NY Times Begs Men to Date Again: Why They're Opting Out

In this episode, Simone and the host analyze a New York Times article titled, 'Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.' The conversation delves into how conservative media reacted to the piece and critiques their misinterpretations. Themes include the retreat of men from traditional dating spaces, the impact of feminism and sexual liberation on the dating marketplace, and personal anecdotes that highlight the current disconnection between men and women in modern dating. The script also touches on the role of personal expectations, urban monoculture, and the need for men and women to reevaluate their dating strategies and societal roles.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing an article that has done the rounds in conservative media. I saw it before it did the rounds. I was like, we should do an episode on this, but it makes more sense for evergreen content which was a New York Times piece titled, men Where Have You Gone?

Mm-hmm. Please Come Back. So Many Men Retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters, and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling. We miss you. What they've been, we're the, they're here, they're right here. No, they actually have left the environments that these women are within.

Simone Collins: Oh, they're not on Blue Sky?

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, it's not that they're not on Blue Sky. They're not dating in the way that these women are dating. They're dating in the environments that these women are dating.

I will note, , while a lot of right ringers have covered this particular article, I think they have missed the larger point in it just to make the dunks. They want to make like, oh, feminist pushed us out. This is all women's fault. You know, women are the worst. When I really think there is an interesting thing to describe here, which is what we're gonna go into, which is why don't you see men at restaurants anymore?

Why don't you see men in these sorts of fancy environments anymore? This isn't just downstream of what we think of as. Big, bad miss Andre

and so what we are seeing is the perception of what dating is like for one of these post-feminist women in an environment. Because this woman is in her fifties.

She was, she she in her fifties and

Simone Collins: she's dating,

Malcolm Collins: she's got kids, she's previously married, she's done this whole thing before. So she is contrasting dating today was what dating was like in the past. And you can say, oh, well, you know, she's post wall. The thing is, is that when you're in your fifties, you're so post wall, you're no longer in the shock of I'm 35 and why won't men day me anymore?

I think that, that she is actually cataloging a difference in dating marketplaces between now and what the marketplaces were like 30 years ago. Oh. Or 20 years ago. Right. And I think that what we see from this piece really interestingly is sort of the decimation feminism has wrought upon her generation and the generation that attempted to espouse it, but not just feminism, but sexual liberation.

And a lot of people have written like follow up pieces, like, oh, this is great. Like men, you really should reengage. And a lot of people are like, bro, men should not be having casual sex in their fifties. Like, you know, this is clearly like not good advice, right? Like this woman is searching for something that only harms everyone that she engages with.

So let's dig into it. By the way, I looked up a picture of the author. She's not like terrible looking or anything. She's fine. Especially if you're a 50-year-old. Well, I

Simone Collins: mean, typically if you're a contributor to the New York Times, like you're a fairly high class, like upper class, educated, successful person.

So that should not,

Malcolm Collins: which in your mind means skinny.

Simone Collins: I think obesity probably is higher with lower income levels. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: true. But not, not lower about the online writer types. You know, there's lots of them out there. You know, it could be anyway,

May 17th, a warm Saturday night in Wicker Park, a vibrant stretch of Chicago where seven restaurants crowd a single block. Tori and I are having dinner at Mama Delia. One of the quieter spots, the sidewalk patio held five tables, three, two tops, including ours, and a pair pulled together for a group of eight women at those tables.

Troy was the only man. The scene was beautiful, low lights, shared plates, shoulders angled. In the kind of evening people wait for all winter. Still, I found myself watching the crowd as it moved past us, women walking in pairs or alone dressed with care at table after table at the nearby restaurants, there was a noticeable absence of men, at least men seated in what looked like dates.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now this is really fascinating to me. And we're gonna be talking about other anecdotal evidence from her, but it's something that I have seen as well, especially in fancy cities like New York, Chicago, stuff like this. These are the environments where men have seen the most benefit from just leaning out of the dating market if they're not in the top one or 2%.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This is a reminder for people who don't know the average man on male in terms of attractiveness gets swiped right on by Less than 1% of women women are completely delusional around what their market value is around this stuff, especially if they're also engaging in casual sex, which you can see this woman is.

So she is likely, like many of these other women saying, I just will not date men of this category. When you go out and you push for equal salaries for men and women, and then you say, well, and I want a man. That, that earns more than me, that means that half or more than half of women, especially in urban environments where they're overwhelming women and where women earn more than men are going to be single.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the question is, is what are men doing? Right. Well, I can imagine very few men who would get any satisfaction from going out and eating alone at a restaurant. I can imagine very few men who want to hang out with a group of men at a restaurant where they are overpaying for food and alcohol.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Especially these days, restaurants are so expensive.

Malcolm Collins: Restaurants are about signaling something to yourself mm-hmm. And to other people. Yeah. So where are the groups of men going? They are going to the other men's houses to play land parties and, and, and stuff like that. Or if they're eating

Simone Collins: out, maybe it's like a sports bar where it's more of like a social fun environment where there's a game playing like it's

Malcolm Collins: that.

But it is, it is not fancy restaurants. There is no reason a man would do this.

Simone Collins: No. And our fancy restaurants are like increasingly for Instagram and for the photos and, well, it's not

Malcolm Collins: just Instagram. It's so that this woman could signal something to herself about who she is and the type of life she's living.

And you see this all the way back in Sex and the City is that they would often meet at fancy restaurants, whereas no male group would ever meet at fancy restaurants.

Simone Collins: Gosh, the feminization of restaurants underrated.

Malcolm Collins: Well, there's no, there's no reason to. Right. A man only takes a woman to a fancy restaurant so she can masturbate this perspective of herself as like this high class.

Yeah. 'cause a man's door

Simone Collins: dashing, if anything, like if he has to eat out.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the, this is. About how she sees herself. And we're gonna see this in the next thing here, which is that even when men aren't taking her to these environments, she still feels forced to go to them herself to reframe this self image of herself as living a good life.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So it started to become clear the previous April when a man who had been pursuing me canceled a dinner at the last minute. There was a scheduling mixed up with his son's game. I understood. I am a hockey mom. I get it. So first we're learning a few things. She's dating guys who have kids, which is good because she has kids, right?

Like Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's, that's more fair. And she considers it, what's her daughter doing? How is she able to go out and go to these. M maybe her daughters was the dad at these times. I, I, I dunno. Still I went, I wore what would have been worn. Anyway, I took the table, I ordered well, and I watched the room.

Only two tables nearby seemed to hold actual dates. The rest were groups of women or women alone with each other. Occupying space was quiet. Confidence, no shrinking, no waiting, no apologizing. I, I love it how she feels. The need, like she can tell how depressing what's happening is for women. And she feels, yeah, she was stood up.

She goes out anyway. Well, not just that, but she sees a bunch of other women who are doing the same thing, like going out anyway. And she needs to go into this whole with quiet confidence, no shrinking, no waiting, no apologizing. And it's like, no, they're being depressing and pathetic. And you don't want it framed that way for yourself, but that's the reality of it.

That night marked something, not a heartbreak, but an unraveling, a sense that what I'd been experiencing wasn't just personal misalignment, it was something broader cultural, a slow vanishing presence. And she's talking about men in the world, but what she means is men who are willing to engage with women in this way, take them to fancy expensive restaurants and stuff like that.

I did that early in our relationship, but we stopped that pretty soon was in our relationship. That really only makes sense was in the earliest of dating because it's such an expensive waste of money. I mean, no matter how much money you have, it should make you ill if you're like a reasonable person.

Simone Collins: No, we cut it out real quick actually. How many times did we actually go out to dinner?

There was, there was the first night Indian food.

Malcolm Collins: We went, I remember for meat at some sort of sausage place because Oh, that's 'cause I,

Simone Collins: yeah, you Well, yeah, you just, we, we went, we got ribs. But that was just 'cause you were like, please don't be vegetarian anymore.

That was even, it wasn't even dinner, it was like lunch. We really didn't eat out much.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, her second

Simone Collins: date was at your house.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I, yeah, and I'm, I'm cooking there, so, yeah. Not, not, you know, this is the other thing is that real guys the type of guys you'd wanna marry, they take a girl at once and they don't do it again.

And well, I mean,

Simone Collins: especially if they dated as much as you did, and that means that you had to make it financially sustainable. So you'd like maybe do a dinner and then you'd do like a picnic or you'd do some kind of other outing. Yeah, like make mixed drinks at your house. 'cause you like sort of built up a really big bar and then that made you capable of having like a really.

Like choice filled cocktail hour at your place instead of a, but she wanted

Malcolm Collins: guys who were gonna reinforce this perception she had of herself and what dating is in a really financially unsustainable way. If you're a guy and you're taking a woman out to a fancy restaurant, like in Chicago or something like this you know, you're paying $20 a drink often.

Oh yeah. At least $10. Mm-hmm. A drink. I mean, she's getting cocktails 20. Keep in mind plus tip here then for entrees, $30, maybe 20. 30.

Simone Collins: Insane. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so, you know, for the whole meal you're paying easily over a hundred dollars. You don't Oh, yeah. Normal people can't do that multiple nights in a row.

Mm-hmm. Right. Like mm-hmm. This is, this is, her expectation is bizarre, but she's able to spend it on herself for well. We'll see where she made her money. She made her money in the adult entertainment industry.

Simone Collins: She

Malcolm Collins: did

Simone Collins: not as an entertainer,

Malcolm Collins: not as an entertainer, though. Actually interesting, actually, I, who she met in the previous one, I've cut some bits out of this.

She met him at the Playboy Mansion. But she used to manage like marketing and PR for them. Okay. Interesting. It gives her an interesting perspective and an entirely wrong perspective, but it is a perspective that many women have. She goes, I spent over a decade behind the curtain of digital desire as the custodian of records for Playboy and his affiliated hardcore properties, including sites like Spice tv.

I was responsible for some of the most infringed upon adult content in the world. I worked closely with copyright attorneys and marketing teams to understand exactly what it took to get a man to pay for content he could otherwise find for free. We knew what worked. We knew how to frame a face, a gesture, a moment of implication, just enough to ignite a fantasy and open a wallet.

I came to understand in exact terms, I. What cues temp the average 18 to 36-year-old cis heterosexual male. What drew him in? What kept him coming back? It wasn't intimacy, it wasn't mutual mutuality. It was access to stimulation, clean, fast, and frictionless. And, and we'll get to a bit more of what she thinks on the phone.

I think here you can already see she, she doesn't understand at all. She doesn't understand that things like for now, this isn't true for some religious men. Some religious men really, really don't use porn, don't masturbate. And this is a huge part of their sex lives and their identity. And it's like, whatever.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: there's another population of men out there who masturbate and use porn and have totally normal relationships. And that this is not what, what a man is getting from this content isn't. What he's getting from going on a date from you. This is a completely different set of emotional stimuli that he would be masturbating by taking a, a fancy woman to a fancy restaurant.

You are just, you, you, you have emotionally protected yourself by saying what he's choosing instead of me as porn, and that's not true.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Many men who would've dated you regardless, in fact, a woman like this, given that she's not like a religious whatever, no man who dates this woman isn't watching porn.

Yeah. I, I'm just gonna be, yeah. A 50 plus woman with kids who likes casual sex in her fifties. Every single man she has ever interacted with in a positive context sexually in her entire life, regularly watches porn. And I can guarantee that. It, it reminds me of the study they did. I think it was in Canada or whatever.

They were trying to compare men who regularly watch porn and men who don't on some thing. And they couldn't find enough men who actually didn't watch porn for the sample set to work because it was so rare, unless there was like a high extremist religious exogenous motivation to prevent it. But the point I'm making here is these men are not choosing porn over you.

They are choosing something else over you. They are choosing not to go on this because of something else. The porn is filling an entirely different need than the fancy date at a restaurant.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Unless you think that the fancy day at a restaurant was a precursor to sex, and sex is what porn is competing with, which again, I disagree with that narrative as well.

Porn is one thing, sex is another thing. You, you might be able to have sex less because you have access to porn, but that's only gonna happen when both partners want that or something, right? Like, or unless you have some severe addiction or something, which as we've talked about in the pragmatic psycho sexuality almost never happens to people who think porn is normal.

Porn addictions pretty much only happen to people who have a strong religious or ideological aversion to pornography. This isn't. Saying that that's wrong. As I've looked into the data more, my actual intuition around this is that it might be an evolved thing. It might be that in individuals born in cultures that have a strong ideological aversion to pornography, never evolved any sort of way of dealing with it.

Hmm.

Simone Collins: So

Malcolm Collins: it might actually be that Mormon men genuinely can't have normal relationships and engage with something like pornography. Hmm. Or, or extremist versions of some religious beliefs. Like they just may never have had to engage with this. And so when they engage with it, they just become completely obsessed with it and can't have normal relationships.

Which fine, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna push against the, you know, if that's what your culture tells you, then, then stick with it. But what I'm saying is of the men who this woman thinks are normal, all of them are engaging in porn. Now to go further here in that world, there's no need for conversation.

No need for effort, no curiosity, no reciprocity, no one's feelings to consider, no vulnerability to navigate. Just a closed loop of consumption. And I'm like, yeah. But all of those things you mentioned are things that men, like, men like conversation and effort and curiosity and reciprocity and vulnerable women.

The, these, these are things they like on a date. Okay. I enjoy those things when I'm dating a woman. So no porn isn't delivering any of that to me. It is just, I know that I'm not gonna get those things from you. I know, you know, as we read further, if I go on a date with a woman like you, there is gonna be no, you know, there's no need for effort because you're a desperate 50-year-old woman with kids.

You're not gonna be genuinely curious in me. You're, you're gonna expect some sort of anti-Trump or narrative. You're gonna want me to be like you. You, you aren't really gonna consider my feelings and I'm not really gonna consider your feelings because we're not actually interested in something long term together, and you're certainly not gonna be vulnerable with me, and so I'm not gonna need to navigate that.

Right. Like, what you haven't realized is you think that it has porn that has stripped all of this from who you are. We, it is you that stripped all of this from who you are. And it is the progressive culture, the woke culture that stripped it all from who you are.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: What struck me the most wasn't the extremity of the content, because as we pointed out, male porn really isn't that extreme in most cases.

It was the emotional vacancy behind it, the drift. What the women want men this to you is emotional vacancy because as Simone has pointed out, that is the normal form of male porn. The way men had quietly was drawn from intimacy and vulnerability. What do you don't want? An intimate and vulnerable man, first of all, right?

Like not with violent. Although it

Simone Collins: seems to be a progressive narrative like I, it, it would seem to me that many women are being told by therapists or society or influencers that they should want men who are emotionally vulnerable,

Malcolm Collins: but they don't, which we pointed about. They

Simone Collins: don't like intuitively and, and, and subconsciously they don't, but societally they think they should and therefore demand it and complain about any absence of it.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: So regardless, they're gonna be un unsatisfied because they either think societally that they're being robbed of some emotionally available man, but then if they actually become emotionally available, then they're, they get the itch. They don't want

Malcolm Collins: that man anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Not with violence or resistance, but with indifference.

They weren't sitting across from someone on a Saturday night trying to connect. They were scrolling, dabbling, disappearing behind firewalls, filters and curated personas. And while they disappeared, women continued to gather to tend to notice who wasn't arriving and to show up anyway. One

Simone Collins: of the things, sweet women are scrolling just as much, if not more,

Malcolm Collins: right?

But they're all targeting the same men and they're finding they can't get those men, right? Like, hmm, the fact that the average woman is scrolling, right? You know, sorry, the average man gets scrolled right on by. Less than 1% of women shows that you're just not being honest with yourself, right?

Like you're targeting a very narrow group of men. And worse, you are going to these dating environments, these fancy restaurants. You are treating yourself and you are thinking, well, if I went 50 50 with a man at a place like this, you know, I'm doing him a favor, right? Like I am. I am pulling my weight. And what you're not realizing is, no, you're not.

Because this environment was never in any way about the man. It was about making you feel good about yourself. And that's when men withdrew from parasitic dating culture. You see the fancy restaurants be the first thing that empty of men. Hmm. Because. Taking women to a fancy restaurant was not 50% for the man and 50% for you, just 'cause you were both eating.

They can make fancy macaroni and cheese at home and it tastes just as good. This is about your self image.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And men realizing they don't want to play that game and it's not worth it for them.

Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah. And my other experience as a kid at fancy restaurants as well, which might have propped up the industry.

'cause also I, I noticed like some stats just restaurant industry wide, that 2025 is now like lower than 2023. Like there is, there has been also some kind of peak and now there's a dropping demand for restaurants that all of the fancy restaurants I'd been to as like before the age of 24 were on business trips.

And it was, they were all related to sales. So maybe also there's just less of that sales whining and dining taking. That's true as I think sales is fundamentally Asia, where you did that. Asia, but also Europe and also the United States. But I just don't think it's, it's playing out that same way.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that's true for us as well. Yeah. When we go to fancy restaurant, it's almost always tied to our business.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like investment or sales or something like that. And I think now these decisions are being made differently

Malcolm Collins: and we used to go on like anniversary dates to fancy restaurants, but we stopped.

Simone Collins: Well, I think because we realized we were doing it because we thought that that was what you were supposed to do. But neither of us really enjoyed it. So

Malcolm Collins: I've been recently trying to look to buy some Haus, by the way. Because I want to have like more fun dishes I like at home, and it's so expensive to ship.

I can't bring myself to get it. I can't buy a meat if the shipping costs more than the meat.

Simone Collins: I know

Malcolm Collins: it's brutal. Like that's what I'm like. Maybe, maybe I'll get like a hundred dollars of frozen haggis and ship it and then we can have it over a series of nights. That's, that's all I can think because I mean, it's ridiculous.

Simone Collins: We'll just need to fly to Scotland.

Malcolm Collins: You can't bring it back to the US because they don't allow lungs. Oh no, I guess I'm getting in the US is like fake.

Simone Collins: So it's not even real haggis. Don't bother.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, come on. I need to eat haggis, Simone. It's true. So good. It's so good. Okay. Anyway, to continue here, I'm five four.

I've been dating since the mid eighties. Been married, been a mother, gotten divorced, had many relationships long and short. Well, I'm sure that recommends you to new guys. I remember when part of heterosexual male culture involved showing up with a woman to signal something, status success, desirability.

Women were weren't signifiers of values, even to other men. It wasn't always healthy, but it meant that men had to show up and put in some effort.

Simone Collins: That's so interesting because now often, like when we host cocktail parties and stuff, if someone wants to bring a partner, it's like, ugh. Like great. Now sometimes the partners turn out to be cool, but typically when a man brings a female partner.

She's an embarrassment to him. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's a, an issue and with dialogue, for example, that secret society, one of the things that was like really distinct about dialogue is most of these secret societies of like luminaries and ideas festivals allowed spouses to attend. And one thing that dialogue did very distinctly was either completely not allowed significant others to attend.

Or if they were allowed to attend, you had to pay a ton of money for them, but they could only come to one dinner and they weren't allowed to go to any of like the other things. Because it's now understood that like in many cases, female partners are just. Really disappointing. And like, we don't wanna see them.

Like they, they're only going to make you look worse. So that's crazy that she thinks that, because when I hear that like, can I bring a spouse? Can I bring a significant other? Like, that's typically only going to make some more. Well, I'm gonna point out

Malcolm Collins: that this isn't true for every population. So, you know, when I look at my parents' generation, you go to the Bohemian Grove or something mm-hmm.

They don't allow women.

Simone Collins: And the reason

Malcolm Collins: they don't allow women is because men of that generation dated bimbos, like, like literally just hot women who are meant to be wise. Hmm. And if you look at the men who are still dating in their forties, and in the urban monoculture, you see this as well, but you don't see this of the men who are dating to marry, like, the men who date to marry, typically their wives are very competent and cool people.

Like all of our friends, males who got married young, generally got married to super smart, really competent, very good conversationalist women. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: And they,

Malcolm Collins: and it's not

Simone Collins: uncommon at dialogue for two. People who are married to both be nominated and both attend. So married couples are there, but they both get there on their own merit.

Malcolm Collins: But the point I'm making about these women is one thing you'll often notice about them is they are not top lookers. And men who date for marriage typically marry in their twenties, which is another reason why she's not finding the good men because they're already married. Like she's one. I want a guy who will care, care.

Well, she's dating that on their

Simone Collins: second marriage. You know, like the guy she was mentioning man should only be on

Malcolm Collins: the second marriage if his wife died. You know, otherwise there's a problem with either him or the woman, right. You know? Mm-hmm. But the, the, or his discernment even, you know, even if it's not, you know, but the point I'm making here is.

One of the things I keep seeing was in these communities is great spouses who you would want to bring along and that you use as a status symbol. But the way they are used as a status symbol is their conversational ability and their intellect and not their looks. And, and the problem that you see with in the urban monoculture is even for her, you can tell she's optimizing for looks, given that she's on these dating profiles and stuff like this.

And the men who are going after her because she's, you know, casually sleeping with people, she has kids, she doesn't appear to be looking for marriage. You're gonna, if you're in that sort of dating market, you're gonna be optimizing around looks. Mm-hmm. You are not going to get a guy like me. You are not going to get a guy like the other guys I know who are in long-term relationships.

And the other guys I know in long-term relationships. Often not. I'd actually say that there is an, an inversion. Now what you don't want is an ugly wife. I know no man with ugly wives, but who I consider in this category, but typically the homeier, their li wife, the more interesting she is whereas the less homely she is.

And when I say homely, what I mean is completely fable. But also not gonna turn a bunch of heads when you look into your room, like she doesn't look oh, five

Simone Collins: or six. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And it's because these men know what to actually optimize for. And I think that that's why you've seen men no longer because nobody is impressed anymore and a lot of the market hasn't adopted to this by you bringing a 10, 10 model into a room e especially if you're in your, also

Simone Collins: because these days being a.

Nine or 10 as a woman doesn't necessarily indicate signs of genetic fitness because there's so much manipulation going on. Like the contouring, the, the, the fillers. Well, I do, I mean, it just looks

Malcolm Collins: trashy. Like consider Jeff Bezos's current girlfriend. Like she looks wife, they're

Simone Collins: getting married soon,

Malcolm Collins: wife, but she looks trashy.

I'm, I'm gonna be honest, she looks trashy compared to the other billionaire's wives. And it's, it's not a good look. Like, I don't know. I think it's 'cause he is a previous generation and he doesn't realize how trashy she looks

Simone Collins: could be. Yeah. I'm fact it seems like she got most of her work done after she met him.

She actually looked pretty normal before, which is also super weird.

Malcolm Collins: Gross. Yeah. Really? 'cause her work is terrible.

Simone Collins: I know, but I almost wonder if he's been driving it because Yeah, she looked pretty normal before I.

Malcolm Collins: He just needs to not do work and dress her like a normal human. And remember,

Simone Collins: he also physically modified himself a lot's.

So he might have some very strong opinions about what he wants for both himself and his partner. And there're sort of like cartoon, outdated cartoon versions. So it's my theory,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. That it's not a bad theory, but it is gross. You No, I mean, like, it, it lower, Hey, he's enjoying it. Walks in a room. Good for

Simone Collins: him, good for him.

He's

Malcolm Collins: happy. And it's not that he couldn't do it, it's not innate to who she is. She could not dress like that when she goes to fancy events.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And she was also very beautiful before. It's not like she needed this,

Malcolm Collins: but to continue. I recently experienced a flicker of possibility was James, we met on Rihanna, the dating app.

Never heard of that. There was a mutual from the start, word play, emotional precision, a tone that felt. Attuned. Oh, it was brief, but it caught light. Okay. I remember saying to him, even fleeting connections matter when they're mutual and lit from the inside. Oh, and I meant it, what a sad thing to say to somebody who you're interested in.

Even if you talk to me for just a little bit, I'll pay attention. Oh God, somebody pay attention to me. There was just enough spark to wonder what might unfold, enough curiosity to imagine a doorway, but he didn't step through it, not with a plan, not with presence. He hovered, flirting, retreating, offering warmth.

But no direction. Sexual tension and a spark aren't enough to sit still in hope. There's substance behind the shimmer. So I named, what I felt, I texted him clearly was care. Not simply to declare attraction, but to extend a real invitation to explore what was possible. Oh God, that sounds so gross.

Mm. Mm-hmm. I didn't chase. Mm-hmm. I invited leaving the door open if he ever wanted to cross that threshold. Not just to take, but to meet. I was willing, I wanted, I still do imagine reading this about yourself. He never replied. He still follows my Instagram stories. One of those small gestures of passive engagement that so many of us.

Mistake for closeness. Who mistakes that for closeness? It was like interest. It feels like silence. There are a thousand jameses. I have known dozens. The arc varies, but the undertow is familiar. This is something I didn't

Simone Collins: know. You could know who follows your Instagram stories. She is really self-involved.

If you're like that, like grasping at those levels of straws. Wait, how do I, I, I honestly dunno. I don't know how people know this.

Malcolm Collins: You don't know how many, you know, who's following your Instagram stories? You haven't stalked?

Simone Collins: Oh, you know what? I don't post Instagram stories. That's probably one of the reasons.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because

Simone Collins: nobody cares.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. But she cares. This is how she judges if the world still cares about her. Wow. He's that guy I flirted with on a dating app, still liking my stories.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's, that's dark. Yeah, right? That's, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture takes all and leaves nothing. Always remember that.

The guys who think they can still date at this age, it is just as bleak for you guys. Just don't tell on themselves as much. You know, find a partner and lock it down, even if she's homely. Well, I think

Simone Collins: maybe what she's, I'm surprised she hasn't mentioned that, like the high caliber men that she seems to be pursuing, who appeared to both, like a man who will do it for her.

Is presumably in his fifties attractive and wealthy. Highly educated. Okay. Yeah. Those men are dating women in their twenties

Malcolm Collins: because they're not, yeah. They're not dating women in their fifties.

Simone Collins: So I don't know why she's not mentioning that because,

Malcolm Collins: well, a lot of women do. They freak out about it, they shame it.

That's how they try to reclaim the marketplace, and we're seeing this more and more with the world culture.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's not gonna work. That's not gonna work.

Malcolm Collins: What I won't entertain is directionless orbiting the thing. So many men now seem to mistake for connection the perpetual. Maybe they don't mistake this for COR connection.

They're using you for sex. How do you not see

Simone Collins: that? Or they're like, they're just, they're really not that into you. They're just, they're not interested and they're there and. Yeah, yeah. I'm doing this with personally texted them and making not marriage themselves. I'm sure these men like the man that she was like, I want a connection.

Like I'm sure it felt kind of good to him. Maybe he got a little creeped out. You

Malcolm Collins: shouldn't be mar like, like dating people who aren't interested in married. I don't care if you're 50. I don't care if you're not. If you were a, a widows, right, and you were looking for Yeah, but you're forgetting just how many people feel they

Simone Collins: need sex for validation.

Malcolm Collins: True. The emotional check-ins, the casual, seeing where it goes without ever engaging anywhere. We call it a situationship, but mostly it's avoidance. An abdication of ownership. Ownership of you. Like this is what you need is ownership, but you are unwilling to give that. A feeling of behavior of sex that isn't a means to an end, but is a communion.

How can it be a communion if it's casual, like the type that you want? Like you, you I don't, yeah, I

Simone Collins: don't know what she wants. I don't know what she wants. 'cause she's describing marriage. A mystical experiment. No, she's not. She doesn't want commitment. She doesn't want marriage. She wants something. We do.

What what this like poetic language about connections and sparks and stuff. I, she wants

Malcolm Collins: she, she wants, she wants what is it like, like, new relationship energy? Is

Simone Collins: that

Malcolm Collins: it? No, no, no, no. What's that book about, like, about traveling and having sex with people? Oh, eat, pray, love. Eat, pray, love. What she wants is eat, pray, love.

There was a time not so long ago when even one night stands my end with tangled limbs in a shared breakfast when the act No, that was because you were younger then and men felt they needed to do more to keep Well, I mean,

Simone Collins: I think this is why so many women go to Cuba for the male sex workers because they can at least pay for that kind of experience if they need

Malcolm Collins: it.

Yeah. When, when the act of staying the night didn't announce a relationship, just a willingness to be human for a few more hours. Oh, she doesn't even want. Sleeping with guy's, demeanor, relationship, she just wants eggs. Now even that kind of unscripted contact feels rare. We've built so many boundaries that we've walled off the very few moments that make connection memorable, and frankly, morning sex is often the best sex.

Ew. Sometimes you even get a side of eggs before you disappear from their bed and their life forever. So that's what she wants. But this is again, I think a thing that women missed. The men who can get sex easily, like from the period of my life where I could morning sex with a woman sleeping over with a woman making her food, that's all for her.

Oh, that's if I'm a guy and I'm just taking, I thought women

Simone Collins: thought morning sex was stressful because like you either have to wake up and sneakily brush your teeth and try to not look so gross or. So the whole thing

Malcolm Collins: is, is, is a, for her phenomenon, right? Like it is, look, you might be like, oh, like as a guy, you know, if I'm having casual sex, right?

Like I just want to go have casual sex and then leave,

Simone Collins: Go to sleep. I have a good night's sleep without the snuggles,

Malcolm Collins: spending the night, additional sex in the morning making food. That's all things I do. So you don't feel used. Oh, I mean, and I did that with most girls because I didn't want them to feel used.

I didn't want them to feel bad, but I wasn't doing that for me. And I think she has normalized so many parts of the sexual exchange as being completely mutual without realizing that they were 100% a pageant for the woman. Mm-hmm. So the woman didn't feel bad about the decision she was making. And I think that that's what we're seeing here.

What she's saying is men do not do the pageant. And

Simone Collins: also I imagine she's romanticizing elements of her youth that she's relived and through memory so many times that she's overridden it and, and she's not even remembering real things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, look, when she was in her twenties or whatever, of course guys, you know, kept her over and made her food and were romantic with her and everything.

She wasn't a 50-year-old woman with kids, you know, or a kid even sadder. I mean, it was like,

Simone Collins: what the eighties then the seventies. So men were maybe a little more traditional too. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, she said she dated in the eighties, so, okay, so the

Simone Collins: eighties. Yeah. See, do lines of cocaine and have fun together. All I can think about the eighties is like shoulder pads, cocaine, neon colors.

Malcolm Collins: I should, but I, I, I think it's, it's, it, it's sad because it's a degree of this dating culture and casual sex culture where I think women got the perception that all casual sex culture was for men, and they didn't realize how much of it was a show that men were putting on for them. Mm-hmm. And now the men, because you know, if, if, if, as we, you know, I, I point out the Tinder statistic, but it also matters for the top men.

It means for the top, you know, 20 men in an area, they're getting, you know, 20 matches a day. Right. And these are the men who you likely think are good enough for you. And they can also date women younger than you remember, so mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Why

Malcolm Collins: are they bothering with any of the things that you care about, right?

Mm-hmm. Like eggs in the morning or morning sex, or staying over. Right. Why aren't they just going home after they've used you for whatever they want to get out of you? Right.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm just also so surprised that apparently women wanted to stay over. Like, when I say in media, I thought like, women kind of feel uncomfortable.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So you gotta understand why women want this. They don't want this because they want the sex or the morning food or anything like that. Mm-hmm. They want it because they don't wanna feel used. And when a woman stays over with in popular narratives, or when a man stays over, the woman hasn't been used for sex, it's a fling.

Hmm. When the man has sex and then leaves, that's being used, that is the way they can conceptualize. It was in modern narratives, this isn't about actual pleasure for the woman. This is about the narratives that she's telling herself about the way she is being perceived by the man. Mm-hmm. And you can see a lot of her complaints are about the way she's being perceived by men.

So it's, it's

Simone Collins: performative even though it's not comfortable for anyone involved.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

Simone Collins: Do you remember where you, where you slept after the first night? We had sex

Malcolm Collins: couch or something

Simone Collins: on the floor of my living room.

Malcolm Collins: Because I, I wanted to wake up early because Your true

Simone Collins: gentleman, because you

Malcolm Collins: knew, oh yeah.

You're very autistic about this stuff and you, I'm like,

Simone Collins: I don't, I can't.

Malcolm Collins: Did you tell me? And I was just like, okay.

Simone Collins: You know, we, we tried snuggling all night like a couple times and I think you and I even then, like we're able to, we're like, we're not getting any sleep. Yeah. Like this is just not that. Like I just sleep better by myself.

Can we just, can we just set up a bed in the living room for you?

Can we just Yeah.

That was so, you were so accommodating to me and I really appreciate that you in relationships think like what is actually going to make my female partner happy instead of. What are the, like tropes or like what's traditional?

But then I, apparently there's women out there, like this woman who despite being very experienced in terms of sex and relationships, is still diluting herself into thinking that she wants things that,

Malcolm Collins: well, she's completely on urban monocultural autopilot. Like this is a no self-reflection individual.

Simone Collins: Uhhuh,

Malcolm Collins: no, I mean, 'cause she's not looking for another hug them. If, if she had any sort of cultural framing, that's what she would be looking for.

Simone Collins: And she doesn't mention that these men are just dating 20 year olds anywhere.

Malcolm Collins: Nope. None of that complaining. Maybe we're, she just

Simone Collins: conveniently doesn't see that.

Maybe she thinks their fathers and daughters bless her. I don't see any dating. There's just all of these fathers taking out their daughters for what must be their 21st birthdays.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think men who date younger women now, they don't go out to restaurants as much either anymore because there's not a point the, the young women are showing off on Instagram and stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: And there's

Malcolm Collins: easier ways to do that. Take care to your nice apartment or whatever.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Order food at your nice apartment. Totally.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: And it saves money. And, and like, I mean also yeah. If you, if you are wealthy, higher probability

Malcolm Collins: of sex too.

Simone Collins: Totally. 'cause she's already at your place. Yeah. And if you're wealthy, you have a nice apartment so you can impress her even more with your power.

You can conveniently have sex very easily. And also I think men who are wealthy and successful financially at that age are also, if they still have their money, they're frugal. Meaning that like they, they see the value and maybe, you know, if, even if they're not cooks, like most men can cook one thing to impress someone else.

Yeah. Or just make food for themselves. So like they make the one thing they know how to make. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I am curious what the 20-year-old stating 50 year olds. Date experience is like,

Malcolm Collins: okay, maybe we're between paradigms, mourning what has fallen not yet fluent in what comes next. The infrastructures of intimacy, slowness, curiosity, accountability, have been eroded by haste, convenience, and a kind of sanctioned emotional retreat, not a sanctioned.

The men just have nothing to gain from these relationships. Well,

Simone Collins: and they're having deep, deep, intimate, very emotionally strong bonds with JG bt,

Malcolm Collins: right? It's not about blaming men, it's about noticing the imbalance, about grieving, what's not meeting us, and about refusing to dress it up as a personal failure when it's actually a collective reality.

No, it's a collective personal failure. That is what you are missing here.

Simone Collins: I just can't imagine living life as this woman lives it like this, like very poetic. Emotional like it seems that she lives in emotions.

Malcolm Collins: She does. Well, well, let's, let's, let's tie out the end of this. Okay, so here's what I'll say.

You are missed not just by me,