The Economics of Dating

In America, dating is an extremely important thing. Love and the transcendent feeling it can give individuals is big business in the Western world and is one of the only means by which Western man has to garner an ephemeral feeling, a sense of breaking through the mundanity of one’s banal life. Western man doesn’t go and find bliss at the feet of some deity, that’s not our style, instead Westerners, or more particularly, Americans find their sense of solace in companionship and in romantic love. I personally believe that all love is self-love, and subsequently all hate is self-hate, this being that westerners project onto another and look for in another that which we wish to celebrate and nourish in ourselves. So, Americans’ sense of transcendental bliss and happiness comes from romantic relationships.

Yet, America is a country that is culturally ensconced in the western, materialistic, mechanistic world that is completely devoid of a system of deriving a sense of transcendental love and bliss from “spirit.” Therefore, when we seek and want more from life, we seek the love of another. And for me, this is where the problem begins. Since America is a completely materialistic world, our culture, instead of shifting to meek a higher standard, our culture takes love and shifts and morphs it to fit into our culture. Since Americans love material and money, we reduce love and dating to its most base level—creating an economy of dating where completely superficial and base level things are considered first and what is on the inside is considered last.

The old paradigm has fallen away. 70 to 50 years ago the gender roles were much more rigid and pervasive while the social construction of what was proper for each gender was more concrete. Men were considered providers and protectors while women were simply home makers, child raisers and cooks. The man went out to work and brought home the bacon. He found a job; he made money and then he bought a house. His direct goal in life, his purpose essentially, was to achieve financial security; that was a little easier in the middle of the last century. In the 1950s, an uneducated man could find a job in factory which allowed him to support a family and earn a living wage. He didn’t need the woman he married to work; she could stay home while he could be the sole provider. The expectations were solid and rigid but were clear and direct. Mr. Man was expected to be financially stable, provide financially for his family and fit the bill and float the boat of dating. The courting process involved him showing how much he could meet these expectations and in return he expected to be rewarded for it. A man with money was rewarded with female attention, being chosen, and had someone to cater to his dietary needs, iron his shirts and generally be his helpmate and assistant—handling things around the home that he didn’t need to worry about. Mr. Man went out and worked 40 hours and when he returned his dinner was cooked, on the table, and he might even be given a stiff drink afterwards. Upon waking the next morning, his shirts were ironed, his breakfast was cooked, and he simply had to pour his cup of coffee, stuff his face and be off to work.

While Mr. Man is working and making the all-desired currency that a capitalist society requires you to have, Miss Lady has a completely different set of expectations. While it is preferential that Mr. Man be handsome, it is absolutely a requirement for Miss Lady to be beautiful. Her beauty is what she traded in for his financial stability. She was also expected to be young, fit, have a pleasant personality and defer to men. In the past, in exchange for being a homemaker and provided for she was expected to cook, clean and take 100% responsibility of raising the children and doing household chores. If she were lucky, she wouldn’t have to take out the trash because that was a man’s job, it involved dirty stuff, that’s for men. On top of this, Mr. Man wouldn’t want to just be fed and have clean shirts, he also needed to be sexed—therefore Miss Lady was expected to fulfill that need as well and as long as he alone was fulfilled, all was good. I hate to say it, but Miss Lady often went into the grave not even having the slightest cognizance of what an orgasm felt like. In return, she was provided for and never had to pull out her wallet for anything—she was protected, and she had stability for her and her children.

All of this worked as long as each gender knew and played their part. On top of that, the patriarchal social structure created economic disparity between the two genders. Women were often barred from many jobs and when and where they did work, they did so as assistants in supporting positions. Patriarchal societies have always seen women as helpmates, not as equals who can and should shoulder an equal burden. The social order was rigid, and marriage worked because men were expected to provide and protect and the providing role was guaranteed because women were absolutely not going to bring in the same income as her husband and until the early 1970s women couldn’t even open a bank account. If she wanted a new dress, she had to ask him for the money to buy it.

Societal change has complicated all of this. Women now work, many earning more than many men, now have their bank accounts and wouldn’t have it any other way. Particularly, after watching grandma beg for dress money, the modern woman will simply not allow a man to have such control over her and her ability to fulfill her own whims when and how she pleases. Yet, the scenario is still one of a tokenized economy, where each gender has tokens that are valued by the other gender and while not all tokens have equal value, they can be traded in for the someone else’s attention. The players positions have changed yet the economic currency has not. Still, men’s tokens include the age-old financial stability, providence and protection, which are supplemented by more modern tokens such as height, physique, a six-pack and confidence. Once these are in place, then his attributes like kindness, being a good listener and empathy are taken into consideration. These are traded in for the female tokens which tend to be beauty, health, youth and sexuality. Once these are in place then her more important attributes that make her a good human being are taken into consideration.

Of course, by now, you have figured out that all of this is incredibly superficial. We have reduced human beings worth to skin-level attributes and to that which is on the surface, too often ignoring what is inside even though that is what truly counts. All too often men and women are trading in their tokens and attracting partners that are perfect for them on paper only to find out that regardless of the number of tokens, one human being isn’t compatible with the other human being because you’re not a good fit for each other based on who you are. Also, our insistence on the importance of our tokens inhibits us from developing the inner traits. So, he is a great provider and has a great salary because that expectation was drilled into him from the beginning but listening, empathy and emotional intelligence are completely lacking because that was never a societal value for men. She is beautiful and sexy, but her entire idea of relationships is based on the Disney movies she watched as a girl, thus her expectations of you are completely unrealistic and once you don’t match up to the idealized knight in shining armor in her head, you’re done. On top of that, when it doesn’t work out divorce often means financial ruin for a man that often takes a long time for men to recoup from. For her, her ignoring the person on the inside and not checking his character makes her vulnerable to abuse, physical, emotional and verbal as well as cheating and toxic behavior.

This tower of untruth has now collapsed. Now, we kick the rocks and forage through the rubble. Men are now becoming disillusioned with dating and marriage, now more aware that for many, they will only ever be valued for their financial worth. Many men now see that if you didn’t have that job, that career or that income she wouldn’t be with you. Many women are simply sick and tired of only being valued for their bodies and being seen as a quick fix for sex and then thrown away. Both sexes want it all to be the other’s fault and neither want to fix themselves to fix the problem. To add, while America is infrastructurally a tier one nation, in terms of social development we are 3rd tier. This puts the value of money and its accumulation at a premium. You must have a 6-figure income in America because if you don’t you can’t actually afford a high quality of life. With gender wage inequality being so entrenched, women are forced into strict hypergamy where they only marry and date on their level or up, being that attaching themselves to a man is one of the prime methods for obtaining a higher quality of life. These new economic realities are not making the single provider model realistic anymore. Nowadays and in this economy one income isn’t enough, you need two, especially if you want to have children. With this in mind, gender egalitarianism is going to become a must to prevent some type of gender war. Culturally, we must teach and raise the next generation to value more than just what is on the surface, but in order to do this we need to create an economic reality where the wages match the cost of living. But, more importantly, we need to instill in both genders from a young age the values that we now know are important for relationships to work and healthy families to be created—we know that men just being providers but toxic and insensitive isn’t working while we know that women being beautiful but entitled, selfish and vapid also isn’t working. We, as a society need to determine the values that are actually of value and then instill those into the youth. We can raise men who lack what is missing in men, we can raise girls to be the women that are a better fit for those men. Our divorce rate is over 50% because we are marrying for the wrong reasons. What we’re doing now isn’t working but the beautiful thing is that in the midst of it not working we can audaciously work on it, do better, teach better to the youth and work it out.