Inside The University of Melbourne

How long is too long to stay in the dating market?

The chief reason for the emotional unease and psychological unpredictability of the vast number of contemporary females and to a lesser degree, current males exist in in the unattainable pressure between our antique natural tradition and the relatively fresh development of the technological drifting world of unmatched mate choice we now occupy. 

It would be a certain shock to the majority of current generation beings to passage back in time and observe how humans lived a more tribal existence. Women getting married in their mid-teens and giving birth only a matter of years later were the norm.  There are still some cultures living in this manner as of today. However, the majority of the western population live a contrasting lifestyle whereby family formation is habitually delayed until the mid-30s, if at all.

One significance of this new architype is the ridiculous amount of years consumed in the dating circuit.

Women are intended by nature to begin reproduction in their early to mid-20s.  Their danger of miscarriage or foetal irregularities only seem to increase year on year after that and radically so after the age of 35.  Her body initiates to wear down which affects how much dynamism she can dedicate to raising her spawn.  If she is unable to discover an appropriate mate by her late 20s she will begin to notice that those influential feelings of passion she felt for crushes in her youth, flawlessly formed by evolution to convey a man and woman together to reproduce, now seem subdued and muddled.  This in-turn will sap the dating experience of the finest elements it has going for it – namely, the impulsiveness, the elation, the powerful drive to connect – and leave behind a carcass of the emotion that more closely resembles bargaining over a commercial deal or suffering through a boring interview.  Overthinking substitutes lust.

It is an embittering realization.

Men haven’t been excluded from this change.  In the times gone before us, a man exercised his hard earned-social proofing and material wealth into courting that one special sweet heard over the peak mating years in his lifespan. Before the existence of birth-control, there was an age when the first cherry-popping raw dogged blast inside a woman often lead to conception followed by decades of parenthood. This meant that for men, there was obviously a limit on just how many female sex partners the average man could accrue in a lifetime.  The laborious involvement in winning over and keeping the best quality woman, he could afford and then providing for their kids soon thereafter meant that serial dating was not a typical feature of life.  Dating dozens of diverse women annually and jumping arbitrarily in and out of mini-relationships is a characteristic of modern life for which men are not adjusted to.  The energy obligation is vast.  Men have altered to this demanding cycle of meet-attract-close-keep by either settling and marrying the first girl that would have them or by toughening themselves against the decision of women and learning to play the numbers game.

The Sex and The City lifestyle which adds glamour to playing musical man chairs is a stark contrast to our male ancestors who were often locked out of any future matings when a pickup attempt went crooked and the target or cockblock would run and tell the whole tribe what a loser he is.  Today, the proximity of exes has very little influence on possible future conquests.  For men, this has bought them almost limitless opportunity to get laid.  For women, this has mugged them of one of their most potent weapons in ensuring that only the fittest males get access to their vaginas — the contemptuous ostracization of their sexual rejection.

On the flipside, men have lost assurance in the fidelity of their chosen partners while women have attained an unstigmatized sexual freedom allowing them to play the field until in their eyes, the perfect man finally arrives to sweep them off their feet.

What a time we live in..