Psychology Today: 63% of all US men 18-29 single, general sexual intimacy approaching 30-year low

[Person Man]

One thing not being talked about enough IMO is how within this age group, there are twice as many single men as women. I have a fleeting suspicion that a lot of 18-29 women are dating amongst themselves, which I only making it harder for men to date.

Or they’re dating older men.

Half of them? I don’t think half of 18-29 year old women in relationships are dating men 30+- at least, that doesn’t match what I’m seeing among people I know in that age group.

Does match what I’m seeing. Tons of men in NYC and other major metros in their 30s/40s dating girls in their 20s.

My wife is 7 years younger than me. Makes sense.

[Person Man]

Many young men only have themselves to blame for this situation largely; specifically for the ones who have done everything in their power to make themselves as unpalatable to the opposite sex as possible in response to these challenges and adopted misogynistic politics and frames of social reference.

If this is your immediate response then you're spending too much time on the Internet.

It's revealing when leftists who point to structual forces as the causes of most inequalities in American society suddenly adopt a bootstrapping, individualist neoliberal approach to men's failures with dating.

It's possible to simultaneously believe that there are structural forces that make dating or romance more difficult for men and also not condemn these forces as necessarily or inherently bad for society. People who are unable to think this way are hopelessly and uselessly subsumed in the culture wars - thankfully my ignore list seems to have removed many of these posters from my forum-reading experience.

It is not some huge exercise in mental gymnastics to believe that both 1) men have to step up and it’s better if dumb weak guys don’t have kids,  2) it’s in society’s interest that some resources are redistributed to help improve these guys so they bring more to the table, and 3) empowering women to unleash the animal spirit of the liberal markets on dating is a good thing.

Like everything else, free markets are good, so long as everyone gets fair access and opportunity. In fact, they are mutually essential.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

One thing not being talked about enough IMO is how within this age group, there are twice as many single men as women. I have a fleeting suspicion that a lot of 18-29 women are dating amongst themselves, which I only making it harder for men to date.

Or they’re dating older men.

Half of them? I don’t think half of 18-29 year old women in relationships are dating men 30+- at least, that doesn’t match what I’m seeing among people I know in that age group.

That needs to be broken down further. I wouldn't be surprised at all if over half of women between, say, 25 and 29 are in relationship with men aged 30+. 18-24 and 18-22 specifically will be lower than that, but still more young women date older men than the other way around for pretty obvious reasons.

This doesn't seem backed up by the partnered people I know IRL who're around my age, or the age distribution of my dating app matches. It's possible that the people I've matched who are my age or slightly older have been more likely to date men over 30, but I'm not really seeing age disparities of more than 4-5 years in my RL social network of people who grew up in the US. At my age I certainly wouldn't want to date anyone who's currently still in undergrad and barely old enough to buy booze.

Second Crumpets' and Ferguson97's most recent posts. A 30% disparity between genders seems more than a little sketch.

I would add to this on the other side (as a 34-year-old whose professional acquaintances are mostly straight men of the same age range) that I don't know any straight man in his 30s dating a woman under the age of 30. And these are super high-status straight men: very high-income lawyers and finance guys in New York City. If private equity bros in their 30s aren't dating 25-year-olds, who is?

I do think there could be a reporting bias here, as well as sex differences in perception of what it means to be "in a relationship" (perhaps straight women are more likely to say in a survey they are in a relationship after a date or two, while straight men won't say that in a survey until much later).

Your experience is what I would've expected for someone with your professional contacts. Makes sense that super-high status, highly educated professional men not working in entertainment (*cough* Leo) would generally want LTRs with women closer to them in age. I wonder how sugar daddies/babies would classify their situationships, since that seems to be what BG-NYC is referring to in this thread.

Does match what I’m seeing. Tons of men in NYC and other major metros in their 30s/40s dating girls in their 20s.

My wife is 7 years younger than me. Makes sense.

[VBM]

They haven't enough time to go out and have sex. They are too busy bitching and whining all day on youtube about Woke Marvel, M-She-U, Brie Larson, Kelly-Marie Tran, She-Hulk, the 2016 Ghostbusters, etc.

XY people bad

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

A large number of men are in fact doomed due to skewed gender ratios, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/?utm_term=.16446268a240

A clear cut example of how the patriarchy can harm men too. The One Child Policy could honestly single-handedly cripple China in the long-term.

Georgia is another example, where sex-selective abortions in the rough 1990s screwed up the gender ratio to the point that, for many men the only way to find a partner would be to leave the country. I hear it's basically normalized at this point, thankfully.

[RINO Tom]

Not good at all for many reasons.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I do think there could be a reporting bias here, as well as sex differences in perception of what it means to be "in a relationship" (perhaps straight women are more likely to say in a survey they are in a relationship after a date or two, while straight men won't say that in a survey until much later).

This argument has shown up a couple of times in this thread, it's possible this explains some of the discrepancy (on the other hand it's also possible that the discrepancy goes the other way). But it's not super useful in this discussion unless there's a reason why this behavior would change differently between the genders over time. It does nothing to explain why we'd see relationship status in men declining over time.

Expansion of ambiguous relationships over time as getting married at 24 has become more and more unusual?

I have to think though that a large part of the trend of people not getting married at 24 is driven by women, particularly women trying to prioritizing careers over relationships. This is fine and totally makes sense for them to want to do in 2023, but in this case I have to think that that women would be driving changes in the ambiguity trend more than men.

And for context, I'm a man who broke up with a long-term girlfriend at 24 because we had two incompatible aspirational career trajectories, then entered a dating scene full of women who did not want to commit to relationships of any kind. From the very limited sample size of my circles, men want security in their relationships and the women want to stay uncommitted.

[leonardothered]

How is this even mathematically possible? I find it hard to believe there are that many lesbians, younger women dating men a decade older, and women in polygamous relationships to account for these statistics.

It's relying on people telling the truth, for one; I have no idea how that would impact a study like this, but we know from a lot more studies that the percentage of men vs women who are virgins aged 18-40 has drastically changed and been changing since the 90s.

The numbers don't really add up if it's 'single men vs single women' but as a percentage of those being sexually active, it certainly could.

[leonardothered]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

If the social programs in were in place us lefties would want, there would be help pulling up those bootstraps. They would be an across the board, equally attainable act

[BlueSwan]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

I do think you are on to something here, but it goes both ways. Men on the right tend to hold the exact opposite view, that economic misfortune is due to individual weakness and that romantic misfortune for males is due to feminism running amok (ie structural forces).

Everybody would benefit from a more nuanced perspective.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

I do think you are on to something here, but it goes both ways. Men on the right tend to hold the exact opposite view, that economic misfortune is due to individual weakness and that romantic misfortune for males is due to feminism running amok (ie structural forces).

Everybody would benefit from a more nuanced perspective.

Yes. I do also see a lot of right-wing men who are successful with women mock those who aren't.
While just like with economic misfortune, romantic misfortune likely has been exasperated by some bad personal decisions, I do believe that it is mostly societal issues caused by their upbringing, ever-so-common neurodivergency and the changing way society views relationships and stuff (which yes does include modern feminism).

[Kleine Scheiße]

There is literally one cause of this and it's housing

So we're becoming China where we need to have an apartment or a house to even begin considering to date?
That totally won't end badly!

50% of people aged 18-30 live with their parents or other family. Anecdotally, the majority of those who do live independently do also have roommates. I think we are undergoing a forced cultural shift toward a perpetual rental model where most are simply not intended to own any property, but you don't have to buy into that to see where this is heading more generally.

We have failed to build enough housing to accommodate the number of people we need to house in the places we need to house them. As a result, people are not living. Metrics of independence are not being met and this is in some cases actually being branded as a good, responsible thing; we have a large group of people now who believe the truly adult thing to do if you want education past high school is to live with your parents, commute to community college and then a university, and have no social life to "save money," regardless of how the numbers actually work out in your individual situation.

College is where many people meet their sexual and romantic partners; usually, this has to do with on- or near-campus housing. If you decide not to do that and instead do "the smart thing," your chances of dating or having a sexual relationship are significantly diminished. If after that, you also don't match into a high-earning position (high enough to rent your own apartment with maybe one roommate), your odds become vanishingly small.

While this is in part related to outdated cultural values about so-called "common sense" and the belief that socialization is decadent "fun," rather than being an important aspect of human health; it is also a manifestation of the housing problem. Dorms are very expensive to rent, often significantly beyond what they would be if they were not owned by the university. Renting off-campus does not do much to blunt the cost anymore for various reasons.

As a result, we are essentially breeding NEETs.

Combine this with the fact that the ratio of women to men in college is what it is, and the fact that more women are simply dating one another now. Neither of these things are inherently a problem, but keep in mind how extraordinarily rare it is for college-educated women to "date down" with men.

More and more people are becoming fully credentialized and productive members of society without ever really participating in it before, in some cases because they have been told it's irresponsibly decadent for them to try.

[Person Man]

I do think there could be a reporting bias here, as well as sex differences in perception of what it means to be "in a relationship" (perhaps straight women are more likely to say in a survey they are in a relationship after a date or two, while straight men won't say that in a survey until much later).

This argument has shown up a couple of times in this thread, it's possible this explains some of the discrepancy (on the other hand it's also possible that the discrepancy goes the other way). But it's not super useful in this discussion unless there's a reason why this behavior would change differently between the genders over time. It does nothing to explain why we'd see relationship status in men declining over time.

Expansion of ambiguous relationships over time as getting married at 24 has become more and more unusual?

I have to think though that a large part of the trend of people not getting married at 24 is driven by women, particularly women trying to prioritizing careers over relationships. This is fine and totally makes sense for them to want to do in 2023, but in this case I have to think that that women would be driving changes in the ambiguity trend more than men.

And for context, I'm a man who broke up with a long-term girlfriend at 24 because we had two incompatible aspirational career trajectories, then entered a dating scene full of women who did not want to commit to relationships of any kind. From the very limited sample size of my circles, men want security in their relationships and the women want to stay uncommitted.

So it’s not just me who was made to feel like the “woman” in the past? (They hook up and ghost you)
It was mostly ambitious women who did this and each time, they probably learned immediately after that I was a klutz or a slob. I mean, there are guys in their 30s and 40s who are athletic and 6 feet tall, make 6 figures, are single for a reason, and are happy to “casually date”.

[lfromnj]

One thing to remember is that men are just born more often. IIRC the ratio at birth is 1.05 to 1 even in fully developed countries. This slowly goes down because young men are idiots but its not till the late 40's or 50's that it evens out and reverses.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

I do think you are on to something here, but it goes both ways. Men on the right tend to hold the exact opposite view, that economic misfortune is due to individual weakness and that romantic misfortune for males is due to feminism running amok (ie structural forces).

Everybody would benefit from a more nuanced perspective.

I mean yes that's true, but also, men (and women) on the right typically apply the individualist perspective that people are often responsible for their own failings as a general rule. The difference is that many on the left are willing to selectively abandon this principle when talking about perceived outgroups, e.g., single men in this case, whereas they are much less likely to take that view for members of a perceived ingroup.

So it’s not just me who was made to feel like the “woman” in the past? (They hook up and ghost you)
It was mostly ambitious women who did this and each time, they probably learned immediately after that I was a klutz or a slob. I mean, there are guys in their 30s and 40s who are athletic and 6 feet tall, make 6 figures, are single for a reason, and are happy to “casually date”.

Speaking for myself, I think it's a mix of supply vs demand and the perception of multiple options that dating app culture creates. Heterosexual online dating has an excess of men chasing a shortage of women, and the consistent availability of (and, honestly, gamification and commodification of) potential partners on the apps makes it much easier for women to adopt a "wait and see" approach where they can avoid commitment in the hopes of a more attractive man coming along. The typical man on the other hand realizes opportunities are more scarce and that he's engaged in much more consistent competition, so the incentive to partner up is going to be stronger.

I'd be really weary of trying to attribute it to any differences in socialization, gender roles, or even innate biological differences. There might be some of all of those but I think you'd see the gender roles here switch if there was an excess of women chasing too few men on dating apps.

[coloradocowboi]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

I do think you are on to something here, but it goes both ways. Men on the right tend to hold the exact opposite view, that economic misfortune is due to individual weakness and that romantic misfortune for males is due to feminism running amok (ie structural forces).

Everybody would benefit from a more nuanced perspective.

As a gay dude, I have had to work twice as hard to fit in. I've had to really invest in my public appearance to get jobs and succeed in our heteronormative society. So, I'm actually fine ignoring the plight of people who vote against my rights when their problem is that they are fat, lazy, unwilling to listen to the women they are trying to woo, and meanwhile calling everyone around them "victims" for finally standing up and taking what is ours.

For a single gay guy to get laid in Los Angeles, you have to go to the gym almost daily, take care of your hair and nails, keep an expensive updated wardrobe, make decent money and hold a good job, post regularly on social media and post high caliber photos... The competitive pressure is insane! And many gay guys don't succeed and are as lonely as any straight incel.

But you don't hear about their plight or struggle, arguably made much worse by contending with the other incels' insistence on voting in anti-LGBTQ fascists. Straight guys need to decide what it's gonna be: either victim culture is bad and you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or we embark on building a sympathy society. But the cognitive dissonance is really too much for me rn. I'll take pity on incels when they stop shooting up grocery stores and voting in fascists

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

I do think you are on to something here, but it goes both ways. Men on the right tend to hold the exact opposite view, that economic misfortune is due to individual weakness and that romantic misfortune for males is due to feminism running amok (ie structural forces).

Everybody would benefit from a more nuanced perspective.

As a gay dude, I have had to work twice as hard to fit in. I've had to really invest in my public appearance to get jobs and succeed in our heteronormative society. So, I'm actually fine ignoring the plight of people who vote against my rights when their problem is that they are fat, lazy, unwilling to listen to the women they are trying to woo, and meanwhile calling everyone around them "victims" for finally standing up and taking what is ours.

For a single gay guy to get laid in Los Angeles, you have to go to the gym almost daily, take care of your hair and nails, keep an expensive updated wardrobe, make decent money and hold a good job, post regularly on social media and post high caliber photos... The competitive pressure is insane! And many gay guys don't succeed and are as lonely as any straight incel.

But you don't hear about their plight or struggle, arguably made much worse by contending with the other incels' insistence on voting in anti-LGBTQ fascists. Straight guys need to decide what it's gonna be: either victim culture is bad and you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or we embark on building a sympathy society. But the cognitive dissonance is really too much for me rn. I'll take pity on incels when they stop shooting up grocery stores and voting in fascists

I'm sorry for your personal struggles but otherwise this is an utterly ghastly and hateful post.

It's idiotic that society pretends that every man who is getting laid less than he wants is an anti-LGBT fascist steeped in Incel ideology. People just want to have sex or, more precisely, people want to feel validated and desirable. This is true of heterosexual men and it's also true of heterosexual women, homosexual men and women, non-binary people, old people, etc.

The Incel movement is reprehensible and holds a worldview that's demonstrably wrong but, also, it's a small subset of men and it's disproportionately men with some form of social disability or associated with mental illness. The term has essentially become a slur to describe any single-but-looking (white) man who is unhappy with their dating life. These aren't nearly the same thing, and it's disturbing that people try to project a minor ideology onto a massive subset of the population whose primary shared characteristic is a sense of loneliness and lack of self-worth or respect. Ironically it's likely to have the exact opposite effect by further stigmatizing, shaming, and alienating men in a way that makes them receptive to niche ideologies like Incelism.

[BlueSwan]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

I do think you are on to something here, but it goes both ways. Men on the right tend to hold the exact opposite view, that economic misfortune is due to individual weakness and that romantic misfortune for males is due to feminism running amok (ie structural forces).

Everybody would benefit from a more nuanced perspective.

As a gay dude, I have had to work twice as hard to fit in. I've had to really invest in my public appearance to get jobs and succeed in our heteronormative society. So, I'm actually fine ignoring the plight of people who vote against my rights when their problem is that they are fat, lazy, unwilling to listen to the women they are trying to woo, and meanwhile calling everyone around them "victims" for finally standing up and taking what is ours.

For a single gay guy to get laid in Los Angeles, you have to go to the gym almost daily, take care of your hair and nails, keep an expensive updated wardrobe, make decent money and hold a good job, post regularly on social media and post high caliber photos... The competitive pressure is insane! And many gay guys don't succeed and are as lonely as any straight incel.

But you don't hear about their plight or struggle, arguably made much worse by contending with the other incels' insistence on voting in anti-LGBTQ fascists. Straight guys need to decide what it's gonna be: either victim culture is bad and you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or we embark on building a sympathy society. But the cognitive dissonance is really too much for me rn. I'll take pity on incels when they stop shooting up grocery stores and voting in fascists

I'm sorry for your personal struggles but otherwise this is an utterly ghastly and hateful post.

It's idiotic that society pretends that every man who is getting laid less than he wants is an anti-LGBT fascist steeped in Incel ideology. People just want to have sex or, more precisely, people want to feel validated and desirable. This is true of heterosexual men and it's also true of heterosexual women, homosexual men and women, non-binary people, old people, etc.

The Incel movement is reprehensible and holds a worldview that's demonstrably wrong but, also, it's a small subset of men and it's disproportionately men with some form of social disability or associated with mental illness. The term has essentially become a slur to describe any single-but-looking (white) man who is unhappy with their dating life. These aren't nearly the same thing, and it's disturbing that people try to project a minor ideology onto a massive subset of the population whose primary shared characteristic is a sense of loneliness and lack of self-worth or respect. Ironically it's likely to have the exact opposite effect by further stigmatizing, shaming, and alienating men in a way that makes them receptive to niche ideologies like Incelism.

Nailed it.

[Horus]

Ironic how leftists are using the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps' Paul Ryan line to mock the disadvantaged.

I do think you are on to something here, but it goes both ways. Men on the right tend to hold the exact opposite view, that economic misfortune is due to individual weakness and that romantic misfortune for males is due to feminism running amok (ie structural forces).

Everybody would benefit from a more nuanced perspective.

For a single gay guy to get laid in Los Angeles, you have to go to the gym almost daily, take care of your hair and nails, keep an expensive updated wardrobe, make decent money and hold a good job, post regularly on social media and post high caliber photos... The competitive pressure is insane! And many gay guys don't succeed and are as lonely as any straight incel.

This isn't true at all. Maybe if you literally live in Beverly Hills and/or are only attracted to cookie cutter guys who all bought the same pecs and noses from the moderately shady plastic surgeon on La Cienega, but it certainly isn't my experience when I visit...

And the rest of your post is just victim blaming, right wing establishment pull yourself up your bootstraps nonsense not worth quoting. Do better.

[VBM]

They haven't enough time to go out and have sex. They are too busy bitching and whining all day on youtube about Woke Marvel, M-She-U, Brie Larson, Kelly-Marie Tran, She-Hulk, the 2016 Ghostbusters, etc.

I find it funny that Ferguson97 thinks it’s ridiculous for people to claim that his wing of the Democratic Party hates men, but he then goes on to recommend a post which insinuates that a majority of 18-29 year old men are sexist incels

[Ferguson97]

They haven't enough time to go out and have sex. They are too busy bitching and whining all day on youtube about Woke Marvel, M-She-U, Brie Larson, Kelly-Marie Tran, She-Hulk, the 2016 Ghostbusters, etc.

I find it funny that Ferguson97 thinks it’s ridiculous for people to claim that his wing of the Democratic Party hates men, but he then goes on to recommend a post which insinuates that a majority of 18-29 year old men are sexist incels

If you can't tell that LL's post was a joke, then I really don't know what to say here.

[Mr. Smith]

They haven't enough time to go out and have sex. They are too busy bitching and whining all day on youtube about Woke Marvel, M-She-U, Brie Larson, Kelly-Marie Tran, She-Hulk, the 2016 Ghostbusters, etc.

I find it funny that Ferguson97 thinks it’s ridiculous for people to claim that his wing of the Democratic Party hates men, but he then goes on to recommend a post which insinuates that a majority of 18-29 year old men are sexist incels

If you can't tell that LL's post was a joke, then I really don't know what to say here.

Trump was just joking most of the time too.

#TakeLLSeriouslyNotLiterally

[VBM]

They haven't enough time to go out and have sex. They are too busy bitching and whining all day on youtube about Woke Marvel, M-She-U, Brie Larson, Kelly-Marie Tran, She-Hulk, the 2016 Ghostbusters, etc.

I find it funny that Ferguson97 thinks it’s ridiculous for people to claim that his wing of the Democratic Party hates men, but he then goes on to recommend a post which insinuates that a majority of 18-29 year old men are sexist incels

If you can't tell that LL's post was a joke, then I really don't know what to say here.

I don’t see why it being a joke is relevant. It’s still expressing the sentiment that these 63% of men are probably sexist incels

[It’s so Joever]

I wonder how much of the rise of this also could be some cultural divide. I do think every man should at least try to be a member of a predominantly female friend group, and Vice versa at some point, because it’s very revealing the different worlds we live in.