Maybe dating is the same thing as buying a car. (wife, marriage)
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With a car, you know the specifications, and can accurately forecast costs of ownership. There is a warranty and lemon laws for those which can't be fixed - you may even get a replacement. And best of all, your dream car has been driven and evaluated by professional drivers and compared against the competition, so you don't have to figure out for yourself which is best. With a date, you have to do all that yourself, and let's face it, few are professionals when it comes to evaluating dates!
In the end, you buy the date (uh, choose the date!) you think will provide the best performance for your needs, but it usually (they usually) underperform once parked in your bed (err, driveway?). My metaphors are running into each other. Airbags, anyone? Besides, I KNOW how to turn a car on and get it to respond - women are a lot more complicated.
So, insist on a test drive, at least, and lease, don't buy.
That last sentence is gold.
And, yeah... the purchase has a lot more variables. But... humans are more complicated than cars.
I think that you brought up some interesting points. My favorite here is that few of us are professionals in the realm of date evaluation.
So true! But, we can be better at evaluating partners than we are... we can read, learn, practice...
We can pay attention to signs... it's complicated, to be sure, but there are some similarities.
If nothing else, approaching it as the same thing is a good STARTING point.
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But, the thing here is that much like the way you cannot reasonably expect to afford a Ferrari on a Hundai budget, you cannot expect to date a supermodel when you're delivering pizzas and just an average guy with little money and few career prospects.
One can construct a rational path of self-improvement to go from Hyundai-class to Ferrari-class. It's not simple and assuredly involves labor, ingenuity and taking of risk, but a scientific approach is possible. My contention is that such an approach is not possible with dating, because good candidacy is only weakly correlated with good success in dating.
Secondly, a poor person can still afford a used Hyundai. It's not prestigious and won't win any stoplight drag-races, but it's basic transportation. I disbelieve that an analogy with dating exists. The analogy would be that a man of mediocre candidacy can secure a date if he "lowers his standards" sufficiently far. This is false, because the woman whom we have the temerity to describe as "low" has every reason to spurn the man's advances.
A better analogy would be between dating and Protestant Christianity. Because of the radical depravity of Man, attainment of salvation is impossible through personal labor of self-improvement, for no such effort is even remotely sufficient. Instead, the only available avenue is receipt of grace, which comes as a free gift - to some. With grace, no additional personal wherewithal is required. Without it, nothing else is sufficient. It is not by leading an upstanding or charitable life that a man attains salvation, but through this free gift of grace, which comes to some people whom we in human terms might not regard as being worthy, and bypasses many of those who appear to be eminently worthy. This is why, in human terms, salvation appears to be arbitrary and capricious.
The analogy would be the arbitrary and capricious nature of success in dating; many worthy candidates fail, while those who appear to be knaves or losers succeed. The resolution to this problem is to understand that "worthy" is a subjective thing. What in some contexts appears to be worthy, utterly fails to be so, in the context of dating.
In sum, I can take specific steps to buy a car, and can reason from the present to some graspable future about how I might buy a better car. Such a calculation is woefully impossible in dating.
One can construct a rational path of self-improvement to go from Hyundai-class to Ferrari-class. It's not simple and assuredly involves labor, ingenuity and taking of risk, but a scientific approach is possible. My contention is that such an approach is not possible with dating, because good candidacy is only weakly correlated with good success in dating.
Secondly, a poor person can still afford a used Hyundai. It's not prestigious and won't win any stoplight drag-races, but it's basic transportation. I disbelieve that an analogy with dating exists. The analogy would be that a man of mediocre candidacy can secure a date if he "lowers his standards" sufficiently far. This is false, because the woman whom we have the temerity to describe as "low" has every reason to spurn the man's advances.
A better analogy would be between dating and Protestant Christianity. Because of the radical depravity of Man, attainment of salvation is impossible through personal labor of self-improvement, for no such effort is even remotely sufficient. Instead, the only available avenue is receipt of grace, which comes as a free gift - to some. With grace, no additional personal wherewithal is required. Without it, nothing else is sufficient. It is not by leading an upstanding or charitable life that a man attains salvation, but through this free gift of grace, which comes to some people whom we in human terms might not regard as being worthy, and bypasses many of those who appear to be eminently worthy. This is why, in human terms, salvation appears to be arbitrary and capricious.
The analogy would be the arbitrary and capricious nature of success in dating; many worthy candidates fail, while those who appear to be knaves or losers succeed. The resolution to this problem is to understand that "worthy" is a subjective thing. What in some contexts appears to be worthy, utterly fails to be so, in the context of dating.
In sum, I can take specific steps to buy a car, and can reason from the present to some graspable future about how I might buy a better car. Such a calculation is woefully impossible in dating.
Did the man not lower his standards when he bought a Hyundai, but wanted a Ferrari?
Sure, the car doesn't know the difference. But, if a man was really "lowering his standards" to date the female equivalent of a Hyundai when he really wanted the female equivalent of a Ferrari? The female Hyundai ought not to know this, either. Lowering one's standards means that one has honestly appraised a situation and determined that one's standards are simply unrealistically high. Lowering one's standards means that one makes a genuine commitment to making a course correction and realizes that one cannot date Ms. Ferrari because one really is only qualified to date Ms. Hyundai.
The same applies to women, of course. This isn't about men going about this wrong, because let's face it... women do, too.
I think that if we all are really honest with ourselves, our dating successes and failures really are not nearly so much "luck of the draw" as they are a statement about who we are and what sort of energy we put out there into the world.
You said that someone can take steps to assure that they will be able to buy their dream car. I say that not everyone has the discipline to work and save and be able to afford that brand new, midnight black metallic Ferrari.
So, really? We like to think we can buy whatever car we want. But, can we?
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What about all the perfectly serviceable cars, some in quite good condition, like new, that are on the lot, but never get noticed by prospective buyers?
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 08-28-2013 at 04:47 PM..
What about all the perfectly serviceable cars, some in quite good condition, like new, that are on the lot, but never get noticed be prospective buyers?
I think they fall under the categories of "Not my dream car" and "If I have to get a car I don't want, I want a cheaper car."
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As part of #3 you forgot to mention plastic surgery. I have a 6 figure job and do all thoes things and I still have to settle big time, the only other thing I could do is get plastic surgery so that I can go from a 5 to an 8 or 9. If I had the balls to do it (I have the money) it would make for a good case study since it would be my same personality I would probably be playing pof or some other site like an active stock trade.
I think that is the key is plastic surgery, without it a 5 is not going to get that much play without lowering standards no matter what other things are worked on (unless they are filthy rich and find a gold digger). So I guess its a matter of having the balls to under go the surgery, if I had nothing to loose I might do it, like if I had baby momma drama and I was not hot enough for a woman to overlook thoes sorts of things.
As part of #3 you forgot to mention plastic surgery. I have a 6 figure job and do all thoes things and I still have to settle big time, the only other thing I could do is get plastic surgery so that I can go from a 5 to an 8 or 9. If I had the balls to do it (I have the money) it would make for a good case study since it would be my same personality I would probably be playing pof or some other site like an active stock trade.
I think that is the key is plastic surgery, without it a 5 is not going to get that much play without lowering standards no matter what other things are worked on (unless they are filthy rich and find a gold digger). So I guess its a matter of having the balls to under go the surgery, if I had nothing to loose I might do it, like if I had baby momma drama and I was not hot enough for a woman to overlook thoes sorts of things.
yeah... plastic surgery was part of my original thought process (I said "find an aesthetician") to be a bit softer about it.
Still, if someone REALLY wants to play in that league and just cannot look THAT good without surgery? They either need to commit to the surgery or redefine their standards (which are obviously overinflated).
And, we all know that looks are not everything, but we are talking Ferraris here, not that used Lexus that would probably make most reasonable people happy anyway.
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