A while back, Peter made the comment that men tend to acknowledge who is and is not “out of their league” while a lot of women seem to wait and wait for someone out of their league to ask them out.
I don’t think that I agree with Peter on this. I think that there are cases in both directions where people have an exaggerated perception of their place in the dating market. To the extent that there is an inequality, it would not surprise me if it were more likely guys with the unrealistic expectations. Rather, it is guys that would have a self-perceived standing greater than their actual standing as girls tend to be much more self-critical than are guys (I believe, but am too lazy to look it up, there have been studies on this). I suspect, though, that the percentages are irrelevant and that what you would probably see is an unequal distribution. So if you’re in one sector of the dating economy, it can appear very much skewed in one direction. If you’re in another, it can be skewed the other.
But really, no matter where you are and what gender you are, it’s going to be skewed against you. I’ll get to that in a separate post.
Phi became famous based on a post about women and alphas, suggesting that the sexual revolution has given women the idea that if they can sleep with a man of certain quality that she can expect a relationship with a man of that quality. But that’s not the case because the criteria of men sleeping with a woman is different than entering a relationship with her. Therefore, women have painted themselves into a corner with expectations a notch above what is realistic where they are turning down guys that should be good enough in hopes of netting one of the guys she has sexual access to.
Phi uses alpha-beta terminology, but I am not go on this post because I think that it’s better to look at the entire spectrum of people rather than a false dichotomy where people are necessarily one or the other based on subjective measurements.
I think that there’s something to all that. Rather, I think that there’s something to the notion that people mistake one kind of access for another. And there have been cases where I’ve seen female-types try to net a guy and “hang in there” because they erroneously believe that if he keeps having sex with her and he’s not a terrible guy that it must mean something. So I could see that dynamic at play.
At the same time, I think that it’s something that guys see a lot more often than is actually there. If a guy asks out a girl that he believes is in his league and she says no, he will quite possibly come to the conclusion that she has unrealistic expections. Meanwhile, it could be that his expectations are unrealistic. But often, it’s actually none of the above. She is not necessarily looking for someone better than him, but rather she has some criteria that she doesn’t meet.
This is a dynamic I’ve seen repeatedly the other way around. Dharla was, physically speaking, out of my league. Particularly the second time around. She was shapely in all the good ways and had a smile that could light up a room. Yet she was more interested in me than I was in her. It wasn’t that I was holding out for someone better. Just that I was holding out for someone different. I am relatively certain that dynamic is in play in the other direction. I can certainly look at some of the people I’ve asked out and been disappointed because I thought my chances were reasonable and can say “Yeah, she needed a guy pretty different than me.”
But back to the original hand, clearly there are cases where women have unrealistic expectations for one reason or another. Phi’s reason is as good as any. There are also some women that have a celebrity fixation (not where they only date celebrities, but they want to date people that look like celebrities… who are invariably more attractive because they look like celebrities).
There are also cases of men with unrealistic expectations. Men that view any body fat as hideous, who have off-kilter self-assessments, and so on. A lot of men believe that since looks are not as important to women as to men that looks are (or ought to be) irrelevant. Guys that believe that being a nice guy will make up for any other deficiency and so latch on to way too attractive girls as friends and then get angry when they’re shut out.
And, of course, that’s the male counterpart to Phi’s theory about women. Guys that believe that if a woman gives them platonic attention and he’s a nice guy that he is owed more. So he continues to ingratiate himself with attractive girls out of his league hoping that he can create a romance like in the movies where the woman realizes that all that she’s ever wanted has been right there the whole time.
Popular entertainment itself is another factor. Entertainment media of course displays primarily attractive men and women, but there are two crucial inequalities in the portrayal. First, the physical standards for women are simply higher. Actresses tend to come in exactly two sizes: attractive and unattractive (read: fat). So you have Katherine Heigl and Camryn Manheim, but not a whole lot in between. So guys can dismiss the obviously flawed women as being unattractive and then can stratify the remaining women, most of whom beautiful and fit enough to be among the most popular at any given public high school (provided that they don’t have personalities that get in the way).
The second way that portrayals are unequal springs from the first but is still a second bird. In the Hollywoodland where the fact majority of women are extremely attractive and men run the spectrum, partnerships between so-so looking men and really attractive women happen with regularity. Rosanne Barr gets John Goodman, but Drew Carey gets Cynthia Waltros (as sorta does Jorge Garcia, Hurley from “Lost”). This feeds into the notion that “looks aren’t important” to girls and gives guys the notion that they might be able to slip through the cracks and get them a Courtney Thorn-Smith.
I suppose you do see the opposite happen as well. You get the “normalish” (radiant beauty aside) protagonist suddenly get the attention of a high-status male. Carol Seaver (Tracey Gold) from Growing Pains being a good example, a nerd-girl who nonetheless got the attention of the star quarterback. However, I think that this is generally undercut by the fact that the normalish girl is, in fact, radiant. So while it exists, I am not inclined to grant it as much of a weight as the male counterpart.
But the bigger reaosn I think that guys are at least slightly more susceptible is because our field of vision is directed at the most attractive. We look at the girls that are on TV, the girls that we are interested in asking out, the girls that are most our type, girls that are just plain pleasant to look at, and so on. The rest are, as a friend of mine perfectly put it in a conversation a while back, “background furniture”.
Now this isn’t a problem if a guy learns how best to approach women and ask them out and learns from his mistakes. He asks out those he is most drawn to, is rejected, and changes his premises accordingly until he learns were exactly he fits into the scheme of things.
However, if a guy is too chicken-spit to actually ask girls out, he will never recalibrate his expectations. He will instead nibble around the edges of the unattrainable, engage in false-friendships, and so on. And he will never notice the girls that, if he took the time to ever actually take an interest in, might take an interest in him, too. I think that this is why guys are more susceptible to realizing, long after the fact, that a girl was into them than are girls. Who notices the way that background furniture looks at them?
Girls, meanwhile, get a more natural gauge by the quality of men that ask them out. If they harbor delusions that they would be a good match for the jock or the class president, the fact that she gets asked out by a lower-class of male specimen is more likely to be noticed. They get a gut check that guys generally don’t, except in the somewhat rare case that a girl pro-actively expresses interest in them.
And even when a girl does express interest in them, it’s not as useful a gauge as it is the other way around. Girls bring pro-active towards guys come in generally one of two varieties: chicks that are attempting to punch above their weight class and chicks that are crazy. There are some exceptions, but the signal-to-noise ratio makes for lousy data-crunching.
These things are never sure, but I would speculate that the problem is worst for guys that have little experience asking girls out. These guys harbor unrealistic hopes that they are understandably afraid to put to the test. Having little or no practical experience, they live in a fanstasy-land where you know if they just keep trying to hit for the fence, they only need one home run. Ironically, though, it’s probably the guys in this group that are most likely to complain about women harboring unrealistic expectations.
If there is an area of womendom that is most afflicted, if there is any credence to Phi’s theory then it would be those attractive enough to garner the sexual attention of the “alpha males” but not really the romantic attention. Not being female, I don’t know how often this is the case and am inclined to say that if there is a problem with female expectations it probably has less to do with the quality of guy that she will catch and more to do with what she can generally expect from the guy she does catch.
About the Author
11 Responses to Leagues & Standards
Leave a Reply
please enter your email address on this page.
I’ll comment in more detail when I have more time today, but for a quick amusing note I was looking at the site of the Democratic candidate for mayor of my old hometown. One look at the picture of the candidate and his wife shows the couple to be a case of a soft fattish man with a super hot wife. I’d love to know the story behind that.
In fact the media tend to be doubly misleading: there is not only a looks mismatch but they also portray needy, nice-guy behavior as being necessary and sufficient to win over the girl.
That said, these same movies often portray aggressive women and feckless men, much more so than reality would suggest. So it’s not clear whose ego is being inflated at whose expense.
Peter, it could be as simple as him not being soft-fattish when they met. Also, he looks like a frat boy. Rules are sometimes different in the frat scene. A number of my brothers’ frat bros married oddly and report to leave unexpectedly active sex lives.
PW, Brandon Berg made a similar comment a while back. I don’t know. I didn’t see it. Well, I do feel misled about persistence paying off, but I remember much more coming away with the impression that nice guys get the shaft (such as Ben Stiller in Reality Bites and Cary Elwes in Liar, Liar) in favor of the jerk whose jerkliness the girl was “deep” enough to see past.
Peter, it could be as simple as him not being soft-fattish when they met. Also, he looks like a frat boy. Rules are sometimes different in the frat scene.
You may be right about his not being fat at the time. The site’s bio says that he played basketball and football for four years at Holy Cross High School, which has been an athletic powerhouse for decades, so at least in his high school years he must have been quite athletic and fit.
Dunno about the frat boy part … when I was in college, the fratboys generally did well with girls, but then again the frats didn’t accept fat or doofy guys in the first place.
Frats in my part of the world were fine with fat guys as long as they were just “stocky”. I.e. they ate well and probably played lineman in high school football.
Typically, in my experience the looks and brains tend to even out with most couples. The average looking guys get the average looking girls, and the super hot guys get the super hot girls. The smarter guys got the smarter girls, and the dumber guys got the dumber girls. Pretty much every couple I know matches in those ways somewhat. There are a few exceptions, either in my inability to see something attractive about a guy that to a girl might seem obvious, or something particularly attractive about a girl that the mainstream may not consider “pretty”.
I don’t think the average looking guys “settle” for the average looking girls or vice versa so much, but that they understand where the bar is and adapt to it. Even in the movies sometimes the nerdy guy and the nerdy girl sense a mutual attraction in their nerdiness that inexpicably (to others) supersedes their attractions to other people.
I think that this is why guys are more susceptible to realizing, long after the fact, that a girl was into them than are girls.
We say this. I probably do more than average. But how right are we? Remembering things years later, with no feedback or risks. I certainly could be lying to myself. I’ve never actually asked one of those girls if she was actually interested.
It’s possible, maybe even likely, that the d’oh she liked me reaction is more ego-feeding than reality.
PS is the econoholic blog dead, or just on hiatus?
“But often, it’s actually none of the above. She is not necessarily looking for someone better than him, but rather she has some criteria that she doesn’t meet.”
This is making the somewhat generous assumption that she already knows what her ideal is, having tried dating guys with all sorts of personalities. I for one don’t think I have a good idea of what my ideal match would be, yet I am unfortunately often less open-minded towards girls that don’t fit my ab initio ideal than this ignorance would suggest I should be.
As long as we’re presuming to prescribe what her standards should be, I don’t think that “looking for someone different” is that great a reason, except for the ego of the rejectee. (Of course someone older who has dated a diverse sample of guys WOULD have the information to make that judgment.)
But how right are we? Remembering things years later, with no feedback or risks.
So right. I’ve made similar comments about the perception that guys have that women dig married men. They swear up and down that so many more women are interested in them. One of the factors I think that contribute to that is that it’s easy to think that somebody is attracted when there’s no risk or rejection upon following up on it.
That being said, I do think it is the case sometimes. I can’t think of any cases where it truly did not cross my mind that someone was interested and then later I determined that they probably were. Often it was the case that I wondered at the time, but in retrospect I wondered way too much and acted far too little.
PS is the econoholic blog dead, or just on hiatus?
I’m pretty sure that it’s dead. The Econoholic has turned into a netmonk, eschewing the web and all of its addictions. I blame his new wife.
This is making the somewhat generous assumption that she already knows what her ideal is, having tried dating guys with all sorts of personalities.
Not necessarily making that assumption. I think that even when you don’t know what your criteria are, you still have them.
I was always overtly vague about what I was looking for in a girlfriend. I didn’t want to say that I wanted one thing because I didn’t want to close off a potential opportunity with another. Yet, when I look back… the criteria were there the whole time. None of the Big Five met all the criteria, but there is a surprising amount of overlap between people that are outwardly very different.
It’s sort of like friendship criteria. We don’t say that we will only be friends with people that fit specific characteristics, but we do tend to gravitate towards those that do. The difference is that in romance, the opportunity costs are higher so you have to be more discriminating.
And it doesn’t sound too dissimilar in your case. You don’t know what you want specifically, but you are discriminating. It’s possible that opening your mind would lead to your finding someone that was everything you never knew you always wanted, but it’s also possible that you would do as I did and spend a lot of time in relationships that were never going to work.
Now, if it’s the case that you never, ever seem to match up with the girls that interest you… then it may well be time investigate your tastes more explicitly and determine if there is a market-mismatch. I had to do that myself, incidentally. A part of me was (and still would be if I entertained the thoughts) viscerally attracted to people that are wrong for me. I had to take a step back and realize that I wasn’t offering what they were buying and move on.
As long as we’re presuming to prescribe what her standards should be, I don’t think that “looking for someone different” is that great a reason,
I would say that it depends on what they are looking for and how well-suited they are for that particular type. If they are attracted to a type that is not attracted to them, they need to reassess their priorities. If they do partner up with people that meet their criteria and yet never seem to be happy, same sort of thing.
I think that this broadening of horizons should occur relatively independently of being asked out by a guy that doesn’t meet your criteria. If a woman is attracted to outlaw biker sorts, she isn’t likely going to be happy with a dull engineer that she goes out with only because there are no outlaw bikers currently vying for her attention. She has to decide that outlaw bikers aren’t worth it.
This is all in an ideal world. Sometimes it may be worth her while to entertain the thoughts of someone different. Ditto for a guy when selecting someone to ask out. But if someone just doesn’t quite “feel right”, I think that there’s something to be said for following that instinct. If you really feel that instinct is leading you astray, then investigate.
While we’re in the land of the ideal, I think that it generally is a pretty good idea to try to ask out and date different sorts when you’re young. Particularly in high school and college. That way, post-college, you can begin your search with some insights.
Of course, I’m the guy that spent his college years chained down in a relationship. I don’t regret the relationship overall, though the opportunity costs were staggering enough that I wish I’d realized that things weren’t going to work out a couple years earlier.
“One look at the picture of the candidate and his wife shows the couple to be a case of a soft fattish man with a super hot wife.”
“Henry, how does a fat man like you get so many girls?”
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
He’s just a local politician, but you never know…
“One look at the picture of the candidate and his wife shows the couple to be a case of a soft fattish man with a super hot wife.”
“Henry, how does a fat man like you get so many girls?”
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
He’s just a local politician, but you never know…
Vance met his future wife when he was on the Board of Aldermen, well before he had any plans to run for mayor. Although Waterbury’s a decent sized city, population just over 100K, the Aldermen aren’t particularly high-profile or influential.
One thing I didn’t realize until later is that his wife is from the Town Plot neighborhood, which is about as totally Guido a ‘hood as you’ll find anywhere. Chances are she was happy to meet a guy other than yet another Camaro-driving Tony or Louie and didn’t even care that he had a few extra avoirdupois. Vance himself is from the East End, which considers itself slightly more sophisticated than Town Plot.