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The End of Love

theparisreview.org

51–60 of 103 posts

Re: The End of Love

#51
The author is their own worst enemy, and their article makes it abundantly clear. Hopefully, someday, they will reread what they wrote and see it as the postmortem that it is.

On a broader note, maybe dating was never sustainable in the first place. The concept of dating is, for the most part, a 20th century invention. In any earlier time, it would have been considered low-key prostitution. As a man, the expectation that I pay for anything regardless of how well I know the other person or how the date goes always felt kinda dirty. Which is why I stopped doing that a long time ago, even before I quit dating all together. Dating can't be untangled from the inertia of technology, and it was inevitable that dating just wouldn't scale well.

We're never going back to some hypothetical time where dating actually worked, but I do think there are pathways that can at least lead to better tradeoffs:

1. Far more people should be open to making acquaintances offline and be willing to introduce friends they think would be compatible.

2. We need to drop the pretense that the only places left for men and women to meet each other after college is at bars, and any context outside of that would be harassment.

3. Everyone is unique, but people need to consider whether their idiosyncrasies are ultimately working against them. As far as the United States is concerned, we've gone way too far in the direction of everybody thinking they can get everything their way, yet few actually do. For instance, if you're perpetually single but you're turning down people for liking Starbucks, maybe you should rethink whether you're the fool for not just accepting the coffee others like.

4. Call a spade a spade and just start calling all dating apps "hookup" apps, because that's what they're best suited for. We should reject the idea that there isn't something inherently salacious about apps like Tinder, and that attitude needs to be a part of the culture.

Re: The End of Love

#52

> One recent man had a lot going for him. In fact he was the most promising prospect I’d had in some time. But then he mentioned that he got his daily coffee from Starbucks, and I found it hard to imagine dating someone who liked Starbucks coffee; or even if they liked the coffee, didn’t find Starbucks so odious and soul-diminishingly ubiquitous they would never go there. I judged this a stupid reason to stop messagi…

Agreed. Put another way, she’s acting entitled and vain. If she could practice some tolerance, gratitude, empathy, and non-judgement, she might be able to find love. As it is, I read this as an entitled woman expecting the world to come to her.

Re: The End of Love

#53

> I have been on first dates with 107 people in the past five years, without securing a long-term love relationship with anyone Time to take a good look in the mirror, honey.

I mean, it could also be that she is just fantastically bad at prescreening. It's easy to find a hundred garbage single people - that's why they're single, remember?

Re: The End of Love

#54
There are millions of lonely guys in decent physical, mental and financial shape who would make devoted husbands and fathers and are actively and obviously looking for a mate. I am sure there are millions of women are like that too, but back when I was looking online around two decades ago, I have never met a normal woman who would give a normal guy some patience to see if initial meeting would grow into a friendship and then a relationship. It always has to be immediate butterflies in the stomach and swept off the feet, meaning that a minority of hunks get all the dates, overwhelmingly without any hope of long term future. I finally met my future wife by accident when I was not looking for a match at all.

Re: The End of Love

#55
> Those seemed like significant numbers. I thought I might stop at one hundred and one, since that seemed definitive. So when I say the house won it’s because I’m still at the table, and my question has changed from, When will I meet someone? to When will I stop?

The Secretary Problem [0], or "optimal stopping" problem indicates that given the perception of an infinite field of options, the author will not be able to determine an optimal stopping point. It's not very good news.

When our perception of our options outpaces our actual ones, that's going to create a cycle of addicted behaviour. Dating apps are literally slot machines for people, and that is a terrible evolutionary strategy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

Re: The End of Love

#56
Can’t decide what I think about this account. It definitely describes a common trope. But I also can’t shake the feeling that she wants a relationship, but not enough to make sacrifices/change for. Which is fine, but it is a high, high barrier to starting a new relationship.

Re: The End of Love

#57
Articles like this make me incredibly depressed. It seems common place now to see blog posts written by women saying “woe is me, I’ve dated a crapton of men and get so much attention, but I can’t find the one”. If women become this entitled and vain from online dating, the dating pool is only going to stagnate more. If the author could practice some tolerance, empathy, gratitude, and non-judgement, I’m sure many of those 100+ men could have been great partners. As it is, I have no sympathy for her. Her stories make me nauseous.

What’s even worse is she’s been twice divorced and already has kids, but expects a perfect man in return. It’s hard to have empathy when she’s rejecting people based on Marvel movies and Starbucks.

Re: The End of Love

#58
I went on over 100 dates using online dating apps. Eventually, I found a partner in the "real world." The problem was that going on yet another date was too easy for me. With my current partner, it took a long time to build up trust and attraction. At first, it wasn't even romantic. Maybe for her too, online dating is too fast to build a real connection. The first time you see the other person, you feel pressured to know if you are attracted to them or not. Don't even get me started on evaluating an online dating profile.

She talked about how drinking Starbucks was a deal breaker for her. My current partner has multiple qualities that would have been deal breakers if I had evaluated them in the online dating context, and yet I am very happy in this relationship.

Re: The End of Love

#59
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Promised by whom?

I think they promised themselves and want to blame society.

too many sappy "romantic" movies they believe reflect real life. Is it really different than hearing fake news or conspiracy theories and believing them? Some people lack good filters to discern good information from bad. The idea of rejecting someone over going to Starbucks is unbelievable to me. If you are that passionate about "good" coffee and they clearly like coffee also, why not try introducing them to something new? Maybe on a date? You may expand their horizon. Does she believe people "grow up" and stop growing after that? Relationships should be about growing together.

Re: The End of Love

#60
post #47

The last paragraph: “How many [men] over six feet tall with graduate degrees who don’t smoke and drink only socially or not at all and either already have kids or don’t want kids and live within fifty miles of you who aren’t polyamorous and designate themselves as active, with liberal politics and no bathroom selfies or rote clichéd philosophizing? I thought I might stop at ninety-nine, or one hundred.” gives you a g…

As a man, it's hard to imagine the kind of bubble that some women must exist in for those combined preferences to seem completely reasonable. Men have their own idiotic preferences, but they're usually self-contained whilst many women have an all-encompassing "he's gotta have this, he's gotta have that, he's gotta have this, he's gotta have that, he's gotta have this, he's gotta have that..." attitude. People should feel ashamed for being so openly misanthropic, but to some extent it's considered acceptable.

Though I mentioned some things that I think will help society move past this phase of "modern dating", I forgot to mention specifically that if anything's going to change, it may only happen if women collectively start rejecting hookup apps. All of the women I know seem to realize they hate something about apps like Tinder, yet continue relying on them, but maybe enough of them will eventually put two and two together. It's not just the men whom are failing them, but the technology itself.

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