Are Men REALLY Avoiding Marriage And Relationships? @thedadvocate

Rita asks— Rita's a longtime follower, I guess, of mine, so welcome, Rita— just curious, I see a lot of men say that they are not getting married or remarried. Is this really a trend these days? If you look at the stats, yeah, the marriage rates are going down. The fertility rate, baby-making rate, going way down. There's definitely a trend there. If you know, when they've surveyed young men for example, I don't know the age ranges off the top of my head, something like 18 to 30, uh, those men are not having sexual relationships with women. They're just not. And it's concerning and scary because that's the most prime, fertile, get out there and meet girls and form relationships and see how the whole process works. And they're just not, for like the lowest in recorded history. So, um, there's a podcaster who I follow, his name's Chris Williamson. He has a podcast called Modern Wisdom. And he likes to dive into a lot of these type of topics and he posts really great stuff on Twitter. And recently he posted stats that show when they asked men, do you approach women? Meaning, hello there, what's your name? Something like over half of the men said, never have. Never have I done that. That's not good. That's how relationships are started. Men pursue women they see as pretty and say, hello there. So if that goes away, we're seeing the marriage rates drop. It's not looking too good right now. No.

I've been saying it's, uh, it's our job now, ladies. Like we, we did this, we made this bed. We are the ones who told men over and over and over again, do not approach us. We do not wanna be approached. We do not wanna be perceived. We have said that we have screamed it into the mountaintops. And so now if we want the men, we have to go get them. That's our job now. We are now, we have to be the pursuers because we have, we have all collectively across almost every culture told the men we don't want them. We, we don't value them. Leave us alone. So now that's on us.

You can go down rabbit holes on on TikTok and so forth of videos by women saying, you wouldn't believe the shit I went through today, let me tell you a story. And they tell you a story about this creep, a-hole weirdo who came up to them. And I'm listening to the story going, a short few years ago, that's called a man hitting on you. That's all that is. You know, you're in a coffee shop and some guy goes, I just saw you across the way and I thought you were beautiful and I just want to say hello. And they're like, oh my God, can you believe this? And they turn their phone on and record, look at this jerk. And you're just like That's— I, that may be, that may be a relatively small subset of women who are that anti-approach, but it's enough, I guess, that the message has been received by a large swath of the population of, well, I guess we don't do that anymore. It's like, so who does the— here's, here's an interesting kind of conspiratorial— I don't know if that's the right word— look at it. Um, if half the men are saying, I have never ever approached a woman, which is scary, That leaves— what type of men are left in that pool of guys who are not afraid to approach women? Are those your super attractive alpha male types, to use that term? Are we leaving just a bunch of hyper-confident jerks? Are we, you know, so I don't know who's left. Is this kind of a, if you will, a societal test by women of don't approach us, but we secretly do want you to approach us, but don't approach us. 'Let's see who doesn't listen to us and does approach us. Those are the men that we do want.' Just some food for thought.

That's the scary part too, is it's the hyperconfident jerks who are going to be ruling the forest in no time. I just, I was actually just thinking about this. I remember being in the 8th grade. And there was this one boy who I found particularly annoying. He was just like, loud and constantly having an opinion, and he was constantly hitting on everyone. And there was nothing particularly like attractive or cool about this person. He was like a pretty kind of a, kind of a big nerd, which I'm allowed to say because I was also a big nerd and I still am. But I remember one day going home and asking my dad, I was like, Dad, why does this guy always have a girlfriend? When he's like not cute, he's shorter than all the other kids, he's really annoying, and he literally just hits on everybody. How does he always have a girlfriend? And it's like, well, you just said he hits on everybody. You ask out 100 girls, one of them is going to say yes. It's a numbers game. And I was like, oh my God, you're so right. It is that simple.

It is. So it is that the hyperconfident jerks who will truly be ruling Yep, it's your more, your more anxious neurotic types will, let me get up the nerve, let me do this, I can do this, let me, let me drink a couple of drinks, let me go into this room. I see this woman, this is, it sounds horrible, but this is the thought process of your more neurotic types. Okay, I see a girl over there, she's not too attractive because if she's too attractive, I'm too scared to, to approach her. So she looks normal, average like me, let me approach her. "Um, hi, how are you?" And she's like, "No, go away, I have a boyfriend." That man turns, goes out the door, and says, "Not doing that again. Maybe next year I'll give it a shot, but I'm done." Versus hyper-confident, low neuroticism, low anxiety jerk. "Hey, you're hot." "No." "All right." "Hey, you over there, you're hot." "No." "All right." "Hey, you." Drink thrown in his face, whatever. But by the 19th woman, he gets a conversation and away he goes. And then neurotic, anxious guy sees jerk and says, all women just like jerks. That's all there is to it. No, you don't see the 19 strikeouts, the drinks thrown in his face, the— yeah, the fact that he just doesn't care. That's, that's it. You're right. The numbers game. It's a big, big part of it.

You got to be somewhere in the middle. You know, you got to—

there you go.

You gotta just do what you wanna do, take your licks, and maybe not do what you wanna do.

There you go. I'm gonna read from Chris's post here on X, Twitter. Men were asked, when was the last time you asked a woman in person for a date on the street or in a bar or a club or at school or work or wherever? 45% of men aged 18 to 25 have never approached a woman in person. Never. This is pri— is this primarily because of the MeToo movement? He says no, because, um, between 60 to 70% of those men just cited a fear of rejection. That's why they don't approach. Um, uh, it, it—

fair enough. But I think, I mean, I guess I, I would have to wonder, because again, it's tough to say, it's tough to say that the MeToo movement has nothing to do.

It has to, in part, have some.

Yeah, it has to, because the MeToo movement was a huge and pretty important cultural shift in things. I think that there are a lot of good conversations that started because of that. I think that a lot of people started to realize the importance of having consent conversations and all of that, all very important. I don't anybody would disagree, but to pretend that it's— it didn't also significantly shift the way that men approach women is also—

you cut out there for a second on me. Say again, the way men approach women?

Yeah, to say that, that the whole MeToo movement played no role in how men approach women is, is disingenuous.

It's— yeah.

It's like, I just don't see it.

Yeah, well, well, while men may not overtly in their mind say, because of Me Too movement, I think the fault— no, it's just that it's been so socially ingrained in terms of he goes to the office and HR pulls all the men into a meeting and say, men, just so we're aware, there are certain behaviors that are good and not good. Don't do this, don't say this, don't say blah blah blah, don't joke in this way, don't do— and then, okay, Jesus, the man's sitting there after an hour going I'm just inherently kind of a ticking sexual time bomb ready to go off, I guess. I better just sit with my arms crossed or sit on my hands, and when a woman walks in, I just look the other way. And so he takes that energy out into the— you know, that's just the office. Then he hears it from possibly his sister, his female friends, of all these men are jerks, all these men are dickheads. And the message gets across, and it takes time, and it's years and years of hearing those kind of messages. And I can see how That may result in 45% of these young men saying, "I have never approached a woman ever."