The best piece of advice I could give is that by the time our in your mid 20s you should be purposefully dating with the goal of marriage. The main mistake women make today is they don't start that process until their late 20s or often their 30s.
Some of the best advice I received was to ask myself, after getting to know the other person at more than a superficial level, "Will he/she be happy with who I am and what I have to offer?"
Of course, I will have already considered this question from my perspective, and if the answer is "No", then there is no point in continuing the relationship.
Let me note that my wife and I celebrated forty years of marriage in June, and we are still happy. We still appreciate my Mom's comment, made about six months after we were married, when she said, "It's a good thing you two married each other so you didn't spoil two normal marriages."
The average age gap is 2.3 years in North America. Only about 8% of relationships have a 10+ year age gap.
The biggest issue with a large age gap is that your partner will get old and sick faster and will die while you still have many years left. In other words it's less of a problem in the beginning but becomes more of a problem over time.
Risk of divorce is correlated with increasing age gap. So that's one point against it. Also men die earlier than women, so if the man is older he's going to die even earlier.
Even in the beginning of the relationship it can be a problem, particularly if you're in different stages of life. If you're both working age, it's fine, but if one is in school and the other is not it can be an issue.
I know too many young women who dated an older men in college who ended up dropping out because their older partners had no respect for the importance of their school work (and actively interfered with it) and those relationships didn't last anyway. So now they're single, with no degree, and poor marriage prospects.
My single piece of advice from women would be this - find the man you're going to marry in university. A lot of my friends got married to men they met in undergraduate, and now 10 years later they're all still married. University is a great filter too- it ensures the man is of similar intelligence and social class as you. And he'll be close in age, too.
I feel like I just got a message from a parallel universe whenever I read anything Bryan (or anyone else, really) writes about how women are unsympathetic to men who open up about their feelings. I know a lot of women and this has never been my experience. Ever. Every time I have seen another man open up to a woman, or done so myself, the response has always been sympathy, concern, and appreciation. Often the woman sees vulnerability as a sign of trust that indicates the man really values their relationship/friendship. Are women really that scornful of male vulnerability, or is it something like cow-tipping that everyone swears is real even though it doesn't happen or make any sense?
Some theories I have as to why this might be:
1. Age. I'm a millennial, and so are most women I know. It's possible that millennial and Gen Z women are more accepting of male vulnerability than older generations. However, I do know some older women and they behave similarly.
2. Professional bubble: A lot of the women I know are in "helping" fields like teaching and social work. Maybe those professions reward personalities that appreciate vulnerability more.
3. Miscommunication: A lot of the women I know show concern in a very maternal way. It's possible that other men misperceive this as condescension, and therefore thing they have gotten a negative reaction to opening up when they actually have not.
4. Obliviousness: Maybe some women I know actually have behaved scornfully and unsympathetically, but I haven't noticed because they were polite about it.
5. Personality bubble: I know a lot of nerds. It's possible that nerdy women are unusually empathetic and understanding towards male vulnerability (there's certainly a lot of fanfic written by women about men being hurt and vulnerable, and how that makes them extremely attractive). Again, however, the non-nerdy women I know appear to behave the same way.
I'd be interested if anyone else has any other theories, or thinks one of my theories is especially plausible.
All of the women who have showed romantic interest in me, including and especially my wife were empathetic and enjoyed the fact that I could be vulnerable around them. Additionally, many women friends I have praise such traits in their significant others, and also lament when their SO lacks such traits.
I think this is closely related to the phenomenon underlying the line "What I really want is for my man to just tell me the truth!" - which usually, but perhaps not always, should be understood as meaning "What I really want is for my man to just tell me what I want to hear - and for it to be true!"
Similar phenomenon with feelings.
I've seen both behaviors: acceptance and non. Non has been more common, and in my experience it was not age-related.
I have not noticed a gendered component to people enjoying being told what they want to hear. That seems like a human universal.
In general most of the women I know are pretty up front and self aware about if they prefer to hear the truth or not. My wife would be very upset if she found out I lied to spare her feelings.
I agree with your first two sentences. I don't think the third is true of either sex: self-awareness is generally not great. As for the fourth, I don't know your wife! :-)
What I was referring to was a comment commonly made by women and, in my experience, far less often by men: the expressed desire for a man "who will tell me the truth". Men also want to be told what they want to hear, they just don't tend to phrase it that way. (Men tend to not say a lot of things - topic for another day.)
If it helps, another fairly gendered expression is a desire for a man "who makes me laugh". Men often think this means they should brush up on their jokes. It does not; it expresses a desire for a man who is sexually attractive - women are much more likely to laugh and be happy around a man they find attractive (they're also more likely to try to touch him). Women (often, still!) feel uncomfortable saying "I want a man who turns me on" and it's a bit weird to say "I want a man who makes me want to touch his arm" but "makes me laugh" is perfectly acceptable and subjectively true, although a bit beside the point. It also confuses the heck out of many men.
I once met someone who summarized the "truth" issue like this: "if you really want someone to tell you the truth, don't punish them for it. If you do punish them, then what you really want is to be told what you want to hear, and they will do that to please you."
RE: Number 5 for Women on Praise: The value of praise and positive reinforcement cannot be over stressed I think. Men will do a lot of stuff to make women happy with them, from drudgery to the highly dangerous and stupid. At the same time, we stop doing things that don't seem to matter. The well runs dry without that positive feedback, so failing to express pleasure over something you liked is not likely to encourage ever greater acts but rather encourage men to just stop trying. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, men see not being selfish as keeping to themselves and not causing problems, i.e. inaction, so if someone doesn't appreciate what we do we tend to just stop. Men don't tend to feel compelled by "you should be doing more" pressure so much as women tend to.
That ties in with point 13 as well: it is easier to thank and praise when it is sincere, so liking who someone is already is more likely to lead to getting more of what you like than trying to mold them from being substandard into what you want.
Despite being married to a no-Western woman, I'd say your generalization is a bit too broad. My wife is Japanese, because I was there and all the single women I met, save one, were Japanese. The stereotypes aren't true. Anyone who mistakes good manners for subservience may well discover the hard way that there is a difference.
I found this moving to the UK. British people are more "polite" than Americans because any deviation from the "correct" manners are strictly enforced. Politeness norms don't evolve without policing.
You don’t specifically mention height but in my experience it is a big deal to women during the dating process but very unimportant during an actual marriage. The great guys who I know that are unmarried are mostly short guys.
I suspect (I say as a very short man) that this is akin to asking men to not care about how overweight a woman is: it doesn't really matter what other qualities they have, it's just a trait they find deeply viscerally unattractive.
Old is a euphemism here not for decrepit but security, i.e. they probably aren't going to cheat, have a stable career, assets, not go prison, etc and you can get all their stuff after a decade or two of marriage when they die. If I were a twenty year old woman I'd marry King Charles or Warren Buffett tomorrow without batting an eye.
Some women, but not all. I’m a short woman myself and I’ve known some really attractive short guys in my life. Physical fitness and a confident attitude seem to be important to a short guy’s attractiveness.
Never get into a relationship with a lazy person who is looking for an easy life. That one is gender-neutral. Someone has got to cook, every night. Clean, every day (if you have kids) or every week (if its just 2 adults). Someone has to mow the grass and take care of the car. No matter which way you look at it, there is always enough work for 2 fully functional adults, and dragging a lazy person around is a relationship killer.
Highly disagree, more you both just need to be on the same sheet of music. You can outsource all those things. It was a giant rift between my ex and I that I would rather spend 2K a month outsourcing cooking, cleaning, choirs, etc as I valued my time more hence she did twice the load because would rather cry about it and nag than let me pay as arguments would go "can you take the garbage out?"->"No but I can call someone who will" which always resulted in giant piles of garbage as she thought to wait me out while refusing to let pay someone to do it but would always end in her just taking it out eventually and complaining about it.
Don't expect the other person to contribute anything at all unless you are marrying for economic reasons. They aren't your slave nor your dog.
I don't understand how it's feasible to pay someone to take the garbage out. It's not a regular task like a deep clean you can hire someone to do once a week. Seems like it would only work if you had a live-in maid.
Like, not 10 minutes ago I took out the rubbish a bit early because it smelled bad. It literally took me less time to do that than to make a phone call.
Your points are mostly sensible, but I have to disagree on this: Physical attraction is important. Sure, it may fade over time, and we all wrinkle and spread out over the years. But you have to begin with attraction and passion. Your life will be poorer if you haven't had that.
That's real attraction= chemistry. But young men's posts lately seem to me to be overwhelmingly sensitive to public, generic arm-candy attractiveness, which is immature and a loser's bet in pairing-off. We used to say "high-maintenance." The sex should be generous, tender, affectionate and accommodating.
Good advice among the 14 tips, but #13 is plain wrong. Too many women pretend to be temporarily the kind of gal that their intended wants, i.e., being on their best behavior and acting like an ideal GF instead of themselves. Only after they nail down the BF, do they begin to show their true selves. BTW, I’m a woman, long married.
re: item 7 in your gender-specific advice – I (female) feel very strongly that this is true, wish other women in my extended sphere would internalize it, and have written a blog post on the subject:
Very interesting article. I think a lot of women would say the goods are odd, but tastes differ!
Regarding both your advice, and Brian's #7, one counter-argument not brought up is that the men you ask out will be tempted to pursue a short-term relationship only. This may not matter so much for a poly/promiscuous woman (I mean no offence), but for the median woman this may be a major drawback. Speaking as one of these shy engineering nerds myself, when I was single, I was only ever interested in pursuing long-term monogamous relationships, not least because of the amount of effort involved. BUT, had a fairly attractive woman asked me out, then, knowing she was obviously into me, I would have been very tempted to date her even if I was not interested in a long-term relationship, string her along, then dump her when I got bored or something better came along. And a lot of men would think the same. I'm not defending that behaviour, just being realistic.
On the other hand, as you rightly point out, asks are massively skewed to serial askers with low inhibitions. Perhaps the positive effect on the pool of men outweighs the negative effect on their incentives? Or perhaps there are other actions you can take later on to counteract this?
Fair enough! I've had female friends voice this concern. I've never been sure how to answer this, because re:
"I would have been very tempted to date her even if I was not interested in a long-term relationship, string her along, then dump her when I got bored or something better came along"
I feel like I have a very good sense of when someone is or isn't going to do this (and I have never dated someone who has led me along in this way, or in fact in any way related to relationship expectations). So when my friends say "but what if he's going to do that?" my very unhelpful answer is "don't ask out people who will".
I'm never sure of how to bridge the disconnect between myself and the women for whom this concern is salient – people who will be honest with you about what they want and expect out of a relationship will also be honest on a bunch of other hard-to-fake-completely axes.
The 'Gender-neutral' advice "Give personality a very high priority and looks a low priority." is pure wishful thinking in the case of men's priorities - and against all the evidence; empirical, experiential and literary. A fact that is, in any case, flatly contradicted in Advice Item 10.
Waaay too complicated. A much simpler rule is to just watch how a potential mate treats service people (hotel staff, airline employees, retail salespeople, Uber/cab drivers, etc but ESPECIALLY waiters/waitresses) b/c that's how s/he will be treating you in 6 months.
"Risk of divorce is correlated with increasing age gap."
I've heard this statistic before, and it annoys me. Because the variable of interest isn't the GAP as an absolute value. It's man's age minus woman's age.
Sociobiology clearly predicts that men should prefer younger women; women should tend to prefer, not so much age per se, as things that come with it. We see that pattern all the time.
So I'd expect stability to be maximized at man's age minus woman's age equals two, or four, or six, or something. That's just a hunch and open to empirical correction.
But the empirics is worthless if it focuses on the GAP, thus lumping together man's age minus woman's age equals four (sounds good) with man's age minus woman's age equals NEGATIVE four (odd).
Is there any research on the correlation of age gaps and divorce rates that structures the question competently?
Also, if you are a saver don't marry a spender.
Huge. Probably more than half of divorces can be traced to that issue.
I was the saver, he was the spender However, we gradually came to compromises, which works for us - usually.
The best piece of advice I could give is that by the time our in your mid 20s you should be purposefully dating with the goal of marriage. The main mistake women make today is they don't start that process until their late 20s or often their 30s.
Some of the best advice I received was to ask myself, after getting to know the other person at more than a superficial level, "Will he/she be happy with who I am and what I have to offer?"
Of course, I will have already considered this question from my perspective, and if the answer is "No", then there is no point in continuing the relationship.
Let me note that my wife and I celebrated forty years of marriage in June, and we are still happy. We still appreciate my Mom's comment, made about six months after we were married, when she said, "It's a good thing you two married each other so you didn't spoil two normal marriages."
The average age gap is 2.3 years in North America. Only about 8% of relationships have a 10+ year age gap.
The biggest issue with a large age gap is that your partner will get old and sick faster and will die while you still have many years left. In other words it's less of a problem in the beginning but becomes more of a problem over time.
Risk of divorce is correlated with increasing age gap. So that's one point against it. Also men die earlier than women, so if the man is older he's going to die even earlier.
Even in the beginning of the relationship it can be a problem, particularly if you're in different stages of life. If you're both working age, it's fine, but if one is in school and the other is not it can be an issue.
I know too many young women who dated an older men in college who ended up dropping out because their older partners had no respect for the importance of their school work (and actively interfered with it) and those relationships didn't last anyway. So now they're single, with no degree, and poor marriage prospects.
My single piece of advice from women would be this - find the man you're going to marry in university. A lot of my friends got married to men they met in undergraduate, and now 10 years later they're all still married. University is a great filter too- it ensures the man is of similar intelligence and social class as you. And he'll be close in age, too.
Yeah, that seems wise!
Then look after yourself! your right if the age gap is like 30 years!
I feel like I just got a message from a parallel universe whenever I read anything Bryan (or anyone else, really) writes about how women are unsympathetic to men who open up about their feelings. I know a lot of women and this has never been my experience. Ever. Every time I have seen another man open up to a woman, or done so myself, the response has always been sympathy, concern, and appreciation. Often the woman sees vulnerability as a sign of trust that indicates the man really values their relationship/friendship. Are women really that scornful of male vulnerability, or is it something like cow-tipping that everyone swears is real even though it doesn't happen or make any sense?
Some theories I have as to why this might be:
1. Age. I'm a millennial, and so are most women I know. It's possible that millennial and Gen Z women are more accepting of male vulnerability than older generations. However, I do know some older women and they behave similarly.
2. Professional bubble: A lot of the women I know are in "helping" fields like teaching and social work. Maybe those professions reward personalities that appreciate vulnerability more.
3. Miscommunication: A lot of the women I know show concern in a very maternal way. It's possible that other men misperceive this as condescension, and therefore thing they have gotten a negative reaction to opening up when they actually have not.
4. Obliviousness: Maybe some women I know actually have behaved scornfully and unsympathetically, but I haven't noticed because they were polite about it.
5. Personality bubble: I know a lot of nerds. It's possible that nerdy women are unusually empathetic and understanding towards male vulnerability (there's certainly a lot of fanfic written by women about men being hurt and vulnerable, and how that makes them extremely attractive). Again, however, the non-nerdy women I know appear to behave the same way.
I'd be interested if anyone else has any other theories, or thinks one of my theories is especially plausible.
Empathy isn't the same as attraction. Women are often empathetic about the homeless, but they don't want to fuck them.
All of the women who have showed romantic interest in me, including and especially my wife were empathetic and enjoyed the fact that I could be vulnerable around them. Additionally, many women friends I have praise such traits in their significant others, and also lament when their SO lacks such traits.
I think it depends heavily on *what* feelings you open up about.
If it's something admirable, all is well, and she will appreciate you sharing it.
If it's the opposite, she will also appreciate learning it, but more how she'd appreciate knowing you have syphilis.
I think this is closely related to the phenomenon underlying the line "What I really want is for my man to just tell me the truth!" - which usually, but perhaps not always, should be understood as meaning "What I really want is for my man to just tell me what I want to hear - and for it to be true!"
Similar phenomenon with feelings.
I've seen both behaviors: acceptance and non. Non has been more common, and in my experience it was not age-related.
I have not noticed a gendered component to people enjoying being told what they want to hear. That seems like a human universal.
In general most of the women I know are pretty up front and self aware about if they prefer to hear the truth or not. My wife would be very upset if she found out I lied to spare her feelings.
I agree with your first two sentences. I don't think the third is true of either sex: self-awareness is generally not great. As for the fourth, I don't know your wife! :-)
What I was referring to was a comment commonly made by women and, in my experience, far less often by men: the expressed desire for a man "who will tell me the truth". Men also want to be told what they want to hear, they just don't tend to phrase it that way. (Men tend to not say a lot of things - topic for another day.)
If it helps, another fairly gendered expression is a desire for a man "who makes me laugh". Men often think this means they should brush up on their jokes. It does not; it expresses a desire for a man who is sexually attractive - women are much more likely to laugh and be happy around a man they find attractive (they're also more likely to try to touch him). Women (often, still!) feel uncomfortable saying "I want a man who turns me on" and it's a bit weird to say "I want a man who makes me want to touch his arm" but "makes me laugh" is perfectly acceptable and subjectively true, although a bit beside the point. It also confuses the heck out of many men.
I once met someone who summarized the "truth" issue like this: "if you really want someone to tell you the truth, don't punish them for it. If you do punish them, then what you really want is to be told what you want to hear, and they will do that to please you."
If you feel comfortable doing so, can you share the specific topics/situations that you opened up about?
RE: Number 5 for Women on Praise: The value of praise and positive reinforcement cannot be over stressed I think. Men will do a lot of stuff to make women happy with them, from drudgery to the highly dangerous and stupid. At the same time, we stop doing things that don't seem to matter. The well runs dry without that positive feedback, so failing to express pleasure over something you liked is not likely to encourage ever greater acts but rather encourage men to just stop trying. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, men see not being selfish as keeping to themselves and not causing problems, i.e. inaction, so if someone doesn't appreciate what we do we tend to just stop. Men don't tend to feel compelled by "you should be doing more" pressure so much as women tend to.
That ties in with point 13 as well: it is easier to thank and praise when it is sincere, so liking who someone is already is more likely to lead to getting more of what you like than trying to mold them from being substandard into what you want.
Despite being married to a no-Western woman, I'd say your generalization is a bit too broad. My wife is Japanese, because I was there and all the single women I met, save one, were Japanese. The stereotypes aren't true. Anyone who mistakes good manners for subservience may well discover the hard way that there is a difference.
I found this moving to the UK. British people are more "polite" than Americans because any deviation from the "correct" manners are strictly enforced. Politeness norms don't evolve without policing.
You don’t specifically mention height but in my experience it is a big deal to women during the dating process but very unimportant during an actual marriage. The great guys who I know that are unmarried are mostly short guys.
I suspect (I say as a very short man) that this is akin to asking men to not care about how overweight a woman is: it doesn't really matter what other qualities they have, it's just a trait they find deeply viscerally unattractive.
This is true but Caplan also says we should marry an older guy even if it's "gross." I'd definitely take shorter over decrepit, personally.
Old is a euphemism here not for decrepit but security, i.e. they probably aren't going to cheat, have a stable career, assets, not go prison, etc and you can get all their stuff after a decade or two of marriage when they die. If I were a twenty year old woman I'd marry King Charles or Warren Buffett tomorrow without batting an eye.
I'm not sure what you're arguing. If they're going to die in a few decades or two, they're certainly decrepit.
This isn't so much relationship advice though so much as how to be a scammer.
The relationship isn't the goal then, it's just the money.
Some women, but not all. I’m a short woman myself and I’ve known some really attractive short guys in my life. Physical fitness and a confident attitude seem to be important to a short guy’s attractiveness.
Never get into a relationship with a lazy person who is looking for an easy life. That one is gender-neutral. Someone has got to cook, every night. Clean, every day (if you have kids) or every week (if its just 2 adults). Someone has to mow the grass and take care of the car. No matter which way you look at it, there is always enough work for 2 fully functional adults, and dragging a lazy person around is a relationship killer.
Highly disagree, more you both just need to be on the same sheet of music. You can outsource all those things. It was a giant rift between my ex and I that I would rather spend 2K a month outsourcing cooking, cleaning, choirs, etc as I valued my time more hence she did twice the load because would rather cry about it and nag than let me pay as arguments would go "can you take the garbage out?"->"No but I can call someone who will" which always resulted in giant piles of garbage as she thought to wait me out while refusing to let pay someone to do it but would always end in her just taking it out eventually and complaining about it.
Don't expect the other person to contribute anything at all unless you are marrying for economic reasons. They aren't your slave nor your dog.
I don't understand how it's feasible to pay someone to take the garbage out. It's not a regular task like a deep clean you can hire someone to do once a week. Seems like it would only work if you had a live-in maid.
Like, not 10 minutes ago I took out the rubbish a bit early because it smelled bad. It literally took me less time to do that than to make a phone call.
Your points are mostly sensible, but I have to disagree on this: Physical attraction is important. Sure, it may fade over time, and we all wrinkle and spread out over the years. But you have to begin with attraction and passion. Your life will be poorer if you haven't had that.
That's real attraction= chemistry. But young men's posts lately seem to me to be overwhelmingly sensitive to public, generic arm-candy attractiveness, which is immature and a loser's bet in pairing-off. We used to say "high-maintenance." The sex should be generous, tender, affectionate and accommodating.
Good advice among the 14 tips, but #13 is plain wrong. Too many women pretend to be temporarily the kind of gal that their intended wants, i.e., being on their best behavior and acting like an ideal GF instead of themselves. Only after they nail down the BF, do they begin to show their true selves. BTW, I’m a woman, long married.
re: item 7 in your gender-specific advice – I (female) feel very strongly that this is true, wish other women in my extended sphere would internalize it, and have written a blog post on the subject:
https://eudai.substack.com/p/the-odds-are-good-and-the-goods-are
Very interesting article. I think a lot of women would say the goods are odd, but tastes differ!
Regarding both your advice, and Brian's #7, one counter-argument not brought up is that the men you ask out will be tempted to pursue a short-term relationship only. This may not matter so much for a poly/promiscuous woman (I mean no offence), but for the median woman this may be a major drawback. Speaking as one of these shy engineering nerds myself, when I was single, I was only ever interested in pursuing long-term monogamous relationships, not least because of the amount of effort involved. BUT, had a fairly attractive woman asked me out, then, knowing she was obviously into me, I would have been very tempted to date her even if I was not interested in a long-term relationship, string her along, then dump her when I got bored or something better came along. And a lot of men would think the same. I'm not defending that behaviour, just being realistic.
On the other hand, as you rightly point out, asks are massively skewed to serial askers with low inhibitions. Perhaps the positive effect on the pool of men outweighs the negative effect on their incentives? Or perhaps there are other actions you can take later on to counteract this?
Fair enough! I've had female friends voice this concern. I've never been sure how to answer this, because re:
"I would have been very tempted to date her even if I was not interested in a long-term relationship, string her along, then dump her when I got bored or something better came along"
I feel like I have a very good sense of when someone is or isn't going to do this (and I have never dated someone who has led me along in this way, or in fact in any way related to relationship expectations). So when my friends say "but what if he's going to do that?" my very unhelpful answer is "don't ask out people who will".
I'm never sure of how to bridge the disconnect between myself and the women for whom this concern is salient – people who will be honest with you about what they want and expect out of a relationship will also be honest on a bunch of other hard-to-fake-completely axes.
The 'Gender-neutral' advice "Give personality a very high priority and looks a low priority." is pure wishful thinking in the case of men's priorities - and against all the evidence; empirical, experiential and literary. A fact that is, in any case, flatly contradicted in Advice Item 10.
Waaay too complicated. A much simpler rule is to just watch how a potential mate treats service people (hotel staff, airline employees, retail salespeople, Uber/cab drivers, etc but ESPECIALLY waiters/waitresses) b/c that's how s/he will be treating you in 6 months.
"Risk of divorce is correlated with increasing age gap."
I've heard this statistic before, and it annoys me. Because the variable of interest isn't the GAP as an absolute value. It's man's age minus woman's age.
Sociobiology clearly predicts that men should prefer younger women; women should tend to prefer, not so much age per se, as things that come with it. We see that pattern all the time.
So I'd expect stability to be maximized at man's age minus woman's age equals two, or four, or six, or something. That's just a hunch and open to empirical correction.
But the empirics is worthless if it focuses on the GAP, thus lumping together man's age minus woman's age equals four (sounds good) with man's age minus woman's age equals NEGATIVE four (odd).
Is there any research on the correlation of age gaps and divorce rates that structures the question competently?
We used to say, if divorced the only thing that matters is does he have a steady paycheck and will he be nice to the kids.