Difficulty finding a significant other in 20' and 30's

Parent Cafe
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The reason the population is small is because of some perceived level. That is self selecting to be lonely. Both men and women need to widen their perspective.

I have a bachelor’s degree. My amazing wife graduated with a 4.0 from her masters program. If my wife wanted someone at her level we wouldn’t currently have an incredible 29 year marriage and two wonderful sons.

I also make 2.5x what she does with her masters degree. Everything we own is under joint control. There is no money dynamic. It’s a great way to live.

If people want to fish in a fish bowl that’s their choice, but I’d suggest deep sea fishing.

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I totally agree with you. I don’t believe that my kids subscribe to the “being on the same level or better” fallacy that I see a lot in younger millennials and Gen Z, but it is something that I hear often. Character, loyalty, and communication matter so much more than some of the superficial criteria keeping some who want relationships from being in one, because we both understand that a person can “build” with someone with the right mindset. I know that I am thankful everyday that my wife took a “chance” on me.

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This is a profound point.

There are people who never went to college who are voracious readers, love theater and opera, are politically aware and keen “life long learners”. And there are college grads who proudly tout their lack of interest in anything cultural or artistic or related to world events. And yet- somehow the college grads won’t date (or even just meet for coffee) someone “without a degree because he’s not on my level”.

The self-sorting that goes on is mystifying to me.

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I am hoping for some good karma…I have matched 2 couples. The first couple was of a good girlfriend, and the guy was head of the legal department at my first job. I was a junior analyst and I don’t know what inspired me to do it. I went up to him to let him know that I had a girlfriend (in her late 20s) whom I thought would be a good match for him. They went out on a date and my girlfriend wasn’t too keen on him - too nerdy. I talked her into going on few more dates. Long story short, they got married. I thought they would be a good match because she was very out going (beautiful). He was smart with dry sense of humor, a nice/responsible person, and well established (it was important to her).
The second match was my brother and his wife. He was dating few other women, but I thought my SIL was a better match for him because of her personality (soft spoken, not confrontational, sweet).
I have also done quite a few job matchings. I’ve had recruiters and job seekers contacting me when they are looking for candidates or jobs. I used to like to do it more, now I feel more tired to get involved.

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I agree with these two points and especially like the metaphor.

However I believe there are some who actually don’t want people to widen their perspective. It’s uncomfortable and at times triggering.

I attribute a good deal of the divisiveness we’re experiencing to this difference of opinion…the ”need to widen their perspective”.

For instance I live in a predominantly white, affluent suburb. We’ve lived here about 30 yrs. My kids and their peers are roughly 30 yrs old.

What I’m seeing is a subtle backlash to this widening of perspective. Of their friends who have married, a good deal of them are partnering with someone of a different race, a different religion or the same gender. Listening to the parents of those kids has been…interesting. Yet I’m actually hopeful when I’ve been around these couples.

Here’s a stat from the economist. ”So in 1967, roughly 3 percent of newlyweds were in interracial marriages. That’s 17 percent in 2015. The census says that in 2022, 19 percent of married opposite-sex couples were interracial.”

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In the Atlantic article shared by @88jm19, there were several points that addressed some of these most recent posts.

One of the biggest takeaways is that education is one of the biggest dividers as to whether someone will get married:

one way to describe the data is that marriage was not a kind of high- or low-status thing to do 50 or 60 years ago. It was just simply something everyone did. So for members of that cohort born around 1930, something like 80 percent of them would end up married at age 45, regardless of education. Whereas when we go out today, you’re seeing rates closer to 50 percent for Americans without a four-year degree, even lower for folks who don’t have a high-school diploma, and then substantially higher rates still closer to around 71 percent for Americans who do have a four-year degree.

As the quote that @88jm19 shared, women with college degrees are marrying men without college degrees, but they’re generally marrying the non-college grads who have more financially strong outcomes.

And so one way to see that is if you look, over time, at the earnings of the non-college men married to college-educated women, they’ve been doing pretty well. So now today they have, on average, earnings of around $65,000. Whereas if you look at all the other non-college men, in some sense, the ones left in the dating pool, there’s just been a huge collapse in outcomes for those folks.

But one can ask, for the non-college men—let’s say you have to meet two criteria to be quote-unquote “marriageable.” One is that your earnings need to be above the national median. So for much of this period, this would mean something like earning above $30,000 per year—so nothing crazy, but a relatively stable, well-paying job. And of course, you can’t already be married to a college-educated woman.

And if one takes that view, if you go back to the 1930 birth cohort, roughly 70 percent of non-college men in that cohort were quote-unquote “marriageable,” according to this view. Whereas when we go out to the 1980 cohort, this has dropped remarkably. It’s now much closer to 35 percent of non-college men that fit the bill today.

What I’ll say is that we’re really using earnings here as an aggregate or summary to describe what’s happened to these folks. So at age 45, if you look at the pool of non-college men who are not married to college women, they used to earn in the 1930 cohort about $56,000 per year, on average. Now they earn about $46,000 per year, on average, for the 1980 cohort. This is remarkable, the fact that earnings have declined over this 50-year period at a time when the U.S. economy has grown substantially. So the fact that you’re able to find any group that’s had a decline in real earnings is remarkable and, I think, a signal of what is going on with this group, but I don’t want to give the impression that it’s all about earnings.

It then discusses the marriage rate gaps between women with college degrees and then women with the lowest levels of education.

It’s more of this broad pattern, which is: Where in the U.S. are the areas where these education gaps in marriage for women are the largest? And they are really concentrated in the subset of places where men who didn’t go to college are struggling.

Demsas: Yeah, and I was just struck by the finding that “marriage rates between college and non-college women are 50 percent smaller in commuting zones where men have the lowest incidence of [what economists refer to as] ‘left-tail’ outcomes,” whether it’s joblessness and incarceration or something else.

And I think that’s a huge, important finding for policy makers who care about this issue and want to make it increase the life outcomes for these men, and also for women who are searching for a partner, unable to find one who meets their needs.

And then it discusses some of the topics in Richard Reeves’ work related to overdoses, incarcerations, sports gambling, etc, and things that might be more relevant to this thread: Males Under 35: Are they struggling and what can be done about it?.

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And there are plenty of people who never went to college, are not voracious readers, nor like theater/opera, but are still amazing, good hearted, loyal, and interesting people. In my office of 11 people, we have nobody above a bachelors. 3 of us have those. One has an associates degrees. The rest are high school graduates only. Only two of us aren’t married. And I think most would say they are living a fine life.

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Of course, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Just that the typical argument for not dating someone with less education than you have seems to revolve around “what do we have in common”. And I was pointing out that you don’t need to have a degree in English lit to enjoy reading a book!

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I suppose I must be in the minority b/c what advanced degree a person has was not important to me, despite my having an advanced degree. When I was in grad school I dated “peers” (others in grad or professional school) but also someone who was working on his undergrad on the GI bill. After I finished my advanced degree and moved away from a college town, I did not query dates/potential dates about their educational level. I dated a fascinating fellow with an undergraduate degree in oenology. My now spouse was working on his masters (initially in a remote/distance program, even way back then) when we met. He was in the military and we joked that if I joined (zero chance of that happening) I would outrank him because of my degree :rofl: My personal 4 main priorities were: non-smoker, good sense of humor, intelligent and “faithful” (IYKWIM). If men and women today are too picky or too superficial, that will likely have consequences. Loneliness. I have a friend whose daughter is strikingly beautiful. I mean drop dead gorgeous. She uses it. She has had lots of fascinating experiences and she dates a lot. She is in her 30s.

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I have a friend in her 60’s-- drop dead gorgeous at 25, still gorgeous at 62. Never been married and has only recently decided it’s not happening.

That’s a LOT of dating.

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Both kids have told me that dating is too hard and takes too much time/effort. They are very busy with their careers and happy with friends and their social life as it is now. Their chances of finding a partner seems remote given the lack of interest/effort :frowning:
D did say that it was very difficult to find an educated person, willing to understand that her career demands so much of her time.

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I wonder, are they older than say 30?

The two groups that can be most picky in dating are women under 25 and men over 30.

Young men have to compete against the older men who typically have more stable employment and higher incomes. And older women have to compete against younger women who have both beauty and higher fertility.

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The being particular about educational attainment is interesting.

But, in terms of fewer and fewer men going to college, we don’t have that subset here on CC. I’m assuming all the folks on here have adult kids that at least have Bachelors degrees - both men and women. Yet many of us are relaying the challenges our 20- and 30-something’s are facing.

People can find partners at any age. The having children is a different issue. Though, I am hearing more and more about women freezing their eggs -with some companies’ insurances paying for that. Which I find astonishing because The Pill wasn’t even covered in the mid-80s.

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I agree with the general effects, but disagree about the specific ages. For example, I previously referenced a paper with the following regression table for preferences in online dating:

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Among men, the model estimates and marginal effects show a similar pattern. Men age <30 have similar degree of preference for women of a similar age or 5+ years younger. At age >30, men display a small preference for 5-10 years younger over current age.

However among women, the model estimates and marginal effects show a very different pattern. The marginal effects suggest all other sections of the profile being equal, women prefer men that are a similar age or perhaps slightly older. However, the model effects suggest that when considering the other factors besides just age (looks, height, education, income, …), women as a whole prefer more notably older guys. This effect is less pronounced among women in their 20s and most pronounced among women in their 40s. Women in their 40s showed a strong preference towards men in their 50s over men their current age, when considering the rest of the profile. And a strong avoidance of men in their 30s.

In addition to these preference effects, there are also different rates of being single by age. The previously referenced Pew survey found men in their 20s were twice as likely to be single as women in their 20s. Men in their 30s were 50% more likely to be single as women in their 30s. It isn’t until 50s and above that women are more likely to be single than men. The gender balance is not as bad for a 30 year old man as a 20 year old man, but the gender balance does not suggest either group as a whole can be especially picky.

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These factors are compounded in online dating, leading to a large portion of men in 20s and 30s struggling to find a match. And a large portion of women in their 20s and 30s being able to be quite selective about which guys they choose to match with. The table above shows the rate of likes by gender in another previously referenced paper using a group of persons on an online dating site, who were in their 20s. Men liked 1116 / 1800 = 62% of profiles that were shown to them, while women liked 81 / 1800 = 4.5% of profiles that were shown to them. This is an aggregate. I expect a good portion of the men liked >90% of profiles, which leads to a large portion of women on the dating site receiving a lot of likes. The author writes,

"Indeed, Tyson et al. (2016), p. 1) argue that this is due to a feedback loop: ‘men
are driven to be less selective in the hope of attaining a match, whilst
women are increasingly driven to be more selective, safe in the
knowledge that any profiles they like will probably result in a match’.

Anecdotally this largely aligns with my personal experience having known both men and women who have used dating sites, and participated myself many years ago. For a good portion of men, online dating doesn’t work. They send many likes/swipes and/or start many conversations, but get few/no replies back. It’s more so younger guys, but also occurs with guys well above the age that are the focus of this thread. And a good portion of women have the opposite problem. One of the many reasons why online dating can be unpleasant is being inundated with likes/swipes/conversations from creepy guys. A minority of the initial contacts can be concerning.

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Now, now, now, she’s 66. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince are/were the same age (and me too). Donnie Osmond is just a little older, born in 1957

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My hunch from real life is that men dislike dating older women more than women dislike dating younger men. I feel like the reason more women don’t go after younger men is not because they don’t find them attractive but because they know most younger men don’t consider them relationship material.

Unfortunately I don’t know how to interpret regression tables, so I’m hoping you can help me. When I look at Table 4 on the Model Estimates side, I am interpreting the numbers as follows (if I am totally off base, please let me know.):

Yes, women in their 40s do feel negative (-0.81) about the idea of dating a man in his ~30s (i.e. “10+ younger”), but not as negative (-1.14) as men in their 30s feel about the idea of dating a woman in her ~40s (i.e. “10+ years older.”)

Likewise, women in their 50s do feel negative (-0.50) about the idea of dating men in their 40s, but men in their 40s are even more negative (-1.30) about dating women in their 50s.

100% this. A close female friend of mine from graduate studies was very badly stalked by a guy who became obsessed with her dating profile. She had sent him the most minimal reply once, never went on a date with him. He sent crazy accusations about her to her employer. He stalked her family and sent fake porn images of her to her father on his work account. The police finally figured out who he was and busted him. He had detailed plans of how he was going to rape and murder her and had numerous guns. And she was not the only woman he was targeting. So yes, when women only “like” 4.5% of profiles, it should not necessarily be interpreted as them just being picky. They are trying to balance dating opportunities with true safety concerns.

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Yes, women being 10+ years older was absolutely a strong negative for men. In terms of marginal effects, the only stronger analyzed criteria than women being 10+ years older were “looks rating”, BMI, and smoking (being a smoker was a strong positive*). Among women, the only criteria that had greater marginal effects than men being 10+ years younger were income, height, and certain racial combinations, all of which involved a different race than their own.

The reasons why both genders seem so opposed to women being older than the male partner are less clear. Looks are obviously important to many men, and aging effects are often perceived as negatively impacting women’s appearance. However, the marginal regression that controls for “looks rating” shows the same pattern. This suggests among equally attractive women, men are far more likely to contact a woman their age than one notably older. I suspect many men use age as a shortcut to search through a large number of profiles – only display users who are age 35-49, so the age 50+ profiles are not viewed, regardless of how attractive they are or how much they like other parts of profile.

You’d know better than I would why women seem to avoid men who are 10+ years younger, but my suspicion would be largely the opposite of why women seem to prefer men who are 10+ older (when considering full profile instead of just age). Whatever profile criteria women like in men who are 10+ older are most likely going to be lacking in men that are 10+ years younger. Among women who are in their 40s, this could include things like age of the partner’s children. Wanting to reduce risk of rejection also likely contributes for both genders.

*I suspect this is due to smoking being correlated with other factors that were not including in the regression analysis, particularly ones relating to sex.

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I know nothing about dating apps. Do they include real names / contact info? (I had assumed there were screen names, app-specific communication.)