As a 44 year old man who has been happily married for 20 years to the girl he met in his high school library, I'd add a few pieces of advice on long-term happiness:
1) The traits that spark attraction and the traits that make for stable long term relationships are different. Not necessarily in conflict with each other for most people, but they are different. When you're young, it's easy to convince yourself that sheer force if attraction is enough to make it work and it is not. The two Big Five traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness in combination are usually associated with good outcomes for a partner for life.
2) The best test for if you've found the one is whether she sticks with you when times are hard. Naturally, you have to do this for her too.
3) As Noah said, it's okay to be a regular guy, but it helps to have your shit together. Have some goals and direction in your life and work actively toward them. Have hobbies that don't involve a screen (it's okay to like video games, but have more going on than that). Get good at something that will make people want to talk to you. You don't have to be a "chad", but being interesting and resilient is important.
Take this article's advice to heart, my young brothers. I'm what Ali Wong would classify a "kind 6," and I've had some long dry spells in my 83 years (well, 65 years since I paid a twenty-something bar girl in Tijuana to end my virginity), but I also had many fulfilling relationships before my marriage at 48 (the most fulfilling of all). Just be friendly, be honest, and if you want to know what a woman is thinking, ask her.
This is great. If you're someone like me who regularly browses dating and gender discourse something you'll notice in it regardless of gender is the unusual lack of discussion about the most important reasons anyone gets into a relationship: love and companionship.
Highlighting companionship as the number 1 reason women (and men) want a relationship is painfully obvious, yet strangely ignored in the discourse. I'm not just talking about what incels say either. You see this total lack of discussion among women too. A lot of content and social media rage farming aimed at women tries to argue that women don't need men anymore because they're now free to be financially independent. It's as if love and companionship never crosses their mind as a reason at all--pure utilitarianism.
I think this says a lot about what our society has lost. We've lost the language, symbols, and models of love and companionship and instead bath in the cold waters of utilitarian decision making when it comes to romance.
re: "A lot of content and social media rage farming aimed at women tries to argue that women don't need men anymore because they're now free to be financially independent. It's as if love and companionship never crosses their mind as a reason at all--pure utilitarianism."-- I think this is a misunderstanding of the rage-farming aimed at women. Granted, women are different and these social media posts are targeted to hyper-specific demographics. But the "you don't need him" posts aimed at *me* (F/38/PhD) don't assume that I don't want companionship. Rather, they acknowledge that high-achieving women face structural barriers to heterosexual companionship under patriarchy and are trying to persuade me that what I need isn't a life-partner, but an expensive spa day or a cortisol-regulating nutritional supplement etc.
I can only see this from an outside perspective obviously. Though I'll note that this content isn't just aimed at high-achieving women. I may actually see more of it aimed at women much further down the socio-economic ladder.
Regardless though, that content also shows a funny mirror image of a rather toxic, traditionally male trait: it venerates the lone-wolf archetype--the idea that you are stronger because you're alone. That *can* be true to a point. Having the ability to live alone is a mark of strength. But actually being alone is not a strength at all. Human beings are stronger with someone, and celebrating singlehood may be a nice cope, but it is still fundamentally a cope.
I'm sure it is acknowledging structural barriers, but it also seems to drift towards "you don't need him anyway."
-lean into a caretaking role and get disrespected by higher-earning partners who see your comparative vulnerability as a justification for subordination
-focus on your career and trigger the insecurities of less accomplished partners whose coping method is often denigrating
-or date someone equally accomplished who nevertheless assumes their career takes precedent
...then your only romantic options are disempowering compared to being single.
I see no reason those are ever the *only* options though. Plenty of women in all positions of the socio economic ladder end up very happily married outside of those possibilities entirely.
Seeing that requires hope though, and most dating discourse for both men and women is practically designed to kill hope.
The discourse reflects people's lived experiences. Welcome to the post-Roe world, where dating has real biologically-asymmetric risks reflected in incompatible coordination preferences.
Discourses are also often very wrong and not rooted in reality at all. Pessimism *feels* correct, and we like to think it's a mark of our intelligence, but often it's completely wrong.
It's rather ironic that while I'm talking to you here, I'm also having a similar talk with a self-professed male incel on Twitter on this same article. Polar opposites in many ways most likely, but in dating discourse it's flipsides of the same coin. Both of you share an extremely pessimistic view and the sense of inescapable patterns.
I like that you've made the case that the "Chad Dream" isn't even desirable.
Because it isn't! Anything you gorge on becomes tiresome after a while, including sex with women (or men) you don't know. Even if you could manage to have sex with different beautiful women nightly, what's left on the other side of that? We're basically talking about some alternate version of "gooning," which has diminishing returns as a compulsive addiction.
But maybe these guys don't know any middle-aged Casanovas to know how quickly hedonists tire of hedonism. Incels are vulnerable to misguided fantasies because they are so lonely in the first place, so IRL exposure to people who might teach them lessons is lacking. But the culture is full of archetypes of the tragic man who has aged out of his womanizing, so parasocial examples are available: One of the most notorious OG "Chads" in Internet history, Tucker Max, eventually recanted on his ecosystem of pick-up artistry and raunchy (probably largely fictional) sex-capades. Max currently resides with his wife and four children in Austin, TX and wrote a whole book about how stupid it all was.
And, as for the far-right edgelords who want to condemn American women to economic dependence on men, just think about how obviously bleak this scenario of the Evil Prince here would be:
"Some percent of incels turn to the “red pill” — they believe that if women can be barred from having jobs, it will force them to accept lower-status men as mates out of pure economic necessity. Have you ever read a fairy tale about a prince who tries to force a poor girl to marry him, even though she clearly hates him?"
Do you *actually* want to live with a trad-wife sex-slave who not-so-secretly hates you, submits to you sexually only with the deepest revulsion, and might even decide one day to poison you, like these village ladies in Nagyrév, Hungary apparently did around the Turn-of-the Century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Makers_of_Nagyr%C3%A9v)?
Maybe if you've never had sex or related to a woman in any way, this seems like a decent idea. But it's textbook "be careful what you wish for" territory, in practice. And, again, don't take my word for it, just look at the troubled history of rich-guy trophy wives, in practice. Or watch a Neflix documentary about sister-wives or something.
I must say I am both surprised and relieved to see Noah write about this. I had been getting the impression that the only intimate emotional relationship in his life was with his rabbit
This is wonderful. As a nerdy loser who was bullied in high school, read Tolkien and Stephen King religiously, played MTG and loved Final Fantasy I grew up thinking love and sex were not possible for me. No girls ever looked my way before the age of 21. I would have been a prime candidate for the kind of incel rage you see online today. Then I met my wife. Someone who inexplicably found me funny and kind and attractive. Someone who just liked being around me and didn’t find my obsession with lore and serial murderers off putting. Now happily married for over 10 years I think the key to success is being honest about who you are, being kind and approachable, being open to change, and not losing hope. For me and I think for many men we need someone to care for. Being married has given me a new sense of purpose and I hope removed any toxic masculinity I had previously and replaced it with positive masculinity. Anyway, great post!
Yes, all you poor white anglo guys have been taught that's bad, when you were a kid. And it's not even fully reliable; different women want different emotions. Some want confident, some want vulnerable, some want the geek, who gets totally carried away by the same thing they love. Some want the humour you actually feel in your bones, because this whole fucking world, ugh - either laugh or shoot yourself...
Well, what do I do? If you "want" to be stuck up and unhappy, just go for it, you'll be sure to succeed.
It is really sad that Anglo-American men were taught at an early age to suppress their emotions (aside from anger, of course). At least that was the case during my childhood, when everything was "gay" (derogatory).
And it was also de rigueur to *bury deep* any genuine need for companionship or emotional vulnerability, reducing the entire romantic impulse to sexuality (and not even truly intimate sexuality... just the "pump-and-dump" version).
So you get this depreciated narrative around romance where women offer men sex transactionally (with the subtext that it's reluctantly) and men offer money or DIY projects around the house, in return. Which is... bleak.
But normal is what you know. And I know so many men who genuinely don't think friendship with women is possible, basically see them as strange creatures, and don't know how to relate to them at all (even when they are ostensibly in a relationship with them).
A good and wise post. I think it would have benefited from better editing and spent much more time than necessary dwelling on framing before getting to the actual advice, but the advice was good.
It is completely true that having a relationship is achievable for the typical man. Even below-average men can pull it off. It takes as much time and effort as building a career does, but most people who try eventually succeed. Take heart, young men!
The internet discourse is skewed by a simple mechanism: men who have no wives, no girlfriends, no children and no jobs have a huge amount of spare time to spend on the internet, where they post all manner of nonsense trying to cope. Some of that cope involves denying the obvious reality that humans have a pair-bond mating system and pretending that we have an alpha-take-all system like gorillas. Men who have wives, children, and jobs are mostly busy in meatspace and are not posting. Stay out of online spaces that are full of nonsense cope.
You should always take precautions before talking about sex online. Using protection helps you to enjoy what comes afterwards all the more. And I thought the framing was introduced very naturally, as part of the overall discussion.
Great post. As a woman, though, this line made me cringe: "It means giving her advice on her job or her personal problems." Please no!! If a woman wants your advice, she will ask for it. Learn to let your partner vent WITHOUT jumping in and giving advice would be the better counsel. 😊
This was, if I remember rightly, on James Dobson, What Wives Wish Men Knew about Women. More than 50 years old, but a classic. He was great before he got so political.
I read "My Secret Garden" in my early 20's and it was revelatory. I too had assumed that women tolerated sex in order to get romance, but that book made me start to realize it just looked that way because women worry about being shamed for desiring sex in a way that men are not, so they play it closer to the vest. In my experience, once a woman finds a man she feels safe and trusting with, her sex drive can often be much higher than his.
As a teenager, I was horribly shy. Spending HS in a boarding school outside of Boston where there were 2.5 guys to every girl made adolescence a lot harder than it needed to be.
What changed it all for me--as a smart kid who had trouble getting out of his head--was physicality. Learning how to dance. Joining the Wrestling team (undefeated JV!). Post-HS: learning how to do massage therapy; and then getting into Sexual Tantra, Chi Kung, T'Ai Chi and meditation.
While Noah warned against recommendations, when I was thirteen--very much pre-internet--my father gave me a copy of "The Joy of Sex." Which I read and re-read, and practically memorized. I still remember trying out some of the techniques I gleaned from it on my first few sexual encounters as a teen, and being like, "Wow, this stuff really works!" All of which paved the way for the later exploration of Tantra.
So yes, investing time and money into broadening your technical expertise and becoming more embodied will definitely pay big dividends down the road.
And while Noah listed "Helping raise the kids" as his #3 reason why women want guys, it could be better amended to: "Developing the capacity to make your woman happy." Which is a broad category that includes (possible) parenting; but primarily addresses the capacity to nourish the relationship.
The most useful thing in here would have been the thing you left out — how you met your partner, how the connection formed, how it grew. That would have done more for a man struggling to find connection than all the charts and incel debunking combined. The data refutes a false picture; it can’t paint a true one. A regular guy’s actual story could have.
But I think it's going to be different for everyone. It doesn't make sense to model too closely off of someone else, given the huge diversity of tastes and desires out there!
The "Chad" lifestyle you mention is more about status among other men than anything else. Status is a crucial factor in dating / marriage / divorce and impossible to measure because most people won't admit this to themselves, let alone a pollster.
Noah - this is the first and only blog I've read by an economist that covers the totality of the dating scene, with the requisite number of charts and stats - good work! As a subscriber, I never expected you to cover this topic, so that's a bonus.
It's bizarre that the world (or at least the country) has turned in a direction to make mating a problem that needs a solution, but it has.
As a 44 year old man who has been happily married for 20 years to the girl he met in his high school library, I'd add a few pieces of advice on long-term happiness:
1) The traits that spark attraction and the traits that make for stable long term relationships are different. Not necessarily in conflict with each other for most people, but they are different. When you're young, it's easy to convince yourself that sheer force if attraction is enough to make it work and it is not. The two Big Five traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness in combination are usually associated with good outcomes for a partner for life.
2) The best test for if you've found the one is whether she sticks with you when times are hard. Naturally, you have to do this for her too.
3) As Noah said, it's okay to be a regular guy, but it helps to have your shit together. Have some goals and direction in your life and work actively toward them. Have hobbies that don't involve a screen (it's okay to like video games, but have more going on than that). Get good at something that will make people want to talk to you. You don't have to be a "chad", but being interesting and resilient is important.
Goes to confidence point 3. And self-confidence is a major factor for many points of life-success or maybe "non-failure"
Indeed, and it's the confidence that isn't faked, unlike the kind PUAs used to teach.
Take this article's advice to heart, my young brothers. I'm what Ali Wong would classify a "kind 6," and I've had some long dry spells in my 83 years (well, 65 years since I paid a twenty-something bar girl in Tijuana to end my virginity), but I also had many fulfilling relationships before my marriage at 48 (the most fulfilling of all). Just be friendly, be honest, and if you want to know what a woman is thinking, ask her.
This is great. If you're someone like me who regularly browses dating and gender discourse something you'll notice in it regardless of gender is the unusual lack of discussion about the most important reasons anyone gets into a relationship: love and companionship.
Highlighting companionship as the number 1 reason women (and men) want a relationship is painfully obvious, yet strangely ignored in the discourse. I'm not just talking about what incels say either. You see this total lack of discussion among women too. A lot of content and social media rage farming aimed at women tries to argue that women don't need men anymore because they're now free to be financially independent. It's as if love and companionship never crosses their mind as a reason at all--pure utilitarianism.
I think this says a lot about what our society has lost. We've lost the language, symbols, and models of love and companionship and instead bath in the cold waters of utilitarian decision making when it comes to romance.
re: "A lot of content and social media rage farming aimed at women tries to argue that women don't need men anymore because they're now free to be financially independent. It's as if love and companionship never crosses their mind as a reason at all--pure utilitarianism."-- I think this is a misunderstanding of the rage-farming aimed at women. Granted, women are different and these social media posts are targeted to hyper-specific demographics. But the "you don't need him" posts aimed at *me* (F/38/PhD) don't assume that I don't want companionship. Rather, they acknowledge that high-achieving women face structural barriers to heterosexual companionship under patriarchy and are trying to persuade me that what I need isn't a life-partner, but an expensive spa day or a cortisol-regulating nutritional supplement etc.
I can only see this from an outside perspective obviously. Though I'll note that this content isn't just aimed at high-achieving women. I may actually see more of it aimed at women much further down the socio-economic ladder.
Regardless though, that content also shows a funny mirror image of a rather toxic, traditionally male trait: it venerates the lone-wolf archetype--the idea that you are stronger because you're alone. That *can* be true to a point. Having the ability to live alone is a mark of strength. But actually being alone is not a strength at all. Human beings are stronger with someone, and celebrating singlehood may be a nice cope, but it is still fundamentally a cope.
I'm sure it is acknowledging structural barriers, but it also seems to drift towards "you don't need him anyway."
Right. If your options are:
-lean into a caretaking role and get disrespected by higher-earning partners who see your comparative vulnerability as a justification for subordination
-focus on your career and trigger the insecurities of less accomplished partners whose coping method is often denigrating
-or date someone equally accomplished who nevertheless assumes their career takes precedent
...then your only romantic options are disempowering compared to being single.
I see no reason those are ever the *only* options though. Plenty of women in all positions of the socio economic ladder end up very happily married outside of those possibilities entirely.
Seeing that requires hope though, and most dating discourse for both men and women is practically designed to kill hope.
The discourse reflects people's lived experiences. Welcome to the post-Roe world, where dating has real biologically-asymmetric risks reflected in incompatible coordination preferences.
Discourses are also often very wrong and not rooted in reality at all. Pessimism *feels* correct, and we like to think it's a mark of our intelligence, but often it's completely wrong.
It's rather ironic that while I'm talking to you here, I'm also having a similar talk with a self-professed male incel on Twitter on this same article. Polar opposites in many ways most likely, but in dating discourse it's flipsides of the same coin. Both of you share an extremely pessimistic view and the sense of inescapable patterns.
I like that you've made the case that the "Chad Dream" isn't even desirable.
Because it isn't! Anything you gorge on becomes tiresome after a while, including sex with women (or men) you don't know. Even if you could manage to have sex with different beautiful women nightly, what's left on the other side of that? We're basically talking about some alternate version of "gooning," which has diminishing returns as a compulsive addiction.
But maybe these guys don't know any middle-aged Casanovas to know how quickly hedonists tire of hedonism. Incels are vulnerable to misguided fantasies because they are so lonely in the first place, so IRL exposure to people who might teach them lessons is lacking. But the culture is full of archetypes of the tragic man who has aged out of his womanizing, so parasocial examples are available: One of the most notorious OG "Chads" in Internet history, Tucker Max, eventually recanted on his ecosystem of pick-up artistry and raunchy (probably largely fictional) sex-capades. Max currently resides with his wife and four children in Austin, TX and wrote a whole book about how stupid it all was.
And, as for the far-right edgelords who want to condemn American women to economic dependence on men, just think about how obviously bleak this scenario of the Evil Prince here would be:
"Some percent of incels turn to the “red pill” — they believe that if women can be barred from having jobs, it will force them to accept lower-status men as mates out of pure economic necessity. Have you ever read a fairy tale about a prince who tries to force a poor girl to marry him, even though she clearly hates him?"
Do you *actually* want to live with a trad-wife sex-slave who not-so-secretly hates you, submits to you sexually only with the deepest revulsion, and might even decide one day to poison you, like these village ladies in Nagyrév, Hungary apparently did around the Turn-of-the Century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Makers_of_Nagyr%C3%A9v)?
Maybe if you've never had sex or related to a woman in any way, this seems like a decent idea. But it's textbook "be careful what you wish for" territory, in practice. And, again, don't take my word for it, just look at the troubled history of rich-guy trophy wives, in practice. Or watch a Neflix documentary about sister-wives or something.
I must say I am both surprised and relieved to see Noah write about this. I had been getting the impression that the only intimate emotional relationship in his life was with his rabbit
Well he's still #1 🐇🐇🐇
So I couldn’t interest you in a certain Japanese cetacean?
Have we seen any pix and video of this rabbit? It might be one smokin' hot bunny he's got there.
This is wonderful. As a nerdy loser who was bullied in high school, read Tolkien and Stephen King religiously, played MTG and loved Final Fantasy I grew up thinking love and sex were not possible for me. No girls ever looked my way before the age of 21. I would have been a prime candidate for the kind of incel rage you see online today. Then I met my wife. Someone who inexplicably found me funny and kind and attractive. Someone who just liked being around me and didn’t find my obsession with lore and serial murderers off putting. Now happily married for over 10 years I think the key to success is being honest about who you are, being kind and approachable, being open to change, and not losing hope. For me and I think for many men we need someone to care for. Being married has given me a new sense of purpose and I hope removed any toxic masculinity I had previously and replaced it with positive masculinity. Anyway, great post!
One little thing: Show your emotions!!
Yes, all you poor white anglo guys have been taught that's bad, when you were a kid. And it's not even fully reliable; different women want different emotions. Some want confident, some want vulnerable, some want the geek, who gets totally carried away by the same thing they love. Some want the humour you actually feel in your bones, because this whole fucking world, ugh - either laugh or shoot yourself...
Well, what do I do? If you "want" to be stuck up and unhappy, just go for it, you'll be sure to succeed.
It is really sad that Anglo-American men were taught at an early age to suppress their emotions (aside from anger, of course). At least that was the case during my childhood, when everything was "gay" (derogatory).
And it was also de rigueur to *bury deep* any genuine need for companionship or emotional vulnerability, reducing the entire romantic impulse to sexuality (and not even truly intimate sexuality... just the "pump-and-dump" version).
So you get this depreciated narrative around romance where women offer men sex transactionally (with the subtext that it's reluctantly) and men offer money or DIY projects around the house, in return. Which is... bleak.
But normal is what you know. And I know so many men who genuinely don't think friendship with women is possible, basically see them as strange creatures, and don't know how to relate to them at all (even when they are ostensibly in a relationship with them).
hhaha - you think anglo boy repress their emotions??? Indian and Asian men have entered the chat...
The ability and willingness to express emotions may explain the usual sexual success of artists, especially those that need to perform for people.
A good and wise post. I think it would have benefited from better editing and spent much more time than necessary dwelling on framing before getting to the actual advice, but the advice was good.
It is completely true that having a relationship is achievable for the typical man. Even below-average men can pull it off. It takes as much time and effort as building a career does, but most people who try eventually succeed. Take heart, young men!
The internet discourse is skewed by a simple mechanism: men who have no wives, no girlfriends, no children and no jobs have a huge amount of spare time to spend on the internet, where they post all manner of nonsense trying to cope. Some of that cope involves denying the obvious reality that humans have a pair-bond mating system and pretending that we have an alpha-take-all system like gorillas. Men who have wives, children, and jobs are mostly busy in meatspace and are not posting. Stay out of online spaces that are full of nonsense cope.
You should always take precautions before talking about sex online. Using protection helps you to enjoy what comes afterwards all the more. And I thought the framing was introduced very naturally, as part of the overall discussion.
Great post. As a woman, though, this line made me cringe: "It means giving her advice on her job or her personal problems." Please no!! If a woman wants your advice, she will ask for it. Learn to let your partner vent WITHOUT jumping in and giving advice would be the better counsel. 😊
My wife told me early on in our life together, 'I don't want solutions, I want sympathy'. Governments should issue manuals with this stuff in them.
This was, if I remember rightly, on James Dobson, What Wives Wish Men Knew about Women. More than 50 years old, but a classic. He was great before he got so political.
Love 💕 this piece 🧩
I read "My Secret Garden" in my early 20's and it was revelatory. I too had assumed that women tolerated sex in order to get romance, but that book made me start to realize it just looked that way because women worry about being shamed for desiring sex in a way that men are not, so they play it closer to the vest. In my experience, once a woman finds a man she feels safe and trusting with, her sex drive can often be much higher than his.
As a teenager, I was horribly shy. Spending HS in a boarding school outside of Boston where there were 2.5 guys to every girl made adolescence a lot harder than it needed to be.
What changed it all for me--as a smart kid who had trouble getting out of his head--was physicality. Learning how to dance. Joining the Wrestling team (undefeated JV!). Post-HS: learning how to do massage therapy; and then getting into Sexual Tantra, Chi Kung, T'Ai Chi and meditation.
While Noah warned against recommendations, when I was thirteen--very much pre-internet--my father gave me a copy of "The Joy of Sex." Which I read and re-read, and practically memorized. I still remember trying out some of the techniques I gleaned from it on my first few sexual encounters as a teen, and being like, "Wow, this stuff really works!" All of which paved the way for the later exploration of Tantra.
So yes, investing time and money into broadening your technical expertise and becoming more embodied will definitely pay big dividends down the road.
And while Noah listed "Helping raise the kids" as his #3 reason why women want guys, it could be better amended to: "Developing the capacity to make your woman happy." Which is a broad category that includes (possible) parenting; but primarily addresses the capacity to nourish the relationship.
The most useful thing in here would have been the thing you left out — how you met your partner, how the connection formed, how it grew. That would have done more for a man struggling to find connection than all the charts and incel debunking combined. The data refutes a false picture; it can’t paint a true one. A regular guy’s actual story could have.
But I think it's going to be different for everyone. It doesn't make sense to model too closely off of someone else, given the huge diversity of tastes and desires out there!
(Also my girlfriend vetoed 😅)
So it isn’t just the hanging Chad we have to worry about, it is the well hung Chad!
The "Chad" lifestyle you mention is more about status among other men than anything else. Status is a crucial factor in dating / marriage / divorce and impossible to measure because most people won't admit this to themselves, let alone a pollster.
Noah - this is the first and only blog I've read by an economist that covers the totality of the dating scene, with the requisite number of charts and stats - good work! As a subscriber, I never expected you to cover this topic, so that's a bonus.
It's bizarre that the world (or at least the country) has turned in a direction to make mating a problem that needs a solution, but it has.
Variety is the spice of life, so keep it up!