The Rise of Lonely Single Straight Men

Chris Wilson said:
Offensive? Are facts offensive now just because some dislike them?

Among those aged 35 to 44, 21% of men and 14% of women first had sex under 16. Published by the NHS Information Centre, today's report found that one in 10 young people aged 16 to 24 have had 10 or more sexual partners. But 26% of women and 32% of men aged 16 to 24 say they have never had sex.



That's from the UK in 2011. I'm not just thinking it, I am presenting the statistics. If you go back to say 2008 the figures are markedly worse, in 2008 the UK had the second highest teenage pregnancy figures in the world. So I stand by saying a lot of 16 year olds are pretty second hand.
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i am saying considering a 16 year old "second hand" because they have had sex is offensive and i thought that kind of logic was limited to edge case religious fruit loops

what right does anyone - man or woman have to think someone who has had sex is used or in some way less valuable. and it is convenient of course that it is not possible to tell if a male has been sexually active (not even possible to reliably know if i female has been but that does not stop people believing it..... )
 
I think also the scope of available dating partners perhaps makes people more choosy. If we go back 50 years, where it was quite common for some people to be born, live, work, and die all within the same town/community. Then your pool of partners is pretty narrow. Now people travel more freely, they relocate more freely, a man or woman no longer only has to worry about competing with the people in their local community but with a much wider source of people. It means that if there were only 3-4 10/10s (whatever your criteria is) in your community, and they're already taken, perhaps you'd relax your criteria. But now where people can literally search further afield on their apps, they can keep holding out for their 10/10s.

So I think people being more selective, compounded with social attitudes changing. For some women now they can choose a life dominated by their careers, that wasn't really an option in the past. For families though women need to make their mind up early, their biological clock is always ticking.

I do find it a little odd though. Women are supposedly more ‘free’ now. But I don’t see how having to spend your whole life working a job, trying to become an ever so slightly larger cog (but still tiny) in a massive corporate machine is freedom. Especially as even if women want to stay at home and raise their children, it’s simply not affordable now. So you spend time away from your kids at work to earn money, and with that money you pay someone else to look after your kids…. All seems wrong to me. I don’t see how that is more freedom tbh. Feels like big business won out here, doubled the amount of available labour in a generation under the illusion that working for a mega corp is emancipation… yeah right.
 
I can't say I blame young single women for being the happiest. They have sex on tap with the top 20% of men on these dating apps. The BBC driving the Bentley who works for BP, what's not to be attracted to :D Any guy after this is then competing with said one night or friends with benefits Casanova. Pre dating app era, it wasn't possible to have so much availability within say a 30-mile radius.

The problem is you're always going to get skewed opinions on this. The 35+ year old men on this forum who've been in a relationship for years likely have no idea what the modern dating scene is like and probably still think their tactics from back in the 90s would work.
 
Hades said:
I guess that depends. Are both partners earning the same? Are both partners long term plans aligned?

I earn 3x my wife's income because of the industries we both chose to build our careers in. But most of the big financial draws are due to desires in her life, such as children and bigger houses. If it were just left to me I would buy a (still lovely) property in a quieter and cheaper location. But my wife has always wanted the big house and drove the decision to have children. Obviously it is a joint decision and I have agreed to it at each point in life. But if I were single then I would be doing an easier, lower paid job, with lower costs such as a small apartment. I am sure I would be financially better off if I had never married and had children.
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Even if you're not earning the same, the extra income and reduced spend helps. When I met my wife, we both paid separately for our housing- now we don't.

I'm pretty sure our plans are aligned. I was divorced before I met her, so took extra care to not walk into another bad situation there!

I can tell you that dating, as a late 30s man, is a very weird thing, especially as I already had a child I needed to prioritise. I met some lovely women, but most weren't exactly long-term prospects!
 
C Kent said:
I've just had a look at the pew study the article are based on and the original article in psychology today is pretty lazy, the pew study notes a rise in both sexes of being unpartnered. The article ignores this and instead focuses on men, noting that men make up the bulk of dating apps and sites (nothing new), men are typically happier in a relationship (nothing new), ignores previous studies that show men have always been happier later in life when compared to women or how women in general are unhappier than they were 40/50 years ago.
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Yeah, its been proven in so many stats that most people on anti-depressants are single women in their late 30's and above. More so, they are women who are unmarried and childless. As if going against their biological programming to care and nourish is mentally effecting them. And we have so many pet mum's than ever before as an result of this. Even the Pope spoke out about this, saying women should be focusing on having kids instead of having pets. I am not an religious person but I agree with him.

We also have more virgin men on the planet than virgin women :eek: I think that's crazy as that wasn't the case decades ago.

With women in the work force, the abiltiy to earn more money than men and the protection of Daddy Government. Women dont need men anymore, leading to more of these high expectations for dating.
 
Slam62 said:
Relationships are not about sex, they are about building a life, anything else is a waste of time.
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That's also probably part of the reason for the increase in single people, in that as traditional gender roles go out the window, men and women don't need each other in order to 'build a life' as much. Particularly for women, now that career options have improved for them there's little incentive to look after a home while the man goes out to work, and as a result there's less incentive for men to have a woman around.
 
potatogate said:
Male friends who are long- term single invariably have issues. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date them.
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That's only because some don't see themselves from an outside the box perspective. When you can self critique yourself and understand the position you are in, as well as what's going on around you, rather than live day to day with tunnel vision, that's when you're in control and are perfectly fine socially as well. This isn't exclusive to men, this applies to women as well.

You may also be applying your logic to blanket men this way because that is your only experience of this particular group of men, which is not representative of most men.

And anyway, being single or not doesn't dictate how good you will end up being in a relationship, that boils down to how you were brought up and the social circle you have kept through your later years.

By your logic then, a man who has hopped around a different woman every other month is going to be the pinnacle of life partner material, which realistically speaking is the opposite in many cases.

But at the same time women's perceptions and expectations are unrealistic quite often too and social media/TV has played a large part in nudging that along.

And besides all of that, some people just don't meet their right match until much much later in life, which seems to be more common nowadays with busy lifestyles, work to live etc.
 
bigmike20vt said:
i am saying considering a 16 year old "second hand" because they have had sex is offensive and i thought that kind of logic was limited to edge case religious fruit loops

what right does anyone - man or woman have to think someone who has had sex is used or in some way less valuable. and it is convenient of course that it is not possible to tell if a male has been sexually active (not even possible to reliably know if i female has been but that does not stop people believing it..... )
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It's acceptable because you CHOOSE a wife or husband, save for arranged marriages (which probably contentiously I am not totally against, another Muslim hugging statement there from me....;))

With choice comes selection, you SELECT a wife or husband, and part of the selection criteria may be whether there's been previous sexual activity. Some men won't be bothered, some will have no choice other than remain single, and some will be selective in that regard and that is their rightful and lawful perogative, just as it is for girls to be hypersexual.
 
And yet despite all of that. Every measurable statistic on the outcomes of children points to children growing up in a stable family of their biological parents having the best outcomes.

I think ultimately people now are far more accepting of individuals being selfish. And it’s not surprising, all politicians ultimately care about is the ‘economy’. And the economy wants individualism, selfishness and consumerism.

When do you ever hear any party putting families first? It never happens, because they don’t care.
 
@Slam62 If you really think that relationships are not about sex then good luck having sexless relationships.

Sex is the number one thing in a relationship, for mental reasons and biological reasons.
 
potatogate said:
Even if you're not earning the same, the extra income and reduced spend helps. When I met my wife, we both paid separately for our housing- now we don't.

I'm pretty sure our plans are aligned. I was divorced before I met her, so took extra care to not walk into another bad situation there!

I can tell you that dating, as a late 30s man, is a very weird thing, especially as I already had a child I needed to prioritise. I met some lovely women, but most weren't exactly long-term prospects!
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Yes I see what you mean. In my case I still think I would be better off financially on my own. My wife would be far worse off. But I'm not saying I regret it. We have been married for 22 years and I first met her 30 years ago. I wouldn't want to date nowadays. I wouldn't be interested in the type of women who would be interested in me, and the type of woman I would actually like to date would probably run a mile from me :) So that's not going to happen (and no plans for divorce either).
 
malachi said:
Yeah, its been proven in so many stats that most people on anti-depressants are single women in their late 30's and above. More so, they are women who are unmarried and childless. As if going against their biological programming to care and nourish is mentally effecting them. And we have so many pet mum's than ever before as an result of this. Even the Pope spoke out about this, saying women should be focusing on having kids instead of having pets. I am not an religious person but I agree with him.
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I read somewhere that people who have had more than 10 sexual relationships by the time they are 20 have more issues developing the emotional requirements to sustain healthy long term relationships, its somewhat more prevalent in women however.
 
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