This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.
Between two -factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected but many other places also have it and they might not be as careful.
That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats.
If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it.
Guaranteed or your money back.
Save up to 40 % your first year.
Visit lifelock .com slash podcast for 40 % off.
Terms apply. One of the biggest levers, in fact the single biggest predictor of your health outcomes in life, are the number of close connections that you have. It's more than quitting smoking, it's more than going to the gym, it's more than stopping drinking.
50 % of men say that they are not looking for a relationship.
When they say aren't looking for relationship, do they mean I'm not looking for a woman or I'm not looking for commitment?
Not actively pursuing any kind of interaction with women.
Oh, where did we go wrong and how do we go right?
Okay, so 50 .1 % of women for the first time in history are mothers.
There are more childless women at 30 than there are women with children.
So for almost all of human history, more women had kids under the age of 30 than over.
And now it's switched.
There's a study from Morgan Stanley that says by 20 -40, 45 % of 25 to 45 -year -old women will be single and childless.
If online dating was creating this perfect facilitation for relationships to start, how are we ending up with all of these outcomes?
That's a question. What's wrong with the outcomes?
What do you mean? Why should people care about being single?
all the stats you just said.
I could look at them and say they're just sort of objectively neutral.
There's no adverse consequence to society or the world.
It's fine that people aren't having kids, it's fine that people aren't having sex. I'm playing devil's advocate here, but what is the negative consequence of all of those outcomes that you've described in your view?
There are people for whom a life without a partner is the right choice.
That's absolutely something that I'm prepared to accept, but it's not most people.
It's one of the biggest levers, in fact, the single biggest predictor of your health outcomes in life are the number of close connections that you have. It's the number of friends.
It's more than quitting smoking.
It's more than going to the gym.
It's more than stopping drinking.
It's the number of close friends that you've got.
And a relationship is a big, close friend.
Robin Dunbar says in order to get into a relationship, you have to sacrifice two friendships because you can have around about five very close friends.
If you want to get into a relationship, you need to get rid of two of them because there is a minimum time investment.
So, people that are in relationships have better health outcomes.
They have onset of dementia later.
They have Alzheimer's problems later on in life.
They are less lonely.
That seems pretty uncontroversial and yet both sides of the aisle, both men and women are retreating from relationships and finding ways that they can justify this, you know, boss bitch culture and sort of the lean in women's mentality or men going their own way and incel culture and the black pill for guys are both ways that each sex is trying to deal with the challenges that are coming out of the mating market.
Both sexes are saying, I don't want to be a part of this anymore.
I'm finding it so painful and difficult to be in this world that I'm just gonna cast off any of it all together and then retroactively come up with a lot of explanations that can justify why they didn't need to be in a relationship in any case.
And for some people that's true, but for most people that's not.
Dating apps are clearly not, you know, and as you say in your own words and previously aren't the only causal factor.
So my question to you is where did we go wrong and how did we go right?
Okay, so, I think challenges in the mating market are coming from many directions.
One of the main ones that will be pertinent to the people that are listening is the increase in female achievement in education and employment.
Now, about 50 years ago when Title IX came in, there was a 13 percentage point swing in favour of men to women in universities.
There were significantly more men than women.
What's Title IX? It was an affirmative action policy that helped to get more women into higher education.
50 years later, 2023, it's a 15 percentage point swing between men and women in university in the other direction.
There are two women for every one man at a four -year US college degree, roundabout by 2030.
Women on average between the ages of 21 and 29 earn £1 ,111 more than their male counterparts.
Women are roughly twice as likely as men to say that they will value financial prospects in a partner.
Around about 78 % of women say that a stable job is something that is important for a partner to have, but it's around about only sort of 45 % of men say the same thing.
For a man to increase his rating on a ten -point scale by two points, he requires around about a tenfold increase in his salary.
For a women to achieve the same two -point improvement, on a 10 -point scale, a salary would need to increase by 10 ,000 times.
My point being that women are — they are concerned about a partner's socioeconomic status, significantly more than men are.
Now, you can start to see that if you have a world in which women are attending university at high rates, they are achieving more success in employment, at least in that sort of 21 to 29 range, which is when most people are perhaps looking for potential partners.
And yet, the socio economic status of a partner to a woman is a big determinant of their level of attraction, you can start to see how this imbalance could cause a problem.
Similarly, when we talk about education.
A man with a master's degree on Tinder gets 90 % more right than a man with a bachelor's degree.
So for all of the guys that are considering going and getting a master's degree, even if you think it's gonna be useless, at least accept the fact that you get 90 % more right swipes for the rest of your life, or just lie about your masters, I don't know.
All of this rolled together describes something called hypergamy, which is the female tendency to date up and across.
On average women want to date a man who is as educated or as employed as they are.
Now in a world in which quite rightly women have finally been able to achieve of parity in education and employment and status and have independence and not be financially reliant on their partner, all the rest of it.
That's great for them, but it does cause some challenges for their dating.
And this is what I've called the tall girl problem.
So everybody knows what it's like to have a girl friend who is six foot without heels, you know, if you wanna wear heels, you're looking at professional athletes because on average women want to date a man who is at least as tall or a little bit taller than they are.
So as women rise up through their own competence hierarchy and education and employment, they further shorten down the potential pool of eligible men that are as educated or more educated and as employed or more employed than they are.
This is a challenge.
This is just a straight up imbalance, right?
What this causes is a very large group of men toward the bottom of this distribution to be essentially invisible to women.
It causes a very large number of women, an increasing cohort to compete for an increasingly small group of turbo Chad, super performers at the top, these guys, the super high value guys, have a wealth of options.
So they are commitment diverse.
Why would they decide to sit down with one goal for the rest of time when they have this wealth of options, which can cause them to use and discard many of these women?
Which then causes most of these women to resent men overall.
And then the guys that were forgotten at the bottom that say, well, hang on a second.
I didn't use and discard you I haven't even been seen by you.
No. No all men are Whatever it might be right that they are users and abusers that we don't need them to wear all of the good men at etc Etc. It's a big group of men that feel like they are good men that are invisible There's a big portion of women who have finally managed to achieve Educational and employment and independence that are chasing after a smaller group of guys.
These guys are commitment of us I don't think it's necessarily good for them either It's the child with the ice cream like guys being able to keep it in their pants when there's a lot of options on the table is going to be difficult for them too, this is one of the main drivers, this tall girl problem is a massive change, I think, in the dating dynamics.
It obviously begs the question, Chris, which is, if everything you've said is objectively correct and spot on and supported by the data, if I may make Chris Williamson and the Prime Minister or President of the world, and I say your first job is to fix this challenge, what do you do?
The first thing that you don't do is roll back women's education and employment.
And this is one of the problems with this discussion, right?
The things that I've just said there are born out in Pew Research data, Morgan Stanley results, like these are incontrovertible facts, right?
They are there. And any girl that is listening who earns more than 50 ,000 pounds a year and has got a master's or above level education, and is toward their late thirties are in their toward the late twenties or in their thirties knows this problem.
You know the fact that you are struggling to find the man that you feel is eligible for you, right?
That needs to be out there.
The problem that happens around this discourse is that it posits men and women as adversaries and competitors of each other, right as enemies.
This means that worthwhile compassion, which is needed to both women and men.
If you're a woman who has gone through your education, you've dedicated yourself to achieving a degree, your mother's generation wasn't able to achieve this and you're the first person that's maybe gone to uni or got a bachelors or got a masters or got a PhD, and then you spend some time in a career grinding away and you're now on 150 grand a year, you think right, I'm 31, I'd love to settle down.
This would be amazing for me.
Where are all of the men at?
Hang on a second. And what you realize is that not only now are you competing with all of the other increasing cohort of women that are high achievers with status, employment and education, but you're also competing with a 21 year old barista who still lives at home with her parents for this small cohort of guys.
That requires sympathy for women.
Okay, that is not a good position for women to be in.
At the same time, this huge cohort of sexless men, 30 % of men haven't had sex in the last year.
50 % of men say that they are not looking for a relationship.
You were a man, you have been through your 20s, you know the power of the male sex drive between the ages of 18 and 30.
Can you imagine getting yourself into a situation where you say, I'm not bothered about pursuing women?
That is an unbelievably extreme statement for men to make.
And their self identifying is this in Pew Research Data.
This isn't on in -cell forums. This is Pew research. 50 % of men aren't looking for a relationship When they say aren't looking for relationships, they mean I'm not looking for a woman, I'm not looking for commitment I'm not actively pursuing any kind of interaction with women.
Oh shit casual included 50 % It is a really interesting time to be running a business Tariff and trade policies are in flux The pace of innovation is relentless, and staying relevant means constantly reinventing how you operate.
If your business can't adapt in real -time, it risks falling behind, which means leaders need complete clarity across every part of their operation at all times.
This is why our sponsor NetSuite by Oracle already delivers to 41 ,000 companies.
NetSuite is an AI -powered business management suite that brings accounting, financial management, HR, and project planning into one platform.
And because you've got this one source of truth, you can make fast decisions based on real -time data.
Or if you're looking ahead, NetSuite's forecasting tools give you a clear view of what's coming next and how to prepare for it.
NetSuite helps you spot bottlenecks, manage your margins and stay agile.
So if your business is generating seven figures or more, download the free e -book, which is called Navigating Global Trade – 3 Insights for Leaders, at netsuite .com slash Bartlett.
That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett.
