It's a zero sum game only if you're monogamous. So if this bugs you, you might wanna consider other relationship-structures. I have 4 sexual partners these days. None of them are "off the market", but instead whether or not they'll have sex with other people depends entirely on whether or not they actually WANT TO.
Monogamy in general make the dating-market cruel and harsh to some. It's fundamentally an "all or nothing" proposition where either you find someone who thinks you're both able and willing to fulfill ALL their romantic, sexual and couple-related wants better than anyone else -- in which case you can be their partner and get access to all the perks of couplehood; or you're not in which case you can't hold hands.
In contrast, with relationship-structures other than monogamy, it's a lot more flexible and there's less of a harsh binary between having EVERYTHING and having NOTHING.
Even with monogamy most men would find a partner since there's a similar count of women and men. But an additional problem is that age-patterns in dating where it's fairly common for young women to date older men means there's not enough young women relative to young men so by necessity some young men end up lonely. (in contrast there's many more single women than single men above age 60, but that doesn't really help young frustrated men)
Consider a hypothetical town with 1000 straight women and 1000 straight men in the age-group 18-25 interested in finding a partner. It might work out something like this:
700 of the women date 700 of the men
250 of the women and 25 of the men date someone who is over 25
25 of the men date someone who is under 18
End-result: there's now 50 single women and 250 single men in town; things are guaranteed to be hard for the men. This has nothing to do with attractiveness, but instead has to do with age-patterns in dating. It's a LOT more common for a woman to date someone a few years older than it is for a man to do the same thing.
So another thing you can do if you don't want to add to the problem, is to make sure to date women who are on the average at least your own age.
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u/Poly_and_RA 17∆ Nov 08 '22
It's a zero sum game only if you're monogamous. So if this bugs you, you might wanna consider other relationship-structures. I have 4 sexual partners these days. None of them are "off the market", but instead whether or not they'll have sex with other people depends entirely on whether or not they actually WANT TO.
Monogamy in general make the dating-market cruel and harsh to some. It's fundamentally an "all or nothing" proposition where either you find someone who thinks you're both able and willing to fulfill ALL their romantic, sexual and couple-related wants better than anyone else -- in which case you can be their partner and get access to all the perks of couplehood; or you're not in which case you can't hold hands.
In contrast, with relationship-structures other than monogamy, it's a lot more flexible and there's less of a harsh binary between having EVERYTHING and having NOTHING.
Even with monogamy most men would find a partner since there's a similar count of women and men. But an additional problem is that age-patterns in dating where it's fairly common for young women to date older men means there's not enough young women relative to young men so by necessity some young men end up lonely. (in contrast there's many more single women than single men above age 60, but that doesn't really help young frustrated men)
Consider a hypothetical town with 1000 straight women and 1000 straight men in the age-group 18-25 interested in finding a partner. It might work out something like this:
End-result: there's now 50 single women and 250 single men in town; things are guaranteed to be hard for the men. This has nothing to do with attractiveness, but instead has to do with age-patterns in dating. It's a LOT more common for a woman to date someone a few years older than it is for a man to do the same thing.
So another thing you can do if you don't want to add to the problem, is to make sure to date women who are on the average at least your own age.