On Tuesday I posted about how and why pursuing career puts women on the back foot when it comes to love and partnering. Ergo stacks of “successful” women are single.
I made all kind of generalisations about male-female behaviour – which I don’t back away from. Many of you made a lot of great comments. The topic will always fire up debate. It’s juicy and real and we don’t really have answers. So we speculate and dig around.
Darren Saunders on Twitter alerted me to this Slate article – The Eligible Bachelor Paradox – which adds another crusty layer to the debate. It answers a few of the point some of you raised. It uses game theory to explain why there are more hot single smart women in their 30s than hot single smart men. As the writer says….
The problem of the eligible bachelor is one of the great riddles of social life. Shouldn’t there be about as many highly eligible and appealing men as there are attractive, eligible women?
He concludes, no. Here’s why:
He explains it in terms of auction bargaining power – “Consider the classic version of the marriage proposal: A woman makes it known that she is open to a proposal, the man proposes, and the woman chooses to say yes or no. The structure of the proposal is not, “I choose you.” It is, “Will you choose me?” A woman chooses to receive the question and chooses again once the question is asked…
You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.
But this is not true…auctions will often be won by “weak” bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the “strong” bidders will hold out for a really great deal… consider that with a lot at stake in getting it right in one shot, it’s the women who are confident that they are holding a strong hand who are likely to hold out and wait for the perfect prospect.
Ergo, the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox.
The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.”
Where have all the good men gone? Wait for it, this is the BIG BIG point:
Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.
This is really key! End of day, it’s women who choose. It’s best we choose. This is how evolutioinaryily it has worked best (within reason: I’m essentialising, of course). I always say that once women realise this, they’re empowered. And can simply focus on being decisive – whatever their decision might be. All this should never mean sacrifycing careers or PhDs or our smarts. We just get confident. And take responsibility.
Decisiveness and certainty of our gender positioning (ie feeling grounded and strong in our feminiity or masculinity) is always going to be productive and lead to stable, strong, sure outcomes. For everyone.
The next question, then, is why is that career-focused women are less decisive? Me, I know I’m indecisive. Is this why I turned to career – cos it’s certain and is mostly about making external decisions, as opposed to decisions that stem from within? Or has my focus on career dragged me away from my intuitive, feminine centre where I make the best, most true decisions?
Crikey. Have you had a good look at that pic Sarah? Take another look at the bike seat. Too funny.
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January 28th, 2011 at 9:16 am
Jason..I think that’s the whole point of the photo!
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January 28th, 2011 at 9:20 am
Oh.
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That photo is hilarious! She looks SO unimpressed.
I think women are indecisive because we have too many bloody options!!! We have so many different choices, we think we can have it ALL but we see the drawbacks that come with trying. Yet we dont seem to know what to do about it. I know this to be my big problem. Having met a man only a few years ago and figured out, hey maybe children are actually on the cards. After 27 years of thinking they weren’t. So I have to sort my career out (I want to re-train for an entirely different field, which means a degree) and get all my travelling done, because everyone knows it is harder to travel with a family, oh and I need to buy a house somewhere sensible for this not-yet-existent family and I’m on a big freaking time crunch because I know my fertility isn’t what it could be because of my Hashimoto’s and I dont want to leave it too late, but how late is too late because I dont want to compromise my study/ travel dream and – AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! Make it stop!!!!!!!!!!
Deep breath.
And that’s a hell of a lot of pressure. Even when you know exactly what you want. And already have the man. I wish I had known what I wanted at 18, but I didn’t and now I feel I am paying for it.
We have our mothers’ generation in our heads saying, do what I did but BETTER! We have our natural instinct of wanting what their generation didn’t have. We want houses and careers and families and we want a man who will provide this and to cap it all off, we have been raised on Disney to believe that yes, it is realistic to expect a man to provide our dreams for us. But we also want our freedom to do all the above things. No wonder we are so confused.
Everything I say is just from surveying my friends and colleagues who are in their 20s/ 30s, it is just a personal observation… but I would love to see what others think.
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I think I forwarded the game theory piece as well to you on Twitter. I think it is somewhat valid, but it assumes the more aggressive bidders are making wise decisions and really depleting the “high quality” market for males. I can’t help but agree decisive women are marrying, but given divorce is still so high clearly poor decisions are being made as well.
Those who have really strived to improve their decision making skills in other areas of life, can apply it to choosing a partner. Just hopefully those of the fairer sex who would like a big family don’t take too long to develop their decision making skills as they confront the limitations of aging.
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Feels weird to comment on this particular subject but I thought I would because my partner and I seem to contradict some elements.
The Eligible Bachelor Paradox, while somewhat true in an animalistic sense seems void of one key thing required in a relationship, love. Looking for the physical attributes and social requirements needed to breed are like looking for a car, but its flawed. For example, apply to same fundamentals that Mark Gimein is suggesting to a car purchase and you will get a Ferrari. A Ferrari looks great, it requires money to keep it going, it is ranked socially elite but you soon learn to hate it. As with relationships, the first speed hump will reveal some true colours, a low sports car that you thought you could actually drive and live with will not be suitable for a Sydney street, and as for your friends? Forget them because the car you chose has no room. Oh family? Nope. Comfortable? Nope. Do you see a guy driving a Ferrari and say “gee, he must be a real nice guy with a great family values and a personality”?
Mark says “The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.” This quote annoys me because I am short, socially awkward and underemployed, so why then is the world’s most beautiful woman with me? It’s definitely not because she is decisive, we once stood in the isle of a supermarket looking at bottled water trying to decide which one, after ten minutes she finally picked one.
So she is beautiful, indecisive, successful and with me, why? The fabled four leaf clover is a genetic abnormality but culture tells us that it is desirable, but actually it is an imperfect mutant, the three leaf clover is in abundance but people don’t look for them.
Being less decisive generally means you are thinking, so is a woman supposed to stop thinking and just make a decision? No, because then she would be like a man buying a playstation leaving him only enough money to eat two minute noodles and drink tab cola for a month. Had he thought about it he could’ve played the with the playstation at Myer for free and eaten food that is hard to pronounce but nutritious.
My thoughts are that humans are vastly different from the animal kingdom, while we are genetically similar to apes and drawn to the pride like behavior of lions that does not mean they have the best advice for relationships. We are deeply spiritual beings that are incomprehensible at times because there are things out side of our control and outside of our ability to make decisions. It’s when we reduce our relationships to shopping lists that we ironically get what asked for, not what we need.
I guess our popular culture says “you want a Ferrari” when actually you need a Nissan X-Trail. Our popular culture says that you should be looking for four leaf clovers in the backyard when actually opportunity is at the front door.
Who should drive? Well if you ride bikes then both of you.
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January 28th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
As I’m recently single and closing in on my thirties, I’ve been thinking about this a fair bit. I love Adam’s reply, but I do think there’s something to ‘strong vs weak bidder’ theory.
That said, I don’t know that the theory is necessarily as gender specific as it’s been put; basically, if you’re too picky, you won’t pick.
And then you end up alone, with a much less attractive (figuratively and physically, natch) pool to pick from.
Which all sounds horribly non-romantic, but it’s ok. I don’t think it’s the end of the world, maybe you just have to be a little practical about things:
- meet more people (and if that means RSVP.com or whatever, then so be it)
- forget bars/clubs for meeting people (knowing what someone’s like when they’re unable to walk is important, but probably not the best foundation for a relationship)
- accept that EVERYONE’S going to have some personality trait that will annoy you
This is also clearly me coming up with a theory to reassure myself, but I reckon it’s a half-decent one.
N
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January 31st, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Adam, I don’t care if you look like Zog the Caveman, I can see why you are married to the world’s most beautiful woman – it comes through in your post. We are not all (or even that much) about looks, us.
That said, I also find this theory has some validity. In my youth i was enormously insecure, and when my boyfriend of 2 years proposed to me aged 21, I said yes (but then backed out). But I was married by 25. Insecure still, somehow throughout that marriage i found myself. Eleven years later, I think I’m bloody marvellous, and yes, i would probably hesitate at another marriage proposal even if it came from a pretty good bloke. Why? Because i like my lifestyle. Why do some high-achieving women prevaricate? Because we like how we live, we don’t necessarily have to change, and all of our previous relationships have shown us that in a live-in partnered situation, more than likely, our workload will increase substantially AND we’ll probably end up making a larger percentage of the compromises. Who wouldn’t hold out?
That’s my opinion this week anyway!
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“…it’s the women who are confident that they are holding a strong hand who are likely to hold out and wait for the perfect prospect.”
There is definitely some truth in this, but as with everything human, there are multiple layers of complexity that cannot be encompassed within one theory.
The problem for me (successful, attractive, intelligent, and well grounded), is not the lack of understanding of all these various theories; it is not any indecisiveness or career prioritisation; it is not even a lack of willingness to take on a traditional gender role; it is the simple fact that there are so few eligible bachelors left in my age group. My 30s were wasted on good men who only thought they could commit, and felt absolutely no social pressure to do so.
The lesson learned for me? I should have married young, back in my 20s when I didn’t think there was any hurry (and yes, was holding out for the perfect prospect). No amount of introspection and self-improvement at this stage in life is going to yield a larger pool of prospective mates, and the older I get, the more likely I am to hold out for the “perfect prospect”. Why disrupt a wonderful life for anything less?
Damn that Game Theory!!
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I met my mr perfect at 22..ten years later – we have been married for eight years and have two beautiful daughters…although I was uncertain in soo many other areas, I knew he was a fab catch and that I was on to a winner….and I was right
…I really think decisiveness is the key and the ability to follow our heart…
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I love this post Sarah!….(possibly because I am an unmarried 30 yo female with a string of unsuccessful medium-term relationships!). At my recent 30th, my cousin’s adorable early 20s girlfriend said to me “your gorgeous and successful Sel, you must try REALLY hard to stay single!” ….hmm, yes :/
I DO struggle with making decisions!!!…especially when there is a high level of emotional involvement (i.e. Relationships!) I find it difficult to synchronise the strong input signals from my head and my heart in making decisions. Could it be that we as women are naturally attuned to make emotional-based decisions, but that our advanced education ingrains logical data-based based decision-making ….and here the conflict and torturous indecisiveness lies?
My career path is all about ‘continuously improvement’ and optimisation, I am always searching for better options (fellow passengers get rather frustrated at my continual switching of radio channels….there could be a better song broadcasting!!!). I do find it difficult to relax into a relationship, even if I really like someone, my brains kicks in to overanalyse the situation…is he right for me?…would he be a good parent?…do I even want a relationship?…should I be putting so much energy into this situation that may not unfold? In terms of the good old benefit -effort analysis, it makes logical sense that we would invest more energy into our career in which we have a lot more control over the situation…it’s a lot less emotional and the outcome is generally directly proportional to the effort we put in. However, that said I believe there is a lot of scope in terms of happiness for switching down the brain sometimes and giving the heart a chance to decide.
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A very interesting topic this one and it’s great to see the guys contributing their thoughts. I do wonder if intelligent ‘career’ women don’t settle early because they are concerned that love and family might stop them from acheiving their dreams in life. I know that I was most concerned that a relationship would lead me astray. I think it can be more difficult to make decisions based solely on who we are and what we want in life when there’s a partner involved. Is the partner going to be willing to embrace our vision and make any required sacrifices to allow us to acheive it? Perhaps we worry that we would be having children all too soon, and imagine that our careers and ambitions would be quashed.
To be honest my resistance to relationships in my early 20′s was that I did not want anyone else influencing what I did and how I went about it, I felt vulnerable in the sense that if I was to be in love I might give up on my own dreams (or who I really am) to feed into the dreams of the other. I only entered into a relationship when I felt confident that I would not be swayed off my path and that if I was enticed I would be strong enough to listen to and follow my own heart ( I continue to be challenged by this, but I am strengthening in who I am and what I want more than ever).
I’m not at an age to really understand what it’s like to feel as if there are limited choices out there as far as men go, but I choose to see this world as abundant and I feel that there is someone for us all to share romance with when the circumstances and timing are right.
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January 29th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
I don’t think it is only women that get into their twenties and realise they might be climbing up their ladder quite well but the ladder is on the wrong wall. A little maturity helps decide which dreams are really worth pursuing and as a male I have thought there is no greater position to hold in life than as a parent. This was not thoughts I worried about during HSC or Uni or Post Grad, and I can’t change that but I can and did change all things going forward from my reappraisal. It was a painful readjustment for me-but I sincerely trust it will be worth it.
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ahaha You think you have troubles? … im 17, male and have the exact same trouble… cant decide what importance everything should have (uni, work, gf, house, socialising…
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