Quote from John Freeman on November 18, 2023, 7:27 am

Hello TPM community,

I found this interesting on the "Female Dating Strategy" reddit:

I'm aware many women today are jaded due to several factors: current ideology (both feminist and free market capitalism) promoting financial success and independence for women (I think women should be independent financially, however there is no intimacy without emotional interdependence for men and women: what we call love), dating apps skewing their views (desirable but never committing high value male, being pursued by many men makes them overestimate their value). Quick thoughts on this:

1. Be a high value woman.

A high value woman is a woman who doesn't revolve her life around men. She has her own career, hobbies, and a great social life that fulfills her emotional needs, so if she does welcome a man in her life, he better be amazing. A high value woman also doesn't romanticize men's true nature, therefore she's cautious around them and wants them to prove themselves to her before she gets emotionally attached.

We find again the "I don't need a man" ideology. I find it interesting as too me it sub communicates more than the women there actually need one. If you don't need a man, why would shout out loud about it?

2. If a man isn’t chasing you, he’s not that into you.

A man’s role is to be the pursuer, the one to convince you that he’s the right man for you. As a woman, you don’t have to prove yourself to him. He either sees your value or he doesn’t. The only thing that’s within your control is working on becoming your best self.

Well, basically if a man is not chasing you it means he's not interested. I agree. However in bold, I think it can become an entitlement mentality problem but also it's good for a woman to keep her power and not qualifying herself too much. Also, it's quite sexist: so men must prove themselves but not women?

3. Most straight men aren’t relationship material for you.

The majority of the advances you receive from men are not of any value, because the majority of them are from men who only want to use you for sex. Many men are sex-driven, low effort, and entitled. However, there are also men out there who can be amazing boyfriends and husbands who know how to be a man and how to take care of you in all ways.

This is dangerous way of thinking. As far as I know women enjoy sex (if not more than men). So basically this paragraph comes from the frustration of not finding a committed relationship.

4. As women, we have the responsibility to be ruthless in our evaluation of men.

We do ourselves and humanity no favors allowing men to exhibit subpar behavior and be rewarded with our attention. Thus, be ruthless in cutting off men who add no value to your life (happiness, emotional security, financial).

In bold it feels to me like entitlement, the first sentence: of course why would you go for lower quality men. Dangerous mindset. The second part: yes of course why would you get in a relationship with a taker (man or woman).

5. Don't have sex before commitment has been established (if you're looking for a relationship) or before he has demonstrated value and investment (if you're looking for FWBs).

If a man is really into you and sees you as girlfriend material, he will commit to you in two months (or three months max). If you're looking to have a dependable FWB, you must still require investment from him so he provides you the respect and fun times that you want.

Makes sense.

6.Generous men are a non-negotiable.

While we believe in having your own career and making your own money, a man still has to add financial value to your life and make you feel like he can take care of you. This means not splitting the bill and not dating financially challenged men.

Here we see that the money is quite important. So the provider aspect is important.

So basically, this has probably been written by a frustrated woman who could not find a high quality man for a committed relationship.

I think a problem is that some women did not have to do that much self-development to get what they wanted in life. So in adult life they're surprised they don't get what they want just for being a (pretty) woman. In this post, it's only talked about external things (hobby, career, money) so I personally would not date a woman who thinks like that. So I think the deeper issue is self-development.

Some of them are surprised that a man is only interested in sex with them. Well, it's quite simple: it means that the woman does not have other value to add to his life. A man not committing is either a sign of:

1. Not interested in committed relationship at all (period of life, personality, tastes, fear of intimacy, trauma, etc.)
2. Not compatible
3. Woman not bringing enough value outside of sex for him to abandon his freedom.

That's something I think many women don't understand. Because we are the pursuers, in order to date them we have to understand them better than they have to understand us. By watching some (biased) podcasts, I was surprised how little and superficial the knowledge of these women of the desires and needs of men (generality here). So many women don't understand how much we value our freedom.

That's something I noticed since a long time. Emotionally, being alone or loneliness is much more difficult for women than for men. That's why they tolerate more frenemies and abusive boyfriends/husbands. Whether for men, we tolerate better from my observation being alone/loneliness. I say tolerate because of course both enjoy social relationships. So many times they don't understand why we would rather stay single. It's because for many of us it's more valuable to stay single and free than with a woman who's actually taking on our freedom with little gains besides sex.

So I think it's great that historically speaking, women got back into the job market (women always worked since dawn of time anyway) after WW2 and more and more. It's empowering for women and for society. So this was an important steps for the development of women as a group in industrialised societies. I think the next step now is self-development. I'm saying this as objectively as possible. I think it's important for women to recognise their individual needs and desires, beyond the cultural norms. A woman not having a child is a major obstacle on many women's happiness from my observation. It's a small minority of women who can be happy without being in a relationship or having a child. And I think that if they don't acknowledge this it's a challenge.

On the other hand for men as a group we were already on the job market/established as earning/gaining skills as a role. We discovered self-development and we had to learn seduction since women became higher power. Otherwise we would not be suitable partners. Then we kind of kicked back and relaxed because in developed societies you just need to show up for work and you'll survive. However, women's standard having evolved and their status increased, they looked for higher status males than theirs. So we realised that our efforts were not enough to attract a mate. We also realised that indeed since the dawn of times, women have been attracted to "alpha males", so that's the next step for us. To become stronger despite living in resource-rich countries and not really needing it (women being the selector/chooser they have been the driving force of human sexual selection and evolution, so current state of society is not men's responsibility, it's both).

Now, what's interesting is that there is an ambivalence in women regarding alpha/strong males. On one hand some of them desire them on the other hand they shame men for being one (not controllable, commitment is unsure, so unsafe emotionally). Same ambivalence in men with Madonna-whore complex. Anyway, for us as men there is no other direction than up to get what we want.

So in the end, it was a wider comment on the current state of dating as a female from my POV.