Edinborough Housewife on dating

[Xantippe]

It is funny that people now are more particular about savings and earning potential as a pre-requisite for marriage than they were back when those people who didn’t make enough money were in far more danger of actually starving to death if they ran out of money. Didn’t they also have a far greater horror of having to depend on the charity that was available back then? I don’t know…maybe people now are more allergic to risk?

Of course, back then people were a lot more afraid of getting caught “playing house,” too.

Except for a blip here and there, people have pretty much always and everywhere cared about savings and earning potential as a pre-requisite for marriage. See, for example, dowries, bride prices, etc. That’s why there are so many stories in our literatures of thwarted love because of financial issues.

Real estate also tends to be very expensive in the areas with later marriage in the US, not coincidentally. One of my formative experiences was house hunting in the greater DC area pre-crash and discovering that even the most modest home in the most modest area was going to cost well in excess of $400k–even a hefty commute from DC proper–I kept touring tiny doll houses in iffy neighborhoods that were $475k-$495kish. That’s DC metro, but the median house in the US now costs almost $190k. Traditional advice is that your mortgage should cost no more than 2X your income. So…that’s a problem, given that the median household income in the US is $52k. (Our mortgage balance is currently only about 1.5X income, and we feel house poor.)

Late marriage in the middle class isn’t coming out of nowhere.

Also, practicing Catholics, who don’t have the same breadth of family planning options as average Americans, are in an even more difficult situation. We have to be prepared to have 3 kids within 5 years of marriage. If you’ve been reading the Family Forum, you know how many CAFers are struggling with feeding and caring for their growing families on a small income and with little to no extended family or community support.

It really is that hard to get a family off the ground these days, and for Catholics specifically, it is a good thing to be able to make a running start.

 

[pianistclare]

This point:

The young woman she describes is young and sounds rather naive. Unfortunatly, women do learn that some men are not safe and (also her point) we can’t tell just by looking at them.

I didn’t find it casual at all, but descriptive and even grave.

I’m sorry, but I really think you are reading something into her words that is not there. And that first line borders on calumny.

Aside from Catholic you probably are. She has a number of non-Catholic readers, or at least did, on her blog Seraphic Single.

The point of the article is not whether men or women are more sexually aggressive but how the male and female minds work when it comes to what each finds attractive.

I feel like you and Seraphic, I mean Dorothy, got off on the wrong foot. I’ve read her blogs for years and found that her insights are spot on, and I appreciate that she’s a traditional Catholic who is not more Catholic than the Pope. Plus she used to hang out at goth clubs years ago when she was single and living in Canada. I find her clever and funny; she has layers and I think it’s worth it to read several of her blog posts to get a better read on her “voice.”

Yes. +1

 

[Xantippe]

From the new post:

"Now we get to my apparently controversial belief that men know a woman is pretty when they first clap eyes on her, and women often need time to develop an attraction to men. Beyond the fact that many women are terrified of stranger-rape, where do I start?

"Men carry two sets of look books. The first, shared by women, recognizes the unusual beauty of starlets and models. The second is highly characteristic to each man. Women can have a hard time getting our minds around this because most of us are not sexually attracted to women. We get that men are attracted to the nineteen-year-old supermodel du jour. We don’t get that some men are clearly attracted to forty-year-old Mrs Macintosh behind the bar at the Whistling Snail. We blame men for having impossibly narrow standards of female beauty, but a short walk around the mall will reveal all kinds and conditions of women hand in hand with men, or pushing strollers.

“Therefore, when I say that men should date only those women they think are pretty, I am talking about a very large number of women. Whatever they may say to their friends before they grow up, men are really not that fussy. They don’t need to be; as young men, they are capable of mating with almost any woman up for it. But at the same time, the inclinations of their hearts have an awful lot to do with their eyeballs.”

edinburghhousewife.blogspot.com/2015/09/natures-little-double-standards.html

Right–have a look around your grocery store at a busy time of day. You’ll notice a lot of women with small children that are not and obviously never have been classical beauties.

If being a classical beauty were necessary for human females to find a partner or spouse, our reproductive situation would be as dire as the Giant Panda.

 

[Xantippe]

DCM adds:

“If it makes my critic feel better, do let her know that the sexual bullying I witnessed at my elementary school seriously blighted my life, and that I finally went to the principal to tell him what had been going on for three years. He, not I, took the “boys will be boys” point of view. For my pains, I was scolded by a female classmate telling the principal because, she said, “Those girls were asking for it.” But even at 14, I knew that this was totally wrong.”

edinburghhousewife.blogspot.com/2015/09/clarifying-clarification.html

DCM goes on to mention that the female classmate that made the remark about “asking for it” was a victim of statutory rape.

 

[Naskor]

Indeed. Even middle school children speak about “dating” or “Going out”. They’re doing no such thing. It’s been known to happen that someone thinks they have a boyfriend, tells people they are going out, and all they have ever done is sit at the same table over a cup of coffee. Not having much of a personal relationship at all.

That’s how it is for people my age and I’m out of college. Lots of people here have had S.Os but very few have ever been on a date. When I say “date” they think “courting”.