Sexless Marriages, Divorce, And The Insanity Of Modern Relationships

All right, man. Welcome back to the mantalk Show. I'm Connor Beaton, and today we're going to be talking about the dating crisis. We're going to be talking about what the hell is happening in relationships. You know, I get a lot of messages from guys saying things like, I don't know if I should get married or I really love this woman, and I don't know if it's worth the risk. I get messages from guys saying, you know, I can't tell if she's the one. Dating is a mess. You know, dating apps are challenging for me to find the right woman. Where do I meet the right woman? How do I meet the right woman? And there's a lot of online conversation about what's going on. And I think one of the things that we can probably all agree on is that the relationship landscape has changed, fundamentally changed. Whether you are married and you've been married for a few decades or, you know, a few years, whether you're in a relationship and you've been dating somebody for a few months or a few years, or whether you're just dating in general and you're not necessarily in a relationship, but you're just out there and maybe you're on dating apps, largely, the relationship landscape has changed. And from what I've heard from both sides, from men and women, is that it hasn't necessarily changed for the better. So we're gonna talk about, like, how has that happened, why has that happened, and what do you do about it as a man? One of the things that I think has changed fundamentally is that for the most part, when you look at something like dating apps, they have largely prioritized a woman's selection preferences, and you start to see some of these very interesting double standards emerge, right? Like, you see women's profile stating, if you're not 6 foot or above, don't message me. And I just can't imagine a man having a profile saying, if you're not under £130, don't message me like it. Just the amount of hypocrisy that seems to be sprouting its head within modern dating culture is almost comical, right? It's almost hilarious. But I think, you know, there's a very real conundrum and problem that a lot of men. I see a lot of men expressing, right? It's like, why should I get married when I know that one in four marriages are going to become sexless, right? One in four marriages. So out of if you know four people that are married, there's A very high probability that one of them is in a sexless marriage, meaning that they have sex less than roughly seven to eight times a year. Right. That's what constitutes a sexless marriage according to most therapists, psychologists, et cetera. The other thing that I think a lot of men struggle with is that there is a very real sacrifice that comes along with getting into a long term relationship. There's a very real sacrifice for deciding to get married. And there's a very real sacrifice that men make that I don't think that women necessarily understand or appreciate to the full degree. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit. One of the sort of threats that I think a lot of men end up talking about is the divorce rates that seem to be happening, right? It's something like 45% of marriages in North America will end in divorce. And of those divorces that happen, divorces are initiated by women 70 to 78% of the time, right. So a lot of men know, if I take the risk of getting married and the marriage ends in divorce, there's a very high probability that I won't have any say in that. Right. That it'll be her that's initiating the ending. And so I think for a lot of guys, when they look at something like marriage, when they look at a long term relationship, they kind of know, you know, I think most of us know, it's like women are still looking for men with resources. Even though 45% of American households, women are now the breadwinners, women now make equal to or more than the men in the relationship. But yet women are still looking for men to be resourceful, right? They still want men that can acquire money, that can produce social networks, that can find various resources. But there's a huge risk that a man takes. It's like, well, if I accumulate all these resources and I get into a relationship with you, I, I know that the court systems aren't necessarily set up so that if we go through a divorce, I'm going to be okay, right? Even if, you know, he's dating somebody that makes double the amount of him. So there's all of these questions that I see a lot of men having, right? It's like, what if I find myself in a sexless marriage? What if I get into a marriage and really fall in love with a woman and, you know, she initiates the divorce and it's not what I want? All of these things are very, very real probabilities. And then you have the selection preferences of women coming in and really being dominant within our social culture. And again, not making a comment on whether that's good, bad or ugly, just sort of stating what's factual and what the research is showing. So as an example, because I found that this sort of data, when it comes to relational lives, right? Dating, relationships, marriages, I find this stuff kind of fascinating because the data tells its own story, right? It tells a story about what's happening within people's relationships that you might not see in and what might be happening in your relationship, current or past, that you might not have known, right? So if you look at some research data, and there's been some great research done by Dr. David Buss, he is an evolutionary psychologist and he's done a lot of work. If you read the book called the Evolutionary Evolution of Desire, he talks a lot about the research that they've done globally and what they found predominantly, first and foremost, was that women everywhere, all over the globe, doesn't matter about your, your racial profile, your ethnicity, your religious choice, your whatever, doesn't matter. Women globally predominantly rank a man's ability to acquire resources, either now or in the future, as one of the single most important things that he can possess. So men kind of know that, that stereotype that a woman wants, a man who is able to acquire resources. And again, resources is a broader term than just money, right? Resources can mean social network, it can mean status, it can mean a number of things, right? We could go down that list. So men know that, right? And then on the other side, you have this very interesting conundrum that I think is influencing the dating pool that women have. And then the dating pool that they have, selection, preference of which is, you know, more women than ever before are going to college. You have only 40% of men going to post secondary education at college or university and graduating with a university degree. And you have more women than men on average. So women are outpacing men in graduating with a degree. But what's very fascinating about that, even if you, you know, even if you're like, well, that's not really a big deal, it's okay that women are getting, you know, more college degrees, more bachelor degrees than men. All that shouldn't be a problem. Well, the issue comes in the sense that women have been asked, would you prefer to date a man with a continuing education, with a bachelor's degree or a master's degree or a PhD or without? And on average, women predominantly prefer to date a man who has a college degree, especially when she has a college degree. So you have this Ballooning population of women who are saying, I have a college degree, I'm educated, I'm making my own money, and what I want is a man who's equally, if not more educated than me. And I want a man who's equally as resource capable as me, either now or in the future. And then if she has other selection preferences on top of that, right, like he has to be over 6ft tall, he has to a body type like this, he has looked like this, his family has to look like that. What it does is it narrows her selection preference to a very, very small bandwidth of men. And you can see this on Tinder, right? So let's talk about dating. Let's talk about the shit show that is, that is largely online dating, which is such a, such a wonderful topic that we could probably spend hours talking about. And I will be talking more about on the podcast in the future. And I've got some wonderful experts coming on as well. If you take, and this was a really cool piece of research on Tinder data because you can, people have shared their Tinder profile data and you can see how many people they've swiped right to how many people have agreed to match with them. And the data is fairly skewed. So we're going to talk about how this has come to into being. So if you take 50 men and 50 women, okay, and you look at the 50 women and, and you look at those women's selection preferences, so you look at the men they are actively communicating with, you look at the men that they are agreeing to match with, right? Because women have the choice preference on something like Tinder, they can say yes to matching or no. They ultimately get the final say. When you look at the data of the men that those women are looking for, they're trying to choose 46 out of the 50 women will be actively open to pursuing, communicating with, going on dates, with having casual sex, with, engaging in relationships with 46 of the 50 women will be actively pursuing four of the 50 men. Four. So that really means that the men category, the male category, that means that they leave 46 men pursuing a very small group of women that are actually open to dating men that are maybe under 6ft tall, that aren't college educated, that don't look a certain way. And so what is starting to happen in online dating is that you see that there's a very small group of men who have realized that they're sort of in this elite club, that they look around, they start talking to their buddies and maybe their buddies aren't having a very good time on the dating apps, right? Their buddies are swiping right to as many women as possible. They've paid money to update their dating profile. They got the perfect photo, they got the perfect bio, somebody's helped them curate it, the whole nine yards. And they are just having no success. Why? Because they are one of the 46 men. They are one of the 90 to 95% of men on dating apps that the majority of women have no interest in that are, they're just not interested in them. And then you have this very small population of men who have this wildly abundant and very different experience on a dating app, right? They have a lot of women interested in them. They have a lot of women talking to them, engaging with them, wanting to go on dates with them, willing to hook up with them for casual sex, willing to get into a relationship with them. And those men are generally the men that are not wanting to settle down, right? They're the men that are, are not wanting to be in a long term relationship or aren't really looking for marriage right now because they've realized that the dating apps have largely prioritized a woman's selection preference and that they happen to fall into this wonderful category of being a man with a huge, huge population of women that are pursuing them. So the challenges that this is leading to is numerous, right? This is leading to a lot of different challenges in the sense that it's leaving a lot of men checked out from dating and relationships. It's leaving a lot of women frustrated as well, right? Because they're pursuing these men, they think that it's going somewhere. You know, maybe they have casual sex with them for a couple weeks or a couple months and then they want to get into a relationship with them and then they realize that that man has been, you know, maybe seeing a couple other women or that he's not interested in a long term relationship and then he sort of moves on. And the reality is, is that the men in that category have such a huge pool that the questions arise like, well, why would I settle down and get into a long term relationship or a marriage when I know that one in four marriages are going to be sexless? That I know that 78% of divorces are initiated by women. The risk seems to outweigh the reward. So these are just a couple of the pieces that are playing into the modern dating crisis. And again, this isn't to blame women, it's not to blame men. It's not to say, you know, women are Wrong for this or men are wrong for that. It's not about blaming one gender or another. See, one of the biggest problems that I see happening within our modern culture is that people are looking at some of this data and playing the blame game. It's like, see, it's all women's fault. See, it's all men's fault. They're all after this, they're all after that. That doesn't actually do anything to give you a chance to really allow yourself to get into the type of relationship that you want. So I'm just going to say a couple final words about how you can sort of safeguard yourself as a man. Number one, educate yourself on what's happening within the dating world. You're probably doing that right now. Right? You're probably educating yourself on the realities of what's happening within the dating world, what's happening within marriages. Right. The landscape has fundamentally changed. So educate yourself. Number two, focus on building the best version of you outside of the relationship. So regardless of whether you're single, you're dating, you're in a relationship, or you've been married for a decade, your focus as a man should fundamentally and irrevocably be on building and developing yourself into a man that you have respect for, into a man that you're proud of in your health, in your fitness, in your routines, in your financial acumen, in your friendship circle. Right? Having a robust group of men in your life, wildly important. Focusing in. And here's the real key to all of this. Focusing in on becoming the best version of yourself as a man simultaneously does a few things. One, it allows you to be more confident, to settle more firmly and deeply into who you actually are. Right? Your passions, the things that you like, your sense of purpose in the world, your mission, your why, why you're here, what ignites you, what lights you up. The second thing is, is that as soon as you start to do that, you are undeniably more attractive to women. Okay? As soon as you start to do that, as soon as you start to prioritize becoming the best version of yourself as a man, you are more attractive to women. Look at what women are saying online in today's dating world. And I'm not saying that you should become the best version of yourself as a man so that you can get more women's attention, because if you do that, it's going to be a losing game. You'll always be chasing after their attention, their validation, their praise. It'll fall apart. I started my own development because I Wanted women to like me, you know, that's the truth of it. But I got to a place where I realized that that was having net negative effects. And I actually had to find my own reason for why I wanted to build and grow and develop myself. My life, my passions, my purpose, all of it. So if you look at what women are saying online, what are they saying, right? Oh, I want a man who does the work. Okay, well, what does that mean? Well, it means I want a man who is dedicated to developing his emotional resources, a man who has more emotional resources, whether that's stability, because emotional stability is a resource, or consciousness and awareness. Consciousness and awareness is a resource. Or I want a man who has a very strong social network, right? I want a man who, you know, when shit's going wrong, he has good men in his life that he can call on. I want a man who has good financial acumen. All of those things, right? If you are building and developing yourself as a man, you're prioritizing your career, your purpose, your health, your fitness. All of those things are going to make you more attractive to women. And then you will have a better understanding of the type of woman that you actually want to be with, right? So you can start to clarify and understand, who do I actually want to be with? And the catch here is that as a man, you can't ever really know the type of woman that you want to be with until you know who you are as a man, until you've gone through the wringer to say, I have built myself into a man that I fundamentally respect. And maybe some people will disagree with that, but I have seen that in my own life. I've seen that in the men's life that I have worked with. Men that do not take the time to build themselves into the type of man that they know they're capable of becoming physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, within their social circle. Those men, they lose themselves in relationships. If they haven't done that work, they lose themselves in their relationships, and they start running around trying to become a version of themselves that they think their woman wants. And it's a trap. It's a losing game. So build yourself into somebody that you know you respect. Do whatever it takes. Commit to that. Maybe that means that you need to go on what I call a vag vacation. So no dating, no hooking up, no sleeping around, and really allowing yourself 3, 6, 12 months to prioritize yourself, to get to know yourself, to prioritize your own development in a world where dating is chaotic. The last thing That I would say is practice the art of engaging with women in real life. You know, there's probably a lot of guys that are very, very good at communicating with women online. They've learned all the tactics, they've done the dating, you know, courses and the pickup lines and yada yada, and they're good at communicating with a woman online. There is something very different about being able to communicate, be assertive, be direct, you know, be engaged and present and grounded with a woman in person. And if you are one of those men that's able to approach any woman in public in person, you will have a leg up on the competition, on the other men in the world who are actually confident with women digitally but afraid of women in reality. And so be one of the men who is confident with women in reality, because it's a very different game. And if you can win at that game in a time of the world where so many people are trying to win in a digital game, you will not only feel more confident, but you will find that you get to know women in a much different way. And I won't say what that way is. I'll just let you explore that for yourself. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.