There's something fundamentally broken about the way men and women relate to each other in the modern world.
Gen-Z's "loneliness epidemic" has become somewhat of a buzzword in recent years, with older people expressing shock that young people aren't talking to each other or having sex anymore. The sharp decline in dating and relationships seems remarkable because prior logic dictated that men and women will always be drawn to each other no matter what. People assumed the natural sex drive and the desire for companionship would keep man and woman together under any circumstances, but we're quickly finding out that's not the case. Just one look at the birth rate paints a dire picture.
I don't think any "side" is wholly responsible for the situation. Some men will say women's standards are too high while some women will say it's because there's not enough quality men out there. The truth I think, is that we've all been screwed by a civilizational project that forced us into roles that disrupt the natural order. Technology and our modern service economy made everyone androgynous.
Boys and girls are raised indistinguishably from each other. They're taught the same way, given the same options, encouraged to pursue the same goals. For a young woman today, motherhood is something that may or may not happen after the life they've been primed for since birth. Just compare the way parents talk to their daughters about college and career achievement vs the way they talk about marriage and motherhood. Where's the emphasis placed?
On top of being raised the same way as men, young women are given ample opportunities to help compete with and economically outpace men. I'm talking about college scholarships and career quotas here. It's the economic equivalent of suddenly making every woman taller than the average man.
Women still want to feel taken care of by men. Men still want to feel respected and valued as the center of power in their families. With the modern dynamic, everyone is frustrated and forced to become autonomous. Women trade husbands for careers, men trade wives for porn.
Where relationships still do happen, they've pretty much regressed back to primitive social patterns. The most desirable men will have a haram of average women trying to get him to commit, while most men will be lonely. Instead of finding a husband, the most desirable women will be subject to mostly unserious propositions while the men in her league shirk commitment.
The thing these relationships all have in common is an unbalanced power dynamic.
That brings us back to the scary truth we've forgotten, something that goes so deeply against the modern way of thinking about things: Patriarchy is the only way of providing men and women what they innately want. When men are the providers, they feel deeply fulfilled with a sense of purpose to their lives. When women are the providers, they feel like their man's mommy. It doesn't work, and the divorce rates by income dynamic attest to this.
So what's the solution? I honestly can't think of one that fits even remotely into the modern framework. It would take a complete civilizational turn to get men and women needing each other again. Until then, all we can expect is sterility, loneliness and frustration.
I have some random thoughts about this:
I see a number of videos of women complaining about dating apps, and the number of them being ghosted or stood up when the two parties agree to meet. No one ever suspects the app itself, and the evidence of the "phone farms" in SE Asia...manned by dozens of asians posting crap. This could be part of a larger conspiracy to make singles disillusioned with the opposite sex.
Single women constantly ask, "Where are all the good men?" Yet, they insist on going out to bars, where they will ONLY meet "players" who are alcoholics and/or creeps looking to game the system. The kind of men who habitually go out to bars are not husband material, nor are they looking for committed relationships. However, these men are made the yardstick whereby women generalize what "all men" are like.
Our materialistic society has trained some women to look for men as "money machines," and nothing else. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has been upgraded in the last few years to unrealistic levels...to a point where only 1% of men may possibly qualify. But, those men in the upper 1% are generally not interested in commitment.
The "independent woman" has been manipulated to think that she can have multiple partners throughout her late teens and twenties, then find a committed partner to marry and have kids with. This is diametrically opposed to what men are looking for in a woman. Without making my comment crude, I'll allow whoever reads this to fill in the blanks.
Women are almost never trained to develop hobbies/interests on their own. This puts them at a distinct advantage at meeting quality people who might be a good match for them.