I’ve been single all my life

I want to stress just how difficult both of these things can be -- especially the second part. It's truly a journey where you end up changing your entire mindset to become a person who is going to make a good partner for another human being. You must not feel pressured to do it, or resentful that you are doing it. You must choose wholeheartedly to do it. It's going to feel awkward and strange along the way.

I touched on this in a later response under your initial comment in this thread, but the tl;dr was that I interpreted their use of the word "value" being the same as its use in economics: something is said to be "valued" if it is desired/sought after, and whether that should be the case or how we feel about it is an orthogonal concern (though certainly not any less deserving of discussion itself).

> [...] with a postscript about how these "truths" are too hot to handle. If it were simply about following the facts wherever they lead, surely there wouldn't be a need to preemptively declare that anyone who disagreed did so irrationally, and surely it wouldn't have been categorical without making room for nuance or disagreement.

I think I see where you're coming from now. I suspect difference in interpretation is a consequence of differences in our individual priors: I have seen countless times that people will conflate mentioning of a statistic with support for that statistic being what it is -- there is, after all, the proverbial saying "don't shoot the messenger". So I can sympathize with (what I interpret to be) a preemptive "I know some of you are going to take what I've written uncharitably and/or irrationally, so fire away" -- which isn't to say that I think that's a productive way of communicating, but I see the rationale behind that (as misguided as it may be) just as much as I can see the rationale behind giving someone the finger, or cussing someone out, letting out a frustrated sigh, or any other emotionally motivated outburst. (I didn't take what was originally written to mean "if you disagree, it's because you're being irrational")

> The obvious course of action when you are unsure about something is experimentation. However, a relationship isn’t an activity (like a job, hobby, or sport) to try and quit when you don’t like it.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Naïve, self-defeating. every relationship is an experiment. and if you try it and don’t like it then you can quit any time.

> Also, if it doesn’t work out, I’m scared of leaving a broken heart in another person.

Yes. That’s the real problem, fear of the unknown.

Better to love and to lose, than to live and to never have found love.

I agree with this.

Though I also don't think anyone is really trying to suggest (express or implied) that there's a general, natural analogy to be made between dating and markets; I solely think the word "value" was being used in the economical sense, without implying any further connection to economic theory. I realize that, when I suggested that "value" was probably meant in the sense of supply/demand, I may have conveyed something I wasn't trying to; sorry about that.

At any rate, this is how I and most people within both my family and social circles have used "value" in conversation: not an expression of sentiment, but merely an observation of what others want. Given this meaning, it's actually nonsensical to speak of a person's value without any supporting context -- people don't have value any more than the color green has smoothness/roughness, or the a note played on a piano is righteous/unjust -- these descriptors just don't apply. I could say that my skills within my career field are valued, and I suppose I could restate that as "I am a valuable employee", but I myself have no intrinsic value. If you read that with "value" replaced with "self worth" (by which people generally would mean something like "self esteem"), then it sounds pretty bad -- but that's not what's meant. I suspect most people in the HN demographic also use "value" pretty consistently in the way I've suggested -- not that I'm trying to make the argument that "value" should be interpreted this way or that way, but just pointing out what I think I've seen in practice.

I think what was originally suggested upstream in the comments was that there are qualities that most men happen to be looking for (are "valued"/"valuable"), and that those qualities give rise to pressures (as unfortunate as they may be) on women to find a long term / life partner sooner than later.