Brad, Ned, Becky and Stacy: Dating Market Dilemmas
In the dating marketplace, just like any other economic marketplace, individual actors trying to maximize their utility often face sets of tradeoffs. To individual actors, compromising their dating goals and standards given these constraints is difficult, and like there is no good option. In this sense, these situations are dilemmas: the individual facing them will have to sacrifice some of their goals to reach others. That might mean sacrificing their standards, their boundaries, or their integrity towards other people. This article will cover the dating market dilemmas faced by Ned, Becky, Stacy and Brad.
Ned’s Nasty No-win
Ned is the quintessential low-status man. Because of the right-skewed balance of the male dating pool, this could place Ned anywhere from the teens to the low 70s percentile-wise. Men in the bottom 10 to 15% of the dating market are probably not even Neds; they truly have zero romantic prospects and many die virgins.
Ned does not get a lot of interest from women. He is not particularly handsome, charming or wealthy. When a woman does come along, she is usually noncommittal, flaky and elusive towards Ned, since she is probably frantically looking for a more attractive prospect while entertaining Ned’s advances.
On the other hand, Ned needs to hold on for dear life whenever there is a woman interested in him, because he has serious doubts about when the next one will come along.
Ned’s dilemma is that his lack of leverage means he can’t do several things required for someone to date successfully and with self-respect. Ned can’t afford to take risks with women. Whether it is the risk of a flirty remark or initiating a kiss, Ned is so terrified of scaring off his prospect that he instead treads water and by not moving the relationship forward, guarantees that his prospect will eventually lose interest.
Ned can’t afford not to appear desperate. He can try to feign aloofness, but will be back to double-texting and overcommitting the minute his weak resolve is threatened. And Ned can’t afford to walk away.
Ned can’t enforce his boundaries by leaving when lines are crossed, because he doesn’t have anyone else to run to. Ned will be taken advantage of emotionally and financially, Ned will constantly be flaked on, Ned will be led on, Ned will be scammed.
Becky’s Brutal Bind
Becky, the medium-status woman, is faced with a dilemma of her own. She is a woman in the casual sex marketplace, so she has no issues there. But in the relationship marketplace, Becky is stuck. Becky wants to get into a long-term relationship that leads to marriage and family. She is not sexually chaste but doesn’t want to waste any more of her time on flings that don’t move her towards her goal.
So Becky opens her online dating profile and checks all the options for “seeking long-term relationship”. She ruthlessly filters out guys who are noncommittal, start flirting sexually early into their conversations, or outright announce their interest in casual sex in their dating profiles. To put an exclamation point on all of it, Becky adds a disclaimer in all caps to her dating profile, “seeking long term relationship only, not here for hookups, if you want something casual swipe left”.
But somehow, all of this doesn’t magically make a husband materialize for Becky out of thin air! Becky is learning the hard way about a statistical concept called the “base rate fallacy”. The base rate fallacy is a statistical mistake where the underlying rate of some phenomenon in the population and how that affects measurements of that population is neglected.
The most straightforward example is called the “false positive paradox”. Imagine a rare disease only affecting 1% of the population, and a test for it with a 5% false positive rate. Administering this test to 100 members of the general population would yield 1 true positive case, and 4 or 5 false positive cases. You can see why this would cause issues for epidemiologists.
Becky’s false positive paradox is her “test” of commitment readiness. There will be an ocean of lower-status men, including our friend Ned, who earnestly swipe right on Becky, but she will quickly reject them. Remaining will be a group of medium and higher status men who Becky will sort through. A few might be potential soulmates ready to settle down with Becky, but most will be amoral manipulators willing to lie about their intentions to sleep with her.
This is because the pool of men interested in sleeping with Becky and unconcerned with their personal integrity is much larger than the pool of men who see the potential for a long-term monogamous future with Becky. To make matters worse, the suitors with the most sexual market value are probably in the former camp.
Becky can implement more vetting strategies of course. She can withhold sex for several dates, or until she’s engaged or even married! But while that will filter out most of the liars, it will also scare off many of her good prospects. Maybe they find it insulting, maybe they think testing sexual compatibility early is important, or maybe some other woman they were seeing escalated things first and took them off the market. So it’s not costless for Becky to be stricter with her rules.
Becky might also relax her approach and date more casually, in hopes that she will develop a relationship more organically by not putting too much pressure on her suitors to commit early. But the false positive paradox still applies: a far larger number of men are interested in dating Becky casually than are interested in dating her seriously, and this time even the honest ones haven’t been filtered out. There is a functionally limitless number of casual sexual partners Becky could sort through before getting lucky and meeting someone with the same goals she has.
But Becky doesn’t have infinite time as a woman interested in marriage and childbearing, so this approach is also flawed. And even when a guy who meets Becky’s standards and is commitment-oriented comes onto the market, Becky is competing with a bunch of other Beckies to lock him down before somebody else does!
There is no solution to this quandary, it’s a dilemma! Dating is an awkward process and trying to lock in guarantees of future commitment early on is unrealistic. But waiting for commitment to blossom without any intentionality could lead to an interminable, fruitless search.
Stacy’s Self-imposed Struggle
Stacy’s dating dilemma is a bit more self-imposed, but we can still sympathize with where she finds herself in the dating marketplace. Stacy is a high-status woman. She has killer looks and makes an effort to age gracefully, she’s well-educated, and she has an interesting career.
Stacy can sleep with whoever she wants whenever she wants, and probably exercised that privilege a few times when she was younger. But now that she wants something more stable and committed she’s running into some issues. Stacy has high standards, but she’s earned that right. And there are vanishingly few men who meet those standards.
The thing about the dating pool of men and women is that they’re not evenly distributed. Women are prettier than men—they are the “fairer sex” after all—and at a population level, women put greater effort into their appearance on average. The “male variability hypothesis” also applies here, so you end up with two overlapping bell curves, with a narrower but higher-averaged bell curve for women, and a wider but somewhat lower-averaged bell curve for men.
This along with men’s greater tendency towards promiscuity probably explains a decent portion of what red pill and manosphere types call “hypergamy”. A small cadre of very attractive hypersexual men set a really high standard for many Stacies and high-tier Beckies, and they aren’t willing to settle for less once that standard has been set.
While it is true that just hierarchically ranking men and women in a dating market and pairing them off by sexual market value would fix this problem and make the higher-SMV women realize who is actually in their league on a statistical level, there is something to Stacy’s dilemma.
Stacy seeking out someone who prioritizes their appearance, their exercise, their nutrition, their style, and a dozen other SMV-enhancing habits as much as she does seems eminently reasonable. But based on the statistical realities discussed earlier and the gender gap in self-presentation, there are not enough men with these qualities to match the women with these qualities, not even close. If Stacy is economically high-status and wants a man who can match her on that level as well, it’s even more dire.
This is why every urban 30-something has half a dozen gorgeous, successful female friends who keep striking out in the dating market. And with every passing year, as more and more of the precious few high-status men get taken off the market, it only gets harder for Stacy. It is true that Stacy is being held captive by her exacting standards, but in every sense besides pragmatic reality, Stacy is not being unjustifiably picky. Stacy is a victim of a lopsided dating market and even though her problems are privileged ones to have, she is still facing a real dilemma.
Brad’s Baffling Bredicament
Brad is a high-mid man. The sexual marketplace is skewed rightwards for men, so he isn’t bang-on average among men, but he also isn’t a Chad, or even a coveted chad-lite. Brad is the type of guy who will ultimately end up settling down with Becky. But Brad’s not looking for commitment right now, and is hoping to give himself space to grow and learn about himself while still maintaining an active sex life.
This is where it gets complicated for Brad. There are plenty of sweet girls who would love to take Brad off the market, but the casual sex marketplace is ruthless for any man besides the most elite chads. So laying all his cards on the table is not super sustainable for Brad and he’s left to choose from several bad options.
Brad could become a player and consciously lead women on. They think they’ve finally found the one, but Brad knows they’re just one of several spinning plates. His sexual needs are fulfilled but he’s amassing karmic debt, he has to either suppress all of his remaining empathy or constantly feel guilty. This is also reputationally risky: roll the dice misleading women a few too many times and Brad might get posted in one of those dating facebook groups, or worse.
Brad could instead commit to a monogamous relationship in bad faith. Yes, he’s not really ready to settle down, but at Becky’s insistence he’ll relent and give her the “girlfriend” label. This is just delaying the inevitable though. Brad knows he’s never marrying her, and with every passing year the stakes of their breakup are increasing. Brad may not be breaking hearts all over town, but the time he’s stolen from and pain he’s caused his placeholder girlfriend when the relationship does eventually blow up in his face will be soul-crushing. In many ways, this common approach is more heartless than the first option.
Brad could try something else: prioritize his integrity and transparently look for casual sex and non-committal dating. But then he’s back in the casual sex marketplace, where he has little leverage. There are a small handful of sex positive women, and maybe from time to time one of them will sleep with him for a little while, but what is he really bringing to the table that they can’t get from a hotter, more exciting Chad? Brad could significantly lower his standards and date women way below his league who are open to casual hookups. But that would get old fast, and it would probably not be a good time for those women either, who would be able to tell how disgusted he was with them.
This approach basically converges into his fourth option: be celibate. Yes, horniness and loneliness will be overwhelming, and not getting the sex out of his system might actually hinder his progress towards actually being ready for commitment, but at least he’ll sleep at night!
Contrast Brad’s experience with Chad. Chad has so much volume of incoming interest that he can filter for women who are open to casual sex and won’t get attached. Chad can reliably score hookups whenever he’s horny. That small minority of sex positive women in open relationships or polyamorous constellations? Chad gets first pick. Girls moving away in a few months and just looking for a fling? Monopolized by Chad.
Chad’s physical needs are fully met, so he can really take his time with finding the right partner if a committed relationship is what he wants. And because he has so many women to choose from, he can skip the emotional drama that is inevitable in Brad’s casual dating experiences by avoiding women who seem hesitant or clingy.
Concluding thoughts
A couple takeaways from these various dating market dilemmas: first, a discussion of privilege. As annoying as Stacy’s situation is to her, she is still immensely privileged insofar as a respectful loving relationship with a stable guy is always within reach, she might just have to accept a bit of baldness or lower her expectations from “very wealthy” to merely “comfortable”. Becky can’t say the same thing, and even when she is reasonable about her expectations, successfully getting off the dating market is never guaranteed.
Chad can afford to be honest with himself and others in a way Brad can’t, and that’s an incredible privilege. His sense of integrity is not tested in the same way Brad’s is, and so he’s not so much a “better person” as he is fortunate to never have to discover how he would have behaved with less leverage. This is to say nothing of Ned, who is meaningfully underprivileged compared to Brad or Chad.
The other point is that no one described in these scenarios is really acting unreasonably. Individual economic actors are always trying to maximize utility, and this continues to be true in the dating and sexual marketplaces. It’s not really a dilemma that the average consumer can’t afford a private jet, but Becky wanting commitment, Stacy wanting a high-value man, and Brad trying to enjoy his youth aren’t really huge asks. And Ned, the prototypical incel, is probably the most modest of this group in his wants, even though he’s also the most socially maligned.
