I don’t know, maybe it’s just my environment, but I just rarely meet people my age who are single and also interested in a relationship.
I’m not exactly a hermit (or at least I didn’t used to be, the layoff has changed that). I’d go out a lot, to bars, to shows, to various events, etc.
A vast majority of the people I meet are either older than me or less commonly younger than me (I stopped going to shows when I realized I was one of the oldest people there). The times I do meet people closer to my age, they are either already paired up or not interested in a relationship.
The only place I can find a “pool” of peers is on dating apps, and I’m not going by to waste my time with those anymore.
I've ended up blaming tech for this after finding time and again that I meet the most people in the most traditional settings. I'm not single and looking for singles, just friends the same age as me and my gf (early 20s). Most strangers in that age group won't make eye contact or respond to small talk. It's eerie.
So in college, most of my friends were from fraternity BBQs and church, and now it's just church. Half my friends are old enough to be my parents, but idc.
One unusually great example was this chess club I stumbled upon. They're all my age and meet once a week at a local restaurant. There's no group chat or anything, just be there or be square. Meanwhile the boba shop next door is people glued to phones ordering off an iPad and waiting behind a bunch of prioritized mobile orders.
Best places to meet people are shared activities. I meet a lot of like minded (and sometimes single) people at
1. The dog park
2. church
3. Gym
4. At my friend's dinner theater shows
Part of the problem is getting comfortable opening up groups of people. Toast masters helps with that.
Maybe try moving to another country for life experience? Late 20s with no job obligation is the perfect time to try that if you have the resources and freedom for it. Such adventure also makes it easier to meet people.
I was actually planning to do some travel this year, but my nice paying job was eliminated late last year followed by some large emergency expenses. I’d still like to do it, but the economic situation looks kind of grim right now.
You could look for a job abroad, heck, even just teaching English, but it is usually not that hard to get hired as a SWE somewhere as long as you can handle a pay cut (which is usually balanced by a lower COL). This really depends on how much obligations you have back home (e.g. debt, house, car, etc...).
I guess I was lucky because I went abroad right after grad school (so I gave my car to my sister and just left the USA for 11 years), but I was about 30 when I left.
You are well below the age of the average person to go to (I assume musical act) shows as well as being below the average age of any bar I've ever been to. Perhaps you are picking venues and acts frequented by college students or are overly self-conscious?
It's very weird to be basically at peak age and to not go to events because you're the oldest one there. Were you exclusively going to high school band shows and 18+ events?
In retrospect I think I was hyper focused on a couple of pre pandemic examples that stood out to me. Thinking about it a little more it depends on the genre. I’ve definitely been to some shows that have different demographics.
Sounds like you might be going to the wrong bars/places? I'm late 20s and already married but have friends who are single around my age. My local places are late 30s - 50s with a few people around my age but if my friends want to meet girls I take them to different places where they tend to be a younger crowd (early - mid 20s). If you don't want to drink, you could check out gym classes too - some have decent social circles built around them.
More than that I’m wondering if I’m just living in the wrong places. The place I live right now is generally more associated with retirees, but I’ve never really made a conscious choice to move somewhere. I’ve just drifted where job offers take me.
I somewhat blame this on the way jobs are set up now. There’s so much focus on hustle hustle hustle there isn’t any time to be looking for a date or any social activity that isn’t directly profitable. It also means dates are also treated like hustles, cost centers that don’t make you money. All the people I know who spend more time in their communities (adoption groups, food banks, mutual aid funds, churches, etc) are all happily in at least one relationship (several are poly!) while the career focused people I know are miserably alone.
Very likely you are in a bubble, because "poly" is a signifier of a tiny subset of youth who have adopted a dubious trend from certain elite circles. And "hustle" culture is also a very particular trend from a small group of online youth, and likely overlaps with a lot of pick-up artist nonsense which indeed is very unlikely to result in successful relationships.
Conversely, I know countless people who are in a traditional family-focused and career-focused lifestyle, and when you are doing that it generally means dealing with children and work, and there isn't going to be much time left over for much else. None of these people I know are super involved in their "community."
It could be that there are more people who can afford to not compromise and are choosing not to compromise. Not only in the financial sense, but in the social sense too where you can afford to be a lone wolf due to societal acceptance and a relatively safe environment where you do not need the physical help of others.
I think that's part of it, but it's also that some people who are successful have more to lose in family and divorce courts. I grew up watching both of my brothers wives at different times concoct plots to bury them financially and in family court rather than go to counseling and get medical treatment. As a result I grew up and already knew how I wanted a prenup written, only dated people who also had careers, and lived alone until I met someone I could absolutely trust.
> I somewhat blame this on the way jobs are set up now. There’s so much focus on hustle hustle hustle there isn’t any time to be looking for a date or any social activity that isn’t directly profitable.
In other words, capitalism (and our capitalist society) thinks its profitable to eat its own seed corn.
It's really strange, people here are encouraging about online dating and you'd think it'd be easier than ever to find a compatible mate what with the ability to have "access" to people you'd never encounter otherwise.
Yet, I've been doing it for about six years on and off and had one lengthy relationship from it (we broke up after we realized we had incompatible difference). I thought in some ways it'd get easier in ones late 30s where people tend to have a focus on wanting to settle down.
I have a lot of great friends, well paying job/profession, have a pretty comfortable amount of financial assets, a handful of interesting hobbies, I volunteer, mentor juniors to level up in their career... I kind of don't really know what more I can really offer. Yeah sorry, I can't become taller or change my ethnicity or face. At the same time, I'm grounded enough to not try matching women who are incredibly attractive.
I'm not filtering out based on race, past marriages, or whether they already have children, and it's still like months upon months of no replies or mediocre first dates.
Online dating is so bad. It’s probably good for a certain type of person who is extroverted and has a cookie-cutter personality and dates based off shallow first impressions, but even then I doubt it. For both men and women in different ways.
The fact that “online dating” as it is now is considered a serious alternative, makes it seem that the current dating situation is really messed up. My understanding is that the still-reliable way to get dates is to be in a community where everyone knows each other and most people date within the community (e.g. small town or school or job). But if you’re not in a community it’s a lot harder, because there are so many creeps and trolls everyone is either closed off or weird, with the very rare viable partner who just hasn’t been exposed enough to become closed off themselves.
It definitely makes some things easier, like being able to filter out wholly uninterested parties, and you can quickly get to important logistical conversations like being direct about what you're looking for.
But it also gives the people on the other side of the app access to literally everyone who's interested in them.
So while it may seem easier than having to walk up to strangers in a bar, you also now have to be picked out of way more people than the other folks in the bar with you.
At least in my case what I have observed is, the explosion of technology has made it easier to be happy alone quite easy. So the absence of a romantic interest or a roommate is felt less. When I have dated, I have loved being outside of the home, but I have been quite comfortable not having a partner as well.
Also, online dating and the ever constant flow of people in your face there has skewed my perspective and has led to a phase where it is harder to commit and stay with someone, so I just find it easier to be alone than be with someone and always be not sure whether this is the right thing.
Dating apps and their illusion of so much choice and options is a net negative to the actual dating structure; but maybe from a sociological perspective, this is where the society should head, I am not smart enough to comment on that.
I don't know. They make a lot of judgy statements about these stats that don't seem to be based on anything.
I think about how Alaska has relatively few roads and six times as many pilots as other US states. And I wonder how Alaska would fare in a comparison of infrastructure based on the assumption that roads are extremely important but airports aren't.
I honestly cannot manage to draw meaningful inferences from any of this and I hesitate to speculate off the cuff on HN.
I truly believe the Internet is to blame for this. as predicted decades ago.
Media consumption, endless entertainment that promotes isolation, toxic thoughts about others and themselves, unreasonable expectations of others, fear of potential public recourse since everything is recorded and shared, and many more. It’s not a simple topic. However, I think some or all of these examples consciously or unconsciously play a role in dating and lower birth rates.
Nobody wants to bet 50% of their stuff that they will love someone forever, while paying the government more tax money yearly for the privilege? I do wonder why…
At least among the single people I know, nobody wants to compromise and they have an inflated sense of themselves. In addition they are using apps that are basically just about sexual interaction and not romantic connection. They aren't even reaching like a 3rd-5th date with most of their prospective partners, let alone thinking about the costs of divorce.
> In addition they are using apps that are basically just about sexual interaction and not romantic connection.
"Wouldn't it be great if finding a partner was exactly like shopping, where you hunt around until you find a thing meets all your fussy requirements?", said a disturbingly large percentage of society.
The dating (or mating) market is a great example of a market where agents provide huge value. Both sellers are unable to objectively value what they are selling (themselves), and so agents familiar with them and willing to vouch for them (family, friends, coworkers' spouses, etc) are in prime position to communicate with other agents and come up with reasonable valuations.
However, this works as long as the networks remain broad and active, and people participate in them (you need at least some "busybodies"). I can see this being hampered if people frequently move, and move away from friends/family.
If it wasn't clear enough, I was mocking the attitude of viewing it like a market and the people as products. Talking about "sellers" and "reasonable valuations" is taking that attitude to a whole different level.
If course, our society is so brain dead it has trouble understanding anything that isn't modeled on shopping in a market. So everything must be converted into "shopping in a market."
I find it useful to use multiple perspectives to analyze things. In this case, I think viewing it as a market on a population wide level can help explain why it does not work like shopping.
Being married doesn't necessarily increase your income tax in the US. Some couples pay more, while others pay less, depending on how incomes differ between the two spouses both in amounts and in kind. Being married does give you more options--a good tax preparer will have their software compute both the taxes for filing jointly and for filing separately.
If you both make over 400k, no matter how you file, you pay more if married. Go look at brackets. Most people don’t know it. But “married filing separately” brackets are LOWER than “single”
No, it is not double. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the marriage penalty quite a bit due to broadening the tax brackets. It is still there, especially for very high earners, but not noticeable for the vast majority.
Surely $600K as a couple income is even on the top endz even in tech. So, for most normal couples like where one earns $300K and the other $100K, filing as a married couple is better, no?
I think I misunderstood you, and did not realize tax slab meant tax bracket, as assumed you meant the US doubles the tax liability if you are filling married joint.
[assuming United States for everything here, in case it wasn't obvious]
In addition to the brackets, there's tons of other deductions, exemptions, etc that are higher or double for married-filing-jointly tax returns.
Just one example is the capital gains on selling your home: if you're filing singly you get an exemption on the first $250k of capital gains, but if you're married and filing jointly that exemption is on the first $500k of gains.
The tax brackets mostly eliminate the "marriage penalty", though there are some true edge cases that might make filing separately better. Generally speaking, most married couples do the same or better by filing together.
At least where I live, there is no distinction. As soon as you've lived with someone for 6 months, you're considered common law. If you separate they're legally entitled to half the stuff you've accumulated while together.
That's not how it works with marriage here either. It's only assets acquired during the marriage that is split. There are some exceptions, I'm not a lawyer.
but if more men don't want to get married, women may not be able to find a suitable partner. Also, there is a gender disparity in location (more men in small towns and SV, more women in NY, LA)
Caring about potential loss of material objects over deep human connection sounds like an absolutely miserable way to live your one short life in this universe!
> Caring about potential loss of material objects over deep human connection sounds like an absolutely miserable way to live your one short life in this universe!
Then fix the outdated laws so people can enjoy those human connections without all the risky loss/gain baggage.
You can already do that by simply not getting married? I have friends that have lived together for 10+ years and have multiple children that don't plan to ever marry... seems to be working for them.
I don't know where you live, but that's a problematic approach in many US states having common-law marriages.
Your friends anecdata is entirely irrelevant until they've separated and we hear about how that plays out, before it's even remotely worth hearing as still meaningless anecdata.
Seven[0] out of fifty is not "many" by any stretch of the imagination.
Even in those seven, it's not something that happens automatically. For example, in Utah, it only applies to those "who hold themselves out as and have acquired a uniform and general reputation as husband and wife."[1]
If my meaningless anecdata isn't remotely worth hearing about, then what's to be said about your intentionally misleading irrelevant statement?
Common law marriages are not as easy to happen by accident as many people assume. Living together doesn't matter. Common law marriage, in every state I've checked, requires that you have a ceremony and present yourself as a "married couple" publicly. You have to go around telling people you're married for it to matter.
> Common law marriage, in every state I've checked, requires that you have a ceremony and present yourself as a "married couple" publicly. You have to go around telling people you're married for it to matter.
It generally does not require a ceremony (but it does usually require an explicit mutual agreement), and living together does matter (cohabitation is commonly a requirement or evidence of common law marriage), but other than that you are right that publicly presenting as married is often a requirement (and otherwise is evidence).
And here is Colorado, which is more evidence based and does not identify cohabitation as even a form of evidence (though it does have joint ownership of property): https://pitkincounty.com/288/Common-Law-Marriage
I'm replying to someone saying don't care about these things and you're saying bring in lawyers to mitigate the awful legal defaults! I'm pretty sure that's also in disagreement with the comment I'm replying to.
>> Then fix the outdated laws so people can enjoy those human connections without all the risky loss/gain baggage.
In a country that celebrates sociopathy, manipulation of others, & psychopathy to such a high degree, I think the laws are perfectly fine as they protect exceptionally vulnerable people.
What sort of resources do you actually think there are for a spouse that is able to escape after having been isolated and abused for years, that oftentimes becomes responsible for not only their own well-being, but also childrens?
The answer is practically nothing aside from maybe your very basic necessities to sustain life.
I also think you’re really missing a major point but that’s a tangent I’m not going to go on.
[edit]:
Revised “What sort of resources do you actually think there are for a spouse that’s been isolated and abused for years”
to
“What sort of resources do you actually think there are for a spouse that is able to escape after having been isolated and abused for years”
The lack of a social safety net in the US is not something antiquated marriage laws should be misused to insufficiently provide.
We need better general solutions in this area, a lot of the separation-related problems would vanish. Job-separation and spouse-separation overlap substantially, and it's rather harmful as-is when spouses are incentivized to stay in abusive relationships if they wouldn't even receive significant support separated from an abusive deadbeat anyways. They become trapped.
I'm not aware of the specifics OP talk about (I'm not from the US) but any mature adult should of course care about the unfair loss of wealth. If you look at US marriage/divorce statistics, it'd not be paranoid to think that it could also happen to you. In fact, I bet most of the people who got to lose "material objects" unfairly never thought they'd be in that situation - which then makes them get to experience the miserable way of life you mentioned, at least for a while.
So yeah, I'd suggest to be mature and consider that things can go wrong, which shouldn't affect the depthness of the connection while things work (hopefully forever).
Looks around room at 120ish-year-old desk, hundreds of books with an average age of probably 30 years with some as old as 160 years, 50-year-old record player and receiver, 60-year-old lamp, 20+ year old guitars that will likely last decades more with minimal maintenance, wood floors that should last literally a lifetime, and decade-old shoes that I expect to still be wearing in 20 years
I mean... kinda? The ones that don't involve microelectronics and aren't mostly fabric, yeah, lots of them may as well last forever, from the perspective of a human lifetime.
Well, I'm not doing that, though, so... bad on me, I guess?
But I have LEGOs that are probably way, way older than the average length of a romantic relationship. Hell, they're probably quite a bit older than the average length of a marriage. That's just true. My kids have some metal trucks made a decade before I was born and with hundreds of hours of kid-play-time on them, that they still play with. And those are just kids' toys, not things made for use by adults who will be careful with them! Lots of stuff does last a really long time.
Quite a bit of stuff does indeed get a ton closer to lasting "forever" (say, an entire human lifespan) than most serious relationships do. Normal consumer shit, too, not, like, gothic cathedrals or something.
Treating things as less-disposable than a serious partner is probably not a great idea, but, in actual fact, they... kinda are.
A sufficient quantity of money, invested judiciously, can, yes. And that money can buy experiences as much as it can material objects. Deep companionship is something I’ve experienced both as a poor person and as a wealthy one. It’s not as durable as the wealth.
Then go sign an equitable and enforceable pre-nup. Jesus.
PS. A "I keep all my stuff forever while I earn all the money, and you cook, clean, have sex with me, and raise my children" pre-nup is not equitable, and is, in many jurisdictions, thereby not enforceable.
You're building a life together. If your partner doesn't meaningfully support you in it, you're with the wrong partner. If they are meaningfully supporting you in it, they are entitled to a share in your family's fortunes.
PPS. This isn't some feminism boogieman, this is a direct consequence of 'men are the breadwinners, women's livelyhood is utterly dependent on them.' If you're earning similar amounts to your partner, that default 50/50 split is a non-factor. If you aren't, see above.
Yeah, feminism has gone completely insane. At the moment of marriage all assets are divided equally in most countries, regardless of when they were obtained. And in many countries a man can even be liable for child support if his wife cheats on him.
That said a lot of countries actually have lower taxes for married couples like Germany, or separate it entirely like in Sweden.
>At the moment of marriage all assets are divided equally in most countries, regardless of when they were obtained.
Is this correct for European countries, UK, Australia, NZ, or Canada?
I have never heard of it for any state in the US. Typically, everything before the marriage contract is signed is not part of the community property in the marriage.
Actually it's slightly worse because asset split might skew more towards the person with lesser income to make it more equitable.
So it's entirely possible you could be the primary earner for a marriage and then when the divorce happens you actually leave with less than half of what you provided.
Huh? I live in a super red state in the USA. All assets you come into the marriage with remain solely yours. Anything you created together rightfully gets split as you were partners at that point, but inherited assets aren't counted in that (weren't created together). We don't have any sort of required alimony. You have to take one class to get divorced (but don't have to take it together) one time that is basically a 'think this through' to prevent a heat of the moment mistake in getting divorced. Seems correct and fair to me. Again, this is one of the redder states in the country. But we do have some pretty crazy common law marriage laws (the state's gotta make sure people aren't living in sin) though I don't know how those are enforced.
If you have significant assets and marry someone without a prenuptial agreement you don't get to blame feminism for your lack of due dilligence. The default marriage contract is 50/50 of everything, and if you want different terms you need to hire a lawyer before you sign the contract.
The child should be supported by a minimum livable amount (part of its rent + food + education + expenses). Instead there are crazy amounts based on the lifestyle the spouse was used to.
Funnily, if you were rich and go broke, you don't get to ask welfare or an employee to give you a salary based on the "lifestyle you were used to".
Again it's based on what the child was used to. Y'all are hyper fixated on the spouse I'm getting heavy reddit vibes here I'm expecting to start hearing about hypergamy and age of consent any minute now.
So? Why should the child get "what it was used to" and not a mere comfortamble amount? Especially if the father had a change of luck and makes less post-divorce?
I don't see any concern for kids from families that have not gone through divorce, but have gone broke or bankrupt. I don't see the state or anyone coming to pay them money to "maintain their lifestyle".
Why is this "lifestyle maintainance" only applicable to kids of divorced parents?
And why are children who started life poor less deserving of such money? They're just as capable as kids from rich parents to "get used" to a more luxurious lifestyle, they just never had the chance.
I actually am concerned about all of those things! Everyone should have their needs met, at the expense of those who have more than enough to meet their needs.
It's not really relevant to this conversation though, which is about the children of divorced parents, and how we've chosen to mediate their rights under the current system.
The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area? or a comfortable amount? Have you seen the poverty line calculations, or the asset limitations on disabled people? The state is not good at carrying this responsibility.
The current system leaves it up to the parents. Not what the parents say they want post-separation, but how they actually acted. That's why it's based on pre-split allocations.
>It's not really relevant to this conversation though, which is about the children of divorced parents, and how we've chosen to mediate their rights under the current system.
Things are to be examined in context, relatively to similar concerns, and to societies priorities and decisions at large, not as isolated domains. At the very least one should ask why this class of people deserves more than another, why their "lifestyle level" is relevant and is not for other cases and so on.
>The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area?
The area shouldn't matter. Use minimum wage as a calculation. If they kid is supposed to live on that while working their ass off as an adult, they can live on that as a kid too, especially since they still have a parent they live with to supplement that. If minimum wage is too low, the lawmakers should raise it for adults too.
Then the child should stay with the parent most able to provide for them. The big issue a lot of people have with the inequity of child support is that fathers who want custody of their kids are continually denied it by the state.
Involved, stay-at-home, full time fathers are given at best 50% custody and then a hefty child support obligation and told to go out and get a job. Uninvolved mothers are given primary custody by default and then collect a massive paycheck as a result.
Sure, but in the US the courts almost always gives custody to the mother, and then the father only gets to see his kids on weekends or less, and he has to pay for the privilege in forms of said support.
This isn't remotely true. Custody tends towards mothers because men often don't pursue joint custody. In cases where they do legally pursue it, they get it more often than not.
And again you're mistaking the fundamental nature and intention of child support. It's not a fee for the privilege of seeing your child. A parent can pay less child support by having the child more. Family court judges are fairly progressive and like this. Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it. Men are simply less often willing to prioritize eg daily school transportation requirements vs their job.
1. In 51% of child custody cases, both parents agree for the mother to be the custodial parent.
6. 79.9% of custodial parents in the United States were mothers.
The math doesn't add up, assuming this is correct.
>Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it.
I just discovered this was the case in my state at least. This is good to hear. In the 80s when I was growing up, it wasn't; it was more like I described earlier.
In the past, women were the most likely to win a custody battle because they were considered the primary caregivers of their children, as most fathers spent the most time outside the household because of their work schedules. Although the current share of custodial mothers is still bigger than that of custodial fathers, recent divorce child custody statistics tell us that the number of custodial fathers has soared over the past few years.
In the US this varies widely by state, My state requires non-married fathers to take additional legal action in signing an additional document declaring parentage before they are allowed on a birth certificate in the first place.
Jesus Christ. Feminism is not the idea that women are weak and need donations from men to survive. Laws set up based on that assumption are very much not feminist.
Which state do you live in that penalizes you? Federally, you'd have to have a combined income of almost $700k for filing jointly to be a penalty and even then you don't have to file jointly.
My assumption would be that they're talking about implicitly penalizing single folks via the tax code rather than married couples. There are only two reasons why I would get married:
I’m not exactly a hermit (or at least I didn’t used to be, the layoff has changed that). I’d go out a lot, to bars, to shows, to various events, etc. A vast majority of the people I meet are either older than me or less commonly younger than me (I stopped going to shows when I realized I was one of the oldest people there). The times I do meet people closer to my age, they are either already paired up or not interested in a relationship.
The only place I can find a “pool” of peers is on dating apps, and I’m not going by to waste my time with those anymore.