Most Replayed Moment: Chris Williamson Explains Why Finding Love Feels Harder Than Ever.

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/a74d5ebf7a20166d

one of the biggest leaders, in fact the single biggest predictor of your health outcomes in life.
are the number of close connections that you have.
It it's more than quitting smoking, it's more than going to the gym, it's more than stopping drinking. Fifty percent of men say that they are not looking for a relationship. When they say aren't looking for a 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
Fifty point one percent of women for the first time in history
Uh
Uh
uh mothers there are more childless women at thirty than there are women with children, right?
So
For almost all of human history.
More women had kids under the age of thirty than over.
And now
It's switched.
There's a study from Morgan Stanley that says by twenty forty
Forty five percent of twenty five to forty five 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.
Question.
What's wrong with the outcomes?

What do you mean, why should people care about being single?
All the stats you just said. Mm-hmm.
Um
I could look at them and say they're just sort of objectively neutral. Like there's no
adverse consequence to society or the world.
It's fine that people aren't having kids, it's fine that people are aren't having sex. I'm playing devil's advocate here, but like what what is the 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 leavers, 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.
The number of close friends that you've got.
And a relationship is a big
Close friend.
Robin Dunbar says that 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 uh problems later on in life.
Uh 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 uh justify this.
uh, you know, uh Bospitch culture and sort of the lean in
um 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.
I'm just
gonna cast off
Any of it altogether.
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, um previously aren't the only causal factor.
So my question to you is, where did we go wrong?
And how do we go right?
Okay, so
I think
Challenges in the mating market.
Uh
Coming from many directions.
One of the main ones.
But
will be pertinent to the people that are listening.
is the increase in female achievement in education and employment.
Now
Uh about fifty years ago when Title Nine came in.
There was a thirteen percentage point swing in favor of men to women in universities. There were significantly more men than women.
it was uh an affirmative action uh policy that helped to get more uh women into higher education.

Fifty year, twenty twenty three.
It's a fifteen percentage point swing between men and women in university.
In the other direction.
There are
Two women.
For every one man.
and a four year US college degree, round about by twenty thirty.
Women on average between the ages of twenty one and twenty nine earn one thousand one hundred and eleven pounds 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 seventy eight percent of women say that a stable job is something that is important for a partner to have. Whereas around about only sort of forty five percent of men say the same thing.
for a man to increase his uh rating on a ten point scale
By two points.
he requires around about a tenfold uh increase.
And his
Salary.
For a woman to achieve these same
Two point improvement.
On a ten point scale, her salary would need to increase by ten thousand times.
My point being that
Women
Uh
They
are concerned about a partner's socio economic 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 uh
more success in employment, at least
In that sort of
twenty one to twenty nine range, which is when most people are perhaps looking for potential partners.
And yet.
The socioeconomic 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 ninety percent more right swipes 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 going to be useless, at least
Except the fact that you get ninety percent more rights wipes for the rest of your life. Or just lie about your masters. I don't know.
All of this roll 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 parity in education and employment and status and have independents and not be financially reliant on their partner, all the rest of it.
That's great for them.
But it
It does cause some challenges for
They're 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're
If you want to 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 in 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
TurboChad super performers at the top. These guys, the super high value guys, have a wealth of options, so they are commitment averse.
Why would they decide to sit down with one girl for the rest of time when they have this wealth of options, which can cause them to
Uh
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
Uh whatever it might be.
Right.
that they are uh users and abusers that we don't need them that we're all of the good men at, et cetera, et cetera. There'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 to us. I don't think it's necessarily good for them either. It's the child with the ice cream, right? 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
uh tall girl problem is a massive change.
I think
in uh the dating dynamics.
It obviously begs a question, Chris, which is
If everything you've said is
objectively correct and spot on and supported by the data, then how does if I make Chris Williams and the
Prime Minister or President of the World and I say your first job is to fix this
Challenge. Mm-hmm.
What do you do?
The first thing that you don't do
Is rollback 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
Pure research data, Morgan Stanley results, like these are incontrovertible facts, right? They are there.
And
Any girl that is listening.
Who earns more than fifty thousand pounds a year.
and has got a master's or above level education and is toward their late thirties or in their uh toward their late twenties or in their thirties, knows this problem. You know the fact that you are struggling to find a 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 posit 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, you know, 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 bachelor's, or got a master's, or got a PhD, and then you
spend some time in a career grinding away and you now own a hundred and fifty grand a year, you think, Right, I'm thirty one, I'd love to settle down. This would be amazing for me.
Where all of the men are?
Uh
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 twenty one 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, thirty percent of men haven't had sex in the last year.
Fifty percent of men say that they are not looking for a relationship.
You were a man.
You have been through your twenties. You know the power of the male sex drive between the ages of eighteen and thirty.
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 they're self identifying as this in pure research data.
This isn't on incel forums, this is pure research.
Fifty percent of men.
Aren't looking for a relationship.
When they say aren't looking for a 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.
Casual include.
Fifty percent.