# The Male Inequality Problem **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 27, 2025, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440 "2025-09-27T21:57:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 58
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2026, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1142 "2026-07-09T20:50:44Z")
What is this “phone call” of which you speak? It’s 100% standard nowadays to exchange text messages at the end of random meetup. Which means both parties have a written record of the other’s text number and usually name. e.g. I’ll text “Hi this is Lsl Guy” to her and she’ll respond “Hi. This is Lady Gray”. Which person types their number first into the other’s phone is luck of the draw. IOW, whoever whips theirs out faster. And yes, somebody might call somebody at some future date, but far more likely they’ll be texting each other first. And I say this a guy over 65 meeting and dating women over 65. I have to assume the youngsters do something sorta similar but probably via an app more advanced than ordinary txt. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2026, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1143 "2026-07-09T20:55:52Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > It’s 100% standard nowadays to exchange text messages at the end of random meetup. Sure, now, but some of us were exiled to relationship Siberia since back in the Stone Age. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2026, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1144 "2026-07-09T21:26:06Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > It’s 100% standard nowadays to exchange text messages at the end of random meetup. Which means both parties have a written record of the other’s text number What if one of you doesn’t want to be contacted by the other? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2026, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1145 "2026-07-09T21:41:11Z")
If not, don’t agree to the number exchange. As the man, I see some evidence of women agreeing to a number exchange they’re not real excited about to avoid a potentially unpleasant reaction, then ignoring or blocking the number later once they’re alone. Since blocking is absolute & anonymous, it doesn’t inconvenience e.g. Jane to have given her number to a bunch of e.g. Johns she’s then blocked. My current GF reports having done that a few times to guys she was unsure how they’d take “No, I don’t want to give you my number”. Modern meeting strangers & first dating is weird. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2026, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1146 "2026-07-09T23:12:44Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Modern meeting strangers & first dating is weird. Glad my kids are paired off and not having to deal with it. They handled it pretty well. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2026, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1147 "2026-07-09T23:38:08Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Since blocking is absolute & anonymous, it doesn’t inconvenience e.g. Jane to have given her number to a bunch of e.g. Johns she’s then blocked Right, I wasn’t thinking of the blocking function. And knowing the number of a cell phone doesn’t give away anything about the owner’s location; at least, not to the casual user. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2026, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1148 "2026-07-10T00:13:23Z")
Well, it tells you approximately where the person probably lived in 1990. 😆 ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2026, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1149 "2026-07-10T00:35:16Z")
Give or take 15 years: > **[Cell Number](https://xkcd.com/1129/)** ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2026, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1150 "2026-07-10T00:51:42Z")
I had the same thought. 😁 ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1151 "2026-07-12T02:12:32Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > Seconded. With a side of recognizing that **single people are allowed to be happy** , and you shouldn’t let the experience of missing out on one of the (potentially) great blessings of life permanently ruin all the other great blessings of life for you. > > Yes indeed. And not only is that true, but I think it’s essential for any sort of successful reconciliation to accepting that one might not find a partner. Who, after all, wants to reconcile to being miserable all of their life? No one is preventing single people from being happy. But I think it’s hard to be happy if a person finds themself cut off from love, affection, or romantic partnership. Single people are often unhappy because they feel alone and excluded. Then again, that can easily happen in a marriage over time too. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1152 "2026-07-12T02:43:53Z")
Single people can have love and affection. People without romantic partners often have friends and family, you know. In fact, they routinely do. And it’s not that uncommon for single people to have romance, too. My MIL never married after divorcing my FIL, but she was usually dating someone. Heck, some of my single polyamorous friends are usually dating a few people. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1153 "2026-07-12T02:49:39Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > No one is preventing single people from being happy. But I think it’s hard to be happy if a person finds themself cut off from love, affection, or romantic partnership. Single people are often unhappy because they feel alone and excluded. Sure, but I think some of that is more self-inflicted than it needs to be. A good, joyful, fulfilling permanent companionate partnership may be the gold standard of love and affection, but it ought not to be regarded as a mandatory minimum for happiness and human connection. Nobody is owed or guaranteed a sexual or romantic relationship, just as nobody is owed or guaranteed good looks or wealth. To my mind, that means that anybody who really buys into the notion that they absolutely **can’t** be happy without those things is setting themselves up for unnecessary misery and/or desperation. That’s what I mean by single people being “allowed to be happy”: i.e., not falling for the assumption that your life just **can’t** be happy if you’re not partnered. _Pace_ your observation, I think that there are a lot of conformist cliches and assumptions that **are** in fact unnecessarily preventing a lot of single people from being happy. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m dismissing the reality that a lot of single people not unreasonably feel that being well partnered would be happier for them than being single. Nothing at all wrong with that. But if they’re feeling that a partnership—-which, again, is partly a luck of the draw thing and never guaranteed—-is so crucial that they literally can’t be happy without one…well, talk about making the best the enemy of the good, eh? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1154 "2026-07-12T03:01:37Z")
And you really don’t need one perfect partner who fulfills all your emotional needs. This is a point often made by my polyamorous friends, but it’s not just true of sex, it’s true of other human connections. I think most people do need emotional partners to be happy, but some emotional needs can be met by pets, others by poker buddies, others by friendly neighbors, others by co-workers… Parents and siblings and children and niblings are also valuable emotional resources, of course. Single people who invest in many emotional connections are in some ways better off than married people who put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. When something goes wrong in one part of their emotional landscape, whether it be a fight or a death, they have other resources to draw on. Of course, each connection takes time and effort to maintain. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1155 "2026-07-12T14:00:59Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > > [@msmith537](#): > > > > No one is preventing single people from being happy. But I think it’s hard to be happy if a person finds themself cut off from love, affection, or romantic partnership. Single people are often unhappy because they feel alone and excluded. > > Sure, but I think some of that is more self-inflicted than it needs to be Yeah. You can sit there thinking how miserable you are because you don’t have a partner. Or you can think about how, because you don’t have a partner, you can hang out with who you please, when you please, doing what you please, without having to coordinate with a partner’s schedule, taste in activities, and taste in companionship. The first way of thinking will leave you alone and isolated. The second one won’t — and will let you be solitary when you need it, which a lot of people do. (Some partners will also ungrudgingly allow solitary time. But it’s one of the things that reduces your potential pool.) > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I think most people do need emotional partners to be happy, but some emotional needs can be met by pets, others by poker buddies, others by friendly neighbors, others by co-workers… Parents and siblings and children and niblings are also valuable emotional resources, of course. > > Single people who invest in many emotional connections are in some ways better off than married people who put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. When something goes wrong in one part of their emotional landscape, whether it be a fight or a death, they have other resources to draw on. > > Of course, each connection takes time and effort to maintain. All of this is true. And some people lose close friendships, because they accept a partner who either objects to them in principle, or just doesn’t like the particular friend. Again, partnerships don’t have to be like that — but a lot of them are. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2026, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1156 "2026-07-12T21:56:06Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Sure, but I think some of that is more self-inflicted than it needs to be. A good, joyful, fulfilling permanent companionate partnership may be the gold standard of love and affection, but it ought not to be regarded as a mandatory minimum for happiness and human connection. > > Nobody is owed or guaranteed a sexual or romantic relationship, just as nobody is owed or guaranteed good looks or wealth. To my mind, that means that anybody who really buys into the notion that they absolutely **can’t** be happy without those things is setting themselves up for unnecessary misery and/or desperation. All true but I guess I’m thinking more broadly in that compared to when I was a young man decades ago, men (and women) seem to be having challenges finding happiness and connections at many levels. Not only are they having trouble finding romantic partners, let alone wives. In many cases they seem to experience challenges making friends in general. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > Single people who invest in many emotional connections are in some ways better off than married people who put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. When something goes wrong in one part of their emotional landscape, whether it be a fight or a death, they have other resources to draw on. I think maybe marriage wasn’t as “all your emotional eggs in one basket” as much as it might be now. But my sense was back in they day, people got married and often remained relatively close to home. They had their friends and neighbors in the community. This might be specific to the NYC/NJ metro area, but it feels like raising kids is more like a full time job on top of two full time jobs. The kids sports are less of a community event where parents get together to socialize and cheer on their kids and more like this hyper-competitive contest to build resumes for college or whatever. I feel we have not so much a community of people we spend time with as a loose network of acquaintances whose schedules sometimes align. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2026, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1157 "2026-07-13T03:07:02Z")
I had kids in NYC, for what it’s worth, and there were several years when my husband and i did nothing except work and child rearing. I guess we sometimes had dinner with his math department, and i did the crossword puzzle and drank coffee every morning with a work friend (whom I’ve since visited 3 times in Germany) but yeah, our other social connections were thin and strained. That was only about 10 years, though. I think some people have always been more “couple-y” and others had more varied social relationships. My mother had a friend who was a stray at home wife. You’d think that would have given her time to do stuff with other people, and i guess she _was_ friend with my mom. But my mom played bridge with her once a month, and told me that was her friend’s only evening-without-husband each month. For whatever reason, the two of them had decided to only spend one evening a month apart. That seems unhealthy to me, honestly, but i guess it suited them. > [@msmith537](#): > > Not only are they having trouble finding romantic partners, let alone wives. In many cases they seem to experience challenges making friends in general. You aren’t the only person to have commented on that problem, for sure. > **[Bowling Alone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone)** > > Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital" in the Journal of Democracy. Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that t... ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2026, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1158 "2026-07-13T08:19:29Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > You aren’t the only person to have commented on that problem, for sure. > > [Bowling Alone - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone) And that book was published in 2000. I imagine that social media and on-demand streaming services have made things even worse. I’ll have to see if I can find some formal research, but it seems like the internet and social media itself is reinforcing the idea that people should be alone. I’ve seen a number of people comment how their feeds are constantly awash with articles and postings urging people to “cut ties with toxic friends/coworkers/family” or romanticizing a life of solitude (particularly for men). My theory is that this isolation is actually harder for men than women. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1159 "2026-07-13T12:23:23Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > My theory is that this isolation is actually harder for men than women. I think it’s commonly assumed that women are, on average, better at maintaining non-romantic social connections than men. I think that’s one of the explanations given for why men who are widowed have a somewhat larger mortality jump than women who are. This shows > In neighborhoods with a low concentration of widowed individuals, widowhood increased the odds of death for men by 22% and for women by 17%, compared to 17% for men, and 15% for women in neighborhoods with a high concentration of widowed individuals. > **[Widowhood and mortality among the elderly: The modifying role of neighborhood...](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2790530/)** > > The effect of death of a spouse on the mortality of the survivor (the “widowhood effect”) is well-established. We investigated how the effect of widowhood on mortality depends on the neighborhood concentration of widowed individuals in the United ... The effect varies a lot based on cause of death. People whose spouse dies of Alzheimer’s do better after the death than before, especially men. (See figure 1, the a section is men, the b section is women) [https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2007.114348](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2007.114348) ---
**Author:** ![Frilly\_Heck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Frilly\_Heck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frilly_Heck)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2026, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1160 "2026-07-13T15:52:49Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Hoe much of her BS should I endure before we have sex? I wish the answer to this, for any person thinking it, were always _none of it_. Don’t put up with someone you don’t actually like or respect in the hopes you can bang them. Even the lightest whiff of this attitude would be a massive ladyboner killer for me. I don’t want to have sex with anyone who sees me in this way. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2026, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440/1161 "2026-07-14T13:02:58Z")
> [@Frilly\_Heck](#): > > I wish the answer to this, for any person thinking it, were always _none of it_. Don’t put up with someone you don’t actually like or respect in the hopes you can bang them. > > Even the lightest whiff of this attitude would be a massive ladyboner killer for me. I don’t want to have sex with anyone who sees me in this way. Therin lies the paradox. 1. You don’t need to particularly “like or respect” someone to have sex with them. Not that you should dislike or disrespect them. 2. Even for the love of their life, most men will need to perform a non-zero amount of tasks they don’t want to in order to keep the relationship. If you want to indulge in the fantasy that we always enjoy doing them, I won’t stop you. Let me put it this way. As much as I’m sure Wesley actually did love Buttercup in The Princess Bride, for all his “as you wishes” he still opted to fuck off to go be the Dread Pirate Roberts for five years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440.md?page=57) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-male-inequality-problem/1023440.md?page=59)