Why imbalance in US dating scene despite 50/50 ratio?

[jamesbond]

In addition to Fschmidt's answer, there is another, equally important reason:

American women only want and date a very limited percentage of men. The top men. This is somewhere between 10 to 30% of the male population. These men can enjoy rotating harem type relationships where they can string along multiple women at once (who may or may not know about each other).

Just think of the attractive women (as in the non-repulsive ones) entering relationships with one of these top men and then switching one for another. As in, they only date within the top % of men. The men who arent in the top % are left out. The men in the top % are dating more than one woman at the same time.

This leaves a large percentage of men who arent impossibly popular or rich without girlfriends or wives.

Let's see who the men are with the greatest access to women, and maybe you will remember from your youth:
(In no particular order)
1. Tall and good looking (need both)
2. Football player and popular (not good enough to be just a player in some cases)
3. Relatively wealthy, often displayed by driving a newer model flashy car
4. Member of prestigious campus fraternity
5. Any guy, regardless of height, looks, weight, if he has tattoos, dealt drugs, been in a gang, been to prison, etc.

This is a great observation! Women want the highest status male they can find (guys who are wealthy, popular, etc.) This leaves a lot of women chasing the small percentage of rich, popular guys out there. These guys in turn are dating a lot of these hot chicks and can date multiple women at the same time. Which leaves a lot of guys high and dry with little or no prospects for attractive women. Now you can see the dating imbalance in the US. One way to fix it, is to go overseas and meet quality women that you may never meet here in the US.

[Winston]

Check out this chart that someone sent me. It shows statistical evidence that there are more single men in America than single women in almost every state.

http://www.halfsigma.com/2008/04/unmarried-mal-1.html

[Winston]

Dan DeLa Cruz gave one reason in his book The Global Dating Revolution why upper tier countries have more men competing for fewer women. He said that in wealthier countries, there are many more immigrant workers coming to make money, and most of them are males. So the wave of male workers coming in creates a surplus of males, which is bad for the dating market there for males, giving women more choices and men less.

Does that make sense? Could that be why the US seems to have more single men than women?

[jamesbond]

From the defunct website "Hookupculture.com"

There is No Longer Someone for Everyone

One of the common myths about dating is that there's a soulmate out there for everyone. Dating services have made millions promoting the idea that your perfect partner is out there, you just need to try harder to find them. This seems to make sense since there are an equal number of men and women. The reality is that in promiscuous culture, a small percentage of men can monopolize sex with a majority of women. When this happens, the matching up process does not occur, and singles end up floating indefinitely around the dating pool.

The Attractiveness Hierarchy

In the monogamous marriage system of the past, the majority of men and women found mates and got married. In that system, singles knew roughly where they were ranked in overall attractiveness and married a mate of roughly equal rank as soon as they could, usually by their early 20's. There were strong economic and sexual pressures to marry early, and this motivated singles to quickly find a mate of roughly equivalent attractiveness rather than wait for their "perfect soulmate." In the monogamous system, if one waited too long, the pool of eligible mates shrank, and it became more difficult to find a quality partner.

This is very interesting. Now a days, a small pool of men (guys who are rich, very good-looking, or men who are celebrities) can date a number of hot women at the same time. These hot women in turn get used to dating these "high status males" and wouldn't even THINK about dating men who are not "high status."

The funny thing is though, in America today even some AVERAGE looking women are getting hooked up with rich, good looking guys. So these average looking women are getting used to the "good life" and they sure the hell won't start dating your "average joe" anytime soon.

[Winston]

Check out this article:

http://www.edatereview.com/blog/2005/08 ... ating.aspx

The male/female ratio of online dating

One of the facts of online dating is that there are more men than women online. For example, Match.com recently told ABC News that 59% of their subscribers are men and 41% are women. You can confirm the ratio yourself by doing searches for profiles.

The high male/female ratio of online dating is not the fault of the online dating services, but it reflects the unfortunate realities of the real world. Over a decade ago I recall reading a New York Times article that stated that there were approximately 6 single men in their twenties for every five single women.

How is this possible? Aren't there an approximately equal number of boy and girl babies born each year? The biggest contributor to the skewed ratio is serial polygamy. A man in his twenties marries a woman in her twenties, then in his thirties he divorces her and marries another woman in her twenties, then in his forties he marries another women in her twenties. This happens. I have a friend who's in his fifties and his current wife is in her twenties.

There is also parallel polygamy. I woman I know, when she was in her twenties, knew a guy who had two girlfriends at the same time (neither, of course, knew of the other one's existence). And at the same time he was also hitting on her, trying to bring his harem up to three!

What's going on in the real world is reflected in the virtual world of online dating. In fact, it's skewed worse than in the real world, because online dating sites attract a much greater percentage of people who have trouble finding dates. So not only will there be more men, there will be more undesirable (for whatever reasons) members of both sexes.

Men who use online dating services will initially try to contact the few women they are interested in. But because the desirable women receive more emails than they can respond to, male subscribers eventually figure out that they have to send out massive numbers of emails because the response rate is so low. So we wind up in the situation we're in now. Female subscribers to online dating services receive more emails than they can respond to, and male subscribers send out large numbers of emails and rarely get a response.

Women actually complain about this, but I think they are in a far better situation than men. If you are a man, how do you fix the problem? The answer is that you need to move to Manhattan. There are more single women in Manhattan than men. If you do searches in Match.com for Manhattan, you will find about 50% more female profiles than male profiles. The opposite of the ratio for the rest of the United States.

Living in Manhattan and using Match.com, I've been quite happy with how many women respond to my emails. And being a nerdy IT professional, I'm not a high priority catch for most women. They'd rather be going out with the good looking athletic men. You also get to meet women of a caliber you'd never find in Phoenix, Arizona, like graduates of Harvard and Yale law schools.

This entry on Wikipedia notes that women seem more picky than men.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_dating_service

* There is some evidence that there may be a difference on how women online rate male attractiveness as opposed to how men rate female attractiveness. The distribution of ratings given by men of female attractiveness appears to look like a standard bell curve (normal distribution), while ratings of men given by women is highly skewed with 80% of the men rated as below average.[20] This shows women are genuinely more picky than men when it comes to online dating. It could also potentially arise from women assessing other profile characteristics besides appearance, like their occupation for example.

[djfourmoney]

I hardly see NYC as the answer but there is some sunshine...

For one thing, its a favorite US vacation spot (with Florida not far behind) for European women. For one thing the ticket prices for flying from say Stockholm to NYC is cheaper than Stockholm to LAX (Los Angeles).

In fact on a few other places I visit on the internet, I can confirm women visiting NY or FL from Europe at least twice in the last 12 months. The initial crashing of the US economy gave buying power to Europeans and Brits, so they came over just to shop and avoid VAT. However because NYC is Cosmopolitan and has many Foreigners (I forgot how many languages they send school report cards home in, maybe 10-15). I have found Russians, Ukrainians, Polish and others in various online dating sites. Since I mostly focus on Interracial Dating sites, that's what I know best but I find these women on those sites.

But unless you live in NYC, I wouldn't recommend trying to date women there. For one thing they want somebody local and I doubt they would be open to anybody that didn't live in the general area, be it NJ, Conn or Philly. I'd say mostly because they are students (If your talking about women under 30).

I totally agree web sites are dominated by men and some sites like OkCupid have suggested younger men go where the "action" is, which is women over 30. I don't know how many times it has to be said, but younger men are not interested in older women and older men are not really that interested in women around their age (under 45).

This is why most of the women online are 30-45. - http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-c ... der-woman/

the male fixation on youth distorts the dating pool

They are 100% correct. My personal preference is somebody over 25 yet younger than 35. Max is late 30's because I desire to have children.

Both the quoted post and the link say women that have trouble dating are mostly online and that would be mostly women in their early 30's to mid 40's, along with divorced with children and never married with children.

According this this graph I should be chasing women between 44 and mid 50's, if I want hardly any competition! This should go without saying. Women past 50 have hit Menopause. Some start as early as 45. Also in this pool of women are many woman that for some medical reason can't have children at all.



Sorry but that can't be the answer, the answer is overseas of course.

I'm surprised most American Men don't see it like we do, what a shame.

[The_Adventurer]

I certainly have no desire to date women that old. My Korean girlfriend, my Philippines girlfriend (except one), and the girl I am talking to now, were, or are, all 18 or 19.

[wuxi]

I certainly have no desire to date women that old. My Korean girlfriend, my Philippines girlfriend (except one), and the girl I am talking to now, were, or are, all 18 or 19.

I like older women because there more mature but they also have more emotional baggage. I suspect relationships with younger women are more successful just because in most cases you will be there first real boyfriend.

[jamesbond]

I certainly have no desire to date women that old. My Korean girlfriend, my Philippines girlfriend (except one), and the girl I am talking to now, were, or are, all 18 or 19.

That's exactly how I feel. I prefer women 18 to 24. I will go as old as 30 but that's only if I can't find somebody in the 18 to 24 age group. And as far as cougars go, I wouldn't be seen dead with a woman older than me!

I know guys who are in their 30's who have told me that have settled and are now dating women in their 40's who are divorced and have kids. I am sorry, I would rather use my right hand for the rest of my life then take a middle aged woman with kids!

[djfourmoney]

Do a search on any of the major dating sites. Those having trouble (women) dating have children or can't/won't have children. I think that's the most common theme among women. Search for women 40-45 and that's for sure what you'll find and if they women had children as teenagers then they are likely grown and out of the house too.

The answer is overseas but it comes with caveats and a high price tag.

European women are largely no different, they want narrow age gaps as well. The difference is because teen pregnancy is largely not an issue in Europe (only in the UK it seems) so many of these women have and are waiting until they get married to have children. If they have their first child at 30-35, so be it. That's why I still have hope for Western Europe, its also the most affordable option out of them all.

[NorthAmericanguy]

I have heard it said that in America, 20% of the men are sleeping with 80% of the women. That very well maybe true after reading what I read on this thread. There are guys in America who are getting laid left and right (not many guys though are like this) these guys have learned how to approach women in bars and clubs and having been doing this for years. They have learned to not let the rejection from women bother them. I do give these guys credit for learning to be "players" it does take a lot of practice and a lot of rejection from women.

My uncle was a REAL player in the 60's. Yea, he had lots of fun and lots of different women but now that he is older he lives alone and I know he is miserable. He looks miserable.

He has 8 kids by different women that we know of and as far as I know those kids are all F%%% ups (i.e., in out of jail, having babies at 15).

These young guys are stupid to be putting all this time into garnishing attention from women. None of these women will be there for them when they get old and sick.

[NorthAmericanguy]

The most important thing that causes the imbalance between the sexes is Money. When women have money they don't need men. As soon as women in 3rd world countries get money they start being difficult. Just look at Ukraine/Russia. 10 years ago when they were poor, you could have had anyone you wanted. Is it easy now to get a FSU women?

W: That's true. Money is a big factor. But then how come those poor crack addict girls in the US aren't that friendly or sweet? I've met some of them and all they do is try to trick you into giving them cash or a free hotel room for them and their crack selling boyfriends, and then they try to jet.

Or they just keep asking you for cash loans without doing anything to please you or giving you what you want.

The nursing student girls in the Philippines tend to very cliquish and ignore everyone outside their circle. Me and our mutual friend, D, noticed this. They are middle class girls of course.

However, I do know two females that own shops on Fields Ave here that are into me. One of them is a very smart and good person. She's only 26, and has been very gracious and generous to me, treating me dinner and driving me home in her car. They aren't poor obviously.

There are always exceptions to every general rule.

"and then they try to jet"

Ha, haven't heard that slang since 1992!

[NorthAmericanguy]

In addition to Fschmidt's answer, there is another, equally important reason:

American women only want and date a very limited percentage of men. The top men. This is somewhere between 10 to 30% of the male population. These men can enjoy rotating harem type relationships where they can string along multiple women at once (who may or may not know about each other).

Just think of the attractive women (as in the non-repulsive ones) entering relationships with one of these top men and then switching one for another. As in, they only date within the top % of men. The men who arent in the top % are left out. The men in the top % are dating more than one woman at the same time.

This leaves a large percentage of men who arent impossibly popular or rich without girlfriends or wives.

Let's see who the men are with the greatest access to women, and maybe you will remember from your youth:
(In no particular order)
1. Tall and good looking (need both)
2. Football player and popular (not good enough to be just a player in some cases)
3. Relatively wealthy, often displayed by driving a newer model flashy car
4. Member of prestigious campus fraternity
5. Any guy, regardless of height, looks, weight, if he has tattoos, dealt drugs, been in a gang, been to prison, etc.

This is a great observation! Women want the highest status male they can find (guys who are wealthy, popular, etc.) This leaves a lot of women chasing the small percentage of rich, popular guys out there. These guys in turn are dating a lot of these hot chicks and can date multiple women at the same time. Which leaves a lot of guys high and dry with little or no prospects for attractive women. Now you can see the dating imbalance in the US. One way to fix it, is to go overseas and meet quality women that you may never meet here in the US.

And this is why more women are walking around with STD then men. Women are knowingly or unknowingly sleeping with the same man/men.

A good example are what you call groupies, these women can range from good looking school teachers/sales clerks to paid models and they make themselves sexually available only to high status men such as NFL athletes or celebrity entertainers but literally they will laugh in a regular guys face just because he spoke to her.

The pic below is a famous musician in a hotel room with 2 random girls. Girls like this are now your next door neighbor. They will do ANYTHING just to have sex with so and so famous person.