So You’re Not Desirable

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/so-youre-not-desirable.html

by wallflower • 12 years ago

255 133 12 years ago

I definitely know some unique folks, and that does really seem to work for them in romantic settings. Like those other qualities -- wealth, attractiveness, power -- only a few can be the "most" unique. Maybe it's cynical, but I guess that most people aren't that exceptional, and that's OK.

harmegido• 12 years ago

I think you missed the meaning of what the author was calling uniqueness. From my reading of the article, I took it to mean that each person likes potential mates in a unique way, but that this only comes out after a little while.

For example, if you asked a group of men to rate women they did not know on a scale of 1-10, you would get largely the same answers from all of them about each particular female. However, since each of these men is "unique," if you asked them that same question after they had just all spent 3 months together (the men and women), the numbers will now be more muddled.

jamesaguilar2• 12 years ago

Hrm. I would guess that effect tends to result from people associating generally with other folks in the same social tier. Like, to side step wealth entirely, let's say you're someone who values physical fitness. You will generally hang out with other folks who value physical fitness. When asked to rate the people around you of the gender you're attracted to, you'll reply by finding the differentiating features, and going from there. But, since you've self-selected your social circle, they'll all tend to have values that you find important. (The undergraduate studies the author speaks of are limiting for the same reason.) So when you've selected people in whom you are relatively more interested, you'll magnify the importance of the unique things about them that you like, but those unique things aren't exactly what made the two of you compatible in the first place.

Put another way, I'd be surprised if this finding still held true if you took a a random hundred people from the general populace and put them in a dome. I predict you'd see "mate value" very clearly delineated in the pairings up that resulted.

I'm not arguing that uniqueness isn't a factor. Maybe I am just nitpicking here -- it's unclear whether the author intended to convey that uniqueness was one factor among many, or an overriding factor. If the former, then my posts here have probably not been useful, but if the latter, I doubt it.

hypron• 12 years ago

In a related study of approximately 350 heterosexual individuals, we collected these same measures in networks of opposite-sex friends, acquaintances and partners. Among these well-acquainted individuals, consensus on measures of mate value was nearly zero. These are the people who know what authors you like, what you wore for Halloween six years ago and what obscure movie you will quote the next time you all get together. But they cannot agree on your mate value. Over the years, it has evaporated before their eyes.

I'm curious if this is the cause of the so-called "friend zone". A guy and a girl meet and become friends. After getting to know each other, the guy still thinks the girl has mate value, whereas the girl doesn't think the guy has mate value.

hangonhn• 12 years ago

I always hated the term "friend zone" because I think it's really as simple as you have just described. One person likes the other and the feeling isn't reciprocated. It's unrequited love. The friendship part makes things more painful and complicated but I don't think it has any bearing on why the person isn't attracted to the other.

rdtsc3• 12 years ago

Exactly. I think the "friend zone" concept reflects the cultural idea that a person (mostly woman) can be persuaded to fall in love with someone if that someone just tries hard enough. It kind of reflect the idea of women as passive objects that have to be "conquered" or "persuaded" by feats of courage, strength, show of wealth or humor.

So now it is the fault of the pursuer for not working hard enough or "screwing up" an initial encounter protocol and being pushed into the "friend zone". Which is like a terribly deep gravity well that the will require a tremendous amount of energy to get out of.

127• 12 years ago

I have always seen the friend zone as a term to describe the dynamic where the girl is using the bait of relationship and sex to make the guy do things for her.

I guess other people see it as the guy being too clingy and not getting the message.

These are two entirely different concepts which both carry the term "friend zone".

watwut2• 12 years ago

"Friend zone" means that she is not attracted into the guy. She might respect him, like him, find him pleasant and still not see him as potential romantic partner. She can even find him attractively looking and still not find him as a potential boyfriend. Some boys tend to think it is going to change if they do enough services or help her a lot of whatever. It does not work that way. If you need to work hard on her, then I do not see relationship looking out of it.

It does not mean friendship can not turn into relationship. It can and all my relationships were like that. I would not date somebody I did not knew. I have also seen couples that originally disliked each other and became attracted only after they knew each other. However, it never went to one-sided "he follows her and help her too much" friend zone.

hendzen• 12 years ago

"A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy." - Nietzsche

huherto2• 12 years ago

I believe the woman knows that he is into her. And she enjoys the attentions without having to commit. It is a very comfortable position. It remains an asymmetric relationship as long as the friend zoned allows it.

Blackthorn3• 12 years ago

What's wrong with the friend zone? See: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2615

(This is a snarky way of saying that friendship is its own reward.)

Dylan16807• 12 years ago

It's generally a good idea for all parties in a relationship to have the same expectations.

peteretep3• 12 years ago

Nothing inherently wrong with it, in the same way there's nothing inherently wrong with a relationship based entirely on casual sex with no attendant intimacy or commitment.

In both cases, though, in practice, you're likely to find one side is getting exactly what they want out of the relationship, where the other is holding out for more.

Dewie12• 12 years ago

Staying friends with someone who you're romantically attracted to is a recipe for resentment (at least for many people). It might just be better to cut contact all together. Of course, then you might be in the uncomfortable position that people assume that you were only interested in her because you wanted to have sex with her and, 'failing' at that, you didn't want to have anything to do with her.

Ironically, it is when men aren't one-dimensional (which I think is must of us) that leads to these kind of situations, which leads to people thinking that they were just out after sex to begin with.

KoalaOnesie• 12 years ago

The concept of "friend zone" might resonate with more people if it wasn't always a straight man remonstrating about a woman who won't reciprocate his politeness with sex. This article is more about people who take time to fall in love, well, taking time to fall in love, regardless of their gender.

rm445• 12 years ago

Not everything has to be symmetrical. The phenomenon as people observe it primarily occurs with a young man doting on a woman.

Mentioning the age of the participants: it seems to be a set of unhelpful behaviours that the guys eventually grow out of.

mercer• 12 years ago

I rather like this interpretation of the male-female friendships and why this 'friend-zone' thing exists. I'm not sure how much I agree with it currently, but it's food for thought:

http://deepfriedcalamari.tumblr.com/post/10839417292/homosoc...

In particular:

Homosocial bonding is different between men and women, and this causes a lot of confusion and why it’s assumed that men and women cannot be friends.
Men see their friendships as camaraderie, hanging out, occasional complaining, and chilling. There’s plenty of support mechanisms in place, but they’re not intimate, per se.
Women on the other hand are intimate, affectionate, they talk more about how they feel than how things happened. The support mechanisms are explicitly intimate.
So, men who are not used to intimate physical contact and discourse have to translate a person of the opposite sex being physically and emotionally intimate beyond the boundaries of relationships he is used to.

Again, I don't want to generalize the linked text, but it was very accurate when I reflected on my own 'friend zone' experiences, and those my male friends have had.

te_platt• 12 years ago

I remember during my first year at college looking through a friend's high school yearbook remarking on some of the girls I thought were cute but he didn't. He made comments that didn't have to do with their physical appearance - like "she was mean" or "she was rude". When he looked through my yearbook the same thing happened, we just switched sides. I thought it was interesting how knowing the person actually changed the assessment of how physically attractive someone was. Not overwhelmingly so but definitely enough to notice.

sevilo• 12 years ago

now that you mentioned it.. I remember a psychology course I took in college just a while ago mentioned that, female's evaluation of attractiveness is greatly affected by knowing the person's financial state/personality/social status etc. While male's evaluation of attractiveness is less affected by other factors. Not sure how true this theory is..

hkmurakami• 12 years ago

Those male qualities are factors that answer the question, "how well can you protect me?"

Our evolutionary instincts die hard :(

davedx• 12 years ago

It's even more complex with women. Their perception of male attractiveness is also tied into where they are in their menstrual cycle.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16848141

Noxchi• 12 years ago

It is true, and it's caused for evolutionary reasons.

When people have sex, the woman is in a much more dangerous place than a man.

Having a baby for a woman is very costly. She needs someone to protect her while it happens and to help raise the child.

The cost for a man is very low. He only needs a couple minutes to do his part in making a baby, then he can leave at any time.

So with that in mind, lets say the scenario is like this:

If a man impregnates a woman and he stays, the chance the baby survives to reproduction is 90%.

If a man impregnates a woman and he leaves, the chance the baby survives to reproduction is 10%.

So with those statistics, the man is actually in a very advantageous position.

As long as he impregnates 10 or more women in his lifetime, he is ahead than if he had stayed with the same woman for all his life.

Of course, the more healthy the woman, the more likely the baby is to survive even if he leaves. Beauty = healthy in evolutionary terms. If the woman is pretty, maybe she can even get another guy to raise his kids for him! So men seek beauty primarily.

So for a man it is genetically superior to impregnate multiple women (which generally means not staying too close to any of them).

A female on the other hand, can only have children a few times in her life. And she only gets a few shots at it.

If the man leaves, her shot is very likely to end up in failure.

So the woman needs to be very picky about who she has children with. She needs to judge his character, to see if he will stay with her and raise the child. And defend her, fight off aggression, etc..

So to a woman, character is more important than beauty, because that's what determines if her genes survive or not.

Erotic fiction is a billion dollar industry and the vast majority of buyers are women. Manly man stories = porn for women.

rasur• 12 years ago

This is usually put more colloquially: "x is alright, till they open their mouth" (and is not gender specific, although it's often used in that way).

streetpickup• 12 years ago

One recent study of a representative sample of adolescents found that only 6 percent reported that they and their partners formed a romantic relationship soon after meeting.
It seems most likely that it is the consensually desirable people who pull off the rare feat of quickly leveraging an initial positive impression into romance, while a vast majority of us get to know our romantic partners slowly, gradually, over time.

I think anyone can learn how to do this.

htns2• 12 years ago

And the trick is called "lowering standards". While attractive people surely have everything easier, I suspect the difference the study found is due to men seeking different things from "short" and long relationships.

31reasons• 12 years ago

>All you need is for others to have the patience to get to know you, and a more level playing field should follow.

And a different career than engineering, so you can find more time and possibility of meeting possible mates at work.

rdtsc3• 12 years ago

Online social networks, clubs, special interest group meetups, churches, gym, community classes are other places.

Mixing work and dating is often a recipe for disaster.

alex_doom• 12 years ago

I thought it worked out great for GitHub...

mjmahone17• 12 years ago

Alternatively, work for a company that has a good gender balance, or, if you absolutely can't find that on the engineering side, where you interact with non-engineers.

Though the better alternative is to have a life outside of work. Do yoga. Go for group hikes. Go to non-tech meetups, or street fairs, or concerts. Join a dance class. If you really, really need tech to solve all your problems, use Grouper to get a chance to grab drinks with strangers, while still hanging out with your own friends.

dubfan2• 12 years ago

I've never been to yoga but it sounds like a bad place to meet women. Women wearing form-fitting clothing posing in revealing ways tend to be self-conscious about how they can be sexualized and objectified.

greggman2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how this is helpful. I've known I'm personally more attracted to personality than looks. That's not the problem.

The problem is it's hard (at least for me) to get the opportunity to be around members of the opposite sex long enough for them to see my "uniqueness"

Personal examples. My last job of 5 years had 100 people on my floor only 2 of which were women. My friends are generally all geeks who have no women friends to include in our activities.

I'm not whining. Only pointing out that telling me it's okay because my uniqueness will win over my consensus desirability is not helpful because no one gets the chance to learn my uniqueness

luckychild305• 12 years ago

I can genuinely recommend you to read 'the game'. Don't get deterred by what people might tell you about it, especially people who have not ready it.

It was eye opening to me that it's in your complete control to show people (not only girls, really anybody) your uniqueness, and that you can literally meet dozens of people every week and must not rely on office environment or random coincidence.

curiouslurker4• 12 years ago

"The Game" is only useful in making one realize that attracting women is a learnable skill. I was a big fan for a time but now realize much of what it recommends is like snake oil. I recommend going through David Deangelo's later material (2009+) and also Michael The Wizard. Deangelo's early work made it into "The Game" but even he realized with years of experience that there is a better way (Of course he made tens of millions from selling courses on material he now admits was wrong!)

doctorKrieger• 12 years ago

pua is usefull only when you want to get sex, but honestly considering the time you have to put into mastering pua, you can safely get a second job and pay for hookers, at least it'd be less random.

Also the book was utter garbage i've read around 30% of it and fell asleep.

edanm2• 12 years ago

Firstly, this is a problem I'm not sure is very common - I'm guessing most people do hang out around members of the opposite sex, at work, with friends, etc.

Second, for your specific situation - you say you have a problem. But it's a very solvable one. Find places to hang out with members of the opposite sex. This can be anything from going to specific classes that have women in them and that you also enjoy (e.g. drawing? Pottery? I don't know, depends what you like).

You can also actively try to befriend people who hang out with women.

ido• 12 years ago

Any sort of dancing is usually a good option.

berdario• 12 years ago

I used to think the same, then I tried to actually get into environments with a more balanced gender ratio, and I realized that actually I was not faring any better than before. Apparently I have low desirability and have few unique appeals/provoke low unique reactions.

At the end, it's inevitable: even if just by mere chance, someone _has_ to be in the lower 5% of people who get the least successful interactions with the other gender.

(Anyhow, his problem seems very common to me, but obviously my POW is skewed, since I got to know most of my friends in one of these place with unbalanced gender ratio in the first place)

sizzle3• 12 years ago

What are your hobbies outside of work? that's a great starting point that will introduce you into a more diverse population. I've heard good things of the 'meetup' website.

Blackthorn3• 12 years ago

What you need to do is go somewhere where women exist. Find extracurricular activities that tend to skew heavily towards women, and see if any such activities interest you!

dubfan2• 12 years ago

I've always thought that women didn't go to extracurricular activities to find dates, and only men do this. I'd like to be told I'm wrong, but my experiences show otherwise. Of course I do live in a west coast city infamous for its gender imbalance and the associated mentalities that go along with that.

quasque• 12 years ago

That sounds like a painfully abnormal work environment. Not even considering dating opportunities here - spending most of your waking time in an almost entirely male domain for so many years seems torturous, like some kind of prison experience.

Maybe it's time to look for a different job, with a more gender-balanced workforce? Five years is a long time to work in one place anyway.

greggman2• 12 years ago

Hmm, I've worked at 9 tech companies. Only one of those 9 had any reasonable number of women in the product development department and generally other departments didn't socialize with product development.

I don't think changing jobs is going to fix that. Possibly changing careers but that's not really my desire.

cafard• 12 years ago

Volunteer. Get involved with a tutoring program or ESL or something like that. Walk dogs for your local shelter--I was running in the park last summer and encountered a group walking shelter dogs. The group was mostly women, and the women were mostly attractive. It is also a fair bet that they were good-natured and generous people.

enraged_camel• 12 years ago

What this article seems to be saying is that uniqueness has a multiplier effect on attractiveness. You can have a "base attractiveness" of 5 out of 10, but the more unique you are, the higher (and lower) you will appear to various people as they get to know you better.

socrates1998• 12 years ago

I usually disagree with papers like these but this one is a little more accurate to real life.

The concept of "value" in dating is absurd. Everyone judges value differently. Being attracted to another person has so many variables it can't bit factored in.

Are there some "universal traits" that make people physically attractive? Yes, but that doesn't mean the dating world is a hierarchy with the beautiful people at the top.

And having a super beautiful girlfriend isn't always great. I know models who are insanely insecure about their bodies and are just a pain to be around because they are constantly worried about how they look.

I think I generally date cute girls, but I once dated a that was definitely physically more attractive than most of the rest. She would get tons of attention when we went out. Guys would constantly check her out or give me "Great job man!" looks and comments. I knew she was constantly getting invited to social events, parties and probably dates as well.

This amount of attention can really be unhealthy to a relationship. If she is constantly being tempted by tons of guys and opportunities every day, then its just a matter of time when she starts to think, "You know he is nice, but that other guy was really cute."

And thats really how it ended. She just stopped returning my texts and phone calls one day, so I am pretty sure she just moved on to something else. It wasn't too bad for me, she had a lot of flaws even though she was gorgeous.

hellbreakslose• 12 years ago

I seriously don't like this article...

Why should we try and scientificaly explain the only things that keeps us human? Then come out with a pattern and become robots?

Also in the other hand of the article, my attractivness is medium to low, and I don't attract women easily (my looks are ok, but I got that weird mindset that drives them away). I've had a relationship with a woman that was hot 9/10 very very smart studied in ivy league with scolarship and she was very attractive to the point that we had guys coming after her when we were going out... My life experiences proves that article jibberish ...

spindritf• 12 years ago

if you do not have a high mate value, take heart. All you need is for others to have the patience to get to know you

Or increase your mate value. In traits like conscientiousness or intelligence 40-60% of variance is genetic. There is no reason to think that somehow charisma is a weird outlier with which you're stuck. She thinks anyone can act much more charismatically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMu_md_5PQ4 Feels a little newagey but otherwise completely reasonable.

It's the same with meeting people. You probably live in a large city with millions of them. Even with strict selection there are at least a few thousands of potential mates. Why wait until you end up in a small group with one of them?

It also means that you have as many attempts as you want. Blowing out with one person will not haunt you through that social group forever.

This is one of those articles that is supposed to make people feel good about themselves, and maybe it does, but at the cost of bringing counter-productive advice.

personlurking• 12 years ago

I spent my teens and 20s working hard on my uniqueness out of a feeling that I was different. I forced myself to like anything that was out of the ordinary (this manifested itself in attaching myself to any concepts, interests, and preferences that were non-American). I allowed my search to be different to overtake me, making me a bit of a vagabond, more interested in exploration than in work (discovery-oriented rather than goal-oriented).

Liking interesting things can act as a repellent because it becomes so much harder to find others who have worked a lot on their interestingness or who can appreciate your differences, knowledge and tastes.

Now in my 30s, I've let it go (due to a realization that I don't need to try so hard) and it feels as if a lot of it just disappeared. Like a great meal, I loved it while I was eating it but afterwards there's just an empty plate and the memory of the meal.

JacksonGariety2• 12 years ago

Hey, could I chat with you be email? My address is on my HN profile.

enimodas2• 12 years ago

You have to put your email address in the about section, the email field is for "Please put a valid address in the email field, or we won't be able to send you a new password if you forget yours. Your address is only visible to you and us. Crawlers and other users can't see it."

bambax2• 12 years ago

There is a blog post on OKCupid that discusses the same concepts:

the more men as a group disagree about a woman's look, the more they end up liking her

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/

If everyone agree you're ugly, that's bad. But if some people lilke you a lot and some people dislike you a lot, that's much better than if everyone agree you're "okay", or "cute".

However, the OP has a rather floating concept of uniqueness that they seem to conflate with intimacy or friendship; of course once you become friends with someone they're unique to you, but that doesn't mean much about their "uniqueness" as a property of their being.

rjknight• 12 years ago

I feel that this could have been stated much more simply:

1) There are personal attributes which are easily observable (mostly physical, also charismatic and possibly social status). This is basically what we can know about a person from appearance alone.

2) There are personal attributes which are less easily observable, and these include temperament, interests, response to various situations, behaviour outside of group situations. To know these things requires much greater time interacting with a person, possibly in smaller groups or one-on-one.

People's tastes in #1 are mostly uniform. Someone rated highly for #1 by one person is likely to be rated highly by any other person. The same is emphatically not true of #2, where ratings vary wildly.

As exposure to #2 increases, it increases in importance over #1. Let's say that #2 constitutes 80% of your overall "rating" of a person, and you really like them so they're a 9 despite scoring only a 5 on the initial assessment. Their total score is 8.2. Someone who scores a 10 for #1 but a 4 for #2 scores 6.2. These numbers might be off and they might vary between people but I think it's a pretty simple idea.

Most people are taking this as a suggestion about their own attractiveness, but the flip-side argument is possibly even more important - the person you're most likely to be really attracted to isn't necessarily the person who scores most highly on #1, and if you're using #1 as a filter then you're ruling good people out.

Dewie12• 12 years ago

Romance is funny. On one hand, people believe in some intrinsic uniqueness in people that make a few of them destined to be their "soul mate". This is purely a matter of being-who-you-are, which can't be measured as objectively good or bad, but is perfect for the few that are your destined "soul mates" (some people won't call it 'soul mate' or have such a mystical aura around it, but may believe in the same thing just as well).

On the other hand, people believe that people can be objectively measured and that they can be assigned a dating market 'value'. Then people have to assess their own value in order to be realistic about who they can date, lest they (gasp) overshoot and try to be with someone who is out of their league.

These two viewpoints are polar opposites. Yet it seems that people seem to either concern themselves with one or the other, at some point in time.

There is nothing like this league-stuff for friendships (perhaps except for in high school) or any other human relationships. Why? Perhaps it's because of the seemingly almost universally accepted concept of monogamy.

dTal• 12 years ago

There is nothing like this league-stuff for friendships

There is, and it's the same league: social status. It's just not as rigid because we typically have multiple friends, so the effect of one lower status friend is diluted. In general though, we try to maximise the average status of our friends (or at least try and match our own self-perceived status) just as with our mates.

Dewie12• 12 years ago

OK then, people are terrible through-and-through. Good way to end my day on that note.

bambax2• 12 years ago

The existence of ugly people is proof that their ugly parents did mate.

danieltillett• 12 years ago

Just like average people can have an exceptionally beautiful or intelligent child so can average people have ugly or dumb kids - any multigene trait will be like this.

Udo6• 12 years ago

The article makes a good case for "when they get to know you, some of them will fall for you."

When I was still young and at least somewhat cute, I remarked to a friend how depressing it was that women always go for rich and arrogant men. My friend's reply absolutely changed my perspective on this: by choosing socially well-accepted and successful men they actually place a lot more emphasis on the inner values than males do. In a very real sense, women love you for who you are (=rich and successful) as opposed to what you look like (=a characteristic you can't do much about).

Contrast that with male perception, if you think a girl is attractive, everything she says suddenly sounds meaningful and important. Of course the article is correct, once you actually get to know people, this changes. But for getting the foot in the door so to speak, attractiveness and an aura of importance respectively are probably still the most important vectors.

I just want to mention for completeness' sake, and only because it would be taboo to express this in a magazine article: if you're really unhappy with the dating rat race, and it's genuinely not realistic for you to improve your chances by optimizing these superficials, it is possible to just opt out of everything. I know it's controversial and for some reason it upsets a lot of people when I tell them that I just stopped. Contrary to popular belief, this mating thing is not something which you absolutely must accomplish. I've crossed to this other side, and it's really really peaceful here. ;)

Dewie12• 12 years ago

Being rich is an inner value? I have the impression that how much being rich has to do with your own will is still not decided. If anything, social mobility has been shown to be very overrated in recent years. And then one can ask, how much did that one person striking millions have to do with ingenuity, and how much was it just being at the right place and time (lucking out)?

One could say that, 'in a very real sense, men love you for who you are (how is how you look not part of "who you are"?) and not for auxiliary things that have nothing to do with you as a person, such as money'. It's all just semantic quibbling, anyway.

Udo6• 12 years ago

Being rich is an inner value?

Being successful is, and being rich is one of the markers for success. I had problems with this view as well until it was explained to me from a woman's perspective. The operating assumption being, as I said earlier, that men and women use different heuristics to do preliminary mate filtering. By and large, you get through the filter by being beautiful as a woman, and by projecting success as a man. The argument goes that beauty has absolutely nothing to do with inner values, while success does (false positives not withstanding).

Then again, there might be a huge cultural component to this. I come from Germany, which has the most unapologetically darwinistic dating scene I ever experienced. German girls are by and large no-nonsense, goal-oriented, and not prone to poetic whimsy.

One could say that, 'in a very real sense, men love you for who you are (how is how you look not part of "who you are"?)

Hey, the darker part of my epiphany story is actually up to that conversation I had believed finding a mate was about finding a partner that matches your inner essence, finding someone who recognizes the "real you". So I had dismissed both success and beauty as meaningless, because they tell you nothing about that essence. Again, I was very young at that point and had a lot of misconceptions.

coldtea• 12 years ago

Being rich is an inner value? I have the impression that how much being rich has to do with your own will is still not decided.

Maybe, but that's still more "inner value" that how big your breasts are etc.

BugBrother• 12 years ago

I have to put in another viewpoint here.

How a woman looks decide who I [try to] talk to, but a good sense of humor, intelligence and cool personality will change my "target" quickly.

From what I've seen, this is not unusual for men. (And probably the same goes for women too, I wish I had anecdotal evidence that my "good" sense of humor worked wonders. :-) )

Edit: Other people below said similar things.

Edit 2: How large percentage of relationships (in small/big cities) starts with people you meet online, these days? Is the article relevant?

Edit 3: As a clarification [and answer to removed(/reinserted?) comment]. I reacted to "Contrast that with male perception, if you think a girl is attractive, everything she says suddenly sounds meaningful and important.". It is too much of a simplification. Attraction to women can come from other things than eyes.

A couple of examples:

- I was crazy over a woman that was far from pretty while ignoring a cool woman. (She dumped me after a year, sigh.) Her (irritated) old time friends said she always had a tail of guys.

- I ended up weirdly on a date with a fat woman a while ago, which I realized that we had both misunderstood -- she was way out of my league in "mate value" (I realized that early in the dinner, so I spent the time asking about her really cool work and previous jobs).

This is not common (large "mate value" for women not based on looks but personality, intelligence and so on), but do exist. (And can also be quite obvious, not after knowing someone for months/years.)

Udo6• 12 years ago

From what I've seen, this is not unusual for men.

Yes, I agree with everything you said. Of course the implication here is that it's different for women. Which may well be the case.

Anecdotal evidence on my part seems to suggest that men are prone to add exceptions to their filter in order to let people in, whereas women overwhelmingly tend to only restrict their results further. In the end, this all might be explainable by supply and demand concepts, the underlying theory being that women always have a higher mate value than men. This sounds mathematically absurd at first, but it seems to fit the behavior patterns observable in the wild.

aragot• 12 years ago

opt out of everything

I've switched to the gay side, out of equal (physical) interest for both genders. Dating criteria are much more "on demand" depending on the way you search for people, so it's hard to generalize. I can still say that in the gay subset, you can find people with balanced interests for who you are, how you look like, your experience, how much you earn and what you live for.

In comparison, girls I have found in my native country are unevenly balanced towards social validation and wage. Plus a big burden of cross-sex relationships is gender-equality-in-the-couple challenges, so I could really say that I've opted to the gay side for the peace of mind.

Quitting the maintstream race, and find your own balance of criteria, may do you good.

Udo6• 12 years ago

I imagine it's nice to have that option, however, it's not really feasible to change what someone is sexually attracted to. If I could do that, I'd have tried it out already.

Besides, I suspect some of the same things that make me a prohibitive choice for women (and vice versa) would also apply to same sex partners -not all of them though.

But yeah, I can see how that can be worth pursuing.

nether• 12 years ago

Only on HN is it a revelation that men value physical attractiveness more than women.

omarhegazy• 12 years ago

For women that chase rich men (not saying all women do this, but the existent and very small subset of women that do), it's often not because of the success implied. It's because of what the paper can buy.

Those women would still chase trust fund babies -- they chose to be born to those parents just as much as you chose to be cute.

Those women would still chase those that became rich out of pure luck (eg.: lottery).

Your financial success says nothing about your ability to succeed in interpersonal relationships. In fact, sometimes qualities between the two conflict with each other : being 'aggressive' in business is a sound plan to boost your competitive abilities, being 'aggressive' with your girlfriend just sounds abusive.

The whole reason the social consciousness regarding the idea of a "trophy wife" exists is to describe shallow women who emphatically don't "love you for who you are".

Also, there's a bit of philosophical conflict when it comes to the significance of "characteristics you can't do much about". The thing is, you often can't do much about any of your characteristics.

I think you're trying to argue that personal characteristics, like being smart, being funny, or being relatable, are somehow more of a choice than being pretty. But do you really have a "choice" in being smart or being funny? Isn't the grade schooler who opines after a girl who values these seemingly choose-able personal characteristics not trying his damn hardest to have those characteristics? If so, why does he fail when he does? Didn't he have a choice? No. He couldn't do anything about it, much like he couldn't do anything about his physical attractiveness. Yes, he can learn from his personal flaws and adapt his personal characteristics, but, first off : that relies on the meta-characteristic of being aware about your characteristics, which, again, not a choice or anything you can change about yourself.

Is having the characteristics to be rich or successful something you can "do much about"? Then why doesn't everyone do something about it to be rich or successful? If it's because they're lazy or aren't determined to work hard -- are those characteristics that they controlled? If it really came down to just working hard (which being rich/successful isn't, there's a lot of intuitive judgment that you either have in your instincts or don't, but that's a whole 'nother discussion), can you blame lazy people for being lazy? Did they sign up on being lazy? Do you think they chose to be lazy and undetermined? If not being lazy is so clearly better, did they ask to not be able to see that clarity?

We don't judge people based on how well they take advantage of their control, because ultimately no one has true control.

The series of actions required to become a multibillionaire with an amazing lifestyle and an absolutely lovable personality where everyone likes you is not some undefined series of actions that requires superhuman levels of magic. It's just that you don't know how or you are incapable of becoming said person; you don't know which human actions to take and decisions to make to become said person. So you become the best person your sense of control allows you to be, but did you really choose that control if it's given to you?

We judge people based on how well they suit our needs.

If one man's needs is someone who is funny and smart, so be it.

If another man's needs is someone who is physically pretty, so be it.

curiouslurker4• 12 years ago

by choosing socially well-accepted and successful men they actually place a lot more emphasis on the inner values than males do. In a very real sense, women love you for who you are (=rich and successful) as opposed to what you look like (=a characteristic you can't do much about).

One might also argue the opposite: Men value women for who they are (looks included). Women value men for what they have (wealth and social status).

lsv1• 12 years ago

I thought this article was about not being desirable in the job market for some terrible fact or harsh truth. Instead I was greeted with a fluffy article. I'm question the value of this article on HN.

kyberias• 12 years ago

I find it hard to grasp the concept of charisma. Its definition seems to be vague and highly subjective. It was mentioned in this article like it was something very specific. My pet peeve I guess.

FD3SA2• 12 years ago

The most interesting aspect of the modern mating paradigm is the opportunity costs associated with mate-seeking behavior, and the impacts on successful societies.

Most primate societies are focused on mating and survival, without much surplus effort remaining for any other tasks. Humans, by virtue of technology and social engineering, have gained a rare ability to dedicate an incredible amount of time to creating heretofore unfathomable works of the imagination such as science, engineering, art, music and literature.

Though many believe this was natural progression, there still exist a few human societies that are effectively hunter gatherers, and expend little energy in advancing their societies technologically. The trillion dollar question is this: what role do mating paradigms play in determining societal structure?

My own hypothesis, and one shared by a surprising number of old scholars, is that mating paradigms are a fundamental determinant of societal structure.

There is a very strong correlation in history between societies that practised very strict mating policies and those that are considered successful. In fact, it seems increasingly likely that the purpose of strict religious practices was to tightly control the mating marketplace in order to prevent the devastating opportunity costs associated with a no holds barred mating market.

As such, I'm interested where the increasingly liberal sexual marketplace will lead societies. Men who spend too much of their time creating wonderful works of art, but fail to reproduce, will be unsuccessful in the long run. Many born in this day and age believe modern civilization has always existed, and will always continue. However, as many countries around the world demonstrate, advanced civilization is an extremely unstable equilibrium. A perturbation of even one pillar can have disastrous, irreversible consequences.

We live in interesting times.

htns2• 12 years ago

I agree with the second half of your post, but hunter-gatherer was an unfortunate choice of words. Societies tend to "evolve" due to scarcity induced by population density, as the first steps of the technology tree simply aren't that enticing when nature still provides plenty. Arguably we see the same thing with fossil fuels today.

What I'm saying is that I'm not so sure reaching a higher population is hindered by a liberal approach to sex (pre-contraception).

sizzle3• 12 years ago

anyone ever been in this situation? what was the outcome like?

galfarragem• 12 years ago

The smartest blog I know to understand relationships. A must read:

http://www.therationalmale.com

jedrek• 12 years ago

A 100+ comment thread about relationships without the use of the word "companionship" once. Wow.

So You’re Not Desirable

Related Stories