Fix for dating and loneliness lies in valuing happy singledom (mostly for men)

There are recurring statements: "dating is broken" and "men are so lonely". Most often it is pure whining and zero constructive ideas and actionable proposals.

Let's get to the root cause of imbalance in dating. There are numerically less women in dating, women can expect men to make a move, prove himself worthy, men are much more often acting desperate. Value of men drops and value of women raises. Why? There is roughly equal number of men and women. Why are men so desperate and dropping their standards if there is theoretically a lot of women? Why is there asymmetry?

When considering relationship people are not just comparing possible partners, they are comparing particular partner vs the zero option - no partner and living single.

Turns out most women's zero option is decent and they are not going to settle to a random guy, because relationship with this guy are likely worse than singledom.

Unlike women a lot of men consider singledom so horrible that any relationships are better. They drop bar to anyone with a pulse. This way they devalue themselves and men in general. Women know that there are desperate men.

I.e. for men to collectively fix this imbalance in dating they need to fix how they see absence of dating. If your single life is decent you are not going to compromise it with a girlfriend that is net negative.

If single men learn to live happy as singles it will be a game changer. Women learned the same trick thanks to feminism, growing workforce participation and improvement in their economic freedom. They don't need provider to survive. And man in woman's life is optional. He is only allowed there if he makes her life better, and this is a high enough bar because her single life is not so bad. This skewed the balance because a lot of men still think that being single is worse than bad relationships.

For men to fix the balance is to realize that bicycles need no fish either.