The Dating Market During Economic Downturns (Women Demand Commitment For Sex)

In my previous piece on thriving in a bad economy, I talked only about the financial aspects.

In this one, I want to talk about women and dating during a bad economy. Because the sexual marketplace changes depending on how much money is going around.

The Standard Female Dating Strategy: A bit of context for those living under a rock

The typical female dating strategy looks something like this:

Phase 1: “Alpha fucks”, “hoe phase”, “party phase”, etc.: Spend your “high value” years (say 16-27) partying, having fun, and having sex with the men they consider most attractive (alphas).

Phase 2: Hitting the wall. Have an identity crisis around 28 where you realize that these alpha men don’t want to marry them, and that time is running out, and if they want to marry and have kids, they need to do something about it soon.

Phase 3: The bait. A very public metamorphosis happens where the woman “changes” her lifestyle to be more “homely”. Often this is combined with religion. This is done to make herself more attractive to beta males, the type of man she would not give a second glance when she was younger.

Again, this metamorphosis is public. This means that it is highly visible. The reason for this is that it is supposed to act as bait for beta males.

Things about her will change, such as:

• The kind of clothing she wears. She can go from wearing clothes that are considered less decent by the society she lives in, to clothes considered more decent by the society she lives in.
• She will adopt more “conservative” political and social speaking points. Feminism will usually remain, but she will try to be “more reasonable than most women”.
• She may adopt a more religious public face. Images of her in temples and religious places (especially in religious clothing) can now be seen on her Instagram. The promiscuous photos of her previous lifestyle will be deleted.
• The worse her past, the bigger the bait usually is. The sluttiest ones will almost become conservative religious influencers saying things like “our religion is under attack” (massive red flag) as if she truly followed that religion at any point in her youth.

Phase 4: Beta bucks/the trap. Eventually a beta male is found who bites the bait. The beta feels “lucky” to have found such a “reasonable” woman in “today’s environment”.

The woman gets someone who will take care of her for life, pay her bills, and take her on 2 vacations a year. Sure the sex is not as good as the men she had when she was young, but at least she is “stable” and with a “caring husband” who “helps with chores” unlike “the other guys”.

Phase 5: The scam. Now I want to point out that MOST (50%+) women DO NOT opt to do this, but some women do. After they marry a beta male, they try to get in touch with an alpha from their past to cheat on their husbands.

The goal is to get pregnant from the alpha male (and secure the best DNA) while fooling the beta male to continue to pay for her and her children (securing the beta’s resources).

NO ONE knows the actual statistics of how many women cheat on their beta husbands with their alpha exes, but here are two data points:

1. Data from paternity testing companies released in the US in 2004 found that around 28 per cent of fathers were biologically unrelated to their children. [Sciencefocus]. However this data is from men who decided to take a paternity test (they probably had a reason to suspect their wife i.e. selection bias).
2. In my own experience, with the women I dated (including the friends with benefits), about 10-15% of them messaged me after they married some beta male later on in their life. If a woman you were sleeping with for fun wants to meet you “for coffee”, you can tell that the warm liquid she wants inside her is not actually coffee.

So I’m going to say about 10-15% of women opt to do this, but getting actual statistics is impossible given the nature of the thing. As my friend Corporate Machiavelli (RIP) used to say:

If you are a corporate type person who aspires to become CEO or something, strongly recommend getting his books (at least read the 55 essays).

Female promiscuity is funded by relative economic prosperity.

In fact, there is a correlation between skirt lengths and economic prosperity (called the hemline index). It’s not hard science, but the trend is that women’s skirts get shorter during good times, and longer during bad times.

When times are good, money and jobs are easy to come by. In such times, women do not need men in order to live a good life.

For the last 15 years before the downturn started, women could easily get a high paying job because of things like DEI and other affirmative action measures. In fact, there were so many jobs in the market that there was something for everyone.

There were people making $100k a year walking dogs for rich people. If you had a YouTube channel with some success, you could make thousands of dollars every video with startups sponsoring you with all the easy VC money they were getting.

Money was everywhere. If you were a young woman, you were in no rush to lock down a man because you did not actually need him to live a good life.

Your cushy low stress DEI job would pay the bills easily. Now, I’m not saying ALL women worked DEI jobs, but most DEI jobs were taken up by women, gays, and other “minorities” by definition of the thing.

If you were a young male from the majority group of your country, you were not getting that DEI job.

This “I do not need men” is what funds the party years.

What you see during market downturns is that many (not all) women become more rational and grounded about the world.

Again, I say “more rational and grounded”, and not just “rational and grounded”. It is a spectrum, and they move towards one side or the other.

Women on average will never think as rationally as men (not part of the pressures of their evolutionary past/DNA). Anyone who thinks women can be like men in their thought process (logic over emotion) lacks experience with women.

How The Standard Female Dating Strategy Changes During Economic Downturns

Basically the value for concrete things (resources and commitment) goes up, and the value for pleasure/ego satisfaction goes down.

1) More women will look for commitment in exchange for sex.

It will be harder to fuck women casually or get into friends with benefits relationships.

More women will try to get more substantial commitments from men in exchange for sex, or at least the bar for uncommitted relationships will get higher (e.g. if a 7.5+/10 man could get into an uncommitted relationship with a particular woman in the past, now he would need to be an 8.5+/10 man or higher).

2) Beta males become more desirable.

Beta males are more willing to commit to a woman and provide her with resources. Secure sources of resources are inherently more valuable when resources are scarce.

You already see this in arranged marriage markets like India. Women and their families care more about your job title, how much you make, and how many properties your family owns than they care about who you are as a person.

The harder resources are to come by, the more valuable they are, and the more men who can provide them are sought for the long term.

Again, this does NOT mean that women are more genuinely sexually attracted to such men. It just means that more women are more willing to make the “practical” decision of dating them instead of sleeping with exciting men who are unwilling to commit to them or pay their bills.

Most of these marriages are sexless in the long run because the woman is not genuinely sexually attracted to the man.

Basically the beta male is a glorified bill payer, because he secures women via his resources and not his masculinity. This is true during both bull markets and bear markets.

The difference is that in bear markets, he can pay the bills of a more attractive woman.

READ: How to Make Women Obsess Over You

3) The wall hits earlier.

For the women who decide to do the party phase or hoe phase, the turning point will arrive sooner than before.

Earlier, the bait used to happen at some point around when the woman hit 28-30 years old.

During the downturn, it could be 26, or 25, or even 21 or younger, depending on the severity of the downturn.

The bigger the pinch for resources, the more important it is to secure them, so more of her “best years” are traded away in relationships/marriage.

Only richer women (upper class etc.) would be able to continue the party years all the way down to their late 20s/early 30s.

4) Promiscuity is more hidden and less rampant.

Promiscuity will reduce, and some women will become more secretive about it.

In the present environment, women openly sleep around with alpha males (just install any dating app to see how many women are on it in a 5-10km radius to you; they are not there because they want to make friends).

Not only do they openly sleep around with alphas, they also shame betas who complain about their behavior.

They expect these beta males to “accept them how they are” and will literally act as if something is wrong with these men for not being happy that these women are sleeping around (the beta males are consciously aware that they will eventually marry a woman from a pool full of these promiscuous women, and their complaints are justified).

However, in bull markets, beta males are “not people” and what they want/think/feel does not matter. So they are just shamed and mocked as lesser men, incel, sexist, whatever.

When times are tough, the beta has more demand, and what he thinks actually has more worth. Simply demand and supply.

This is why women start hiding their promiscuity.

When they sleep around, they don’t tell their friends about it (to protect their reputation).

When they wear slutty clothes, the chances of photos ending up on Instagram for the world to see are lower.

You get the point.

Bear markets do not change a woman’s DNA (she still wants to be promiscuous), it just changes the degree to which she can execute her standard mating strategy.

The party phase ends earlier, the concern for reputation is higher, the demand for commitment increases, and the beta males get to pay the bills for more attractive women.

That’s all for this piece.

Until next time.

Your man,

Harsh Strongman