Last week, I outlined what I think a pro-family subculture might look like; one of its chief aspects being an intentional approach to courtship and marriage. On this front, our current culture does young people absolutely no favors.
We’ve burned away anything that might infringe upon personal choice, life optimization, individuality, and gender equality. All concepts which our culture holds sacred but are culturally lethal because they make attracting a partner extremely difficult.
If we want to have a pro family culture, we’ll have to tell young people the truth, even if, especially if, the truth doesn’t sit well within our modern anti-family sensabilities. Otherwise the romantic struggles of the generations that come after us will be on our heads.
A Truthful Framework
To fix this, we need commonly accepted frameworks and principles to talk about this stuff. Frameworks which prioritize stable and loving relationships (which are more likely to lead to happiness), over career, mobility, money and self-fulfillment.
In short, I’m advocating for more truth-telling.
To that end, I’m contributing my “4 Rules of Dating” to the conversation. Over the last few years, I’ve shared this framework with family, friends and students in a number of venues and have had the chance to refine it. These rules are extremely simple and obvious. So much so that I have no doubt many people will be offended by them. Still others will say they dated and married in their time while doing the exact opposite of these things. Great, I’m very happy for you.
This framework is not tactical dating advice but is meant to apply to the broad experience of men and women. I make no claim that it solves all of today’s dating problems.
Nevertheless, they are tried and true.
To come together successfully, men and women have to both attract and evaluate each other. But they do each of these things in a different way.
These 4 rules are divided into pairs.
rules governing attraction (1 for men and 1 for women)
rules governing evaluation (1 for men and 1 for women)
The sections on the rules for women are longer because those rules are less intuitive and less understood generally than the rules for men. And so we might mistakenly believe that men are always to blame.
“In essence, [men] are expected… to carry out the duties and bear the burdens of husbands from the pre-industrial or pre-feminist past. Whereas women are generally allowed to reject the majority of their old responsibilities as extra-Biblical anachronisms. They tell men to be a 1950’s TV dad like Ward Cleaver, but they’d never dream of telling women to behave like 1950s TV housewife June Cleaver.”
To the extent that Ward and June had a common relational language which brought them together and made their relationship possible, we’re going to dream just a little bit today.
Rules Governing Attraction
Rule #1: Attractive Men Are Interesting
To put it simply, in order to attract a woman, a man must be interesting; he needs to have things going on, he needs to be “winning” in something. It doesn’t matter that much what “it” is as different kinds of interesting will be interesting to different kinds of girls. Winning as a bookish, pensive type can be interesting. Winning as a tall, lean athlete can be interesting. Funny, talkative guys can be interesting as can rugged stoics and many more!
There are a few things that are generally not interesting or are so unattractive they can negate other interesting things about a man:
fandom, video games or media consumption as a personality.
poor character or laziness
addictions and/or not taking care of his appearance.
The archetype of a fat and sloppy video gamer who hasn’t strung together enough professional successes to escape his parent’s basement is a real problem and the stereotypical “man up” response in that case is needed. But being interesting tells a woman that a man is building and prioritizing a world; one which she could join and build with him.That’s attractive.
Giving positive attention and respect to the opposite sex is what men want from women and a man errs when he assumes that’s primarily what women are looking for from him. Hence the stereotype of the nice guy who can’t get a girlfriend. Nice guys don’t really finish last, but they do finish behind guys who are both interesting and nice.
As Jordan Peterson said:
“Girls aren’t attracted to boys who are their friends, even though they might like them, whatever that means. They are attracted to boys who win status contests with other boys.”
Most interesting men will still face mostly rejection, but interesting men are by definition not victims. Like the Bird of Paradise above, interesting men are doing what they need to do to be attractive. If it’s not working out, the problem (i.e. rule #4) is up to women to address.
Rule #2: Attractive Women Use Their Attention & Availability
Unambitious, consuming men are a part of the dating problem everyone recognizes. But the issues on the female side tend to go unnoticed or unwittingly promoted. Such as telling women that what they find attractive in men (being interesting) is what they should in turn do to attract men.
But the truth is, simply by existing, a woman is interesting to a man. As one comedian whose name escapes me said “My favorite thing about my wife is that she’s not a dude.”
This isn’t to say that women shouldn’t do things they themselves find interesting or valuable, or that any degree of ambition is unattractive but she should know the real value of those things in the eyes of men.
Instead, attractive women are women who use their attention and availability. I think many women underestimate their ability to set the tone of any social relationship they have with men. This is what women can generally do to maximize this power and attract men they find interesting:
take care of her physical appearance.
be open and take an active interest in the world a man is making.
use attention/availability on men she finds interesting rather than on friend zoned loafers or deadbeats.
Using attention and availability, a woman can signal what type of man she finds interesting, where she wants to meet them and how she wants the relationship to proceed. Collectively, women in a social group decide how to reject men, whether with patience, or disgust and who is deserving of each; they decide the meaning and expectations of dates. For example, think of a high school prom. The wild invitations and expensive theatrical planning that many young men go through for prom are a reflection of the expectations that the young women have.
Almost no matter the culture, men will go where the women are. Once there, men will try to put on the most interesting show they can in whatever way the women allow for. And so, today, where are the women?
Increasingly, they can only be found online, which has become the most common way for couples to meet. Social norms, the breakdown of community, and HR rules at work mean that other ways women can showcase their attention and availability are disappearing quickly.
Just as with the men, women who make an earnest effort to be available and to give their attention to interesting men, are not going to be victims in the dating game. They too may be rejected or passed over by men, but they’ve done their part.
Rules Governing Evaluation
Rule #3: Men Choose A Wife By Being Direct
In essence dating is a man’s direct question to a woman: do you find my kind of interesting attractive? Being interesting is how men create and refine their offer to women. Being direct is actually making the offer. At first the offer is low stakes and empty of commitment. Something like:
“I’m going to a movie Friday, would you like to come?”
or
“You want to grab lunch on Saturday?
This kind of offer can be given often, to any woman whose attention he seeks. And then he can continue to escalate that offer and increase the commitment, intimacy, and connection until the offer is one of marriage and everlasting commitment. Continuing to offer and escalating the offer to women who give him attention is how a man evaluates potential mates and eventually selects just one.
Men will need to work up the courage to make direct offers. A lack of a direct offer is what creates muddled male and female friendships, long-term relationship malaise, and mismatched expectations. Being direct is being honest and either moving a relationship forward or ending it so both man and woman can move on.
Men will sometimes hesitate to make offers because they feel they’re not yet ready. But when it comes to dating, marriage and family life, you’re never ready until you decide to be.
Rule #4: Women Choose a Husband By Judging Potential
A woman presented with offers decides if they are compelling at every stage of escalation. But many women seem to have long lists of requirements of what compelling should look like and while a list of traits is good, it should probably be short and limited to some non-negotiable qualities. For example, love, loyalty, integrity, etc. Or active in the same church, wants a family, etc. Boxes that do not filter out good potential men while filtering the bad ones.
It’s not that the other things on the long lists aren’t important or good; it’s that they’re made absent the reality of any offers. This can create a situation where a woman has obscenely high expectations or is optimizing for a partner who doesn’t exist. For example, it’s been shown that the majority of women on dating apps filter out men shorter than 6 feet tall (85% of men). Many go on to filter out men shorter than 6’5”, (99% of men).
Another problem long lists cause is filtering out men who are still building their worlds, full of potential that they’re likely to someday meet but for now, they’re still plugging away in school, working their way up the ladder, trying out a business idea, or simply haven’t been around long enough to stack real wealth, wisdom and experience.
I’m a big fan of the hero’s journey and last year I stumbled across a female writer who wrote a version of the heroine’s journey that applies here. She summarized it this way:
“The hero challenges the external threat and the heroine challenges the hero. The inverse of that is a figure we're all familiar with, namely Lady MacBeth who rather than challenging the hero to virtue, goads him into evil. A positive example would be Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice where she challenges Darcy for his actions.”
The heroine must look for the Mr. Darcy’s who come her way and who have a half built, half matured life and decide….”do I want to build out a world with this man?”
A note of caution: marriage is not a service project for the needy and I’m not saying the role of women is to fix men. Far from it. I’m saying that she should put down the long lists of “required” traits and decide, based on the offers, if she believes in his potential.
My wife and I’s own love story followed this template. And the offer of marriage she received from me was not from a mature, self-employed, homeowner who knows how to lead and support a large family. That came from the potential she saw and helped build up in an awkward-looking 24 year old entry-level event planner with 5 roommates, a 150,000 mile discontinued Toyota and no real wealth.
Conclusion
In summary, if you’re a man, you need to be interesting and make as compelling an offer as you can to as many women you think will accept it and escalate that offer until marriage.
If you’re a woman, you need to give your attention and availability to men who you find interesting. You need to evaluate their offers based on potential, not necessarily their current state and decide if you want to build a life with him.
Part of fixing the social confusion which plagues us is passing on this basic knowledge of things as they really are to the next generation.
Good advice. On the last one, women have to strike a balance between giving men time to prove themselves and catching them while they're still single.
The problem stems entirely from a lack of a standard basis from which the "rules" can be said to derive. I covered it tangentially in my latest article: https://theflammifer.substack.com/p/examining-the-decline-of-christianity - but to elaborate on it here, the massive rise in the age of marriage (it is now an average of almost 30 for first marriages!) means people are staying single for far longer, which has made premarital sex considerably more acceptable. Once that happened, the perceived "need" and "value" of marriage declined precipitously. That, combined with the high divorce rate, has thoroughly destroyed the value of marriage on the men's side of things, while women have become increasingly promiscuous - an increasing pool of women sleeping around with the top 10% of dudes on Tinder, then reaching 30 and wondering why they are still single. The problem is, now, any given date or approach for a date, can be operating under a dozen different perspectives - is this a one night stand, a short term relationship, testing the waters for a long term relationship, etc.? Is a "no" a flirty "ask me again" no or a firm no-means-no? And getting it wrong, especially as a man (who is still expected to make the first move!), can mean expulsion from university or loss of a job. Long-term, this is untenable and new norms will have to emerge and be standardized on eventually, but in the meantime the situation is a complete mess. I don't have a solution, but it's clear that any real solution requires bringing the average age of marriage down - which requires doing something about the universities and the inability for early-career people to date in the workplace. You can't get married if you can't date.