Darwinian Dating Scene

George Gilder made his mark during the 70's and 80's warning against some of the ill gains from the sexual revolution. One point that stood out for me was the dating environment becoming a sought of survival of the fittest with the older, wealthier males being predominant and older women at the bottom. Older men who are divorced have more money and maturity than younger men and so can swoop in for second, third, or fourth dibs at the pool of younger women. This leaves more younger and poorer males without a chance but especially the older class of women left behind by divorce.

Miranda Devine's new column gives a modern update of all this.

She has a treasure trove of human stories which tell of loneliness and disconnection between the sexes, and a series of brutal home truths - especially for single women, who outnumber their male counterparts in every age group from 30.

At age 25, women can afford to be choosy, with four single males for every three single females, because they are competing with older men.

But by age 44 there are six single women competing for every five single men of the same age.

The high school dufus unlucky in love turns out to be a great catch at 50, provided he has a decent job.

“Men are in a buyers’ market and they are just in clover,” Arndt said.

“They don’t know what’s hit them. I’m always talking to men who are getting 70 contacts (from women) a day. I know someone who had 80 in the first hour.”

That particular 65-year-old Lothario decided to target the “Mosman book club market” with a line in his profile that read: “Keep meaning to spend a year with Proust, but who doesn’t?”

Pretentious, you might think, but “he was knocked over in the rush,” Arndt said.

Spoiled for choice, some middle-aged men are falling prey to what demographer Bernard Salt calls “hotness delusion syndrome”.

Arndt sees the delusion translate into discourteous dating behaviour, with men failing to show up for a coffee date, for instance, or worse, turning up, taking one look and leaving.

The lesson? The sexual revolution had anything but an egalitarian outcome and younger women should be a little less willing to wait until their 30's and 40's to marry.