I've been thinking about this so much recently and you are so right. I will add that the person you are attracted to needs to want to have children. That person does NOT have to be religious. She (but more likely he) will come around to the faith but not wanting children is fatal. If the person wants children, the children will lead them to the faith by sheer necessity. But if they don't want children, they are cold and their faith won't make you happy. Many, many non-religious people just want a family and that's the best predictor of future happiness, not whether they can explain the hypostatic union.
I think that point goes with being attracted to the person.
I wish religious people would date GOOD non-religious people. It's better for the person to be attractive, warm, fun, and GOOD than to be a card-carrying religious person. Things are just too confusing now -- too many reasons not to have faith. But they are superficial. In the end, a GOOD person will get there, but a person without morals or lax in interest in others will be hard to live with, even if "religious."
Not having sex is a way to find this out, by the way. Why can't people understand you can find someone super hot and attractive but NOT have sex? It's better for finding your love. Sexual tension is the best motivator. Expend it and you'll end up unhappy. That's the flip side of pursuit!
I have more to say and haven't said this exactly right, but what you wrote is so important! I wish the younger people would just... have more of a blast and try to focus on whether they actually LIKE being with the person!
Thank you so much for your comment Auntie Leila! I'm honored.
I totally agree with you. And yes, even if only one of the pair is Catholic, simply following the teachings of the Catholic Church will make everything so much easier when it comes to dating, choosing a spouse, discernment, etc.
The rules are there for a reason! I've always thought the yoke was easy but I mean these things are so much clearer the older you get and the more stories and life experience you gather.
I'll go a step further and say that a "religious" person could have much more in common with a non-religious person than another of the same faith, such that it wouldn't make sense for them *not* to marry each other.
When a friend (and faithful Catholic married to another faithful Catholic) told me, “you deserve to feel fireworks,” it was a game changer for me and my dating life. Before that I just felt like something was wrong with me for not being super into the guys I had been going on dates with. Then I met my now husband and realized exactly what she meant lol. This message needs to be said—thank you!!
So true! I went out with so many men I agonized over not liking enough… then I met my husband, who was Protestant at the time, but became Catholic by the time we tied the knot! The coming together spiritually is a longer process than just the end point of conversion, but I definitely see what Lane is saying about attraction motivating couples to resolve incompatibilities.
I have quite a few guy friends who are single like me, some more and less normal, but no one too extreme. I don't think we have any problem with these points you laid out, it's just a wall of rejection we keep running into. I think the girls we ask out are broadly following your advice of "don't date someone you're not attracted to", but man, being on the receiving end of that for years wears on you. Most of us have to walk a tightrope of consuming the right amount of self-improvement/looksmaxxing type of content, because we aren't good enough as we are, but going off the deep end of that stuff obviously is bad.
I've thought for awhile that girls should usually at least give a chance to the guy and go on a first date, but I think your essay has soothed that burn a little for when they often don't, so thank you. You give good reasoning for why not to date someone you aren't attracted to.
Man that sucks I'm sorry. I do hear the same thing from a lot of younger guys so I know you're not alone in this. Any chance you could expand your social circle or join some real-life clubs or groups that could introduce you to more people?
I think it's possible we have to meet a lot of people before finding the right one. A million and one things have to line up for it to be right. It's just a tall order. Hang in there; and thanks for your comment.
Why does that suck? Women do all manner of things to improve their appearance above their natural state in the effort to attract men. But, we tell men "that sucks" when they do only a fraction of the same? Perhaps the response should be "that's good! Do more!"
Online dating really messes with this. Back in my day lots of girls would find guys attractive by being around them and getting to know them, and the guy’s great sense of humor or intelligence or skills way he moved or whatever would make him attractive. So it was still genuine bodily attraction, but it wasn’t always based on an initial impression. It seems like getting as much in person time as possible could help today’s youth.
You mention that many women don't have as big of an initial attraction, and it tends to grow over time. But Lane and other commenters here advise women not to waste time going on dates with guys they dint have initial attraction for, and don't listen to people who say to wait for attraction to grow. It seems contradictory.
I hear you that it seems contradictory. I was think it’s hard because there’s a difference between meeting and immediately dating and waiting for attraction to grow under the pressure of those one-on-one interactions, and getting to know someone in a group setting where you can observe what a a stand-up guy he is with his friends, how you didn’t notice him before just based on looks but now that he’s playing guitar he’s actually kinda sexy, or whatever. And friends can recommend him because they know him to be a good guy. I imagine this could go the other way too. A guy might think a girl is just ok looking, like not the hottest of the hot, but once he sees how fun she is to be with, she gets cuter. But it’s all under so much pressure when it goes straight from an online profile to a date, without the context of a friend group or repeated low-stakes encounters.
That's true, there is a subtle but important line there. I guess my question is, why do dates have to be such high stakes? There's some girls I know that I just can't practically meet in group settings consistently to develop that kind of attraction, but I definitely could realistically meet with them one on one a few times. I'm not sure whether the better play in those situations is to ask her out and likely get denied, or spend years seeing her once ever 9 months in a group setting and trying to build something off that. I could do neither of those and try to go for a low stakes option where I see her more (i.e. try to become her friend then ask her out over time), but women tend to disapprove of that option as well.
I'm an old Millennial so calibrate my advice based on that, but here are a few possibilities:
- Have lots of friends of both sexes. If you don't have them, try to make them. It's like chemistry or culture: more interactions among different individual things creates more possibilities! Even if none of the female friends you make turn into Girlfriend, you will do better with women if you can demonstrably earn the trust of some. And it's easier to build a good relationship if you don't see every single woman as either Romantic Object or Not Relevant.
- If you can build a decent-sized friend group (or have one already), try to take the lead in organizing some things. In my case, my now-wife-then-friend was in my church small group. I would propose hikes to the group which were a low-pressure way for us to talk naturally in a somewhat one-on-one way.
This is great advice. You should like and respect women as people if you intend to marry one. And organizing group activities is helpful to the whole group, but shines a light on the person competent and motivated enough to do the work.
Starting a young adult group is how my husband and I fell in love.
^ This is actually great advice (although I’m a young Gen X, so I guess calibrate my agreement based on that, too 😆). I met my husband by hanging out with a group of his friends. I wasn’t necessarily attracted to him right off the bat, but it didn’t take very long to figure it out.
Yeah I’m not sure. Maybe ask your mutual friends for a little help with planning events where you see one another more often? I just know in my case, it was kinda sporadic and it went from oh I recognize that guy to wait he seems kinda cool, wait he’s pretty cute, to 20+ years of happy marriage. And I will say on his side too, like we were both on and off dating other people and maybe only mildly making note of each other until the stars aligned and then we were super into each other. I wish you luck, genuinely.
And I will add, I think this connects to Lane’s advice to be “just be normal” and to her larger project of having all of us being more “normal” in terms of getting together in groups and hosting friends on the regular. This would all be easier to do if everyone was hosting and initiating group hang outs more.
The point is that these girls were getting to know the guys in casual settings. Maybe being part of the same club or volunteer org or church or whatever -- not that they were going out on dates. When the pressure is off, attraction can and does grow, because someone becomes familiar, trust builds, and their wit/intelligence/smile/appearance/etc. takes on a desirable quality.
That seems harsh. Even if nothing came of it, I enjoy going on dates because I like getting to know people, plus the practice doesn't hurt. It could be because I don't go on many, though, maybe it starts to seem like a waste of time if you go in lots of them.
It is because you don’t go on many. If you get asked out a lot or are a woman (and therefore have a shorter time window for reasonably expecting to be able to marry), it absolutely can be a waste of time. Our time is precious and has to be respected.
Plus, in my experience, if you’re a woman forcing yourself to go on dates with men you’re not attracted to you, it can make you numb to the point where you’re just not attracted to *any* men at all.
Imagine that you meet a woman who *could* be your future wife except that she cannot bring herself to be attracted to you because she got emotionally burnt out by giving a chance to all 100 men who asked her out in the past year. That would be very unfortunate.
I do think it can sometimes make sense for a woman to give a chance to a man she is not initially attracted to, BUT it depends on so many factors that only she would know/have access to, so the man should not try to pressure her into it.
Obviously I dint try to pressure women like that, and I get the logic behind what they are doing. But think about how it feels from the reverse. Women have what, maybe like 15 years to find someone? But an hour on a Thursday night with me is too much of a waste of time. Or your other point, the woman is turning me down because she's done the math and realized that upside of having a happy rest of her life with me isn't worth the downside that she literally may think worse of all men by interacting with me.
Then have that happen over, and over, and over again. It's soul crushing.
Look at your language here: the word “feels.” I am not talking about how things feel here. I am taking about how women should date.
If you are looking for sympathy or advice, that is a separate topic. But also I can’t give you advice because I don’t know you or your situation.
It’s not fifteen years, really. Not equally. At some point the chances of getting married plummet drastically because almost all marriageable men are taken. Especially in the Catholic dating pool. So it’s really more like 8 years. Ten if you’re one of the lucky ones.
And yes, an hour spent with you is a waste of time if she could instead be spending it with someone she is attracted to, someone she is likely to grow attraction to, or on recharging/doing other necessary parts of her life so she can go on a date with someone she is attracted to the next day/week/month/whatever.
This is a good conversation, but if you make it about feelings again, I’m going to stop engaging. I’m here to talk about reality, not feelings.
Well, if you want to talk reality, I'd argue that almost all of the marriageable women are taken by 8 years as well, so I'm not sure your statement that women have a shorter timeframe holds up. What makes your time more precious and more needed to be respected (your words) than a man's?
I don't think he literally means that you should go on a date with every single man who asks you out. That would obviously be silly, for the reasons you give here.
Well I don't know what he means, but I generally agree with the sentiment that going on a first date with someone and giving them a chance is a good idea. If a guy isn't repulsive or creepy, it would seem like a good idea to go on a first date if he asks, because you might find out that the way he behaves on the date is actually attractive - or not!
I don't think there are 100 guys who aren't repulsive or creepy asking you out in a year (assuming you're not super active on dating apps).
“Most of us have to walk a tightrope of consuming the right amount of self-improvement/looksmaxxing type of content” couldn’t you seek spaces and communities that support self improvement that aren’t harmful? That you can fully lean into without needing to pull back when it becomes too much? Positive exercise-focused groups?
“Because we aren’t good enough as we are” is a really sad thing to feel. You will definitely be enough for somebody, and I hope that somebody is someone who loves you in every season of your life.
Sad, but accurate based off the evidence it seems. Thank you for the encouragement, and I hope so as well, but I'll believe it when I see it. The proof is in the pudding.
1) "It would be like approaching girls and leading with “My body can only tolerate drinking a certain brand of rare bottled water because my main personality trait is deep, profound dissatisfaction with the normal water most people enjoy. This and looking down with disdain on people who have never realized that the water they are drinking is disgusting are my two main selling points.”" I dated this person
2) "People without much life experience think if they can manage to match minds then the bodies will eventually come along, too. This is a profound error. Do not do this to yourself." I was that person
3) "This means that you can really like someone, really enjoy their personality and agree with them on all important things, but feel zero attraction to them, and that won’t be evident until you try to actually go out on a real date." This, word for word, happened to me
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This is a fantastic, much-needed article on a topic I have not heard anyone address ever, somehow. I needed to hear it and I feel a little less crazy picky now. Thank you for the practical sage advice, even coming from a church circle that acknowledges the physical side of living in God's world fairly well, this is something that young people (such as yours truly) should hear more often. I feel less guilty for feeling nothing around theologically sound and chubby/bony/oily/short guys I have told myself I'm supposed to enjoy the prescence of. 🫣
I just feel as those though I need to jump in here as a man and confirm that you did not say anything remotely rude. You're not attracted to unatteactive physical characteristics and stating this forthrightly isn't rude in the slightest.
No need to be disparaging of men you do not find attractive. Also keep in mind that height is not a characteristic that men can control. All the best to you!
Saying “I am not personally attracted to this physical trait” is actually not an insult, just a statement of fact. Nobody is entitled to the adoration of everyone
Thank you mate thats what I was trying to communicate 😮💨 I was in fact NOT calling chubby, bony, oily and short men less than human, only saying I do not find them attractive as potential spouses. There's a lilliputtian queen for every short king and I just cant be her
I think you may be reading into it a bit much. I would find no fault in a man saying he was put off by chubby/bony/oily/tall(?) women.
Height is certainly out of one's control, but the others are all mostly matter of hygiene and discipline that can be corrected, and can indeed give you a read on someone's character at a glance. These might be rude to point out in an individual, but I think they're fine as general standards.
Shortness was just something I tossed in because I am a woman the same height as the average man in my country, "short" to me is anywhere downwards of 5'10 and is plain personal preference 😅
Lots of very insightful points in your article. I don’t have any opinions on the religious aspect of it all, but having been a vegan for a few years in my youth, I know a thing or two about people who have nothing else but their worldview going for them.
The point about modern dating being backwards is also very true. An additional thing I would consider, is that young people trying to optimize against divorce might look up to middle-aged happily married couples as role models, and that’s a mistake. They see the deep compatibility of mind and of lifestyle, they see companionship ; they do not see that it’s been an ongoing building process toward one another for 25 years, that this couple didn’t start there. They also see a couple who now has enough common sense to show propriety. They do not see how at 20 they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and would hook up in alleyways or train restrooms.
Have you read Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver? A 20something tries to get to that compatible middle aged marriage by trying to steal someone’s husband, and the wife just goes (paraphrasing) “Honey, you can’t get to the finish line of a marathon by trying to start in the middle.”
This. As an analogy: I remember seeing my mom and dad and their brand new kitchen remodel and looking at my own shabby, black and white tile kitchen and being jealous. 16 years into the marriage I have a beautiful new kitchen. ;) I also remember being jealous of them being able to pick up and go anywhere or travel. 20 years later I’m sitting in a hotel in Spain while my parents watch 4 of the kids (ages 10, 11, 15, 18).
I think when being trad cath is someone’s whole personality, it comes off the same to a normal person as someone who’s gay and makes it their whole personality
I think so much of Gen Z dating is reacting against the boomers’ divorce culture and the millennials who kept putting off serious relationships. They want to optimize for a person they won’t divorce but also want to settle on attraction so they don’t wait around forever.
“My body can only tolerate drinking a certain brand of rare bottled water because my main personality trait is deep, profound dissatisfaction with the normal water most people enjoy.”
… This hits home. I dated someone I met at my Catholic parish who refused to drink anything other than Fiji Water.
We married different people, given my concerns with the environmental impact and the long-term effects of microplastics. (Kidding, but only slightly…). But we still attend the same parish eight years later - unsure about his current water preferences, though.
Ok, I get what you’re saying. And, physical attraction was like the leading thing that drew me to my husband 20 years ago. But! What do you do with the thousands of years of arranged marriages and just the general findings that those marriages — even today — are just as happy or more so than folks who met in more conventional ways?
For one thing, I simply don't believe it. Genetics haven't changed that much, and we are made to literally be able to sniff out a genetic match. Secondly, I think even if that did happen, so did a lot of infant mortality, maternal death, etc. I'm not sure it's the strong argument people think it is
Are you familiar with the orthodox jewish dating system? I suspect arranged marriages looked something like that, where multiple matches were suggested but the couple got to choose whether or not they would marry.
My understanding is that for ordinary people in many places, the parents might "arrange" the marriage but it was often more about both sets of parents coming to an understanding with each other about the social/financial consequences of a relationship that was clearly already blossoming. Parents have always loved their kids and wanted them to be happy!
Yeps! There are different subsets of Orthodox Jews and except for the most extreme most date to consider physical and
Personality compatibility. Yet that seems at least partially what Lane is lamenting -we check off the religious/ value boxes before even knowing if there is an attraction piece.
I don’t agree with Lane that one can just “sniff out a genetic match”. Lane’s position doesn’t answer why people cycle in and out of dating relationships with good matches.
I have met bougie Catholics who have dated for years and went on and on about how they would marry only to break up. I guess they sniffed a good genetic match but then walked away?
I’m very supportive of arranged marriages à la Orthodox Jews. Goals are explicit and clear. No endless dating and no frivolous time-wasting.
As a Catholic, we sadly have no religious structures to help the young jump from dating/courtship to marriage. No surprise Catholic marriages are down more than 60% since 1970. Good luck, kids!
It's actually a demonstrated side effect of the contraceptive pill which change's women's sense of smell in pheromones to detect genetic compatibility. Women who go off the pill after marrying someone and wanting to start a family can find that they actually can't stand him. Men also respond differently to women on the pill than they do to normally cycling women- again see pheromones which we are able to detect, but not consciously.
Now, theoretically super religious Catholics aren't using hormonal contraceptives for ya know, fornicating. But a huge number of women have been put on the pill since puberty for health problems, (some are... less evidence-based as doctors trying to make their lives easier, others are legitimate) including a lot of normie Catholics. This can be a super difficult thing if your uber-religiosity is your entire personality.
Yes this is correct. Birth control but also basic metabolic imbalance, hormone disruption, etc can cause a physical inability to sense suitable partners. I wonder how much of our trouble is purely physical, to be honest with you.
Oh, I've been talking about this with my younger siblings in their early 20s... the NUMBER of girls who went on the pill and then on anti-depressants six months later between the ages of 14-18 is shocking.
I think my sister was the only one of her friends who wasn't on some kind of anti-depressant and she did have to take the pill to treat quite nasty cystic acne. She just got married to by the way, the first among her friends to do so.
They wonder why they can't feel anything and are all mostly single or in long-term boyfriend mode, which is almost worse.
The ones who walked away-- sometimes people chicken out! They are a good match but they are commitment-phobic.
OR they are the exact people Lane is talking about-- they feel that they SHOULD be a good match so they keep dating but they really aren't "in love" and eventually break up. I don't think healthy young people can date for years on end in a virtuous manner, unless it's someone they really aren't attracted to.
As noted below, birth control for hormonal acne or whatever and then getting off of it before the wedding could certainly be a factor in some of these cases.
Arranged marriage is a Med-coded activity. Northern Europeans have always married voluntarily. The only arranged marriages in Britain and Scandinavia were the peak nobility, for political reasons.
You're pulling this out of your ass. I'm Spanish and we don't have a culture of arranged marriages and never did. That parents may have insisted on lending their approval for a courtship or engagement to take place? Sure, that happened in some traditional families. But it wasn't the parents arranging the introduction. And the couple involved had absolute agency over whether to see the courtship through or end it.
My one granddad in the 1930s asked to court my grandmother because they lived in the same area and attended the same church. My grandmother found him handsome and agreed. My other set of grandparents met entirely organically, also in the 30s, because my grandmother (who came from an atheist family btw) moved to a new city by herself to be a domestic worker and her employer was my granddad's boss. Incidentally my grandfather was deeply religious and had been in seminary preparing for priesthood before deciding that it wasn't his calling.
(I also had one great-aunt who never married as she never found anyone she liked and no one treated this as unusual.)
I have heard many similar stories of how people's parents and grandparents/great-grandparents met in Spain. It's a mix of completely organic, self-determined matches and slightly more formal courtships involving some level of family oversight. Not once have I heard anyone describe anything that sounds like an arranged marriage as commonly understood.
fascinating read. I'm the liturgically nitpicky Catholic who married a compatible protestant. A lot of people were surprised. Sometimes I wonder if they think this was a terrible downfall downstream of my parents letting me go to a secular college, which also raised eyebrows at the time. IDK, in our circles there are a lot of Catholic-prot or even Catholic-Jew marriages between interesting, compatible people (who met in person in college or shortly after) and we're all doing ok so far!
Yes, I feel like this is hard to get right. Secular culture has somehow managed to make sex passé, even boring, to generations raised on a firehose of internet porn. But us religious people sometimes go too far the other way by scaring young people out of even having sexual thoughts.
Please write a book and send it to every church in America. Because my experience is that they repeatedly teach the youth 100% the opposite of all of these points.
I agree that attraction is very important...part of why I married my husband was because he smelled amazing, even (especially) when we had been hiking for hours and were all sweaty. But, one thing I have observed is people, both men and women, only being "attracted" to members of the opposite sex, who, to any objective outside observer, are visibly out of their league. Most stable married couples I see are pretty looks matched where you see them and go, "They make sense", but perhaps part of the issue with modern dating, even in religious contexts, is that social media, porn, etc. has distorted people's senses of who their looksmatches actually are.
People also have impossible standards outside of their league when some part of them truly doesn't want anything to work out. When they don't really want to get married.
Someone close to me is like this and I go back and forth between thinking this and thinking she really has no idea how unattractive she is to most men because of her weight (she is very very overweight).
So good, and also true for the secular set. I also never would have matched with my husband on a dating app, but the chemistry was there from the start and fortunately so were the shared values, lifestyle compatibility, and willingness to commit. I also think it's possible to know whether all the boxes are checked relatively quickly, and "dating" for years on end is usually not necessary. If you know, you know. Also: the paintings you found for this essay! 10/10, so hot 🔥
You make really good points about very religious people getting wrapped around the axel about very nitpicky things. Reminds me of when I was engaged and got worried that I may not be compatible with my then fiance (now husband), a very hot marine pilot whom I was very attracted to, because he revealed at a dinner party full of my very religious teacher friends that he would rather read Thomas Sowell than Plato. Thankfully I had my mom to laugh at me, and we are happily married now. I laugh and cringe when I think about it. Pretty embarrassing for me tbh
Bingo Lane! The test is: is this someone I could split a bottle or two of wine with, laugh so hard we cry, and …. then ….. welcome a baby into the world with nine months later?
I've been thinking about this so much recently and you are so right. I will add that the person you are attracted to needs to want to have children. That person does NOT have to be religious. She (but more likely he) will come around to the faith but not wanting children is fatal. If the person wants children, the children will lead them to the faith by sheer necessity. But if they don't want children, they are cold and their faith won't make you happy. Many, many non-religious people just want a family and that's the best predictor of future happiness, not whether they can explain the hypostatic union.
I think that point goes with being attracted to the person.
I wish religious people would date GOOD non-religious people. It's better for the person to be attractive, warm, fun, and GOOD than to be a card-carrying religious person. Things are just too confusing now -- too many reasons not to have faith. But they are superficial. In the end, a GOOD person will get there, but a person without morals or lax in interest in others will be hard to live with, even if "religious."
Not having sex is a way to find this out, by the way. Why can't people understand you can find someone super hot and attractive but NOT have sex? It's better for finding your love. Sexual tension is the best motivator. Expend it and you'll end up unhappy. That's the flip side of pursuit!
I have more to say and haven't said this exactly right, but what you wrote is so important! I wish the younger people would just... have more of a blast and try to focus on whether they actually LIKE being with the person!
Thank you so much for your comment Auntie Leila! I'm honored.
I totally agree with you. And yes, even if only one of the pair is Catholic, simply following the teachings of the Catholic Church will make everything so much easier when it comes to dating, choosing a spouse, discernment, etc.
The rules are there for a reason! I've always thought the yoke was easy but I mean these things are so much clearer the older you get and the more stories and life experience you gather.
I will second this 100%
I'll go a step further and say that a "religious" person could have much more in common with a non-religious person than another of the same faith, such that it wouldn't make sense for them *not* to marry each other.
When a friend (and faithful Catholic married to another faithful Catholic) told me, “you deserve to feel fireworks,” it was a game changer for me and my dating life. Before that I just felt like something was wrong with me for not being super into the guys I had been going on dates with. Then I met my now husband and realized exactly what she meant lol. This message needs to be said—thank you!!
So true! I went out with so many men I agonized over not liking enough… then I met my husband, who was Protestant at the time, but became Catholic by the time we tied the knot! The coming together spiritually is a longer process than just the end point of conversion, but I definitely see what Lane is saying about attraction motivating couples to resolve incompatibilities.
I have quite a few guy friends who are single like me, some more and less normal, but no one too extreme. I don't think we have any problem with these points you laid out, it's just a wall of rejection we keep running into. I think the girls we ask out are broadly following your advice of "don't date someone you're not attracted to", but man, being on the receiving end of that for years wears on you. Most of us have to walk a tightrope of consuming the right amount of self-improvement/looksmaxxing type of content, because we aren't good enough as we are, but going off the deep end of that stuff obviously is bad.
I've thought for awhile that girls should usually at least give a chance to the guy and go on a first date, but I think your essay has soothed that burn a little for when they often don't, so thank you. You give good reasoning for why not to date someone you aren't attracted to.
Man that sucks I'm sorry. I do hear the same thing from a lot of younger guys so I know you're not alone in this. Any chance you could expand your social circle or join some real-life clubs or groups that could introduce you to more people?
I think it's possible we have to meet a lot of people before finding the right one. A million and one things have to line up for it to be right. It's just a tall order. Hang in there; and thanks for your comment.
Why does that suck? Women do all manner of things to improve their appearance above their natural state in the effort to attract men. But, we tell men "that sucks" when they do only a fraction of the same? Perhaps the response should be "that's good! Do more!"
Rejection always sucks; what's the matter with you?
It certainly does. However men's rejection is more their own making than they let on.
Online dating really messes with this. Back in my day lots of girls would find guys attractive by being around them and getting to know them, and the guy’s great sense of humor or intelligence or skills way he moved or whatever would make him attractive. So it was still genuine bodily attraction, but it wasn’t always based on an initial impression. It seems like getting as much in person time as possible could help today’s youth.
You mention that many women don't have as big of an initial attraction, and it tends to grow over time. But Lane and other commenters here advise women not to waste time going on dates with guys they dint have initial attraction for, and don't listen to people who say to wait for attraction to grow. It seems contradictory.
I hear you that it seems contradictory. I was think it’s hard because there’s a difference between meeting and immediately dating and waiting for attraction to grow under the pressure of those one-on-one interactions, and getting to know someone in a group setting where you can observe what a a stand-up guy he is with his friends, how you didn’t notice him before just based on looks but now that he’s playing guitar he’s actually kinda sexy, or whatever. And friends can recommend him because they know him to be a good guy. I imagine this could go the other way too. A guy might think a girl is just ok looking, like not the hottest of the hot, but once he sees how fun she is to be with, she gets cuter. But it’s all under so much pressure when it goes straight from an online profile to a date, without the context of a friend group or repeated low-stakes encounters.
That's true, there is a subtle but important line there. I guess my question is, why do dates have to be such high stakes? There's some girls I know that I just can't practically meet in group settings consistently to develop that kind of attraction, but I definitely could realistically meet with them one on one a few times. I'm not sure whether the better play in those situations is to ask her out and likely get denied, or spend years seeing her once ever 9 months in a group setting and trying to build something off that. I could do neither of those and try to go for a low stakes option where I see her more (i.e. try to become her friend then ask her out over time), but women tend to disapprove of that option as well.
I'm an old Millennial so calibrate my advice based on that, but here are a few possibilities:
- Have lots of friends of both sexes. If you don't have them, try to make them. It's like chemistry or culture: more interactions among different individual things creates more possibilities! Even if none of the female friends you make turn into Girlfriend, you will do better with women if you can demonstrably earn the trust of some. And it's easier to build a good relationship if you don't see every single woman as either Romantic Object or Not Relevant.
- If you can build a decent-sized friend group (or have one already), try to take the lead in organizing some things. In my case, my now-wife-then-friend was in my church small group. I would propose hikes to the group which were a low-pressure way for us to talk naturally in a somewhat one-on-one way.
This is great advice. You should like and respect women as people if you intend to marry one. And organizing group activities is helpful to the whole group, but shines a light on the person competent and motivated enough to do the work.
Starting a young adult group is how my husband and I fell in love.
^ This is actually great advice (although I’m a young Gen X, so I guess calibrate my agreement based on that, too 😆). I met my husband by hanging out with a group of his friends. I wasn’t necessarily attracted to him right off the bat, but it didn’t take very long to figure it out.
Yeah I’m not sure. Maybe ask your mutual friends for a little help with planning events where you see one another more often? I just know in my case, it was kinda sporadic and it went from oh I recognize that guy to wait he seems kinda cool, wait he’s pretty cute, to 20+ years of happy marriage. And I will say on his side too, like we were both on and off dating other people and maybe only mildly making note of each other until the stars aligned and then we were super into each other. I wish you luck, genuinely.
And I will add, I think this connects to Lane’s advice to be “just be normal” and to her larger project of having all of us being more “normal” in terms of getting together in groups and hosting friends on the regular. This would all be easier to do if everyone was hosting and initiating group hang outs more.
The point is that these girls were getting to know the guys in casual settings. Maybe being part of the same club or volunteer org or church or whatever -- not that they were going out on dates. When the pressure is off, attraction can and does grow, because someone becomes familiar, trust builds, and their wit/intelligence/smile/appearance/etc. takes on a desirable quality.
Giving a chance with a first date is often just a waste of time for both you and her.
That seems harsh. Even if nothing came of it, I enjoy going on dates because I like getting to know people, plus the practice doesn't hurt. It could be because I don't go on many, though, maybe it starts to seem like a waste of time if you go in lots of them.
It is because you don’t go on many. If you get asked out a lot or are a woman (and therefore have a shorter time window for reasonably expecting to be able to marry), it absolutely can be a waste of time. Our time is precious and has to be respected.
Plus, in my experience, if you’re a woman forcing yourself to go on dates with men you’re not attracted to you, it can make you numb to the point where you’re just not attracted to *any* men at all.
Imagine that you meet a woman who *could* be your future wife except that she cannot bring herself to be attracted to you because she got emotionally burnt out by giving a chance to all 100 men who asked her out in the past year. That would be very unfortunate.
I do think it can sometimes make sense for a woman to give a chance to a man she is not initially attracted to, BUT it depends on so many factors that only she would know/have access to, so the man should not try to pressure her into it.
Obviously I dint try to pressure women like that, and I get the logic behind what they are doing. But think about how it feels from the reverse. Women have what, maybe like 15 years to find someone? But an hour on a Thursday night with me is too much of a waste of time. Or your other point, the woman is turning me down because she's done the math and realized that upside of having a happy rest of her life with me isn't worth the downside that she literally may think worse of all men by interacting with me.
Then have that happen over, and over, and over again. It's soul crushing.
Look at your language here: the word “feels.” I am not talking about how things feel here. I am taking about how women should date.
If you are looking for sympathy or advice, that is a separate topic. But also I can’t give you advice because I don’t know you or your situation.
It’s not fifteen years, really. Not equally. At some point the chances of getting married plummet drastically because almost all marriageable men are taken. Especially in the Catholic dating pool. So it’s really more like 8 years. Ten if you’re one of the lucky ones.
And yes, an hour spent with you is a waste of time if she could instead be spending it with someone she is attracted to, someone she is likely to grow attraction to, or on recharging/doing other necessary parts of her life so she can go on a date with someone she is attracted to the next day/week/month/whatever.
This is a good conversation, but if you make it about feelings again, I’m going to stop engaging. I’m here to talk about reality, not feelings.
Well, if you want to talk reality, I'd argue that almost all of the marriageable women are taken by 8 years as well, so I'm not sure your statement that women have a shorter timeframe holds up. What makes your time more precious and more needed to be respected (your words) than a man's?
I don't think he literally means that you should go on a date with every single man who asks you out. That would obviously be silly, for the reasons you give here.
Okay. What does he mean then?
Well I don't know what he means, but I generally agree with the sentiment that going on a first date with someone and giving them a chance is a good idea. If a guy isn't repulsive or creepy, it would seem like a good idea to go on a first date if he asks, because you might find out that the way he behaves on the date is actually attractive - or not!
I don't think there are 100 guys who aren't repulsive or creepy asking you out in a year (assuming you're not super active on dating apps).
“Most of us have to walk a tightrope of consuming the right amount of self-improvement/looksmaxxing type of content” couldn’t you seek spaces and communities that support self improvement that aren’t harmful? That you can fully lean into without needing to pull back when it becomes too much? Positive exercise-focused groups?
“Because we aren’t good enough as we are” is a really sad thing to feel. You will definitely be enough for somebody, and I hope that somebody is someone who loves you in every season of your life.
Sad, but accurate based off the evidence it seems. Thank you for the encouragement, and I hope so as well, but I'll believe it when I see it. The proof is in the pudding.
1) "It would be like approaching girls and leading with “My body can only tolerate drinking a certain brand of rare bottled water because my main personality trait is deep, profound dissatisfaction with the normal water most people enjoy. This and looking down with disdain on people who have never realized that the water they are drinking is disgusting are my two main selling points.”" I dated this person
2) "People without much life experience think if they can manage to match minds then the bodies will eventually come along, too. This is a profound error. Do not do this to yourself." I was that person
3) "This means that you can really like someone, really enjoy their personality and agree with them on all important things, but feel zero attraction to them, and that won’t be evident until you try to actually go out on a real date." This, word for word, happened to me
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This is a fantastic, much-needed article on a topic I have not heard anyone address ever, somehow. I needed to hear it and I feel a little less crazy picky now. Thank you for the practical sage advice, even coming from a church circle that acknowledges the physical side of living in God's world fairly well, this is something that young people (such as yours truly) should hear more often. I feel less guilty for feeling nothing around theologically sound and chubby/bony/oily/short guys I have told myself I'm supposed to enjoy the prescence of. 🫣
I just feel as those though I need to jump in here as a man and confirm that you did not say anything remotely rude. You're not attracted to unatteactive physical characteristics and stating this forthrightly isn't rude in the slightest.
No need to be disparaging of men you do not find attractive. Also keep in mind that height is not a characteristic that men can control. All the best to you!
Don't think I said anything disparaging, I only said I don't find these men attractive 😂 Apologies if it came off rudely, that was not my intent!
Saying “I am not personally attracted to this physical trait” is actually not an insult, just a statement of fact. Nobody is entitled to the adoration of everyone
Thank you mate thats what I was trying to communicate 😮💨 I was in fact NOT calling chubby, bony, oily and short men less than human, only saying I do not find them attractive as potential spouses. There's a lilliputtian queen for every short king and I just cant be her
All the best to you!
It was quite rude. Imagine if I stated traits of women that I found unattractive.
I think you may be reading into it a bit much. I would find no fault in a man saying he was put off by chubby/bony/oily/tall(?) women.
Height is certainly out of one's control, but the others are all mostly matter of hygiene and discipline that can be corrected, and can indeed give you a read on someone's character at a glance. These might be rude to point out in an individual, but I think they're fine as general standards.
Shortness was just something I tossed in because I am a woman the same height as the average man in my country, "short" to me is anywhere downwards of 5'10 and is plain personal preference 😅
I don’t know you and don’t know how you were raised. I was raised to refrain from casually criticizing others physical characteristics.
Good for you that you are 5’10. You can search for your taller future husband and recognize height isn’t a genetic variable that men can control.
Another internet miscomm in the books ✍️🤷♀️
No, just different cultural vantage points.
Lots of very insightful points in your article. I don’t have any opinions on the religious aspect of it all, but having been a vegan for a few years in my youth, I know a thing or two about people who have nothing else but their worldview going for them.
The point about modern dating being backwards is also very true. An additional thing I would consider, is that young people trying to optimize against divorce might look up to middle-aged happily married couples as role models, and that’s a mistake. They see the deep compatibility of mind and of lifestyle, they see companionship ; they do not see that it’s been an ongoing building process toward one another for 25 years, that this couple didn’t start there. They also see a couple who now has enough common sense to show propriety. They do not see how at 20 they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and would hook up in alleyways or train restrooms.
Have you read Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver? A 20something tries to get to that compatible middle aged marriage by trying to steal someone’s husband, and the wife just goes (paraphrasing) “Honey, you can’t get to the finish line of a marathon by trying to start in the middle.”
This. As an analogy: I remember seeing my mom and dad and their brand new kitchen remodel and looking at my own shabby, black and white tile kitchen and being jealous. 16 years into the marriage I have a beautiful new kitchen. ;) I also remember being jealous of them being able to pick up and go anywhere or travel. 20 years later I’m sitting in a hotel in Spain while my parents watch 4 of the kids (ages 10, 11, 15, 18).
Oh that's so true. Great insight
I think when being trad cath is someone’s whole personality, it comes off the same to a normal person as someone who’s gay and makes it their whole personality
Love this!
I think so much of Gen Z dating is reacting against the boomers’ divorce culture and the millennials who kept putting off serious relationships. They want to optimize for a person they won’t divorce but also want to settle on attraction so they don’t wait around forever.
I'm a young millennial and absolutely wanted to optimize for someone I wouldn't divorce. We got divorced anyway.
I saw your comment. May you find the solutions you seek.
I don’t buy that there is a generational shift in dating. Most Americans are maximizers holding out for the best match.
I would love to hear more about this because this at least sounds like a very plausible theory
“My body can only tolerate drinking a certain brand of rare bottled water because my main personality trait is deep, profound dissatisfaction with the normal water most people enjoy.”
… This hits home. I dated someone I met at my Catholic parish who refused to drink anything other than Fiji Water.
Lol is his faith true devotion or just neuroticism?
Por che non los dos?
We married different people, given my concerns with the environmental impact and the long-term effects of microplastics. (Kidding, but only slightly…). But we still attend the same parish eight years later - unsure about his current water preferences, though.
LOL…pampered Americans!
Ok, I get what you’re saying. And, physical attraction was like the leading thing that drew me to my husband 20 years ago. But! What do you do with the thousands of years of arranged marriages and just the general findings that those marriages — even today — are just as happy or more so than folks who met in more conventional ways?
For one thing, I simply don't believe it. Genetics haven't changed that much, and we are made to literally be able to sniff out a genetic match. Secondly, I think even if that did happen, so did a lot of infant mortality, maternal death, etc. I'm not sure it's the strong argument people think it is
Are you familiar with the orthodox jewish dating system? I suspect arranged marriages looked something like that, where multiple matches were suggested but the couple got to choose whether or not they would marry.
My understanding is that for ordinary people in many places, the parents might "arrange" the marriage but it was often more about both sets of parents coming to an understanding with each other about the social/financial consequences of a relationship that was clearly already blossoming. Parents have always loved their kids and wanted them to be happy!
Yeps! There are different subsets of Orthodox Jews and except for the most extreme most date to consider physical and
Personality compatibility. Yet that seems at least partially what Lane is lamenting -we check off the religious/ value boxes before even knowing if there is an attraction piece.
I don’t agree with Lane that one can just “sniff out a genetic match”. Lane’s position doesn’t answer why people cycle in and out of dating relationships with good matches.
I have met bougie Catholics who have dated for years and went on and on about how they would marry only to break up. I guess they sniffed a good genetic match but then walked away?
I’m very supportive of arranged marriages à la Orthodox Jews. Goals are explicit and clear. No endless dating and no frivolous time-wasting.
As a Catholic, we sadly have no religious structures to help the young jump from dating/courtship to marriage. No surprise Catholic marriages are down more than 60% since 1970. Good luck, kids!
It's actually a demonstrated side effect of the contraceptive pill which change's women's sense of smell in pheromones to detect genetic compatibility. Women who go off the pill after marrying someone and wanting to start a family can find that they actually can't stand him. Men also respond differently to women on the pill than they do to normally cycling women- again see pheromones which we are able to detect, but not consciously.
Now, theoretically super religious Catholics aren't using hormonal contraceptives for ya know, fornicating. But a huge number of women have been put on the pill since puberty for health problems, (some are... less evidence-based as doctors trying to make their lives easier, others are legitimate) including a lot of normie Catholics. This can be a super difficult thing if your uber-religiosity is your entire personality.
Yes this is correct. Birth control but also basic metabolic imbalance, hormone disruption, etc can cause a physical inability to sense suitable partners. I wonder how much of our trouble is purely physical, to be honest with you.
Oh, I've been talking about this with my younger siblings in their early 20s... the NUMBER of girls who went on the pill and then on anti-depressants six months later between the ages of 14-18 is shocking.
I think my sister was the only one of her friends who wasn't on some kind of anti-depressant and she did have to take the pill to treat quite nasty cystic acne. She just got married to by the way, the first among her friends to do so.
They wonder why they can't feel anything and are all mostly single or in long-term boyfriend mode, which is almost worse.
The ones who walked away-- sometimes people chicken out! They are a good match but they are commitment-phobic.
OR they are the exact people Lane is talking about-- they feel that they SHOULD be a good match so they keep dating but they really aren't "in love" and eventually break up. I don't think healthy young people can date for years on end in a virtuous manner, unless it's someone they really aren't attracted to.
As noted below, birth control for hormonal acne or whatever and then getting off of it before the wedding could certainly be a factor in some of these cases.
Arranged marriage is a Med-coded activity. Northern Europeans have always married voluntarily. The only arranged marriages in Britain and Scandinavia were the peak nobility, for political reasons.
Med-coded?
Mediterranean. Southern European. Catholic. That sort of stuff. Not the patterns of Northern European Protestants
You're pulling this out of your ass. I'm Spanish and we don't have a culture of arranged marriages and never did. That parents may have insisted on lending their approval for a courtship or engagement to take place? Sure, that happened in some traditional families. But it wasn't the parents arranging the introduction. And the couple involved had absolute agency over whether to see the courtship through or end it.
My one granddad in the 1930s asked to court my grandmother because they lived in the same area and attended the same church. My grandmother found him handsome and agreed. My other set of grandparents met entirely organically, also in the 30s, because my grandmother (who came from an atheist family btw) moved to a new city by herself to be a domestic worker and her employer was my granddad's boss. Incidentally my grandfather was deeply religious and had been in seminary preparing for priesthood before deciding that it wasn't his calling.
(I also had one great-aunt who never married as she never found anyone she liked and no one treated this as unusual.)
I have heard many similar stories of how people's parents and grandparents/great-grandparents met in Spain. It's a mix of completely organic, self-determined matches and slightly more formal courtships involving some level of family oversight. Not once have I heard anyone describe anything that sounds like an arranged marriage as commonly understood.
Gotcha. Thanks.
fascinating read. I'm the liturgically nitpicky Catholic who married a compatible protestant. A lot of people were surprised. Sometimes I wonder if they think this was a terrible downfall downstream of my parents letting me go to a secular college, which also raised eyebrows at the time. IDK, in our circles there are a lot of Catholic-prot or even Catholic-Jew marriages between interesting, compatible people (who met in person in college or shortly after) and we're all doing ok so far!
Yes, I feel like this is hard to get right. Secular culture has somehow managed to make sex passé, even boring, to generations raised on a firehose of internet porn. But us religious people sometimes go too far the other way by scaring young people out of even having sexual thoughts.
Please write a book and send it to every church in America. Because my experience is that they repeatedly teach the youth 100% the opposite of all of these points.
I agree that attraction is very important...part of why I married my husband was because he smelled amazing, even (especially) when we had been hiking for hours and were all sweaty. But, one thing I have observed is people, both men and women, only being "attracted" to members of the opposite sex, who, to any objective outside observer, are visibly out of their league. Most stable married couples I see are pretty looks matched where you see them and go, "They make sense", but perhaps part of the issue with modern dating, even in religious contexts, is that social media, porn, etc. has distorted people's senses of who their looksmatches actually are.
People also have impossible standards outside of their league when some part of them truly doesn't want anything to work out. When they don't really want to get married.
Someone close to me is like this and I go back and forth between thinking this and thinking she really has no idea how unattractive she is to most men because of her weight (she is very very overweight).
So good, and also true for the secular set. I also never would have matched with my husband on a dating app, but the chemistry was there from the start and fortunately so were the shared values, lifestyle compatibility, and willingness to commit. I also think it's possible to know whether all the boxes are checked relatively quickly, and "dating" for years on end is usually not necessary. If you know, you know. Also: the paintings you found for this essay! 10/10, so hot 🔥
You make really good points about very religious people getting wrapped around the axel about very nitpicky things. Reminds me of when I was engaged and got worried that I may not be compatible with my then fiance (now husband), a very hot marine pilot whom I was very attracted to, because he revealed at a dinner party full of my very religious teacher friends that he would rather read Thomas Sowell than Plato. Thankfully I had my mom to laugh at me, and we are happily married now. I laugh and cringe when I think about it. Pretty embarrassing for me tbh
Your husband sounds awesome, lol. That's a funny story
Bingo Lane! The test is: is this someone I could split a bottle or two of wine with, laugh so hard we cry, and …. then ….. welcome a baby into the world with nine months later?
I wish it was this simple. I’ve asked many women to join me for wine in the park. No takers in my East Coast city.
The test is simple … this is not directed negatively at you in any way, but meeting the test is not simple.
change the park to a wine bar and you’ll have better luck i guarantee you
I had to make it the park because Gen Z women are an anxious bunch who don’t meet at winebars with guys from church. All the best!