This is Why You’re Single – The Top Dating App Dealbreakers Revealed, by M. Notkin

This is Why You’re Single – The Top Dating App Dealbreakers Revealed, by M. Notkin

(Link): This is why you’re single — the top dating app dealbreakers revealed

by Melanie Notkin
May 5, 2023

…A sizable number of single females have had their fill of tofu nibblers. A new study on dating app dealbreakers reports that 1 in 5 women will summarily reject a man who indicates he’s a vegan on his dating profile.

The study was conducted by Alexander, also known as @Datepsych on Twitter, a behavioral and cognitive neuroscience graduate student with a passion for information gathering. He keeps his last name private, he told The Post, due to his sometimes controversial research into topics like incel culture, promiscuity and facial attractiveness.

For this study, Alexander collected 130 different dealbreakers from his 18,500 Twitter followers, coding them into a survey for a social media “convenience sample” — meaning easily accessible dating app users on Twitter — of 438 men and women, with a mean age of 32.

He then asked participants to imagine a dating profile with a photo they found physically attractive enough to consider accepting. (Or, in app speak, swiping right.)

Next, the respondents scored each dealbreaker from one to five, with one being something they could overlook, and five being an absolute no-no that would lead to an immediate rejection, or a swipe-left, no matter how attractive the profile photo. Alexander then shared the absolute 5/5 guaranteed dealbreakers in his report.

The dealbreakers with the highest percent of fives were not shockers. For example, the overwhelming majority of women say they reject male profiles that exhibit violence, or sexual and bigoted content.

Men, on the other hand, were highly unlikely to want a date with a woman who uses her dating profile to promote her OnlyFans.

But that’s where the survey responses stopped being predictable. Turns out, when it comes to dating apps, the dealbreakers are not always the ones you’d expect.

Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

And what do conservative Christians (who tend to be hyper-pro-marriage-and-pro-parenthood-and-pro-nuclear family) do BUT to highly pressure and shame single, childless adults into marrying.

I did a post here years ago about a woman who says she felt pressured to marry by her church, so she ended up marrying the wrong guy, and she regretted it, and she divorced (link to that is below, under “Related Posts”).

Christians and pro-nuclear family conservatives deify marriage (and parenthood and the nuclear family) to such an un-biblical, absurd degree that they end up alienating, insulting, and marginalizing any adult who doesn’t marry or have kids for whatever reason, and it needs to stop.

And by the way, for single adult women who had wanted to marry but remain single after the age of 30, 40, or older, getting married is not easy, but so many conservatives incorrectly assume that if you want marriage, it is easy-peasy, it’s a total snap, that if you want marriage, it will “just happen”,

(or, conservatives – and sometimes secular liberals, too – incredibly, insultingly, and unrealistically – expect single, adult women to “settle” for marrying stupid, abusive, weird, disturbed, sexist, ugly, fat, or idiot men
– of course, they hypocritically would not expect their own single adult daughter to marry a loser or weirdo (no, they advise their own single adult daughter to hold out for a quality catch),
but they feel fine advising non-family single females they run into to marry ANY GUY with a pulse who they cross paths with – it is so hypocritical and demeaning).

If one is a single, adult woman who desires marriage, it is not easy to find a decent, compatible man to marry – not on dating sites, bars, or in churches, either (most churches lack marrying-age single men, and some of the men who attend are abusive or are pedophiles who want to marry an adult woman to act as a “beard” to hide their sexual attraction to children).

(Link): Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study by Leonardo Blair

Excerpts:

Nov 2, 2022
by Leonardo Blair

Couples who get married due to family or social pressure are up to 50% more at risk of having a union that ends in divorce, according to a recent study from the Marriage Foundation in England and Wales.

The study, “Attitudes towards marriage and commitment,” published in October, asked 2,000 adults who had ever married how much they agreed or disagreed with each of 12 reasons presented by researchers for why they got married.

To ensure that the findings were relevant to today’s families, researchers then focused on 905 couples from the sample who married for the first time after the year 2000 when online dating emerged.

“What this research shows conclusively is that the reasons why people get married has a significant material impact to whether they stay together. While this might seem obvious, this has never been quantified,” said Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s research director, in a statement about the study shared with The Christian Post. “But the message is clear. Get married for love and your future together and not because it is either expected of you or because of family pressure.”

Rebuttal to, Or Observations About, the Kerwin Holmes Jr. Editorial “On Finding ‘The One:’ Another Correction on Christian Teaching Concerning Romance”

Rebuttal to, Or Observations About, the Kerwin Holmes Jr. Editorial “On Finding ‘The One:’ Another Correction on Christian Teaching Concerning Romance”

The following post has been edited after publication to fix typing mistakes or to add more commentary.

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I will be commenting on this editorial about singleness and marriage on The Christian Post:

(Link): On finding ‘the one:’ Another correction on Christian teaching concerning romance by Kerwin Holmes Jr

That post as linked to on The Christian Post’s Facebook page:

(Link): On Finding The One – post on Facebook Page

This guy’s editorial is written in an odd way, so I’m having to go back and re-read it to just to try and comprehend some of the points he’s making.

Maybe I am totally wrong about this, but my impression is that Holmes is either in his 20s at this time, or in his 30s.
(Wait until he’s in his 40s or older and STILL single.  If Holmes still has not married by age 40 or older, his views on these matters will likely shift in time, thanks to good old life experience.)

Also distracting: his first name, Kerwin, reminds me of Kermit the Frog, so I unintentionally keep visualizing Kermit sitting at a keyboard typing this editorial I am reading. (That is not intended to be an ad hominem, just a random aside.)

At the beginning of Holmes’ editorial, he tells readers to view or read dating advice articles or videos by Christian pastors or personalities that he agrees with, such as the works by Reformed pastors or personalities in general and Voddie Baucham in particular .

Let me stop him right there.

I spent years following Christian dating advice (stuff I read or heard in the 1980s and 1990s, advice by and from standard, run- of- the- mill conservative Baptist or evangelical Christians), and none of that smelly, stupid advice ever actually helped me to marry, though I had wanted to be married for many years (I am currently in my 50s and still single). 

As a matter of fact, a lot of Christian dating advice, even the advice by conservative Christians, is counter-productive and actually plays a role in keeping single adults single (this includes, and is not limited to, the “be equally yoked” rule).

The “Dating Market” Is Getting Worse by A. Fetters and K. Tiffany

The “Dating Market” Is Getting Worse b A. Fetters and K. Tiffany

For anyone who cannot wait to get to it, here’s the link to the piece on The Atlantic:

(Link): The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse

Some of my comments about that piece before I put in some excerpts from it:

About the only “numbers approach” I have ever mentioned on my own blog here is that Christian women really do unnecessarily limit themselves if they try to live out the “Be Equally Yoked” philosophy in regards to dating and marriage, because the reality is, yes, the math is that there are not enough single, Christian men to go around for all the Christian single women who’d like to marry.

So, it makes sense to forgo the “equally yoked” rule, if one is a Christian, to date outside the Christian faith.

At the same time, though, I have seen other adults singles make much too much out of the “numbers game” philosophy on dating sites or comments sections on blogs about dating, where they make finding a romantic life partner sound so cold, or as though they’re shopping for a car.

There’s nothing wrong with having standards, but I am afraid there is a category of single adult who is too stringent or unrealistic with their lists of “must haves.”

I am personally turned off by anyone dispensing dating or “how to get married” advice who behave  as though there is a sure-fire guarantee way to land a spouse – because (Link): there is no such thing.

So, I’m really turned off by the many (sexist) attitudes and lists out there telling women if only the women do X, Y, and Z, they will absolutely get married to a great guy.

One problem is that most of these lists (which go viral on Twitter) are predicated on the notion that all men want and prefer 1950s, submissive, uber-feminine women.

Well, I lived that way for many decades – I was raised in a very traditional family that was into conservative values – so I had many of those prized traits sexist men online say will grant a woman a husband, but I remain never-married into my late 40s.

I was a very meek, docile, passive, sweet woman with traditional values, and no, it didn’t get me a husband.

(As I’ve aged, I’ve realized that it’s not a healthy or safe dating strategy for a woman to fit the picture of docile, overly feminine, passive, etc, that the “dating advice” gurus suggest on twitter and elsewhere, because many abusive, selfish, or controlling men intentionally seek out women with such qualities so that they can control, abuse, or take advantage of them.)

There are many conservatives – including women authors, unfortunately – who keep writing dating advice books for women, or who go on to FOX cable news morning shows, who keep encouraging women to engage in these dangerous dating strategies (of being a doormat, where being “feminine” is associated with doormat behaviors), which I’ve written about before (Link): here and (Link): here, among other blog posts.

The article below states at one point that men out-number women on dating sites. That may be so on some sites, but certainly not all.

Years ago, I had a paid membership on a dating site, and the site was forever claiming they could find no matches for me, most of the time.

For the four or five month paid subscription I had, I was only linked up to a total of about three men in that time.

My research on that particular online dating company found it’s the same with a lot of women, as it had been for me: that site tends to only “dribble out” a tiny number of matches for women, while they send male members more matches per month, every month.

Here are excerpts from…

(Link): The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse

The old but newly popular notion that one’s love life can be analyzed like an economy is flawed—and it’s ruining romance.

…It’s understandable that someone like Liz [a 30 year old single who is using dating apps to find dates] might internalize the idea that dating is a game of probabilities or ratios, or a marketplace in which single people just have to keep shopping until they find “the one.”

The idea that a dating pool can be analyzed as a marketplace or an economy is both recently popular and very old:
For generations, people have been describing newly single people as (Link): “back on the market” and (Link): analyzing dating in terms of supply and demand.

Thoughts Regarding ‘Both Purity Culture and Hook-Up Culture Failed Me’ by A. Murrish

Thoughts Regarding ‘Both Purity Culture and Hook-Up Culture Failed Me’ by A. Murrish

First, here is a link to the page I will be discussing:

(Link): Both Purity Culture and Hook-Up Culture Failed Me

I don’t care for this editorial.

For one thing it sort of spiritualizes the status of singleness, which is grating to any adult over the age of 35, who had hoped to marry, but is still single.

Next, the author points to the church as a solution for singles.

She is essentially telling marriage-desiring singles to lose themselves in church, to find belonging in church groups.

The problem with this is that for many never-married adults (and some divorced and widowed) over the age of 30, most churches either ignore adult singles, or they insult adult singles, because they are too preoccupied with promoting marriage and catering to the needs of married couples.

Majority of Heterosexuals Say They Won’t Date Trans Folk and That’s Discrimination Somehow – by Brett T.

Majority of Heterosexuals Say They Won’t Date Trans Folk and That’s Discrimination Somehow – by Brett T.

(Link): Majority of Heterosexuals Say They Won’t Date Trans Folk and That’s Discrimination Somehow – by Brett T.

Zhana Vrangalova late last month wrote a piece for Them about the results of a study by two Canadian researchers that showed that the vast majority of cisgender people (those who identify as their biological sex) would not consider dating a trans person, and that is just another example of the discrimination trans people suffer.

Of 958 participants in the study, only 12 percent said they would consider dating a trans woman or trans man.

After Threatening Suicide, Pastor Ronnie Gorton (Married to a Woman and a Father) Indicted on 47 Charges of Sexually Assaulting Boys

After Threatening Suicide, Pastor Ronnie Gorton (Married to a Woman and a Father) Indicted on 47 Charges of Sexually Assaulting Boys – Ditch the Equally Yoked Teaching, Christian Single Women!

I believe the article, which is linked to much farther below in this post, says that this child- raping pastor is married to a woman, and he and the woman have two or three of their own children.

Once more, contrary to what many to most conservative Christians and conservative think tanks teach, marriage does not make people more godly, loving, or mature. Being married to a woman did not stop this guy in this article from sexually assaulting boys.

Once more, the “equally yoked” teaching as applied to dating and marriage is detrimental and irrelevant: if you are a single Christian woman, you need to get past this mindset of “I can only date or marry another Christian” because many Christian men will abuse you, or they turn out to be perverts.

Tim Challies Needs to Shut His Pie Hole about Many Things, but Especially About Dating, Marriage, Singleness, and Now, Equally Yoked

Tim Challies Needs to Shut His Pie Hole about Many Things, but Especially About Dating, Marriage, Singleness, and Now, Equally Yoked

Tim Challies is the doofus Christian blogger, speaker, and book author who has actually said garbage in the past such as “even fornicators are virgins now” (yeah, (Link): he really said that).

Also bear in mind:

(Link): Tim Challies, Who Is Fine With Single Adults Fornicating, Is Not Okay With Fake Sex on TV, As Portrayed by Married Actors

(Link):  Christians (such as Tim Challies and his wife) Want to Hold Adulterers Accountable but Give Adult Single Fornicators a Pass

Furthermore, Challies is so vested in his belief of “Christian gender complementarianism,” he doesn’t care that its “male headship” doctrine leads to domestic violence against women and often leads to pressuring women to staying in abusive marriages; you can read more about that here:

(Link, to “Internet Monk” site): Stuck With Their Noses In the Text

Challies is more interested in women obeying the “male headship” and female subordination articles of faith that comprise gender complementarianism than he is in the safety and well-being of women.

As such, if you are a single woman, do you REALLY want to take any sort of relationship advice from this kind of person who does not value YOU as a person?

I would hope not.

See this:

(Link):  Consider The Source: Christians Who Give Singles Dating Advice Also Regularly Coach Wives to Stay in Abusive Marriages

Here is the link to the Tim Challies “Equally Yoked” article on Christian Post site (with more remarks by me below the excerpts):

(Link): Tim Challies Warns Christians the ‘Bible Is Very Clear’ Not to Marry Unbelievers

Here are excerpts from that page:

“The Bible makes it very, very clear that a Christian can only marry another Christian. You may not marry somebody who is an unbeliever. You should not marry somebody for whom you’re not certain whether they’re a believer or not. So absolutely, the first thing is, is this person a believer in Jesus Christ? Do we share faith?” Challies advised Thursday in part two of his message on Christian dating.

The Creepy, Sad, and Weird Love Life of Actor Tom Cruise

The Creepy, Sad, and Weird Love Life of Actor Tom Cruise

If you’re a singleton who sometimes reads my blog, and you’re fed up with being single (because you’d like to marry but haven’t been able to find the right person), this 2012 article from Vanity Fair might cheer you up.

Rest assured that your love life (or life as a single) cannot possibly be AS BAD or bizarre as Cruise’s.

There is a link way down the page to a Vanity Fair magazine article about how Tom Cruise’s church “auditions” women to be his girlfriends or wives.

Before I get a bunch of haters and get to the VF link: I don’t hate Tom Cruise, though he does come across as sounding like a weirdo, insensitive, and just as, or almost, self-absorbed as my ex fiance, in the Vanity Fair article I’m featuring farther below.

I don’t even know as I care so much that he’s into Scientology.

I only remark on Scientology in so far as it reminds me of the Protestant, Baptist, sort of evangelical Christianity I was raised in, in regards to the stupid and confining views on dating and marriage.

I read this Vanity Fair article about Cruise the other day, and it relates to a few of the subjects I blog about on here at times.

Dating, Marriage, Male Entitlement, and ‘My 600 LB Life’ TV Show

Dating, Marriage, Male Entitlement, and ‘My 600 LB Life’ TV Show

This is going to be one of those posts that meanders all over the place.

I’m not really sure where to start.

I’ve been watching a cable TV show called “My 600 LB Life” for over a year now. Aspects of content I see on this show remind me of some of the subjects I blog about on here.

I’m not sure exactly why I watch this show, but I find it riveting, and sometimes horrifying. It’s a reality program. Each show features a real-life person who is 600 or more pounds over-weight.

I do not watch the show to make fun of or laugh at the obese people.

I watch, I suppose, because I am interested in their life stories and what drove them to cope with life’s problems by over-eating to the point they become morbidly obese.

I also tune in to learn medical information about what happens to a body once it gets up to 600 pounds.

I learned from this show that not only does the body get a lot of fat on it (obviously), and the heart has a harder time pumping, but obese people can and do develop all sorts of secondary issues, such as painful bumps, scales, and swelling on their legs (which are referred to as, or the result of, things such as (Link): Cellulitis and (Link): Lymphedema).

The majority of the time, I feel empathy for the obese people on this show.

I am wishing them all the best and hoping they lose the weight and recover and get over whatever childhood horror and pain led them to over-eat (most cases of this show consist of someone who turned to food as comfort after they were neglected, molested, or abused in childhood).

There have been a few cases on this show, such as Steve Assanti, Chuck, and James K., where I have little to no empathy at all, because the person is whiny, ungrateful, abusive, rude, or incredibly self-absorbed.

Death, Grief, Marriage, Single Again, Soul Sleep, Christianity, Obnoxious Male Fixation on Female Looks

Death, Grief, Marriage, Single Again, Soul Sleep, Christianity, Obnoxious Male Fixation on Female Looks

I have several topics I’d like to address here. I’m going to discuss death, grief, dating, how men are too fixated on women’s looks, etc, and so on, all in the same post.

I learned from watching the Christian program “It is Written” today (Feb 2017) that the wife of Christian TV host Mike Tucker, Gayle, died. I’m not sure when the episode was first filmed or first aired.

You can read a transcript of that episode, “From Grief To Hope” (Link, off site): here.

You might be able to watch that very episode or one like it here: (Link, off site): Coping with Grief.

I see from an online obit that Gayle Tucker passed away in April 2016.

I am sorry for his loss.

I lost my mother, and it hurt a lot.

(Link, off site):  Gayle Tucker, Beloved Marriage Counselor on Faith For Today TV, Dead at 60

April 2016 –  The prominent Adventist television personality dies after a brief struggle with pancreatic cancer.

(Link, off site):   Beloved Christian TV Host, Couples’ Counselor Dead at 60

I learned a few years ago that the hosts and backers of “It Is Written” are SDAs (Seventh Day Adventists).

I also learned from a glance over google search results that Mike Tucker is a Seventh Day Adventist.

Part of SDA theology is something called “Soul Sleep,” a view that I totally disagree with and find discouraging and cruel.

The Selfish, Lazy Husband Who Kept Blowing Off His Stressed Wife to Go on World War 2 Reenactments – Male Entitlement in Relationships: Why Women Divorce Men – and Churches and Culture Support This Male Entitlement

The Selfish, Lazy Husband Who Kept Blowing Off His Stressed Wife to Go on World War 2 Reenactments – Male Entitlement in Relationships: Why Women Divorce Men – and Churches and Culture Support This Male Entitlement

This may be the start of a series. I may do more posts like this as I come across more examples. I kind of already did a part one a couple of years ago (Part 1). This post was not the Part 2 I had in mind, not really.

The things this post covers pertains to one of my big pet peeves as related to men, dating, marriage, culture, church, and relationships.

First, here is the story, (and then below, I’ll analyze or comment why this bothers the hell out of me).

Over a year ago, I watched an episode of the TV show “Restaurant Impossible,” hosted by Chef Robert Irvine on Food Network.

This married couple owned a restaurant that was failing financially, so they had Chef Irvine come in to rescue their business.

I don’t remember all the details of the show, the couple, or their restaurant. I don’t remember their names or where they were located. I cannot recall if both the husband and wife wanted the business, or just the wife did, or what.

Regardless.

The wife was having a nervous breakdown from all the stress of being a restaurant owner. She was running all aspects of the restaurant by herself (with a small staff who helped cook), but the vast majority of the responsibility for the restaurant was on her shoulders.

Although the wife kept begging her spouse to help her, because she was at a breaking point, he would not help her. He would sort of promise or act like he agreed to coming in more often to help, but he would bail on her.

If I am not mistaken, the husband did not hold down a regular job at this time. I think he had quit his regular “9 to 5” job to be in the food business with the wife.

However, the idiot (the husband) spent all his free time chasing down his passions and hobbies, which included stuff like parachuting out of planes on weekends with other men as part of a World War 2 para-trooper re-enactment group, and I think the guy was also part of a barber shop singing quartet the rest of the time, or something.