From Tokyo to TriBeCa, people are increasingly alone. People go on fewer dates, marry less and later, have smaller families if at all. People are having less sex, especially young people. The common complaint: it’s just too hard. Dating is hard, intimacy is hard, relationships are hard. I’m not ready to play on hard mode yet, I’ll do the relationship thing when I level up.
And simultaneously, a cottage industry sprung up extolling the virtue of loneliness. Self-care, self-development, self-love. Travel solo, live solo, you do you. Wait, doesn’t that last one literally mean “go fuck yourself”?
This essay is to tell you: go fuck someone else. Ask someone on a date. At the very least, invite someone to hang out and ask them what they’re struggling with. This essay is not about how to make friends and lovers (a topic I’ll come back to), but an exhortation to actually go and do that. Now instead of later, directly instead of ass-backwards, seek relationships instead of seeking to be deemed worthy of relationships. If you think this is all too obvious to mention, reread the first two paragraphs again.
My argument doesn’t hinge on specific data relating to the intimacy recession and whether the survey counting sex dolls adjusted for inflation. If you’re reading Putanumonit as a brief escape from all the loving relationships smothering you, congrats! If you’re trying as hard as you can to connect and the world isn’t reciprocating, consider this essay as written for those you seek to connect with instead. Reverse all advice as neccessary.
This essay’s epistemic status is whatever The Last Psychiatrist was drinking.
Wherefore all this aloneness? The pink-hairs blame the red-pills who blame the pink-hairs. But really, they’re both in agreement that men and women are natural enemies and any interactions between the two are zero-sum. If you’re stuck in zero-sum thinking you’re probably on the wrong blog, but take this as a first dose of medicine and then go give someone a hug.
One level up from the gender war is the class war. Leftists blame loneliness on capitalism — single people buy twice as many toasters, sex toys, and Netflix subscriptions. Rightists blame socialism — for the state to be your daddy it must first destroy the family. I won’t spend much time on this. If your ability to connect with people depends more than zero on the GDP composition that’s the problem right there. “But in this economy…” Listen, if you’re struggling to build financial capital, maybe now is the time to invest in relationship capital instead?
The famous Atlantic article on The Sex Recession starts by noting that sex is now more accepted than ever:
If hookups are your thing, Grindr and Tinder offer the prospect of casual sex within the hour. The phrase If something exists, there is porn of it used to be a clever internet meme; now it’s a truism. BDSM plays at the local multiplex—but why bother going? Sex is portrayed, often graphically and sometimes gorgeously, on prime-time cable. Sexting is, statistically speaking, normal.
Polyamory is a household word. Shame-laden terms like perversion have given way to cheerful-sounding ones like kink. Anal sex has gone from final taboo to “fifth base”—Teen Vogue (yes, Teen Vogue) even ran a guide to it. With the exception of perhaps incest and bestiality—and of course nonconsensual sex more generally—our culture has never been more tolerant of sex in just about every permutation.
[…] These should be boom times for sex.
So why, in the words of philosopher Julia Kristeva, “everything is permitted and nothing is possible”?
I don’t think there’s a contradiction here. Everything is hard because it’s permitted.
There used to be no shortage of people who would judge you for having sex. Parents, peers, teachers, pastors, even the same media outlets that now claims to be “sex positive”. And when you had to escape surveillance and risk judgment just to make out with someone, it was HOT. The illicit is sexy. Sneaking around created a bond based on a shared secret and merely having sex in the face of restriction was an achievement to be proud of. Having good sex was gravy.
If “the culture” no longer judges you for getting naked, who will? Your partner might. They’ll think you’re inexperienced, or too experienced, or too frigid or horny or vanilla or too weird. This can be a problem, but it’s ameliorated by your partner repeatedly telling you that no, it was good, you’re just what they wanted. You should believe them. If they didn’t like you they’d make like Hamlet and ghost.
The big problem is when you start judging yourself. You can hide from your parents. You can find a partner who doesn’t judge your shortcomings. But you can’t outrun your own insecurities.
It starts by comparing yourself to the internet. Everyone’s dick is bigger in porn, the tits are perkier. Everyone’s dates are more romantic on Instagram, their vacations sexier. People who suck at relationships are a lot less visible online.
It also turns out that society will judge you for looking for romance if your perceived status isn’t up to snuff. Try to date “out of your league” and you’ll be labeled a creep or a thot, depending on gender1. People who seek help with dating can run into this judgment and begin to internalize their perceived inadequacy. They start diverting all their energy into acquiring status markers, into being perceived as relationship-worthy by the real or imagined crowd of observers.
There’s no natural end to this process. As people spend more effort on status-climbing and self-improvement they spend less time in actual relationships. Unfortunately, you don’t get better at dating by learning to meditate or doing pushups alone in your room. When people who are obsessed with self-improvement have a miserable time on apps and first dates, they often conclude that problem is lack of self-improvement — surely when two well-developed high-status people effortless love will spark by itself! And so people keep chasing the next personal milestone. Get that degree, lose 10 pounds, learn that skill, read that book…
It’s important to distinguish between life’s necessities and extras. If you’ve just lost your job, are dealing with a health crisis, or moved to a new city where you have no friends then you should probably stabilize these issues before dating. Dating is hard, and acute crises should be solved directly and not by looking for salvation in a partner. But most self-development isn’t addressing real crises even if it pretends to.
Self-development is riskless. Progress is slow but assured, and every step towards your personal goal is rewarded with likes and favs on social media. The pursuit itself raises one’s status. Opening up for connection, on the other hand, is scary. The rewards are great but so is the risk of failure. And real affection is the one thing you can’t brag about in an Instagram story. Intimacy for external consumption is not intimacy.
And so, as the great guru put it: people want to be fuckable more than they want to fuck.
Fuckability is capital. We seek to accumulate capital. Fucking is labor. We seek to avoid labor. And so people are more fuckable than ever, and do ever less fucking.
It gets worse.
The pathological case of becoming obsessed with status and perception is when relationships themselves are subjugated to this end. When the main measure of a relationship is in how it makes you appear. Narcissism.
I see it in rich women who refuse to date a man who makes less money than they do, no matter how severely it limits their mating pool, because it would be beneath them to have a poorer boyfriend. I see it men who refuse to date a woman who is a year older or an inch taller than they are.
It’s looking at accomplished women dropping out of demanding careers to raise kids as sexism. Could it be that someone may prefer to raise a family to grinding 70 hours a week at the office once they don’t need to worry about money? I certainly would! But if the only thing you count is personal status2 then it would seem to you that these women are being cheated out of something by the evil patriarchy.
Narcissists ask: How does this relationship reinforce my ego narrative brand? How worthy does it make me seem? Ego-poisoned people who are short of narcissism merely ask: Would I be judged of a relationship? These questions are self-focused, and intimacy requires that you relinquish them entirely. Instead, the question that starts all good relationships is: Can I make someone happy?3
Making someone happy doesn’t imply forever, or as happy as they can be, or happier than anyone else could make them. A compliment makes a person happy. A text where you share something fun. Being a good listener on a date even if you didn’t blow their mind with electric conversation. A cuddle makes a person happy even if it stays a cuddle. Sex makes people happy even if it’s not PornHub-grade.
Romance is the most complex and rewarding multi-player game that humanity has invented. There are many romantic interactions that are short of your wildest dreams that are still worth having, that make two people happier than they would have been alone. And if you’re starting out, that’s where you should aim for.
Dating and sex and relationships are all trainable skills. You learn by doing. To learn painting you start by making 100 paintings. To get good at tennis you start by playing 100 matches. The first 100 will be mostly mediocre and some will be outright bad, but the 101st one has the chance to be good.
To go on a great date, you have to go on 100 mediocre dates. Or at least, put yourself in the mindset where that is your goal. That is how you learn to date and make people happy to be dating you. You learn how to deal with rejection and breakups and how to bounce back. Just as importantly, that’s where you learn to enjoy dating (see rule 97).
What if you’re not enjoying it? There are bad dates out there, people who are selfish and manipulative and dangerous or who just don’t show up. This sucks, and the only consolation is that with dating experience you get better at spotting them earlier.
But perhaps you are going on dates with lovely people but the dates aren’t going exactly according to the script you envisioned. Or the people who flirt and match with you are not quite what someone with your degrees and BMI and yoga skill deserves. In this case you should go back to self-development: fix your narcissism and figure out what value you actually provide to a romantic partner besides imagining that you raise their status through mere association.
How to tell if you’re in the latter category? If you get a lot of “I can’t believe a great guy/gal like you can’t find a girlfriend/boyfriend” from your friends, that’s a sign. Your friends saying that is not a compliment, it’s a mockery of your misguided self-focus. They’re saying that you have the resources to make someone happy, and that you’re failing to do so.
Unfortunately, dating is a matter of luck and circumstance. All you can do is be proactive and open. There’s no guarantee that you’ll meet the partners you want in a given time frame or for a given amount of mating effort. Exponential distributions are tough: you go through one mediocre match after another, and there’s no way to predict when the positive outlier comes. But still, you’ll always do better the earlier you start.
Perhaps there was a hidden benefit to the premodern mating context when you had roughly one shot at a successful partnering — all you could do is invest in the one relationship you’re given. But now that the option to date without lifelong commitment exists it affects your dating life even if you don’t plan on it. The option is always there for you and your partners. Waiting until you hit some life marker to start dating just means that you miss out on years of learning what other people are looking for, and what you yourself are looking for in a relationship.
And if you’re too busy for dating, actually busy with something that’s more important to you than romance, consider that dating doesn’t have to be a sink of time and energy. A casual date can be invigorating, and a partner can provide the support you need in your struggles.
So go out there and make some people mildly happy by going on mediocre dates4 and having mediocre sex and learning to connect with people romantically instead of having your head up your own ass. There are more interesting things to put in there with a partner.
Footnotes
[1]
Men get the worst of it, especially those on the bottom of status ladder. Punching down at low-status people is generally contemptible and so people convince themselves that all incels are violent misogynists to justify it. I see having compassion for incels as a good litmus test of basic human decency.
[2]
I consider it quite unfortunate that being a middle manager (which entails a lot of personal benefits) is considered higher status than being a good parent or partner (which entails a lot of benefits for other people).
[3]
In case people are confused, the whole business with decision matrices is about choosing a partner (or a house). Once you’ve chosen, the only thing that counts is investing in the relationship, not scoring or comparing it.
[4]
If you don’t know who to go on a mediocre date with, I’m always available to deliver mediocre romantic satisfaction in person.
PUTANUMONIT 
“Sex makes people happy even if it’s not PornHub-grade.”
Funnily enough, as a porn-addict/sexually abstinent dude for years, the reason I signed up for Tinder/Bumble is because I started realizing that “Pornhub-grade sex” is mostly fucking TERRIBLE.
Don’t even get me started on the amateur section (“replace the goddamn battery in your smoke detector”).
After a few months I was already having much better — and realer — sex than anything I had seen in porn.
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Is this some sort of Straussian-reading joke that I’m not getting?
How would I do this? I haven’t gotten a single Tinder match in two months, swiping right on every non-bot woman who’s even vaguely in my social class [1]. (other apps aren’t any better.) I work in an industry dominated by men. I already uprooted my life to move to the one city with a reasonable ratio in the US; not good enough.
Modern dating is incredibly winner-take-all and you really haven’t internalized how attractive you are. (I know this because you wrote that post about picking your now-wife; do you think normal guys have choices?)
I find it really upsetting, I must admit, that so much discussion of dating takes place in a different fucking world than the one I live in. All this discussion of how to flirt with all the women who want to talk to you constantly, advice people give on how to choose between matches, discussions of what’s the proper way to hit on/not hit on the girls in your social circles–what women? which matches? What girls? These people, in my life, don’t fucking exist.
Seriously: how do you think this is physically possible for most of your readers, unless they’re female, gay, or incredibly attractive? Have you actually tried?
[1] I admit I left swipe on people who, like, haven’t finished high school. Sue me. Every single person at this point berates me for being “too picky”; just-worlding is real fun.
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Looking forward to Jacob’s response on this.
– Sounds like your environment (work/city) isn’t amazing for meeting women.
My only suggestion would be to get off Tinder, I don’t think I’ve ever got a date off it!
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He said he lives in a good ratio city. My read is that he’s considers himself unattractive and is bitter about his dating life. Tinder is going to be the worst strategy as it rewards the opposite. OK Cupid would be my suggestion.
To his point, I think dating is quite the opposite of winner takes all… outside of cases like polyamory, it’s winner take one. Nobody is holding out because they think their celebrity crush might finally come around.
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I don’t know if I have a lot of generic advice for John Doe. I wrote a Twitter thread about a gameplan for incels starting from zero, but it got very little engagement so I don’t think it’s very good. And if anyone wants specific advice on dating profiles/strategy/places to meet women or anything else, you can hire me as a dating consultant for a fair rate.
But as for “most of my readers”: I’m not rich, not thin, not famous, and I’m 5’9″. I’m never the most attractive man in the room. I’m more extroverted than average, but that wasn’t the case when I was young and socially awkward. I am not that different from “most of my readers”.
But I do have two decades of hard experience seeking out relationships. I made female friends, took a real interest in their lives and pursuits, and learned to be comfortable around women. I asked women out and got rejected, then got over the fear and embarrassment and asked other women out. And I put myself out there with a very personal blog that has my name and face on it, making myself open to ridicule but also to connection.
Sitting at home on Tinder is not being open for connection. You know and I know that Tinder only works for the hottest 20% of men, and that includes neither of us. Tinder is giving yourself an excuse to fail predictably. There are women in your city. In dance classes and book clubs and art galleries and yoga studios and OKCupid and Hinge. Are you sure you’re not hiding from them?
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I think you should write more about the “generic advice for John Doe”. Dance classes are all good and well, but doesn’t it go against your general advice of trying to pre-select for people who have something in common with you?
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Get involved in the music and arts scene and do drugs. The dating and opportunities for sex will be rife.
Tech sucks. There’s ten guys for every woman. Parts of life dominated by women and their sensibilities – such as the above mentioned arts – have far better ratios and opportunities for intimacy. Like real, gross intimacy.
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I appreciate the intent, and I wish I could contribute to the sudden reversal of gender war trends by re-establishing the win-win interactions. Unfortunately, it’s just a wishful thinking, and the collapse is imminent. Some disorganized reflections:
Genders have very different reasons for giving up on dating and mating. Women can’t secure commitment of men way above their league, whereas most men are invisible and/or dehumanized. Every month increases the difficulty level and brings more mutual resentment.
Paradoxically, both pink-hairs and red-pills are right. The main rule of relationship states that intersexual strategies are competitive, and we have to take lots of systemic and individual measures to coordinate, bring the best in us and spark the fleeting state of genuine love. This collaborative mode, accounting for all sorts of social benefits, was best facilitated through assortative monogamy. While far from perfection, it guarded us against the current dystopia – but as everything deteriorated under the combination of cultural, political, financial and technological factors (social media, dating apps, unilateral reproductive health), the zero-sum part prevailed and we’re in the race to the bottom.
Consider that leftists and rightists might be correct at the same time – in the age of woke capitalism, woke signalling destroys bonds and families, whereas unregulated capitalism turns people into constantly dissatisfied, hyper-consumerist wageslaves.
External factors play a bigger role that we would like to admit. There’s a level at which the frequency of unpleasant interactions and the pressure of male burden of performance are unbearable.
Kudos for citing Kristeva in the context of hyper-sexualized culture leading to romanceless hostility.
The way society treats a person and their levels of insecurity and highly correlated. This is why self-esteem is a controversial concept and you can’t easily boost your confidence in bad circumstances.
Nowadays, female pickiness reaches the absurdly high levels, and you can’t politely but openly criticize any negative trends concerning women (even if backed up by peer-reviewed sources) without being labeled as a misogynistic incel-nazi-bro or something. Tech-boosted hypergamous drive is practically never satisfied.
High financial and social status of men is highly preferred across all cultures. Women don’t pursue status and positions in dominance hierarchies the same way as men do. Some of women may think that self-improvement will enable them to “secure The Bad Guy (duh)”, but Untamed Bad Guy is careful with money (or broke) – and just found 10 hot college chicks in your area. As soon as the prime years pass, they’ll try to “settle down” by securing a resourceful Nice Guy, still missing the past thrills and transferring their resentment to the obedient boy.
Relationships are no longer getting fixed and improved, because men, the disposable gender, can be replaced without any major costs. A tiny inconvenience? A minor argument? Hundreds of thirsty guys can compliment you, invite you to a restaurant, or even Venmo you for existing. Swipes and small talk are emotional labor? You can always branch-swing to one of your orbiters.
Women are literally repulsed by most men sharing their deep vulnerabilities. Feminists encourage this because they want to maintain a facade of civility and pretend not to be gender supremacists, and later use sensitive information to backstab you. In most of the cases, women other than your mother or sister will neither give you good advice nor will be capable to really empathize with you (see: empathy gap).
Dating and mating is labor – mostly for men. Look up the Briffault’s Law.
Men refusing to date slightly older women? There are millions of MILF fetishists. Set up a Tinder account as Karen, 52, set age brackets to 18-40 and see what happens. Taller women being rejected by shorter guys? Come on, there is barely any force in the universe as powerful as heightism applied to men.
Good luck with encouraging the “make someone happy” mentality among men. It ends up with orbiting/providing for years and shattered false hopes. More importantly – because nobody is obliged to accept anyone’s advances and doing good things has some intrinsic value – these efforts are rarely reciprocated even on friendly terms.
Narcissism actually improves men’s success rate; moreover, if the world hates you because of your gender identity and orientation paired with non-top-notch looks and status, some self-preserving tendencies are justified.
Online dating is the primary way people meet up now, and social media/Tinder do not operate in vacuum. The damage they’ve done is likely irreparable.
I hope you’ll see this not as a simplistic “men good, women bad” rant, but a comment challenging the false equivalency mindset. I also really like you, it’s just that my tone may seem unpleasant because the truth about contemporary intersexual dynamics is so ugly.
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Look at that, the real article is in the comments.
The original article has some good points, but it just boils down to suck it up and get out there. Trouble is, there is a breaking point once one gender has enough of an advantage.
And incels’ problems are almost entirely due to not having been socialized well as children. The author tries to align himself with them by referring to himself as previously being socially awkward. Everybody thinks they’ve experienced rock bottom in this or that domain of life until they get a very close up look at the life of someone who is much further down in the pit.
But it’s hard to get a feel for another person’s general interpersonal experience. It’s too subtle and spread out over the course of their life. You’d have to shadow them for such a long time and you’d still only get an outsider’s understanding.
So tell me, if you were legitimately socially awkward and then went on to attempt a rigorous higher education, employment writing for a magazine, and STAND-UP COMEDY (even if none of these panned out), how is it that you even managed the attempt? Is it really because you were just so willing to throw yourself bravely into the lion’s den and risk it all compared to these cowardly incels? Or were you really just someone (who admits to bring extroverted) who was at some in between point from socially awkward to socially graceful. My guess is you’re just being self deprecating about your abilities so that it feels better when you pat yourself on the back for having tried, unlike those OTHER guys.
Everybody likes to embellish their own personal narrative. To make it a true rags to riches story despite it being an average tale of the status quo. When you look at anybody’s current position in life, it would make perfect sense if you could rewind their life to the beginning and watch it through.
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I think you both made fair points. Sure, Jacob might not have been born relationship guru, but he had enough of the pieces together to figure out how those interactions play out in his own life. If you’re commenting about how your situation is different, then that certainly wasn’t the case.
That said, if you really want to improve your own life, focusing on other people’s advantages isn’t going to help you. I wrote this comment because I can relate to some of the feelings in these comments, and I hope I can offer a more-or-less balanced perspective as an “outsider.” Believe me though, I do understand the importance of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, and I know that simply seeing a new perspective isn’t always enough to magically bring about change.
For me, I could spend all day writing about the advantages straight men have with dating compared to me. Sure, if you just want to fuck (per this article’s title), that’s not a problem, and I even saw someone bring up being gay as a positive thing. But if you’re trying to find someone you really like to spend time with (in addition to being intimate with), there’s a much, much larger dating pool open to straight men and women. Happy to engage on this point further if you’re not convinced.
Since I’m not completely deprived of basic decency, I offer these words of benediction for the incels:
Go into the churches and make wives of the Christians. Attend community potlucks, be converted, and be wedded. (Religious people have a motivation to connect with you, and maybe they can even help you meet someone nice. Not all churches are equally good, but you can shop around. Plus you get free food)
Go forth to the language exchange clubs, the dance classes, the art classes, the camping clubs, etc. If you’re reading this, your English abilities can allow you to develop great mutually-beneficial friendships and romantic relationships with non-native English speakers. For other activities, choose clubs, classes, and events that might give you opportunities to learn from those around you.
Be blessed and know that women are not selective because they want you to be miserable. Women within a given culture learn to admire a certain set qualities, just like men do. Maybe American culture doesn’t particularly value you in your present state (if only because you lack confidence), but also understand that in addition to variation between individuals, there are subcultures that vary across regions, religious groups, ethnic groups, etc. Obviously biological factors are in play, but I can tell you from experience that in China nerds are actually attractive to women, and that bodybuilding and going to the gym is associated with being gay. Similarly, Christian circles might value “character” more than your average group of Starbucks girls. What different subcultures can you tap into that you might not have much awareness of right now?
Ye with friends of high EQ, the LORD has given ye a bountiful blessing. If you’re ugly, short, a creep, and have an annoying voice, you can still learn to, say, dress well and find a community where you belong. Have you tried volunteering at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen? Ask what your high EQ friends would do if they were you :)
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Lol, what a load of shit. He isn’t valued because he has no value. Joining some volunteer group won’t make anyone less ugly and worthless. You are either born attractive or you are born subhuman. Nothing gets better and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
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Hope you don’t mind me replying to this post 3 months after you wrote it. :) I just came across your blog via one of the Covid posts and spent a few hours stumbling through it enjoying myself. I particularly liked the dating posts. This delightful piece is a nice one to end this binge on.
You know, I think you might just have inspired me (after 30+ years of being single and not even attempting dating/romance) to set up an account on OKC and give this online dating thing a try. There are worse ways of spending this lockdown, like staying up late at night reading blogs. :) Can’t hook up with anyone at the moment, but might at least get a decent conversation out of it.
A large part of what put me off dating for so long, besides laziness/fear, is the ‘make someone happy’ question – I had such low self-esteem for a long time, I’d convinced myself that no woman would be happier with me than with the average dude out there. But I now realise there are enough awful people that I no longer feel that’s true…
I don’t pretend I would be many people’s ideal partner; but I guess there’s only one real way to get better at relationships!
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