A WP guide to getting women, by women.

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Thats some hard evidence right there.

LIKE I SAID:

There is a valid reason why women want a man who can support himself. And that reason is so they have the option of maternity leave so they can have kids. It really is that simple.

That graph shows results for both sexes, not just women. So? It's not a surprise that people will get more messages if the earn more, it's just that, in that case, they are more attracted to the money than the person.

Actually, maternity leave is not the reason for wanting a man who can support himself. Most places of work that I know of actually offer the option of paid maternity leave, so they will still get paid even while on maternity leave and that's what feminists have always lobbied for.

The reason why people want a partner who can support themselves is so that they don't have to work to support them and this goes for both sexes. A few generations ago, married women traditionally didn't work and men worked to support their wives but now that women do work, even men want women who can support themselves because it takes the pressure off having to support them. That's very different from what I said about worrying about a potential partners income though because it's possible to care about whether a potential partner can support himself/herself but not worry about the exact income that they earn.

It clearly says "How many messages a man gets"

You and I live in different countries, my friend. Did it occur to you that having and raising kids actually costs A LOT of money? That's one of the reason why working moms are now more common than stay-at-home moms here in the USofA: Because the Mr. doesn't earn enough money to support the both woman and the children! This is precisely why women started entering the work force is droves starting in the 1980s because families with children need more than 1 breadwinner to make ends meet. I did not say that it's important to all or even most women that a man make a lot of money, but I did state very clearly that an inability to support yourself if you are man is a dealbreaker for the vast majority of women because that means that if she has kids with him, she will have to be the sole breadwinner and if she either loses her job(job security in the US is non-existent in case you haven't been paying attention)or her income alone cannot support the family then he can help make ends meet.

And furthermore, your anecdotes about the places you work don't actually correspond with the reality of maternity leave policyin the US

My ex, who was knocked up at the time, worked for a company that did not give paid maternity leave until its employees had worked there for at least 1 year. And under federal law, only 12 weeks of maternity leave are required legally by employers. A lot of women strongly prefer to take an an entire year off as most work places do not allow their female employees to bring infants and children to work; nor do they necessarily offer free daycare.

I have trouble in accessing their page.
but it says:
his age, his income. And the title "How many messages a Man gets by Age & Income" - and gays are minority of any population.

Jono, it's nice to be egalitarian, everyone should be, but also....don't be a naive denier.


I am pretty sure the equivalent one for men would be a mosaic mess, men don't care as much in partner's income.

As a fellow U.S. person and also a woman who took paid maternity leave after my daughter was born(which it took me >year to accrue, as you said), you are absolutely right. This doesn't negate what Jono said about women being wary of supporting a man. Rather, it compounds it. Unless a woman is an extreme high earner, getting into a situation where she is supporting both herself and a man means either she can't have children with him or he must be a Stay-At-Home-Dad.

Ok, so what about Stay At Home Dads? Here's where cultural factors come into play. Since there is not a long cultural tradition of men being the primary caretakers of their children, it generally only comes up in a special situation. And that special situation is that the man has lost his job and the woman hasn't. Of the precisely 3 men I know who do this, all 3 lost their jobs but their wives didn't. There are probably some couples out there (maybe even on WP) who planned from the start for the man to be the primary caretaker, but they aren't numerous enough to show up in anybody's statistics.

Why wouldn't women embrace a cultural change that made men just as likely to be the primary caretaker as women? Some would. But for many, there is the wariness that a "slacker" man (as opposed to an unfortunately laid off man) would decide this just wasn't the life for him after all and leave, leaving her with the baby. Any man could do that, and many have, but at least the laid off man (laid off during, not prior to the relationship) has shown a sense of responsibility- at least to his job- that the un or under employed man hasn't and so there is nothing by which to gauge any future sense of responsibility.

This would all be a moot point with women who strongly don't want children (as opposed to those who don't children right this minute but want to keep future options open) but these women are also in such a minority as to not affect the statistics.

I disagree with the "PUA rubbish" characterization. I read "The Game" by Neil Straus, and watched some PUA videos on youtube when I left wife 1.0.
I learned lots of ways to get more comfortable around women. Suggestions like going up to a woman in public and asking for a recommendation for where to buy a good-looking men's suit helped reduce my nervousness with approaching women. Learning how to read body language (something that is intuitive to men) helped me recognize when women I meet in public are interested in me.

I think it also helps that when you're dating as an adult that it doesn't matter if you were the high-school quarterback or not. I think the cocky cool guy attitude might work with teenage girls but not adult women.

I agree with your "be yourself" recommendation. For starters, I find fake people repulsive, so pretending to be someone I'm not is almost impossible for me. Aspies are known for their altruisim and honesty, something I've found is almost rare in NT men. I was surprised to find out how common it is for NT men to justify "little" lies, and stealing from their employer. I've even met a couple men who's definition of cheating is drastically different than their wife's. An honest an trustworthy man, Aspie or not, is attractive to many women.

No Janissy, there's a bigger reason why many, especially women wouldn't embrace this cultural change: Women are way more likely to be traditionalists and conservatives (there are many legacy cultural reasons for that)- there's a lot of social research showing that the gender gap in religiosity is universal despite being excluded from leadership in the organized religions - women are the holders of customs, practices and generally care way more than men about those things. And it has been an obvious observation, a very common Christian Arab saying: "Prayers is for women" -because there was always a higher female attendance to church - statistics on atheists and antagonists showing that the majority of those are males too.


And what the traditional/conservative/religious women hate the most? Men who are "like women", who have any slight "resemblance to women", - and the most hated: the married men who don't work regardless of the reason, because in being so they resemble too much to Housewives, hence women - it's an inter-sexism from women against women, and against men who are being "associated to women" in any form therefore "lowering their status" to women (in their views).

Talk about the Stay At Home Dad concept in front of any conservative woman, it would fall like something alien on her ears and you would see an expression of disgust on her face and express mockery of the concept.

I think you have it right when it comes to respect. My wife has little interest in technology, and I have little interest in her field of work. We have respect for each other, and have enough things besides sex that we both enjoy so that the relationship is comfortable and secure. She's not bothered that I think some of her favorite TV shows are stupid, and I'm not bothered that she doesn't care what my new oscilloscope can do.

She's not stuck on some fairy tale that we need to be soul mates that complete each other. When one or both partners need the other, it's not a healthy attachment. When you make a conscious choice to be with another person because of mutual trust, respect, and honesty, it is a healthy attachment.

I also think it's a bit hypocritical for women to complain about men who are just trying to get laid. I only talked to 5 or 6 women when I was dating (2 of which lead to actual dates), and one of them that I didn't end up going out with was just looking for a f*ck when her boyfriend was away.

Wife 2.0's casual attitude toward sex was a big surprise to me after all the drama that was wife 1.0. Women who withhold sex as a way to control men should be avoided, as should women who think the only way to attract a man is with sex.

And yes, like you've said, the first thought they came to their mind is that the Stay at home Dad is in reality a slacker lazy man, however this prejudice never extends to moms though, even thought surely there are many 'housewives' (non-employed moms) who are slacker and lazy too and they chose this lifestyle being they are so: You see them a lot in the middle-high to rich class, the nonworking wives of those wealthy men often hand 100% of chores and the 90% of the most difficult and dirty child-bearing tasks to maids, the 10% include the fun stuff like activities with the child and organizing impressive birthdays/photo-shooting/whatever , child has learning difficulties? Easy, hire a private teacher.
My mother is a math teacher and she has capitalized from such families for teaching the same struggling children like 10 years in a row, and she told me all about how their moms live and do, and the young of them are often more attached to their maids than to their moms - there's a world of them.

When their children are in school, they spend all their day with their likes jogging in parks, or working out in gyms or drinking coffee together and gossiping; the better ones of them might do 'social' and 'humanitarian' activities once in a while to be aired on tv shining her name (and often financed by their husbands).

Yet those are viewed as housewives.

Also you hear many cases of neglecting and horrible moms, especially here on WP for some reason , it's very noticeable here actually that many members have poor relation with their parents especially their moms to the point that I am starting to rethink about the long dead refrigerator moms' theory of autism as one of the possible environmental triggers.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 19 Jan 2015, 3:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Also true. There are some wildly different sub-demographics of women and what appeals to one group will be considered just awful to other groups. The U.S. is so large and demographically diverse that these groups can even geographically separate themselves and have to a great extent, especially recently. That separation has come to be called Red State/Blue State in the U.S. It's political but also applies to culture. There's a reason why my personal experience includes 3 stay at home dads but there are also many women who would be disgusted at the thought-I just don't know any of them and may not even live 100 miles from any of them.

I should have qualified but didn't that what I said does not apply to traditional/conservative/religious women. It's a demographic I hear about but don't live among. The U.S. is so large that it's easy to do that- select to a fine grain what demographic you want to live in.

That's another demographic I've heard about but never actually spent any time with.

For dating advice to actually be helpful, it probably needs to be a lot more culture and demographic specific.

It just occurred to me that internet dating might be skewing things weirdly. When you date only the people who are in your immediate surroundings- friend of a friend, met at a party etc, you will be in the same culture and demographic (usually). The conservatives have their social circles and the liberals have their different ones and the religious people have their and the non-religious people have theirs and so on. On the internet it all gets flattened and you have to try to pick out these details from a profile. The advice to appeal to a religious and conservative girl is very different from the advice to appeal to a "spiritual but not religious" liberal girl.

Some of it is universal. Instinctive human mating behaviors are universal. There's lots of examples of how you don't even need to be able to speak the same language. If you understand the body language, that's enough.