I’m glad texting didn’t exist when my husband and I were dating. Calling is infinitely better! So was coming home and finding a message on your machine from the one you’re waiting to hear from!
You're forgetting to mention the enormous advantage that facilitating a major oxytocin rush plays in getting the girl; i.e., one of the highest of high-value plugs in the young love market.
To paraphrase (or quote?), "The secret to true love is: shag her 'til her ears drop off. Then don't call her for a week."
‘Debbie wanted to be independent of her family. Bob was not the answer. His niceness cost him.’
I was a ‘Teenage ‘Bob’ back in the early-1960s enjoying the, sometimes intimate, company of girls but no one getting serious. Now I understand why. I remember some of the words said that appealed to my vanity: ‘I can trust you’; ‘You’re good’; ‘I don’t have to do it with you’ and ‘You’re clean and I like that’ (it was years later I understood the full significance of that comment) and I was yet to become an ‘escape route’ - I was nineteen before that happened in 1963. Thanks for the insight David🐰
I agree, and I have to admit to seeing some of the girls as a future wife, but there was just me and maternal grandfather, which gave me a lot of freedom with which came responsibilities. It was a great story you told.🐰
Despite the feminist lies it's a fact that us females(even us oldies at the ringside) are attracted to Bad Boys. And the more hurtful and dangerous they are (I don't mean in a stupid s+m way) the more attractive they are. It's crazy but true. Treat em mean and keep em keen may be chauvinistic but it's true. Men who can be socially acceptable but still give out Bad Boy vibes are the top of the tree.
I had a similar experience in which, like you, I was the winner. I'll reserve that story for another time. But in answer to your specific question, I think the mode of communication may change but not the underlying dynamic or means of stopping it. We can tell people now that if they keep sending unwanted texts etc we'll block them or even report it as spam. I don't think that is any more assertive or, perhaps, brutal, than telling someone you'll send their letters back.
I learned a lot from this high value // low value theory, although I suppose it’s fairly intuitive in a counterintuitive sort of way. Like either you get it or you don’t. But my favorite line of all is this: “Bob stayed up late at night with Debbie’s dad assembling various mechanical devices.” Tragicomic ❤️
Very interesting, and great anecdotes. Many people today don't really appreciate the competitive nature of the sexual marketplace. Many leftists deride the PUA community, but if nothing else it helped explain to all the nature of the modern sexual marketplace, and understanding it is the key to success. I read Neil Strauss's The Game in about 2005 and it helped me get to where I am today (happily married with kids - later than typical, but still). SMV really matters to men and women, and the sooner a single person gets this, and better off they will be.
Me too. In my out-of-touch-with-the-dating-scene world, SMV means slow moving vehicle. Which was always my approach on the dating scene come to think of it!
Many people who married young-ish when all their peers were kind of in the same boat, dated and mated pretty intuitively and if they have any innate skill at all, probably paired up by the time they turned 30. They wouldn't have thought much about it all. But for those who were not easily successful, after awhile (and especially for the male technical problem solver types) they came to see human mating as both a market which follows rules and also as a game, with rules that could be learned. So these men (now called PUAs) learned and/or taught themselves how it all worked, and could both learn the social skills they possibly lacked and/or increase their SMV by social skill acquisition, better dress, exercise and grooming, etc etc. And in most cases, if they worked at it, they could eventually pair up to create happy families. The dark side of PUA happened when said men realized that the rules of the game, could be gamed, and then simply used all the techniques to simply bed women, for fun, and hence some PUAs become associated with manipulation, etc. But overall, the sexual marketplace is very real, and once you realize it exists as a construct, you tend to look at human interactions in an entirely different light.
Thanks for sharing yours and Debbie's story, David.
I met the love of my life through a blind date in 1986, pre-mobile phones or internet, which I'm really glad of. On our second date we arranged to meet after work by the escalator at Euston Station. I was delayed while on an assignment and was over an hour late for our rendezvous, with no way to let Ian know. He was waiting, reading a book, totally calm and relaxed and it just confirmed what I already knew: he was the one!
A somewhat scummy guy once told me it’s always better to pursue women with boyfriends. His logic? When you pursue a single woman, you’re competing against all men, but when you pursue a woman with a boyfriend, you’re only competing against *one* man.
I will also add that your interesting story is kind of an example of what I would call old-school classic courting rivalry, very typical of courting before the internet. As someone who never even considered marriage until I turned 40, I casually dated for many years, and was always kind of disturbed by the new reality that sex was easy and there were immediate assumptions and implied commitments, that the 'dating' exemplified by Happy Days no longer existed. I think the Happy Days dating scenarios probably were the norm for generations, and allowed to people to test lots of people out before making commitments, and also real commitments (marriage) happened far earlier than today.
Now with the internet that shopping is easier than ever, but its comes at the cost of unlimited choice, which is not conducive to making good decisions.
Just this week a 30 year old told me that his dating was hampered by too many choices. He had a long list of first dates lined up. There's a marketing theory called the Paradox of Choice where consumers decide not to buy anything if faced with too many option.
Absolutely, and its a genuine problem now with on-line dating being ubiquitous.
In terms of the sexual market place, generally, it is literally the ultimate marketplace, where all the rules of economics apply but no money is involved, and where's one's (genetic future) life is literally on the line.
Which explains why rejection for males is so painful (and something every successful male has to overcome) and intra-sexual competition explains a lot of human behavior, especially intra-sexual female competition. Women are absolutely just as nasty to other women as men can be towards men, its just expressed differently.
It was funny to read this today. This very morning, I was chatting to my husband Ray about the number of guys who try to capture the attention of women on Substack. I had three this morning (I know, I am almost 83!), who write something to the effect of "hello, beautiful, you have a lovely smile, I would like to get to know you". It's one of the facts of life we women have to put up with. They almost always talk about my/our being 'beautiful'. Ray said he thought they would do better by stating how much they liked our writing! Talk about high value, low value.
Yes, Substack is turning into a weird ‘social media’ that makes me very uncomfortable. They don’t seem to understand the underlying concept of Substack - a forum for writers and readers.
Maybe Substack needs to give us all the option to place an icon of a wedding band on our profiles! Although I'm not sure that would stop anyone. I actually don't wear a wedding band because Debbie didn't think it looked good on me.
I suspect the ring icon would have nil effect whatsoever. I asked one guy very politely to stop sending me DMs and he said he hoped he might be able to inspire me. I replied that my husband was my best inspiration (in the hopes of making the situation very clear), but he STILL came back. After that, I just blocked or deleted, but I have never reported anyone (which is an option). I have been having this conversation in two places today - here and on Notes - and someone said she thought some of these pesterers were bots. I can't get my head around the idea of a randy bot.
I don’t like classifying people as high or low “value,” particularly when money is part of the valuation. Of course, I’ve never had any money, so my value in that regard is close to zero. I never considered a person’s financial status when deciding whether to date. The things I looked at included intelligence, kindness, sense of humor, responsibility, trustworthiness, etc. Of course you have to find each other attractive and want the same kind of life. When I decided to marry my first husband, I took into consideration that we both were raised in small towns by still-married parents. I thought a shared background boded well. (He ended our marriage after 15 years and two children, so not so much.) However, I IMMEDIATELY knew I’d marry my second husband. It took only seconds for me to know. I called my dad and told him that night that I was going to marry a man I’d just met, a man who had just put everything he had into a new business in another country. He returned to his country (he was visiting American relatives) without us having so much as kissed. But sure enough, after two years of long-distance courtship, he gave up everything to move here and start over. Best decision of my life. We still have no money and never will but he is as high-value as they come.
I think any set of criteria applied to a romance is going to be imperfect. I did learn a few things, however, about our origin story and how we've evolved by trying my best to see our romance through this lens, however cloudy it may be.
Let me hasten to add that I dated an unacceptably high number of people earlier in life and very often made terrible choices and did terrible things! I once went out with a young man solely to annoy another girl whom I disliked. She had a crush on him, but she was insufferably spoiled and conceited and a certified Mean Girl, so I could not resist rubbing it in her face that he preferred me. So even though I ended up with a really wonderful marriage to a really wonderful guy ... there is some less-than-wonderful history.
I am far happier with a man from an entirely different country and culture than I was with a man from a very similar background. You would not expect that to be the case, but it is.
The other thing is that my ex pursued me relentlessly. I think I assumed someone so all-in would always be thus.
Sometimes you just know, and nothing is going to stop what’s meant to be from happening. That’s abundantly clear in everything you write about her - always with such love and tenderness.
I think ease of communication has really done a major disservice to dating. In the way it’s turned the “sea” into a commodity marketplace, the expectations of constant communication it creates, and the false intimacy it lends itself to…I wish I could turn back time!
Thanks Cici. It was a good exercise, however imperfect any set of criteria has to be when applied to romance. There's a spark that just happens that can't be evaluated or analyzed or quantified.
One of my takeaways was what you said in your comment. That despite our initial spark, i think 2025 technology might have prevented our romance from blossoming. Fake intimacy is a good way of putting the current technology. As I wrote to another commenter, I also think too many choices can prevent any choice from happening, at least a choice at real commitment.
I will admit that for the first half of this post, you made relationships or more specifically courtship sound unappealingly transactional. But as I kept reading, thinking of my own beginnings with my husband and our great love affair, it was easier to understand that all courtships are transactional by this definition, and that doesn’t make it a bad thing.
Two things I’ve always generally balked at: 1) when employers frown upon relationships between coworkers - you meet people where you meet them, and who is your employer to get in the way of that (unless of course there’s a workplace power imbalance and things get sticky). And 2) the idea that if a person cheated on someone in order to be with you, they’re necessarily the “cheating type.” I mean, I guess sometimes they are, but Bob wasn’t Debbie’s person, and timing and chemical attraction can’t always be helped. Also, to your point and your daughter’s, none of your frontal lobes was fully formed by 22. I don’t think anyone before 25 can really be pegged as a cheater. Perhaps after that point, yes.
Lastly, judging by how difficult a time my adult nieces are having in courtships, I’d say technology has reached its tipping point in being helpful here. My husband and I met online in the very early days, and we still had most of what you’d consider a traditional courtship, with all the attendant anticipatory moments and butterflies. But this was before the “swipe left, swipe right” apps that reduce potential partners to their looks only.
Hi Amy! At the time neither of us thought in transactional terms. This was effort to apply the value criteria looking back forty years ago. And it was a good exercise. Clearly, for a romance to be a romance there has to be a spark, an important element that can't be reduced to values.
I agree about co-workers provided there are appropriate guardrails. As for cheating I understand why people would warn against getting involved with someone who was already "going steady" but, yes, we were all very young and so that mitigates.
And the whole swiping thing seems antithetical to romance. I'd think the better dating sites are ones where it's like being set up on a blind date by mutual friends.
Man, while my story didn't end with marrying "the girl" our stories are eerily similar and happened during the same time period. Its funny but despite the heartbreak, I have nothing but happy memories of our time together. My wife, who I met not long after I broke it off with "the girl" laughs and shakes her head at me when I mentioned it. I'm a hopeless romantic she says but at least I'm her hopeless romantic. That was a good story David.
I wonder if “hopeless romantic” means “interminable romantic”, i.e. it’s hopeless that I could ever be different from my romanticist ways… it’s hopeless to think that I could ever resist the charms and directions of the heart.
I’m glad texting didn’t exist when my husband and I were dating. Calling is infinitely better! So was coming home and finding a message on your machine from the one you’re waiting to hear from!
Agreed. Romance is helped by anticipation and a bit of mystery.
You're forgetting to mention the enormous advantage that facilitating a major oxytocin rush plays in getting the girl; i.e., one of the highest of high-value plugs in the young love market.
To paraphrase (or quote?), "The secret to true love is: shag her 'til her ears drop off. Then don't call her for a week."
I waited 12 hours before calling and as for the other part, I’m a gentleman!
Hey, you picked your girl. But helping her realize that you are *her* pick is what we're talking about here.
‘Debbie wanted to be independent of her family. Bob was not the answer. His niceness cost him.’
I was a ‘Teenage ‘Bob’ back in the early-1960s enjoying the, sometimes intimate, company of girls but no one getting serious. Now I understand why. I remember some of the words said that appealed to my vanity: ‘I can trust you’; ‘You’re good’; ‘I don’t have to do it with you’ and ‘You’re clean and I like that’ (it was years later I understood the full significance of that comment) and I was yet to become an ‘escape route’ - I was nineteen before that happened in 1963. Thanks for the insight David🐰
I think adolescence, extending into our young twenties, is all about escaping from the family and becoming independent. Thanks for the comment.
I agree, and I have to admit to seeing some of the girls as a future wife, but there was just me and maternal grandfather, which gave me a lot of freedom with which came responsibilities. It was a great story you told.🐰
Despite the feminist lies it's a fact that us females(even us oldies at the ringside) are attracted to Bad Boys. And the more hurtful and dangerous they are (I don't mean in a stupid s+m way) the more attractive they are. It's crazy but true. Treat em mean and keep em keen may be chauvinistic but it's true. Men who can be socially acceptable but still give out Bad Boy vibes are the top of the tree.
Killer competition. Glad I wasn't in the ring with you!
I had a similar experience in which, like you, I was the winner. I'll reserve that story for another time. But in answer to your specific question, I think the mode of communication may change but not the underlying dynamic or means of stopping it. We can tell people now that if they keep sending unwanted texts etc we'll block them or even report it as spam. I don't think that is any more assertive or, perhaps, brutal, than telling someone you'll send their letters back.
Terry, on the cutting off front I agree. I do think, however, the expectation of instant always-on access has changed the game
True
Always-on access is a tricky one, and can go either way depending on the girl, and how close to a sale you are.
On the downside, it's 'too nice'; even almost-doormat. On the plus, it's active proof that you're all in.
He blocked me. . Bastard!!
Who blocked you?
I learned a lot from this high value // low value theory, although I suppose it’s fairly intuitive in a counterintuitive sort of way. Like either you get it or you don’t. But my favorite line of all is this: “Bob stayed up late at night with Debbie’s dad assembling various mechanical devices.” Tragicomic ❤️
I'd love to hear how Bob remembers this episode. He was a tough act to follow as a prospective son-in-law!
Very interesting, and great anecdotes. Many people today don't really appreciate the competitive nature of the sexual marketplace. Many leftists deride the PUA community, but if nothing else it helped explain to all the nature of the modern sexual marketplace, and understanding it is the key to success. I read Neil Strauss's The Game in about 2005 and it helped me get to where I am today (happily married with kids - later than typical, but still). SMV really matters to men and women, and the sooner a single person gets this, and better off they will be.
Steven, I had to look up PUA and SMV! Thanks for the comment.
Me too. In my out-of-touch-with-the-dating-scene world, SMV means slow moving vehicle. Which was always my approach on the dating scene come to think of it!
Many people who married young-ish when all their peers were kind of in the same boat, dated and mated pretty intuitively and if they have any innate skill at all, probably paired up by the time they turned 30. They wouldn't have thought much about it all. But for those who were not easily successful, after awhile (and especially for the male technical problem solver types) they came to see human mating as both a market which follows rules and also as a game, with rules that could be learned. So these men (now called PUAs) learned and/or taught themselves how it all worked, and could both learn the social skills they possibly lacked and/or increase their SMV by social skill acquisition, better dress, exercise and grooming, etc etc. And in most cases, if they worked at it, they could eventually pair up to create happy families. The dark side of PUA happened when said men realized that the rules of the game, could be gamed, and then simply used all the techniques to simply bed women, for fun, and hence some PUAs become associated with manipulation, etc. But overall, the sexual marketplace is very real, and once you realize it exists as a construct, you tend to look at human interactions in an entirely different light.
Thanks for sharing yours and Debbie's story, David.
I met the love of my life through a blind date in 1986, pre-mobile phones or internet, which I'm really glad of. On our second date we arranged to meet after work by the escalator at Euston Station. I was delayed while on an assignment and was over an hour late for our rendezvous, with no way to let Ian know. He was waiting, reading a book, totally calm and relaxed and it just confirmed what I already knew: he was the one!
That's a great story, Wendy, made possible by no cell phones.
Exactly, David! It was a random test of character, patience, good-humour and commitment that would be hard to replicate in the modern "always on" era.
A somewhat scummy guy once told me it’s always better to pursue women with boyfriends. His logic? When you pursue a single woman, you’re competing against all men, but when you pursue a woman with a boyfriend, you’re only competing against *one* man.
I never thought about it that way and i suppose it does take a certain type to come up with that concept!
I will also add that your interesting story is kind of an example of what I would call old-school classic courting rivalry, very typical of courting before the internet. As someone who never even considered marriage until I turned 40, I casually dated for many years, and was always kind of disturbed by the new reality that sex was easy and there were immediate assumptions and implied commitments, that the 'dating' exemplified by Happy Days no longer existed. I think the Happy Days dating scenarios probably were the norm for generations, and allowed to people to test lots of people out before making commitments, and also real commitments (marriage) happened far earlier than today.
Now with the internet that shopping is easier than ever, but its comes at the cost of unlimited choice, which is not conducive to making good decisions.
Just this week a 30 year old told me that his dating was hampered by too many choices. He had a long list of first dates lined up. There's a marketing theory called the Paradox of Choice where consumers decide not to buy anything if faced with too many option.
Absolutely, and its a genuine problem now with on-line dating being ubiquitous.
In terms of the sexual market place, generally, it is literally the ultimate marketplace, where all the rules of economics apply but no money is involved, and where's one's (genetic future) life is literally on the line.
Which explains why rejection for males is so painful (and something every successful male has to overcome) and intra-sexual competition explains a lot of human behavior, especially intra-sexual female competition. Women are absolutely just as nasty to other women as men can be towards men, its just expressed differently.
This is great! I loved everything about it!
Thanks Katie!
It was funny to read this today. This very morning, I was chatting to my husband Ray about the number of guys who try to capture the attention of women on Substack. I had three this morning (I know, I am almost 83!), who write something to the effect of "hello, beautiful, you have a lovely smile, I would like to get to know you". It's one of the facts of life we women have to put up with. They almost always talk about my/our being 'beautiful'. Ray said he thought they would do better by stating how much they liked our writing! Talk about high value, low value.
Yes, Substack is turning into a weird ‘social media’ that makes me very uncomfortable. They don’t seem to understand the underlying concept of Substack - a forum for writers and readers.
I guess they don’t WANT to get it. They’re just looking for a live and breathing woman and if she happens to be a writer, that’s ok.
Anna and Beth,
Maybe Substack needs to give us all the option to place an icon of a wedding band on our profiles! Although I'm not sure that would stop anyone. I actually don't wear a wedding band because Debbie didn't think it looked good on me.
I suspect the ring icon would have nil effect whatsoever. I asked one guy very politely to stop sending me DMs and he said he hoped he might be able to inspire me. I replied that my husband was my best inspiration (in the hopes of making the situation very clear), but he STILL came back. After that, I just blocked or deleted, but I have never reported anyone (which is an option). I have been having this conversation in two places today - here and on Notes - and someone said she thought some of these pesterers were bots. I can't get my head around the idea of a randy bot.
"Randybot!" Hilarious. But think of the marketing opportunities!
go for it!
But the Substack bot can be fun, if you have a sense of humour. See https://arichardson.substack.com/p/conversations-with-a-bot
I don’t like classifying people as high or low “value,” particularly when money is part of the valuation. Of course, I’ve never had any money, so my value in that regard is close to zero. I never considered a person’s financial status when deciding whether to date. The things I looked at included intelligence, kindness, sense of humor, responsibility, trustworthiness, etc. Of course you have to find each other attractive and want the same kind of life. When I decided to marry my first husband, I took into consideration that we both were raised in small towns by still-married parents. I thought a shared background boded well. (He ended our marriage after 15 years and two children, so not so much.) However, I IMMEDIATELY knew I’d marry my second husband. It took only seconds for me to know. I called my dad and told him that night that I was going to marry a man I’d just met, a man who had just put everything he had into a new business in another country. He returned to his country (he was visiting American relatives) without us having so much as kissed. But sure enough, after two years of long-distance courtship, he gave up everything to move here and start over. Best decision of my life. We still have no money and never will but he is as high-value as they come.
Michelle,
I think any set of criteria applied to a romance is going to be imperfect. I did learn a few things, however, about our origin story and how we've evolved by trying my best to see our romance through this lens, however cloudy it may be.
Let me hasten to add that I dated an unacceptably high number of people earlier in life and very often made terrible choices and did terrible things! I once went out with a young man solely to annoy another girl whom I disliked. She had a crush on him, but she was insufferably spoiled and conceited and a certified Mean Girl, so I could not resist rubbing it in her face that he preferred me. So even though I ended up with a really wonderful marriage to a really wonderful guy ... there is some less-than-wonderful history.
FYI, your criteria in finding your first husband were textbook Buddhist: shared/similar values, personality traits, and socioeconomics.
In other word, the compatibility side of the compatibility-passion spectrum. Looks like you rounded the formula with husband #2.
I am far happier with a man from an entirely different country and culture than I was with a man from a very similar background. You would not expect that to be the case, but it is.
The other thing is that my ex pursued me relentlessly. I think I assumed someone so all-in would always be thus.
The Buddhist angle is simply shared values/ethics/morals (Sila) and looks/smarts/sense-of-humor/finances (Punna). And of course emotional IQ (Panna).
This!!!!!
Sometimes you just know, and nothing is going to stop what’s meant to be from happening. That’s abundantly clear in everything you write about her - always with such love and tenderness.
I think ease of communication has really done a major disservice to dating. In the way it’s turned the “sea” into a commodity marketplace, the expectations of constant communication it creates, and the false intimacy it lends itself to…I wish I could turn back time!
Thanks Cici. It was a good exercise, however imperfect any set of criteria has to be when applied to romance. There's a spark that just happens that can't be evaluated or analyzed or quantified.
One of my takeaways was what you said in your comment. That despite our initial spark, i think 2025 technology might have prevented our romance from blossoming. Fake intimacy is a good way of putting the current technology. As I wrote to another commenter, I also think too many choices can prevent any choice from happening, at least a choice at real commitment.
"There's a spark that just happens that can't be evaluated or analyzed or quantified."
"I also think too many choices can prevent any choice from happening, at least a choice at real commitment."
Agree wholeheartedly. I always admired the title of Joni Mitchell's album "Court and Spark". For some, not everyone, it's a mysterious alchemy.
You are amazing. I love your openness. I met someone recently through Jewish friends. It feels like magic.
Thanks April. Magic is...magical.
I will admit that for the first half of this post, you made relationships or more specifically courtship sound unappealingly transactional. But as I kept reading, thinking of my own beginnings with my husband and our great love affair, it was easier to understand that all courtships are transactional by this definition, and that doesn’t make it a bad thing.
Two things I’ve always generally balked at: 1) when employers frown upon relationships between coworkers - you meet people where you meet them, and who is your employer to get in the way of that (unless of course there’s a workplace power imbalance and things get sticky). And 2) the idea that if a person cheated on someone in order to be with you, they’re necessarily the “cheating type.” I mean, I guess sometimes they are, but Bob wasn’t Debbie’s person, and timing and chemical attraction can’t always be helped. Also, to your point and your daughter’s, none of your frontal lobes was fully formed by 22. I don’t think anyone before 25 can really be pegged as a cheater. Perhaps after that point, yes.
Lastly, judging by how difficult a time my adult nieces are having in courtships, I’d say technology has reached its tipping point in being helpful here. My husband and I met online in the very early days, and we still had most of what you’d consider a traditional courtship, with all the attendant anticipatory moments and butterflies. But this was before the “swipe left, swipe right” apps that reduce potential partners to their looks only.
Hi Amy! At the time neither of us thought in transactional terms. This was effort to apply the value criteria looking back forty years ago. And it was a good exercise. Clearly, for a romance to be a romance there has to be a spark, an important element that can't be reduced to values.
I agree about co-workers provided there are appropriate guardrails. As for cheating I understand why people would warn against getting involved with someone who was already "going steady" but, yes, we were all very young and so that mitigates.
And the whole swiping thing seems antithetical to romance. I'd think the better dating sites are ones where it's like being set up on a blind date by mutual friends.
Man, while my story didn't end with marrying "the girl" our stories are eerily similar and happened during the same time period. Its funny but despite the heartbreak, I have nothing but happy memories of our time together. My wife, who I met not long after I broke it off with "the girl" laughs and shakes her head at me when I mentioned it. I'm a hopeless romantic she says but at least I'm her hopeless romantic. That was a good story David.
A hopeless romantic to me is an oxymoron as romance is all about hope! Thanks for the comment John.
I wonder if “hopeless romantic” means “interminable romantic”, i.e. it’s hopeless that I could ever be different from my romanticist ways… it’s hopeless to think that I could ever resist the charms and directions of the heart.