All you need is one …
Somehow my male friends don’t seem to agree with the depreciating asset argument that tremendously increases the urgency for women to get married/lock into relationships as opposed to men. I think it’s basically because women are just smarter than men. Women are typically attracted to men with money and power (ability to provide), and these would increase with age. Men, on the other hand, are typically attracted to women for their looks and youth (child-bearing ability). So clearly, women become depreciating assets in this market while men keep appreciating. The interesting thing is that men are willing to lock into a depreciating asset, without realising that they should try and invest in one that also has characteristics that would maintain or increase value.
The counter-argument to this is that this might hold for the market in general, but if you are a woman who brings to the table more than child-bearing ability, you would want to be with someone who appreciates those other qualities. But again, since women are smarter, the longer you wait, the more men able to value this would have been taken out of circulation … so, as a woman, if all you want to do is bear and raise children, you lose value with age, and if you want to find a man who appreciates you for more reasons than that, you had better snag him before someone else does.
The real danger though is to realise that this difficulty shouldn’t lead one to compromise for the sake of getting a commitment, any commitment. And it is tough to counter the social pressure that tells you to do so - a ‘friend’ recently told me that I wasn’t being realistic … looking for someone smart and interesting … so picky!!! … but hey, I am realistic about the fact that I might not find someone who meets my criteria .. I still don’t think it’s worth relaxing them.
Links:
Two points:
a) Even assuming you’re right, the men left in the market at some later time will be precisely the sub-set of men who are smart enough not to lock themselves into a depreciating asset (or, in other words, are more likely to value you for things other than the way you look) - which is what you’re looking for in the first place. So the market is actually helping you by pruning out all the men you wouldn’t be interested in anyway. Be grateful.
b) It’s not entirely true that women are attracted to men based on money and power, btw (that is to say it’s even less true than most stereotypes are). There’s anthropological research to show that women are also attracted to men based on their looks. The theory is that women are genetically conditioned to look for healthy, good-looking partners since they i) make better providers (this has been true for most of human history, btw - the complete irrelevance of physical strength is a relatively recent phenomenon) and ii) provide better genes that will help their children do better. So if you plan to have babies you may want to pick some good looking guy precisely so you have a better chance of having good looking daughters (they have to get it from somewhere) who will do better on the depreciating asset market.
Comment by Achilles, Sacker of Cities, Lord of the Myrmidon Spear — July 23, 2005 @ 12:51 pm
Ugh! Totally missed my point re being picky….all im saying is, u dont NEED to look for the ideal man who is smart interesting sensitive humourous good looking alongwith being rich and successful (coz im already dating him, loser!)….instead figure out what exactly u are looking for in a relationship…is it companionship? intellectual stimulation? need for appreciation? sperm? house n car? or all of the above?….naah, being educated independent and highly capable women, we are quite self sufficient for most of the aforementioned needs…(see, i said most, the sperm bit is sill a deal breaker!)…the traditional need to be provided for was the 1st to go out of the window, and emotional support is a close 2nd, being well substituted by ones own support system (be it friends family or just ones self) thats built in all these yrs we have spent thriving and winning in highly competitive male dominated set ups. Hence, its not about relaxing the criteria coz u cant find someone who fulfills it all…and its totally NOT about compromising for any committment (lady, u shock me!)…but relax it coz u DONT NEED all of the above…if anything, u might end up missing the guy whos brilliant at the 1 or 2 things that u do need from a partner, and sucks (ahem!!!) at the rest, for a guy who is average at everything. Hence prioritise and then look…its easier to find and its more likely to work! UNLESS u do belong to the clingy genre of ladies who always need to be with their partners and always need to be loved and appreciated…in which case…right about now…im all set to disown u!!!
Comment by "friend" — July 23, 2005 @ 7:36 pm
Dear “friend”
Good argument - the only trouble with it is that you’re ignoring the covariance between these characteristics. Let’s take the first three on the list - could you really have companionship with someone who’s not intelligent and doesn’t appreciate you? Conversely would you really value appreciation from someone who wasn’t intelligent / didn’t really know you? (I won’t even to get into the emptiness of sex with someone who has no intelligence / whom you don’t respect) The trouble is precisely that we can’t break people down into dimensions - your perception of them on one dimension is highly correlated to your perception of them on every other.
Also, it’s not the choice of the person that the compromise is about - commitment per se is a compromise - one that needs to be off-set by what you get in the person you make it to. That’s why it makes sense to be ‘picky’ - if you’re paying the high cost of getting into a relationship you should get enough out of it to justify that price.
Comment by Achilles, Sacker of Cities, Lord of the Myrmidon Spear — July 23, 2005 @ 8:27 pm
Um, i’ve never accepted this “depreciating assets” argument, girl. While thinking about social relationships from an evolutionary point of view is appreciable, care should be taken not to over-extend the reasoning.
Your oversimply the situation by assuming that all men look for someone to bear children (and hence, a preference for young, good-looking women). And preferences like these are the least likely to exist in the kind of men that an intelligent, educated person like you would want to date. (Unless you have a distinct preference for cavemen, a lot of whom can be seen on a typical IIM campus.)
As an aside, it boggles my mind that while women think its “shallow” when a guy hooks up with a girl only for her looks, even intelligent and successful girls like you do not think that it shallow to seek successful males.
Comment by shucks — July 23, 2005 @ 11:17 pm
wow .. .this got some reactions!!!
Achilles: You missed my point. The market is pruning out men who think women are depreciating assets - those are the ones I’m not interested in, so that’s good, but since the others are so rare (those who value women for intelligence and the like, and therefore don’t see them as depreciating assets), women will snap them up and they will also be taken out of the market.
Friend: First of all, I wasn’t referring to you … you’re a friend, not a ‘friend’
Second,I agree with Achilles’ point - the qualities you value are usually bundled together, not just in terms of whether the man can give them, but whether you can receive or truly value them. So, for instance, I’ve figured out that the only thing I’m really missing out on by not being in a relationship is intimacy (pls to note - not sex, but hand-holding type intimacy), but I can’t really appreciate the intimacy I would get from someone who doesn’t have the other things I need to respect him. Also, if I am getting into a relationship with someone for that reason, I would need to weigh all that I am giving up against the intimacy I’d be getting, and the investment of time away from other things just wouldn’t be worth it unless he brought a lot of other things to the table as well.
Shucks: My point is that the type of men I am looking for are so rare that they would be recognized as being rare and special and would have been taken out of the market by the women who appreciate them.
Re your second point - I agree completely that women being attracted to men because of power and money is as shallow. But I’m talking about being attracted to men who are intelligent and interesting, and what’s so surprising about that - don’t you seek friends who are intelligent and interesting? Success is usually highly correlated with these characteristics, so it might be difficult to separate out the two, but money and power most definitely aren’t criteria.
Comment by Administrator — July 24, 2005 @ 3:24 am
Hmm.. so there’s this “image” you have and you are trying to match people you meet in real life with that “image”. am not so sure that’s the way to go.
Re: “intelligent and interesting”
i dont know how you define “intelligent” and “interesting”. very often “interesting” is just a way of saying “different from me”. Besides i don’t think “intelligent” and “interesting” are correlated with success. Usually, “successful” people are not only boring, but also not huge geniuses either, and in this sense “intelligent and interesting” is often just used as a euphemism for success.
Comment by shucks — July 24, 2005 @ 3:57 am
Not really - e.g. a leather clad biker is clearly different from me, but I wouldn’t really call him interesting. I think it’s someone who helps you enjoy or learn more about the things you value already, though you may not act upon them yourself - so it could be someone who’s better read than I am, or it could be an artist, since I might appreciate art, but I don’t create it myself.
You’re right that they’re poorly correlated. I should have said the probability of someone being successful if they are intelligent and interesting is reasonably high (though they would probably be more successful if they were as intelligent but less interesting). Most successful people are boring because they are too one-dimensional.
Re image … didn’t get it … are you saying I shouldn’t have a preconceived notion of who I would be attracted to, and compare people I meet to that? Not sure - if I know what I enjoy and value, wouldn’t I naturally go for just those things?
Comment by Administrator — July 24, 2005 @ 5:13 am
yes. thats what i’m saying. what about things that you dont know about that you could enjoy and value too? a lot of these things are actually very incidental, and merely functions of our experiences. perhaps if you let go of preconceived notions you might realize that the kind of people you want to go out with are actually not that rare?
Comment by shucks — July 24, 2005 @ 6:26 am
I can’t resist:
Re: the depreciating asset argument - my point is precisely that men who are looking for intelligence / maturity in women are hardly likely to get into relationships early because for them the market of under 25 women is essentially a junk bond market - they’re more likely to invest in a portfolio of women and see how they turn out over a ten-fifteen year period.
Also, while I agree that interesting men are not that common, neither are interesting women - so I’m not sure why you think the few interesting men would already have been snapped up. It seems to me that the issue is not about depreciating assets but about market failure more generally, where both interesting men and women are rare and so in the absence of perfect information they may not be able to find each other. The two solutions to this are: a) more extensive search - basically all you’re saying is that it’s going to take more effort for you to find someone you like than it would someone shallow enough to care only about bank balance; b) serendipity - to shuck’s (shucks’?) point - the trouble is you’re looking for an asset that fits exactly into your already path dependent life; it’s probably easier to find an asset that has some basic potential + unique qualities and see if you can co-develop it into a useful resource; essentially the market won’t provide you the readymade man of your dreams but by judiciously influencing person (and being more open to different experiences) you could easily find someone who could become Mr. Right.
On a seperate note, to shucks’ point about how do you define interesting, my question would be how do you define intelligence? Intelligence is hardly a unified construct, it involves a number of very different dimensions: analytical skills, creativity, emotional intelligence, judgement / maturity, humour, taste, verbal skills, etc. all of which are often poorly correlated. So, for instance, on the same IIM Campus where shucks found his cavemen you’ll find an astonishing large number of people who can solve the most complex mathematical problems in their head, but haven’t read a book in their lives and can usually be spotted wearing purple pyjamas. Conversely I can think of plenty of people who are immensely clever conversationalists, but are impatient of structure and panic if you show them a spreadsheet.
Comment by Achilles, Sacker of Cities, Lord of the Myrmidon Spear — July 24, 2005 @ 1:28 pm
Now this feels a lot like real life … getting lectures on my love life
)
And those were pink pyjamas btw …
Comment by Administrator — July 24, 2005 @ 3:35 pm
Forgive me - you’re right as usual - they WERE pink. That of course makes it all right. Now I can rest secure in the knowledge that you’ve finally found your soulmate. Maybe you could lend him your pink slippers - the ones with the little white bows on them. They would go so well with the pyjamas.
Comment by Achilles, Sacker of Cities, Lord of the Myrmidon Spear — July 24, 2005 @ 8:53 pm
completely agree with u..even though i’ve heard my female friends confirm that the older they get, the less attractive they are on the marriage market..ur not being picky..don’t settle for anything less than wat u deserve only cos’ u need to get hitched! all the best
Comment by Anonymous — June 20, 2006 @ 7:08 am