The Real Reason Dating is So Hard Right Now (That No One is Naming).
The currency of need has officially switched sides. But dating culture hasn't caught up to reality.
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In our increasingly divided world, there is one thing everybody agrees on:
Dating is not going well.
According to a recent report from Pew Research Center, 67% of daters say their dating life is going poorly. 75% of daters report it is difficult to find people to date.
Half of Americans believe dating has gotten harder in the last decade.
When asked why dating is harder, answers are scattered:
53% say that it’s “hard to find someone looking for the same type of relationship.”
46% say it’s “hard to approach people.”
37% say there are limited options nearby.
34% say they are too busy.
Experts and daters alike are increasingly pointing to dating app culture to explain current dating woes: the pickiness, the over-emphasis on looks, the ghosting.
But beneath all these surface-level reasons lies a tectonic historical shift that no one seems to be naming:
The currency of need has flipped.
For most of recorded history, women needed men more than men needed women. Women needed men for access to money, property, respectability, safety, influence and religious salvation.
But that is no longer the world we live in.
And yet, we are still dating as if it is.
Come, let’s take a little journey to 1762.
We’ll start with our friend Jean-Jacques Rousseau
You remember Rousseau? He was the 18th century philosopher whose ideas on equality directly influenced the French revolution and the U.S. Constitution. That whole “all men are created equal1” thing? Rousseau’s idea.
But his radical ideas on equality definitely did not extend to women.2
Every few months I get the urge to dig Jean-Jacques out of his grave to let him know that yet another of his declarations about gender has proved to be incorrect.
And ya know, I haven’t done that since December. His tomb is getting a little too comfortable.
*rings the cow bell.* JJ! Rise and shine! We’d like to hear more of your gender takes please!
Here’s what Rousseau had to say about who needed who more in the year 1762:
“We men could subsist more easily without women than they could without us.
In order for women to have what they need to fulfill their purpose in life, we must give it to them, we must want to give it to them, we must believe them worthy; they are dependent on our feelings, on the price we place on their merit, and on the opinion we have of their charms and of their virtues.
By the very law of nature, women are at the mercy of men’s judgments… It is not sufficient that they be thought estimable; they must also be esteemed. It is not sufficient that they be beautiful; they must please.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762.
In Rousseau’s time, women needed men more than men needed women. Thus, the men had the upper-hand in choosy-ness.
It wasn’t enough for a woman to merely be beautiful, she also must be charming, virtuous, worthy and esteemed (and duh, she must also be beautiful).
He goes on to say that this imbalance of need meant women should devote their lives to just one thing: making themselves as desirable to men as possible.3
Let’s bookmark that thought and fast forward 264 years.
In 2026, do men need women more or do women need men more?
Setting aside gender, what is it people need?
Our longest-running scientific study asks what is the most important contributor to both physical and mental health?
The findings?
"Harvard's longest longitudinal study says... that the people who live the best lives, the most fulfilled lives weren't the ones who made the most money, they weren't the ones that stayed the healthiest, they weren't the ones that exercised the most, they weren't the ones with the best jobs… the greatest social status, they were the people that had a thread line of meaningful connection relationally throughout their life.” - Dr. Adam Dell
Meaningful relationships is the single greatest predictor of human health and happiness. Not having high quality relationships has proven to be more deadly than smoking, poor diet, not exercising or poor air quality.
And men overwhelmingly get their meaningful connection needs met through women.
Dmitry Tumin, a sociologist at Ohio State found,“Females have larger and stronger social support networks than men, whereas men often report their wives to be their chief source of social support.”
Studies have shown that:
Unmarried men are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than married men.
Never-married men are three times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than married men.
On average, married men earn $30,000 more than single men even when controlling for education, age and experience.
Married men have lower blood sugar levels, better cognitive function, reduced risk of Alzheimer’s, lower drug and alcohol addiction levels and half the rate of depression when compared to single men.
Pick a metric any metric, single men are less healthy and less happy across the board than married men.
Men’s need of women is widely acknowledged across political and cultural divides. Hard-core evangelicals, Jordan Peterson, Scott Galloway, all my favorite men4 are all in agreement- men need women.5
So, men need women to be healthy and happy, but who do women need?
See all those statistics up there about how marriage to a woman decreases risk of suicide, addiction, financial insecurity, disease and depression?
Take all those flip it and reverse it for women married to men:
Married women die sooner than single women.
Marriage increases a man’s lifespan by 1.7 years, but LOWERS a woman’s lifespan by 1.4 years.
Married women are more depressed and anxious than single women.
Married women earn less money than single women.
Married women do more housework, cooking, caretaking and unpaid work than single women.
Married women get less sleep and exercise than single women and weigh more.
Married women are less sexually satisfied than single women.
Married women are more likely to die from stress-related diseases, accidents suicide and homicide than single women.
Single women are the happiest and healthiest subgroup compared to married women, single men and married men.
Far from needing men, being partnered with one is actually a hazard to women’s health and happiness.
What have researchers found is essential to a woman’s health and happiness?
Other women.
A Harvard Study found that women with strong female friendships had lower blood pressure, reduced risk of heart disease and a 60% less chance of premature death compared with those that were socially isolated.
UCLA found that women who regularly engage with close female friends have lower cortisol levels, reducing the risks of chronic stress.
A 2006 Breast Cancer Study found that women with close friends were four times more likely to survive the disease.
(Hey those sound like the wife statistics!)
In sum, a PubMed study found that “women are more effective at providing social support relative to men for both same-sex and opposite-sex others.”
So if men need women and women need women, what do men do when no one is dependent on them?
What have men done when they don’t feel needed?
In his book Misogyny: the Male Malady, anthropologist David Gilmore’s research finds that men have always needed women more than women needed men—not just sexually, but for care, comfort, community and status as well.
Throughout place and time, this imbalanced need men have for women has caused intense resentment and fear in men. So everywhere from Ancient Greece to indigenous New Guinea to Victorian England, men set out to counteract their dependence on women by building economic, familial, religious and political systems that put women in a position to be dependent on men.6
For most of history, marriage functioned as an economic arrangement more than a romantic one. Women needed men for access to food, shelter, legitimacy, repentance and safety.
The architecture of courtship, commitment and desire was built upon this foundation.
But over the past century, that balance has quietly, yet profoundly shifted hands.
Women are no longer dependent on men for food, shelter, employment, community or even reproduction.
The conditions that once made men structurally necessary have for many women significantly eroded or disappeared completely.
And you know, David Gilmore may have been on to something because modern American men (#notallmen, #alsosomewomen) are acting a lot like the men in Ancient Greece and New Guinea when they didn’t feel needed—they are trying everything they can to alter the structures of our society back to when women were dependent on men.
For example:
Efforts to limit women’s control over if and when they become mothers—from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade to Project 2025 aiming to restrict birth control.
The pronatalism movement applying pressure on women to have children earlier and more often. Elon Musk said that the fertility crisis is a bigger risk to civilization than global warming.
The tradwife movement trying to sell submission as empowerment by telling women there is freedom and joy in letting their husband lead.
Conservative religions preaching women’s dependence on men is God’s will.
Widespread blame on women’s pickiness for men’s loneliness. (Oh heyyy Scott Galloway.)
Despite these efforts, the currency of need has still shifted.
Women now outnumber men at every level of college graduate—in bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and PhD’s. Single women now outnumber men in home ownership.
With this in mind, let’s update Rousseau’s quote to reflect the modern gender flip in the currency of need:
“We women could subsist more easily without men than they could without us.
In order for men to have what they need… we must give it to them, we must want to give it to them, we must believe them worthy; they are dependent on our feelings, on the price we place on their merit, and on the opinion we have of their charms and of their virtues.
… men are at the mercy of women’s judgments… It is not sufficient that they be thought estimable; they must also be esteemed. It is not sufficient that they be [providing financially]; they must please.” - Celeste Davis, 2026
There we go. That’s more reflective of where were are at now.
And yet…….
Even though women do not need men for their social, financial, physical or mental health, and men do need women for theirs, if you looked at our current dating culture, you would think it was exactly the opposite.
Wait. If we live in 2026, why is our dating culture stuck in 1762?
Given the risks to women’s health and happiness, you would think they would not be at all eager to settle down.
Yet according to that Pew report we started the article with, guess which gender wants a committed relationship more?
WOMEN!
36% of women daters are seeking a committed relationship compared to 22% of men. And when you hone in on the age range of 30-39, those numbers become 49% of women compared to 23% of men. More than double!
And this despite the fact that in this same sample, 65% of women say they have experienced harassing behaviors from men on dates.7
And women are still the group looking for commitment?!
What are we—masochists?!?!? THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!
Based on our scientific studies, women should absolutely be “the prize” in dating. Statistically, she is the asset.
And yet, dating norms—from men and women alike—suggest that men are “the prize.” Men are the ones running from commitment. They are treated as the asset.
If men now need women more than women need men, so many things about our dating culture make absolutely no sense.
Romantic movies make no sense
The much beloved trope of Prince Charming rescuing the weak, lonely maiden makes no sense.
Beautiful women desperately trying to get a man to marry them while the man is worried about being tied down—none of Sandra Bullock’s movies of having a man be the solution to all of her problems make any sense. Should be the exact opposite.
Our beauty standards make no sense.
Women spend an average of 33 more minutes per day than men each day on their appearance. But given who should be trying to impress who more, it should be just the opposite.
Men should be the ones who take an hour pruning, shaving and beautifying before dates while women should be the ones rolling out of bed a few minutes before.
The stigma of the sad, lonely single cat lady makes no sense
When a woman never marries, it’s seen as an embarrassing failure. She did something wrong, she wasn’t desirable enough to be chosen, she didn’t try hard enough. Our current Vice President called single women “childless cat ladies who want to make the rest of the country miserable.” When actually, they are the happiest group in the country.
Meanwhile single men don’t have that stigma. Should be just the opposite.
“Don’t scare him off!” advice makes no sense.
Women are told not to be too intense, too eager, too attached or too emotional lest they drive men away. Women are told to play hard to get to attract a man, to play it cool when a relationship starts. They are told to hide their feelings and not to act clingy. Should be just the opposite.
The world telling women to be less picky makes no sense.
In an Instagram Post about the Pew data on the difficulties of dating, the top comment is, “It’s because women have unrealistic expectations. They need to bring themselves down to the level of reality.” The reality is that men benefit far more from relationships than women, so they should be picky!
Advice for women to be “low maintenance” makes no sense
Men want women to be easygoing, undemanding and chill. Not to take herself so seriously. Be the cool girl. So she contorts herself to make being partnered with her as easy as possible. Should be just the opposite.
Who does the emotional, mental, social and household labor to maintain the relationship makes no sense.
Women are the ones more likely to initiate difficult conversations, remember birthdays, plan dates and parties and take charge of household labor. Women do a disproportionate amount of the work that makes relationships last. Should be just the opposite.
Now- don’t misunderstand- just because all of these high expectations from women in relationships should be just the opposite in order to reflect the reality that men benefit more from relationships; still, inequality is never the goal.
Men needing women isn’t the goal
Rousseau made the point that it was in a woman’s best interest to contort herself to be as pleasing as possible to a man.
And in 1762, that made a lot of sense. A woman had very few avenues to secure food and shelter without a man.
But it’s not 1762 anymore. So why are women still the ones contorting themselves to make relationships work even when relationships don’t benefit them? Why are men still the ones dodging commitment when it’s in their best interest to be in a relationship?
Everyone is acting exactly counter to what would actually benefit them.
This is what I actually think is at the heart of the dating crisis.
Dating power dynamics, relationship expectations and standards of behavior for men and women are all completely misaligned with reality.
And let me be clear—the ideal is not women ruling over men the way men have historically ruled over women.
Feminists have long been accused of wanting to reverse the patriarchy—to move from men dominating women, to women dominating men.
But this has never been the goal.
The ideal is not for men to be dependent on women.
The ideal, actually, is equality.
And the really frustrating thing is that the Western world is closer than it’s ever been to equality. Meaning it’s closer than its ever been to making real love possible.
We should equalize dating culture, not to give women the upper hand over men, but because the standard is currently so unequal—expectations of behavior are so high for women and so low for men and it is making everyone miserable. Men’s entitlement and “not needing” anyone is making them miserable. Women’s over-giving, over-accommodating is making them miserable.
Gloria Steinem often articulated this idea that female domination isn’t the goal of feminism- equality is the goal of feminism.
The quote “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” is almost always attributed to her, but she never actually said it.
When she was asked about that quote once, she said:
“That business about the fish and the bicycle was coined by someone else… I never, ever, ever said it wasn’t important to have men in our lives. In fact, I always said, far from dividing women and men, feminism will make love possible for the first time. That economic dependency may look like love, but it feels very different.” - Gloria Steinem
Equality could make love possible for the first time.
I can see why men throughout history have tried to create and then cement their need. Who doesn’t want to be needed?
It makes sense why all of us keep gravitating towards dependence rather than free choice as a relationship foundation. Our brains LOVE certainty. We are wired for certainty.
Relationships are way less scary when we can be certain about them. If our partner needs us, then we don’t have to live in a state of daily fear that our partner will up and leave.
Relationships based on choice rather than need on the other hand, way scarier. Our partner could leave at any time. There are no guarantees. We’ve got to behave in a way where our partner keep choosing to stay with us day after day.
It’s so much more secure to set things up so that our partner is dependent on us.
And yet, that’s not love. That’s a cage.
There is a WORLD of difference in a relationship between “I’m here because I can’t leave” and “I’m here only because I want to be here.”
I can speak to this first-hand. I used to be completely financially dependent on my husband. Earning enough money so that I could provide for myself if I needed to produced a massive shift in my marital happiness.
That shift from need to want is powerful.
And I did want to be with him before I earned money as well, but there was an undercurrent of resentment and fear I didn’t even realize I was living with until I became financially independent and that feeling of being stuck lifted.
Love based on choice is so much freer, more expansive and rich than love based on obligation (same goes for sex!).
Not to get all sappy on you, but this description of love from Conscious Soul is spot on:
"Love is wanting others to be free... It’s easy to confuse love with attachment, with needing someone to stay so we feel safe or whole. But that’s not love. That’s the ego’s version. True love liberates... To love someone is to want their freedom, even if their path eventually leads away from yours. And if they stay? If they grow beside you, not because they’re bound to you—but because they want to? That’s sacred. Because they’re not staying for safety or need. They’re staying for love. And nothing is more beautiful than that. Love is freedom. Or it’s not love at all."
The problem isn’t that women don’t need men anymore.
So yeah, dating is hard right now. But the reason it’s hard can’t be reduced to apps or busyness.
Something deeper is misaligned.
Men are still being handed that ancient script that tells them they shouldn’t need anyone. That wanting love, companionship and commitment is weakness. That they are supposed to conquer, consume and move on.
And women are still being handed the inverse—that their value lies in how well they can attract, accommodate and please. That they should be desirable and giving above all else. To be ever so grateful just to be chosen and then fight like hell to keep him with you.
Both scripts are written for a world that no longer exists.
That’s why dating feels so hard.
Our dating culture has changed very little from 1762, a time when women’s survival depended on men.
Even though that is no longer the world we live in, our habits haven’t caught up to reality.
But dependency in either direction isn’t the goal.
For the first time, love doesn’t have to be built on necessity. If we don’t shift back our laws, women won’t be dependent on men financially. If we allow men a new script—one that frees them from the cage of isolation and domination, one where they could be emotionally expressive, interconnected and committed without stigma, then they wouldn’t be dependent on women for their social, emotional and physical health.
This could be a win-win.
The problem isn’t that women don’t need men anymore.
The problem is that we haven’t yet learned how to relate to one another without that imbalance.
But until we modernize our outdated patriarchal scripts, dating will keep feeling like a game no one can win.
Want to de-patriarchify your own head? Cool me too. Our next Matriarchal Blessing book club book is going to help us do that. The book is The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality by Angela Saini. We will meet April 19 at 11:00am PT to discuss it. Next Sunday’s article will include a link to register, so keep an eye out. Join us by becoming a paid subscriber.
and he definitely just meant men.
nor did they extend to men of color. Rousseau’s radical ideas on equality were that non-land-owning white men should also get a say in how their country is governed. Which, to be fair, at the time was a pretty radical thing for a land-owning white man to say.
We’ve discussed Rousseau’s thoughts on women’s education in the past, but he staunchly believed it was in a woman’s best interest not to waste her time on gaining an education in anything other than what men want.
sarcasm.
Dr. James Dobson, Christian author of more than 70 books on traditional family values says that the unmarried male is “far more likely to be an alcoholic, a drug user, a convicted criminal, or a general ne’er-do-well. Landlords don’t want to rent an apartment to him, insurance companies don’t like to underwrite him, and loan companies are reluctant to loan him money. He drives too fast, he is more hot-tempered, and he tends to be impulsive. There are millions of exceptions to this pattern, of course, but the unmarried young man is at risk for many antisocial behaviors…. When a man marries and commits himself to a wife and children, however, most of his social liabilities disappear.” Scott Galloway and Jordan Peterson say this all the time too.
“…these deep and abiding male anxieties stem from unresolved conflicts between men’s intense need for and dependence upon women and their equally intense fear of that dependence.” - book blurb for Misogyny the Male Malady
From Pew: “While single-and-looking men and women report equal levels of dissatisfaction with their dating lives and the ease of finding people to date, women are more likely to say they have had some particularly negative experiences. Most women who are currently single and looking to date (65%) say they have experienced at least one of six harassing behaviors asked about in the survey from someone they were dating or had been on a date with, such as being touched in a way that made them uncomfortable.”
Such a great quote by Steinem!
I definitely feel like one major shift that has to occur is it needs to become culturally common for men post-college-age to have large male (or coed) friend groups. I bet that a lot of those mental and physical health benefits that were found in the study of women with strong female friend groups could be replicated in research on strong friend groups in general. Our culture's long history of men relying on their wife for all their emotional needs after marriage is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone involved. If men would also usually form strong social groups, I think it would be a lot harder for them to be taken in by misogynist narratives on how much women are failing them, etc.
Women needed men more back then, because of men! They created those systems and conditions. It's actually always been true that men need us more, the systems have just distorted that