Why the Dating Game is Rigged Against Women

Life in the Boomer Lane, in perusing her weekly issue of Time, bypassed articles about all manner of significant news to share with loyal readers, and focused, instead, on the following: “There are now four college-grad women for every three college grad men among Americans ages 22-29.”  And, as the years go by, the disparity will only get worse. This lopsided state of affairs has resulted in young women having fewer affairs than they want to. Fewer affairs lead to the prospect of fewer marital partners.

And it gets worse. Time notes that “Classism is bigger than racism in dating.” In other words, classism drives dating choices. So a college-educated woman, in the likelihood of not finding a college-educated man to date, isn’t likely to dip down into the pool of blue-collar singles for prospects. And college educated men, faced with a smorgasbord of nubile young women who have all discussed Chaucer and experienced binge drinking, are less likely to want to grab just one partner and hold on. The result is fewer real relationships, all around.

LBL knows what you are thinking, that, since you left your twenties in the dust, along with your bell bottom pants and your never-ending libido, why should you care? People in their twenties are self-absorbed nitwits, who think technology is fun and who can text really fast. But you are wrong. LBL has gone where this article has not.

While the article leaves us with the image of countless twenty-something women sitting home on Saturday night and binge-watching The Walking Dead, the reality is that it won’t take these women long to start competing for eligible thirty-something men. And thirty-something women, facing more competition, will turn their sights toward forty-something men. You get the picture here. If you are a single boomer woman, your days are numbered. If you spend you time complaining that there are no good single men out there, you haven’t seen anything yet.

And don’t dream of converting to Mormonism or Orthodox Jewry to solve your problem, or relocating to another part of the world. Time notes that “Mormon women outnumber men by a significant margin. The same is true in many Orthodox Jewish communities.”  Before long, these women will be competing for your men, as well. The World Bank reports that “women in the MENA region (Middle East/North Africa) are more likely than men to attend university.”

What’s a single boomer woman to do?  While there’s always the option of hanging out at retirement homes, LBL suspects that the situation for single boomer women will remain dire.

The New York Post, in its own article about this international crisis, does provide one small ray of hope: “People who leave organized religion are disproportionately male.  Atheists and agnostics are also disproportionately male. An atheist meet-up would be a really good place to meet men.”