Women’s Empowerment in Dating

An odd fact about men, which is relevant to women’s empowerment as far as the world of dating is concerned, is that around 80% of men who seek dating advice, do so in order to “find a woman for a long-term relationship”, and about 20% do so to “play the field”. This was highlighted in a video course offering dating advice to men. The men were asked their motive for seeking dating advice and that is how they responded. The dating coach said that those percentages were typically what he got in answer to the question and I have come across similar data from elsewhere. Therefore, as a rough guide we could say that 80% of men who seek dating advice, do so in order to “find a woman for a long-term relationship”. Yet, many woman would dispute this based on their experience of the small number of men being willing to commit to a long-term relationship. Why is this? Let’s explore.

Empowered Woman, Hot or Not?

A similar fact about women, which is also relevant, is that on modern dating sites and apps 80% of the women only find 20% of the men attractive enough to want to date. The 20% of men are in the “hot” category; and the 80% of men are in the “not” category. Chances are that the 20% who want to “play the field” are the same 20% who are hot enough to get away with it. Therefore, there are roughly two distinct categories of men; the “20% Men” who are hot and tend to play the field; and the “80% Men” who are not so hot and who turn out to be more interested in a long-term relationship. This, of course, is just a rough estimate, but it can help an empowered woman better understand her experience of men.

Part of what is going on here is the “Instagram factor”. Traditionally women are usually more sociable than men, in the sense that women are more “networked”. Things are changing, but usually women in the family were the ones who remembered birthdays, initiated social contacts, kept in touch with friends of the family, and so on. In other words women are, or were, more likely than men to have a support system and social system which they engaged with regularly. This reflects in online behavior in that it’s mostly women who use Instagram; and it’s mostly men that use YouTube. (Though that is probably changing too).

Is Instagram Disempowering Women?

The downside of the Instagram factor is seeing others with their “perfect life”can cause us to feel that our life is not what it could be. We might forget that the photos are often heavily filtered and edited – and that the lifestyle we are being shown may be reliant on large amounts of credit card debt.

More to the point, a woman seeing others on Instagram with their “perfect partner” can experience frustrated  expectations and possibly a blow to her self esteem (“Why don’t I have that?”). It can cause women to question whether they could find someone better than their current partner. Sometimes that question makes sense and sometimes not. A woman may have a good man in her life, but he is certainly not “perfect”. Most ordinary men are not good Instagram material and do not aspire to be. Her current man, and the life he is offering her, is not likely to look good at all on Instagram. Can she upload pictures of her life, and particularly of the man in her life, and feel proud? If not, what can she do about this? How can she handle her current life situation and not have many of her experiences of using social media be a blow to her self esteem?

Can an Empowered Woman Still Find Love?

In the face of such challenges to self-esteem, online influencers tell women, “You are a queen”, “You deserve the best” and so on. All very well, as it is good to affirm oneself. Yet, “the best”, when it comes to women’s tastes, is only 20% of Men. Since 80% of women are after those men – somebody is going to get disappointed. In fact, simple arithmetic suggests that at least four out of five of us women are going to be disappointed since only 20% of men match what most of us want. Even that low success rate is assuming that a woman manages to tie down one of the 20% of hot men.

Yet, modern dating apps have turned those 20% Men into rock stars of the dating world and they have lots of choices and opportunities for new partners on a daily basis. This enables those 20% Men to become even more able to play the field and they often become very elusive and evasive when comes to making a commitment. This is not the patriarchy in action as it works against the majority of men and favors the 20% of Men. This is simply the law of supply and demand. Often the 80% Men don’t even get a date as they are ignored in the scramble for the 20% Men.

Initially roaming around on dating apps, doing hooks up, getting all excited about new possibilities at work, seems very freeing, liberating and empowering. Yet, in the longer term it can actually be very dis-empowering. It can be fun to decide that “A women can do anything a man can do” and go ahead and prove it. The problem is that most men lead fairly mundane lives and often work long hours. They also lead fairly dangerous lives too in some types of work, but “dangerous” without any glamour to it. Most men’s lives would not look good on Instagram – even with some heavy filtering.

Those women who are chasing the 20% Men experience the typical behavior of that type of man – which is to “play the field”. For those men it is about having hookups and not settling down. Men in general use the curious term “Alpha Widow” to describe a woman who has got involved with one of those 20% Men and who is now unable to relate to an 80% Man. She will meet other men, but they will pale in comparison to the one she “nearly got” – or rather the one she thinks she nearly got. The truth is he was only playing around, playing the field. After a few of these experiences she might decide that “All Men are Trash”. If she is an influencer she might even make videos on that theme and be tempted to retreat into an extreme form of feminism. When in reality she is facing the consequences of chasing the 20% Man, and doing so in competition with a lot of other women. A 20% Man may ghost her before even meeting her, or right after sleeping with her, because he gets lots of offers every day. But that type of behavior is not typical of the 80% Man.

Women Empowered in the Search for Love

There is a hilarious video somewhere which shows a variety of clips of women asking variations on the theme, “Where have all the good men gone?”. In the video a man answers every one of the clips with the same response. “They are in your friend zone.” It’s very funny. Yet also sad, but true. Of course, most women want a 20% Man . That is until they get sick of the unreliable behavior of those men. Why should a woman settle for less than a hot guy? Well, the thing is the 80% Men are not “less”. They are not lesser men; they are just not so physically or sexually attractive as the 20% Men. The 80% Men are more stable, more loyal, they are able to raise a family (and they might even earn more money), because they are looking for someone for a long-term relationship. The 80% Man gears his lifestyle towards stability and being able to provide; the 20% Man gears his life to playing the field (that is what make them “exciting”, but excitement should not be confused with love).

An objection to this is that the 80% Man is “boring”, and “not exciting”. The unspoken objection may well be “He won’t look good on my Instagram.”, or similar. He won’t make a woman the envy of her friends; whereas that hot 20% guy…. The other unspoken objection may be that he was not her first choice. If she still yearns for “The One”, who may well have been just a 20% Man who played her and dumped her, she ends up as an Alpha Widow (mentioned earlier) who then hangs on for another chance or reluctantly “settles” for less than she feels she deserves.

She might eventually resent any hapless 80% Man she ends up with. She could even take her resentment of the 20% Man out on the 80% Man she “settles” with. She eventually decides that the whole patriarchy thing, or anything she is annoyed about, is obviously his fault, and so he must be punished for it. Divorce looks like an appealing option at this point, now that she has found a “justification” to make him suffer. She might even go through divorce to be with a “hot” guy she has secretly got involved with only to discover, if she is not careful, that he is really just playing the field and soon tires of her.

The main thing to keep is mind is this: the 20% Man is looking for excitement; he is not looking for love. If a women is after one of the 20% Men then the probability that he will be loyal to her (or at least not ghost her) is very low. If a women is after an 80% Man he is much more likely to be loyal. If that still sounds boring read on.

Becoming Empowered to Choose Love

With empowerment comes choice. Do you choose love or excitement? Some will say, “I want it all!”. That is disney-esque fantasy. It plays out on Instagram and movies but rarely in real life. The reason for this is that while we are motivated by excitement and “the tingles” we are firmly locked into acting out our biology. Most of our feelings then come from the flood of hormones which cause us to act like biological robots to perpetuate the species. When this happens, we are not in charge of ourselves; our biology is in charge. Our biology is doing the choosing of potential mates. When that happens “our feelings” are not even ours; they are feelings of millions of years of biology at work within us (saying “C’mon churn out some babies, the clock is ticking!”). This is not a bad thing (as otherwise none of us would be here), but it is a limited thing. Our biology limits us; if we let it. Someone who merely acts at the behest of their biology is not empowered as an individual. Letting our animal instincts run wild empowers us an animal, but not as a person. A woman can be totally for women rights, gender equality and woman’s empowerment; yet, get dazzled by her biological reaction to some totally inappropriate hot guy. Therefore, if you consider yourself a strong independent woman, but go weak at the knees for the certain type of man, it is not your fault it is just your biology taking over. Just remember to try and keep your biology in check and not let it run the show.

The thing is that our biology does not actually “love”. It desires, it seeks to posses, “take care of” and all manner of mixed behavior, but it does not love in the higher and nobler sense. A woman’s  experience of men depends on what type of man she goes after. The 80% Man is not so run by his biology as the 20% Man. The 80% Man is more likely to be able to genuinely love someone. The 20% Man just dumps a woman as soon as his biology is no longer excited by her. Whereas the 80% Man will stick with a woman and keep on with a tough job, even one he hates, if it means keeping the family fed and sheltered. That does not look very exciting on Instagram, but it is back to the choice “love or excitement?”. The right to make a choice means we also get to face the consequences of our choices. The consequences of chasing the 20% Man these days are often not good. Having the right to do something does not mean that thing is right for us as an individual.

However, it is not really such a stark choice after all. When the excitement fades in a relationship then comes the time to learn to love more deeply. Impending divorce can be a sign that we did not learn to love someone more deeply. There is no shortage of videos nowadays from women who sought divorce, because they were “not happy” and are now deeply regretting it because they cannot find anyone better than the man they had. Often the man was not abusive or the like; she was just bored with him. This misses the point that love brings it own form of excitement, it has its own form of “the tingles” but it takes maturity and bit of effort to awaken it. If you are bored, it can be because you are bored with who you are. Maybe it’s a good time to change yourself rather than your partner. At least it’s worth a try before facing the perils of divorce and life on your own.

Learning to love, to truly love, is a life-long process. It means giving up a lot of selfish habits in how we think, how we feel and what we do. Selfishness and love are opposites. Yet, are there any online influencers encouraging us to be less selfish and more loving? No, not many. Mostly they are usually all about becoming more selfish. They present love as something we need to “get”, to “hunt”, to “chase”. But the more we grasp for things and the more selfish and self-centred we become the more unloving we become – and the more miserable we become. When we become too entitled; we become disconnected with others and their wants and needs are only aware of our wants and needs. We blame our partner for what is “wrong” in our relationship, but what is wrong could be that we are being challenged to learn to love more. (This assumes that they are a decent person not one who is violent or abusive).

We may have learned to “be nice” to someone and charm our way into getting what we want (or create drama and tantrums when we don’t get what we want). But that is not love. When we love someone truly, we love them for who they are not for what they do for us and certainly not based on how good they make us look in Instagram. We see the good in that person and we help them discover it and express it, by offering them what is good in us. The deeper kind of love is not co-dependent, because it is not dependent. It lets us be free and it lets the other person be free.

The trick to learning to fully love our partner is knowing how to get past the levels of resentment, frustration and anger which may have built up in the relationship. One of the keys to discovering, or re-discovering, our capacity to love someone is learning how to forgive. We need to forgive ourselves and our partner so that we can let go of the past. This will set us free of the pain of the past so we can re-evaluate our life and our relationships. We need to let go of shaming and blaming our partner and begin to see the best in them. We need to acknowledge them for the good that they do which we are taking for granted. In acknowledging the good in them it will grow and flourish in them. We need to replace blame and judgement with kindness and appreciation. Even if we ultimately decide that the relationship is not working (perhaps the person is compulsively abusive) and we decide to move on, we can still use the situation as a chance to grow our capacity to treat another person with love and respect.

True empowerment and true self esteem arises from becoming the best version of yourself. It comes from living by your highest values and not waiting for some perfect person to come along to “allow” you do do that. Through forgiveness you learn that your self esteem is not dependent on anything outside of yourself. Other people do not give you self esteem; you do. You give ourselves self esteem by treating others in the ways which are in line with your own highest values. You cannot feel truly good about yourself while treating another person badly. You get self esteem, by forgiving yourself, forgiving others, and by moving on from the types of relationship you used to get into. To learn how to forgive, click the link to the free ebook on this page (No need to enter an email address. Download is immediate).