for western/rich countries I think. Asian countries (rich and poor) still don't suffer from obesity.

I believed I had heard differently, that obesity was on the increase globally, not just in the US or the West or rich countries. The first hit from Google: > In most of the Asian countries the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased many folds in the past few decades and the magnitude varies between countries [6–15]. South East Asia and Western Pacific region are currently facing an epidemic of diseases as…

I have to tell you that my data is anecdotal. And boy rarely I find obese people here.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#194

Post by fxtentacle »

watwut wrote: post #120
fxtentacle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No actually females can typically "smell" (for lack of a better word) out of the sweat of males if the immune system markers are different enough to protect potential offspring from getting the same sicknesses as mother or father. "In several species, including rodents and fish, it has been shown that the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) influences mating preferences" "This study thus supports the hypothesis th…

Human females typically prefer males that use deodorant. Human females can smell male sweat and typically find it smelly.

... says the Axe advertisement with lots of paid models in it, so it must be the truth.

"The Walk showcases how AXE can transform an everyday walk into an amazing journey of attraction."

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-new-axe-effect-...

But jokes aside, I can't find the study for it now but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that for long-term married women, smelling the sweat of their long-term partner can reduce anxiety. And from an evolutionary perspective, that would make sense: If your long-term partner is around, you're probably halfway safe.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#195

Post by eternalban »

tgv wrote: post #115
dbspin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meeting strangers to 'make out' with or 'hook up' with is literally the point of a club. It's been going on ever since humans had festivals and dances. Lets case conservatively 8 - 12k years. What you consider 'trashy' is completely culturally determined, and in this case amusingly bourgeois. This post is part of a wider trend toward sex negativity. It's not predicated on any major social change - in fact young peopl…

> completely culturally determined Murder, another completely culturally determined taboo. The (presumed, I might add) fact that something is cultural doesn't change its value. And using bourgeois as dismissive is so 1970s.

The unintended irony of those who throw around "bourgeois" in this context is amusing. Historically, the classes that discounted sexual mores have been the poor and the wealthy and powerful elite. The latter already have long standing social mechanisms for maintaining their social position, and the former are under economic pressures that undermine moral and ethical considerations.

It is basically the middle classes that definitively require stable families. So unless OP is manor born -- the working classes do not have leisure time to spend time on HN -- OP is likely a product of a petite-bourgois family who has not really understood the vital necessity of sexual mores for their class.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#196

Post by Brian_K_White »

insickness wrote: post #51
MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #15

Is it just me, or does this article really overthink way too much? IMO, dating is ultimately not a subject that could be analyzed by logic. At least not on on the personal / self-help level (of course sociology / statistics still work). Trying to find some kind of generally applicable "rules of the game" that would work for everyone (or even most) people seems somewhat "not even wrong". It's simply trying to use the…

I always hate the "don't overthink it" comment that inevitably comes along with any advice on dating, eating, sleeping, etc. Yeah, if dating is going great for you, then no need to apply any thinking at all. But if something is not working then you'll need to think about it and the chorus of people saying "don't overthink it" are less than useless.

You know who really loves for you not to overthink things? Predators.

What awesome life advice that is.

There is a certain containing context within which you could validly say "don't overthink it", but that advice itself only comes as a result of thinking.

So what you actually do is you think ALL about it, and the result of that thinking shows you how and where to pay the most attention and demand the most data and exert the most control, and where not to, and how to tell the difference.

I can not imagine having a kid and advising them not to think too much about this topic.

"Whatever happens happens, it'll probably be ok somehow. This isn't a chemical emotional landmine waiting for every human to step on or anything. It's not like naivete in this area is the root cause of 100 different ways for you to hurt yourself, or hurt others, or be hurt by others. It's not like there multiple whole classes of violence called domestic abuse and crimes of passion or anything like that."

If I had a daughter who was neurotic and overthought things, and I wanted to help her avoid the harm that this can cause in this area, the talk would not be in praise of ignorance.

The talk would be about over-optimization and mis-optimization.

The fix is to be even less ignorant, to be aware of this natural pitfall, and to have an understanding about stepping back to see a wider view of something and get perspective, identify what actually matters, and avoid sabotaging the important goal (being happy) by optimizing for the wrong things (any number of details).

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#197

Post by lesuorac »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #179
virtualritz wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR; Extrapolating both your points you should thus only have one partner for life. And never leave the house (just use delivery apps/wear an ABC suit when opening the door of your house to receive deliveries). The first objection you listed contains all the reasons to use protection. In general. I live in Berlin. A city where open/poly relationships are perfectly normal and common. The bday party I went to last Sat…

Berliners are a weird group culturally. This is the same bunch of people that went on an anti-Semitic and racist bender and massacred millions of people across Europe. I don’t think they are a good example of how life should be lived. Weird/crazy people being weird. Everything is acceptable to Berliners.

I think you've missed an important thing in your comment.

In order to kill a jew you need a jew. So in order for a berliner to be killing one, the rest of the berliners had to have been nice enough that a jew was present. Unlike say Belgium [1]. Not to say killing a jew is a good thing (it's not) but areas like Poland ended up with a relatively higher concentration because they were more tolerant than western societies.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Belgium...

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#198

Post by ZephyrBlu »

solenoidalslide wrote: post #185
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Societal stability 2) Most men are not capable of being promiscuous, even if they want to be

I think you meant to say that most men are not capable of polygamy? I would very much think that most men are capable of promiscuity.

By capable I mean able to execute. Most men struggle to find a single partner to be monogamous with, let alone multiple partners.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#199

Post by tgv »

AlexandrB wrote: post #169
tgv wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> completely culturally determined Murder, another completely culturally determined taboo. The (presumed, I might add) fact that something is cultural doesn't change its value. And using bourgeois as dismissive is so 1970s.

Murder violates the rights of another human being. Whose rights are violated by two consenting adults making out in a club?

A right is just another cultural concept.

Re: The Agony of Eros: Dating

#200

Post by schrijver »

meerita wrote: post #58

The author clearly didn't studied the matter and she's speaking from personal and enviroment-she-can-perceive point of view, no offense with this part. After reading the entire post, I can see she's biased with her own perception on the matter. Reading other articles, who are also biased just make it worse. When you look at the data, you realize the dating world for men is close to doom. Only a small fraction of men…

I keep hearing this reference on how most (80%?) of women compete for the 20% of men, it just doesn’t make sense to me. It can only be true in a narrow sense… i.e. on a specific dating app 20% of men get messaged by 80% of women (that’s where the figure comes from IIRC?).

But looking at the larger picture of how relationships are formed, there is no way for it to work this way. And if it were true, it would be just as bad for women—as most of them would stay single! These 20% of men might have an easier time on the apps, and casual hookups might be simpler, but they can’t be in relationships with 80% of women. And a committed partnership of two people keeps being the long term vision for most in the dating game.

And people still have relationships. From the US numbers I could find, the bracket with the most singles is males 18-29, at 51%, which is a lot, but not exactly ‘close to doom’.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profi...

EDT: This 80/20 figure initially came from an OKCupid study, and it’s about perceived attractiveness. In this study, 80% of men are perceived as of less than average attractiveness. However, that did not necessarily stop them from getting messaged. https://archive.ph/ZJymw#selection-600.0-633.275

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