Female Neediness or Female Status Seeking?

A response to Stella Tsantekidou

Stella Tsantekidou

recently wrote about how frustration resulting from “female neediness”, the greater desire for romance and commitment that young women feel relative to young men, parallels frustration resulting from “male horniness”, the greater desire for sex that young men feel relative to young women. I very much agree with her that women, especially successful urban women, experience social shame for admitting how much they really do want to find a relationship. But while I appreciated the self-deprecating tone and the (probably successful) attempt to build mutual empathy with resentful men, the piece really didn’t ring true to me.

Of course, I agree that most young women are more needy and more desirous of relationships than most young men. This is the expected result of our biology and the selection pressures present in our evolutionary past and present. Young women are looking for someone who can become a partner and father to their children while young men are trying to maximize their reproductive potential by offering the least possible commitment required to get sex, and so are more likely to resist settling down early. This is why age gaps in relationships have and continue to be common.

But, most women I know are not having the experience she claims is so common:

Do you know what it’s like to be a woman who wants a relationship but can’t get one? It is incredibly common and yet hardly acknowledged. Most women I know are well-presented, successful, pleasant, if a little frigid, and looking for a relationship that never seems to arrive.

My close female friends are all wonderful (of course I think that, and it’s true!). But they’re also just human and they come with plenty of flaws. And still, most of them have had a partner most of the time that they’ve wanted one. That isn’t to say that they haven’t experienced heartbreak, or haven’t wasted time in relationships with men who were painfully incompatible with them. But, when they’ve been looking and actively wanting a committed relationship… they’ve generally found one within ~6 months. Not to rub salt in the wound here, but I’ve seen more girlfriends struggle with the concern that they’re jumping into a new relationship too quickly after the previous one dissolved than I’ve seen struggling to replace an ex.

But, most of my close female friends are not really part of the “London/NYC urbanite with a high-status job” set. Nor do they desire to be. And while her piece doesn’t reflect my or my close friends’ experiences, Stella’s depiction of dating as a successful and attractive urban woman is not new to me. I’ve heard it described before by podcasters and colleagues alike. It could be that large urban centers are particularly bad places to find men who want to commit, which seems plausible (although I found a wonderful one without ever touching a dating app). But it’s also plausible that there’s something in the way these types of women select men that prevents them from making the deep connections they crave.

Many of the women I’ve heard complaining about not being able to find a boyfriend are also filtering their potential dates using a 10+ point list of legible traits that nearly everyone would agree are attractive. As

Jacob Falkovich

points out in his post “Whose dream bf is it anyway” these lists are often less about what would really make someone a great partner for you as they are about what would make someone look like an obviously great partner for you. As he says of the Twitter user’s list that prompted his post: “Her actual list describes, first and foremost, immediate social approval.”

It’s not that my friends and I don’t care about social approval per se. But that the social context we exist in is less concerned about some of these highly legible high-status traits. My friends are not filtering for extreme financial success (although they are filtering for financial stability) or lofty educational prestige - they’re concerned with finding someone who’s loving, stable, supportive and aligned on long term family goals. Like I said, it’s not that we’ve all had exactly what we wanted in every relationship or never experienced heartbreak or rejection. But that’s just part of finding the person you’ll marry and have kids with, not a tragic cross women bear.

I agree that relationship failures can be more anxiety inducing for women as a result of our shortened timeline and quickly closing fertility windows. But I also think much of this can be solved if young women are a little more open to dating mildly older men. Older women on the other hand, I have a lot more sympathy for. Their operational sex ratio gets worse and worse as the men their age are happy to date younger women while they’re not interested in dating younger men. And even if they were, these young men are unlikely to be interested in settling down and rushing to produce babies with them before the clock runs out.

I don’t relate to Stella’s experience of being the “super hot girl”, but I’ve always looked good enough that it hasn’t prevented me from dating anyone I’ve been interested in (as far as I know!). And, as I said in my 10% hotter post, I think investing in things you find inherently interesting and rewarding is a better use of time, even when it comes to attracting a man, than is spending 10 hours a week (plus $$$) to increase your hotness by a 1/2 point on a 10 point scale. One of the reasons I’ve always felt relatively confident that I’d be able to find another relationship if the one I was in failed is that many of my interests are more common among men than among women. This gives me a big advantage in that I’ve naturally found myself in male-dominated social situations that I actually enjoy. NYCs bad sex ratio is completely irrelevant to me because the circles I socialize in are 75% male! But while I haven’t read all of her writing I’m quite confident that Stella shares this advantage as well. So I have to wonder… might she be filtering for precisely the type of traits that are not only not required for a productive and happy partnership but are also most common among the men who are the least likely to want to commit.