In this vein, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been chatting with a girl online, without realizing that they hadn’t yet visited my profile (and seen my pics), only to have them vanish without saying one word the moment they visit my profile and realize I use a wheelchair. And nobody will admit it either, which just makes me roll my eyes.
None of what Wesley Clark (i.e. the standard Trivers stuff) is a matter of ‘thinking’, rational thought isn’t supposed to enter into it at all. A lot of the decisions we make happen at the sub-rational level. The theory is that women have evolved to be in general more risk-averse than men, because sex has more potential consequences for women than for men. (This goes for plenty of things that are not sexual- women are in general more temperamentally conservative, even on questions like ‘should marijuana be legalized’, which doesn’t seem like gender would be relevant).
Wesley Clark why is obesity an indicator of infertility? On the contrary, lots of women at the thin end of the standard American “beauty ideal” range have trouble with ovulation because they’re underweight.
Speaking as a woman, I will frankly admit that this is true in my case. I tried on- line dating briefly and it never went anywhere - when my friends asked why I said " I wanted the guy in the ad, not any of the ones on the site". When I meet guys for real I am often attracted to men that aren’t particularly good looking, but it’s based on subtle qualities that don’t come through via a website.
I was 57 at the time. Now, one thing that I noticed was MANY of the men in my age group will list a desired age range of 35-60 or 40-60. But I think that upper range number is only there so the younger women won’t think the guys are shallow - I did not get any response -even when I initiated contact- from anyone under 65. And I’m slender and look really good for my age.
I suspect that they are the same.
I can’t speak very much to others, but for me age is a big one. Women substantially younger than me don’t tend to get my jokes, aren’t interested in the same things I am, and generally don’t ‘get’ me.
Obesity, yeah. I don’t mind a woman with some cushion, but the Walmart redneck globe-for-an-ass thing just doesn’t do it for me. A grating voice will turn me off like a switch, and so will vapidity.
A woman with a waist 70% the size of her hips and chest has a higher fertility than women with a larger waist.
Plus, on some subconscious/unconscious level, if a woman has a large belly that could imply she is already pregnant which makes he far less appealing as a sexual partner. But that is just speculation (ie, does female abdominal obesity trigger the part of the male brain that says ‘don’t bother, she is already pregnant with someone else’s kid right now’)
To a point. Back when I was a broke student (I know, it’s redundant), I would never ever hook up with someone at a concert that wasn’t free; in 12 years in college between under and postgraduate I attended three paying concerts and worked the bar at two. My probabilities of hooking up outside of class with a guy who owned a car were exactly zero - it went both ways, of course, but still, there is economic layering.
Since I’m perfectly capable of supporting myself, I really don’t care what kind of salary or money the man has. In fact, if he’s stinking rich, that would be kind of a turnoff because obviously we have little in common. If he’s so poor I would have to support him, that would be a bit of a turnoff unless he’s incredibly physically attractive and is fun to be around or I was incredibly rich (which has failed to happen).
Some (all) of my female friends joke it would be great to hire a stable of poor young “pool boys” and support them through college in exchange for other favors. I think some might have actually done so but due to sexism won’t admit it. Why would you think women were any less superficial than men? We’re the same species.
I assure you, my desire to avoid rape and murder does not stem only from my rational brain. It is a very animal instinct. Women have evolved to be more risk-averse than men because sex has more potential consequences for women is right, but around creepy men, it’s more about predator-prey fear. I’m not sure how (or why) that feeling is supposed to be filtered out of the equation here.
I have never heard this. Do you have any cite on the subject?
A woman has more deal breakers that may prevent her from getting into a relationship.
A man has more deal breakers that make him feel better about getting out of a relationship.
The suggestion that men are in as much danger as women regarding violence from intimate partners is ludicrous.
In any case, even if your limited cites show domestic violence is initiated as often by women as by men, we are discussing DATING. Women are afraid men they have known only briefly may hurt them, and their fears are justified. How many women get raped by men and how many men are raped by women? I’ve been a man on this earth going on 30 years and have never worried a woman would rape me. Women are afraid of this stuff, and have reason to be, since a lot if not most of them have been sexually assaulted to varying degrees of severity.
That’s cause your body is better at picking fertile women than you are. Unless you’re attracted to overweight grandmas…
Yes women are afraid of strange men, and men do not have the same fear of women. And I agree, men do not fear sexual abuse from women the way women fear it from men.
But regarding domestic violence between established partners, the rates are about even. Maggie mentioned violence between partners.
wrrong thread
This woman has lots of deal breakers, like, “Anyone under 5’10’’ please leave. No beer bellies, no long beards, no bald guys, no khakis … also, anyone named Jimmy. I don’t enjoy the name Jimmy.”
Depends entirely upon the person and how they perceive dating. Any guy or girl just looking for an enjoyable evening might have very few dealbreakers. Any guy or girl looking for someone to spend the rest of their life with might have more. I’m a guy and I certainly had a not huge, but a non-negligible list of dealbreakers that were far more than ‘Must not be fat’ (actually, that wasn’t one at all. I was looking for someone to spend my life with, not be my sex toy. If you’re picking a life partner based on their looks, you’re likely gonna be pretty disappointed in 20 years. - My actual list in no particular order was: intelligent, religious, moral, not petty, must be able to imagine as a good mother, educated.) My wife must have had far fewer because she ended up picking me, so her standards were obviously pretty low.
Confidence manifests itself as being able to identify the absence of knowledge and wanting to seek it out; admit mistakes and work to correct them; to admit weakness and seek a crutch or workaround–all without worrying that doing so will diminish one’s value as a man.
“Confidence” is the attempt to mask all of the above by feigning strength & control, often because the strength required to admit shortcomings is absent. “Confidence” is a liability in a relationship because as soon as the man begins to doubt his manliness, he will engage in ritualized behavior to reassure himself–acts of excessive machismo & bravado, drinking, fighting, whoring, and generally dominating all that he can, including his partner.
“Confident” men, ironically, are easily manipulated by confident ones.
As for the OP, the exhaustive list of deal breakers for women eludes me. Getting smacked, cheated on, and generally misused seem like logical points, but even they are by no means universal. Some women prefer “confident”, I’ve never understood why. Maybe something to do with them having no self-esteem due to a lifetime of exposure to “confident” men? As for me, dealbreakers can be condensed to: avoid the stupid ones.
Women have two. Men have one.
This is interesting. A few weeks back there was a thread titled “Straight Women - which is more important a man’s face or body?” There were many women that responded along the lines that physical traits were not important to them and that you should look beyond the physical. I disagreed saying that first, you have to be physically attracted to a person to get to the next step. And what is wrong with a woman being attracted to certain physical traits in a man? This thread confirms that, especially the experience with speed dating. Obviously, there is more to a relationship than looks, we all need more than that. I just think it’s natural for both men and women to be attracted to certain physical characteristics.
To answer the OP’s question, I think the number of deal breakers are pretty even between men and women. Just different.
Noted.
So. . . you do sort of care because having a lot of money is, what exactly? Because rich people can’t connect with anyone except other rich people?
So. . . you don’t care how much money a man has as long as it isn’t too much OR not enough.
So. . . if you were rich it would be okay for you to have a boy toy, but you don’t want a rich guy because rich people can’t connect with not rich people.
Thanks for clearing that up for us.