Why Single Women Are Judged More Harshly Than Single Men

Consider any dating app. The pattern is familiar. Men initiate, women respond. Those messages come from all kinds of men: good ones, shallow ones, players, narcissists, bad boys. And out of dozens, sometimes hundreds of messages, she picks one. What she’s attracted to decides who gets the chance. If she responds to the good guy, the story is different. If she responds to the bad-boy, an entirely different story gets written. In other words, she’s the creator of the story that unfolds. Like it or not, she’s at the center of what follows.

When a gender is given such power in the dating market and still ends up single, or in failed relationships over and over, it’s natural to question the choices being made. If chemistry and instant spark only shows up with the wrong men, while good men are dismissed, the outcome shouldn’t be surprising. At that point, blaming the men has little truth as it ignores the role of selection.

Deep down, society understands this. Unless a woman was forced, every relationship started because she said yes to one man and no to others.

When she says “all men are narcissists,” what it means is: all the men she chose were. After all, how can her statement be representative of all men? The pattern points back to the men she responds, not the entire gender. Without realizing it, she’s revealing more about her decision-making than about men as a whole.

So men offer little support. He didn’t even get the chance to write the story she’s created. The only support that comes are from other women that exist in the same boat, quietly drifting into a future marked by disappointment and shrinking hope.

For men, on the other hand, being single comes from circumstance rather than choice. When every approach is met with rejection or silence, there’s only so much effort one can keep giving. Eventually, many step back and invest their energy elsewhere, into work, purpose and self-development. For him, ending up single isn’t seen as a failure of judgment, because his options were limited to begin with. In an earlier generation, he could approach someone nearby. Today, his competition is her entire social media feed stretching across cities, states, even countries.

And that’s why women are judged more harshly, and that’s not going to change.

Where does this pattern end?

It ends with ownership. As long as the blame stays on the opposite gender instead of on the self, the cycle repeats. That’s nature way to leading humanity into evolution. Growth comes from introspection. Men learn this early through rejection, competition, and failure. Those who blame women stagnate, because blame is the least attractive trait a man can show. The same rule applies to women. Those that blame stagnate.

Irrespective of gender, repeated failure is a signal for self-correction. Ignore it, and one stays stuck.

Pick a good man, and life becomes easier. Pick a thrill one, and chaos eventually follows. The idea that one can choose badly for years and later “reset” for a great man remains a woman’s fantasy. It hasn’t happened yet, and it’s unlikely to ever happen.

Why? Because choices leaves traces. The good man reads what the bad apple leaves behind in her personality, her attitude, her emotional habits and he walks away. Again it’s nature at play. Without self-work, a man gets rejected. The same rule applies to women. She might get the man, but he doesn’t stay until she wins the commitment. And she doesn’t until she has owned her choices, the results that followed, corrected them. And then, she becomes compassionate to the opposite gender. Her calm, her acceptance, her peace is what draws the great man into her life. This time, for him to commit and for both of them to stay in love together.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.