What is Dating and Courtship?

We have lots of sentimental, subjective ideas about romantic relationships. That's to be expected since the very act of falling in love tends to shut off our objective reasoning in a sea of happy, horney hormones.

Coordinating the seeming randomness of falling in love is a series of powerful social technologies that we call the Sexual Marketplace. Describing them that way might sound cold even mechanistic, however by thinking of dating and courtship as technologies can have a very positive impact on our romantic lives. 

The Social Technologies that impact the Sexual Market include dating/courtship, marriage, family structure, extended family structure, and our tribe. By thinking of these structures as technologies we can understand how they work, why they sometimes don't and what to do about Sexual Market failures. We can even learn how to have greater control over our romantic future and create happier and more satisfying outcomes. We can even build new and improved Sexual Markets to fit our needs. 

The entire Sexual Market has changed

Only 4 or 5 generations ago we would have been raised in a 100% homogeneous community, with several dozen possible romantic matches. Roles were carefully structured. Dating and courtship followed clear rules. Every young man or woman knew exactly what would be expected of them and what they could expect in return. 

Match makers, parents and extended family would all be available to help prevent a bad match and to evaluate the character of both parties. Community pressure to take seriously the vows and obligations of marriage helped to ensure its success.

By the time a man was in his late teens he would often be married, setting up his own household with his wife. Children would be expected as soon (and as often) as possible.

Today we are isolated. Alone with our social media. Cut off from family, with few friends no tribe and very little social structure. Society has abandoned the rules, roles rituals that worked in the past while replacing them with sweet sounding memes, hollow at their core. We may live in a city of millions yet easily find ourselves 30 years old, alone and childless.

For many people the modern Sexual Market has become just another multi-culti, cosmopolitan, rootless, soulless cultural trash heap. Its horrible. It's degrading. Its utterly failed.

But why? Why is the Sexual Market in the west in so much trouble? Its because we have lost sight of the primary goals of dating, courtship and marriage.

The primary purpose of the Sexual Market

The Sexual Market influences all aspects of culture and human action however it is primarily a tool used to help us find a compatible mate.

Formerly the primary objective of the Sexual Market was to maximize the chance for the survival of our children by selecting an optimal mate. This applies independently our of specific reproductive strategy (see r/K reproductive strategies). 

Dating, marriage, reproduction (sex) and the raising of children can be VERY pleasurable, however the pleasure is a secondary reward and a direct result of pursuing the primary objective of passing on our genes.

However, in modern times we can see an attitude shift towards a different and often conflicting objective, the maximizing individual pleasure. Children are often seen as an optional, even undesirable, byproduct of romantic relationships. This change in priorities is leading us towards a devastating demographic winter and the destruction or our people.

Why have we changed our priorities? 

Primarily for three reasons:

1. Government distortions of the Sexual Market through direct interference in marriage, promotion of delayed reproduction, enforced multiculturalism, destruction of the economy, high taxation and child unfriendly policies have reduced the benefits of having children while raising the costs.
2. Toxic propaganda from anti-natalists, anti-white, anti-male, anti-family, pro-state, pro-degeneracy elements in government and the media seek to pervert our natural reproductive and family building instincts. Often this can be traced back to cultural marxism.
3. A negative cycle of traumatized children raised by traumatized parents, often single mothers or with fathers that have been de-masculinized. This leads to distorted, often negative attitudes towards healthy romantic relationships and reproduction.

In addition we have lost the social cohesion formerly provided by homogeneous cultures, traditional churches, extended families, small towns, tribal alliances, etc. Without the support of allies and people who love us, raising children can be a daunting process.

The result of these attacks against the traditional family structure is the destruction of our Sexual Market and a backwards devolution of our most important social technologies such as courtship and marriage.

This is bad news for western culture and civilization. Our nations are built on the basis of familial ties. Strong families (and extended families) produce great nations. Weak families destroy nations.

Our world still needs strong families that produce strong, well adjusted, happy, healthy, productive children. The current, broken state of the Sexual Market in western nations is failing us. Its leading us into pain, suffering, sadness and eventually extinction. So what are we going to do about it?

We can't wait for someone else to do something. It's not anyone else's responsibility, it's our job to fix our own system. Sure, maybe it's not our personal fault the system is broken. It's not fair we have to fix it, but that's life. Whining, surender, hopelessness, isolation, defeatism and nihilism will simply ensure that we lose. Only action will save us.

3 things we can do to fix the Sexual Market:

1. Reinstate the original purpose of dating, courtship, and marriage: to maximize the survival and wellbeing of children. This means that we have to change our attitudes and work to influence others to change theirs. We cant be embarrassed to speak the truth about romantic relationships, promote healthy parenthood or call out degeneracy when we see it.
2. Use the best of traditional Romantic Social Technology. Read about the history of your people. Read about how our ancestors successfully created and navigated their Sexual Market. They managed to have successful marriages and raise many children despite living in times that were FAR MORE CHALLENGING than our own. Join into support groups. Share with others what you learn, be curious, help each other.
3. Innovate new technologies, concepts and supports for dating. We have new challenges and we need to solve some of them with new technologies. The internet has opened up new possibilities in the sharing of information, research, display of social proofs, meeting of new people, forming of digital tribes, etc. We still don't understand exactly how these opportunities will change the Sexual Market or how we will use them in the future, that's up to you to explore.

Conclusion

Dating and courtship feels unnatural because our system is broken. Only we can fix it. We can only do that through action and influence. Whether you are married, single or even too young to be thinking about dating you can still help to fix our Sexual Market. Make a list of things that you think are broken about dating and courtship. Talk with other people about your thoughts. Finally, resolve to do something to change the world around you. Every step in the right direction takes us closer to a better world, a world where in a generation our children will have a secure future to build their families on.