Men's Memes: The mathematics of relationships

Sunday, May 20, 2007

The mathematics of relationships

As long time readers know, I believe that internet dating sites can be a very good source of information on what today's women are looking for in relationships currently, and what they themselves are like.

I've been working on a theory, which is still not fully formed, but I'll give you a taster of it.

I call it the Y:O ratio. Basically I think there is interesting information contained within the age range of man that a woman is looking for. But the key thing is that you look at it in terms of how much younger (the Y parter) or older (the O part) than her OWN age she is willing to look.

Now, there are a couple of small caveats here. Firstly, there is a high chance that if a woman puts her age down as 29, she is actually 30, and likewise for 39 and 40. Secondly, there IS the fact that a lot (maybe most) women DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW what it is that they want, but that doesn't detract from the power of the Y:O ratio because you are looking for their subconscious motivations and tendencies. A lot of women may, in theory, for example, agree with you that older women/younger men relationships are less stable (on average) than those the other way around, but she might still have the tendency to go for those.

Now, baring all that in mind, here is what I think about different Y:O ratios.

If the Y is greater than the O, then the woman is highly likely to have an immature streak in her, and/or is looking for a relationship that she can control. There are very few women who will say they are ONLY looking for someone younger than them, because I think even they are aware that this would look weird. So any ratio in which the Y is greater than the O is indicative of a woman who is basically looking for a younger man.

If the Y and the O are exactly equally balanced (this happens less often than you might think), then the woman is either indecisive, or she is a great believer in the ideology of 'equality' (but don't think thats a good thing, because it is, in my view unworkable in relationships and will lead to endless conflict).

If the O is greater than the Y, but she is still willing to look a little bit younger than herself, then thats probably the closest you can get to being normal (although that doesn't preclude the possibility that she is abnormal in some other sense!).

If there is no Y, i.e. if she only wants someone older, then shes clearly looking for someone to support her in some sense.

If the O is massively greater than the Y, then shes probably a gold-digger of some sort.

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Turn of the tide: feminists begin to regret

Cosmopolitan (The women's magazine that urges women to use men for sex) Editor Lorraine Candy has a change of mind and now urges women not to have "Soul-less sex":

"We didn't feel ashamed about one-night stands...this, we thought, is what feminism is about."

70s feminist Fay Weldon now says:

"It is the fault of me and my like, who... got it wrong.

So were we wrong, we feminists, setting women free? The results have been devastating – greater than we ever imagined.

We steamed ahead, changing the world with too little caution, and I hope the future will forgive us.

The pendulum has swung too far over. But it may yet swing back again. Societies, thank God, tend to be self-righting."

"Once a man could look forward to starting a family and the dignity that came from being the provider. Forget it. At best as a man you're decorative, look after the kids and earn a bit sometimes; at worst you're a write-off. Women are elbowing the men out. The boys get anxious, the girls swagger. The male suicide rate goes up, female down. Twenty-eight per cent of us now live in single person households - a lonely and unnatural state - and most of the 28 per cent consist of young men. It is strange that it is left to a woman to suggest, in the normal nurturing way, that men start some kind of movement to promote their gender's status and self-esteem - call it masculinism, brotherism, machoism, what you want - and some mark of the success of the feminist movement, that it needs to be done."

60's feminist Doris Lessing now says:

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

An excerpt from an interview with Joan Rivers:

"She's not with the feminists when it comes to matters of the heart. For her, they're to blame for the current parlous state of our relationships, as depicted in these television Shows (Such as Sex in the city) and films. "I saw this coming. You cannot be equal to a man, you cannot make a man feel 'I don't need you' or 'I'll take my sex when I want it'. All these shows are so sad."

Camille Paglia :

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."