Thanks for the advice! I've never really had much success in even seeing any women I have much interest in IRL, which is part of my problem (and was back in my 20s too; it hasn't really changed much). I just don't see a lot of available, attractive women in the grocery store. But much of this isn't too different from the approach I take with online dating.

Maybe I should try staying at a Holiday Inn Express though....

I don't know about this. With the upper classes back then, marriages were usually arranged and had nothing to do with love, only property rights and strategic alliances and such. So of course they didn't want to sleep together, they really didn't even like each other much.

The lower classes weren't so much like this; they were just peasants, so they married people they liked.

However, I do think you're right about relationships not lasting a lifetime any more. There's also good evidence that monogamy really isn't natural for us either, and many people in non-monogamous relationships are happier and have stronger relationships than typical married monogamous people. Many older cultures were completely non-monogamous, such as the Hawaiians before European contact.

Exactly, this is excellent and highly insightful.

So what can we do to try to get back to something approximating this environment? Maybe we need to try to make some kind of social change in this direction.

The US is also the #1 oil consumer; it uses all it produces, and then imports more from Canada and Mexico to make up for the shortfall. Europe is the same way, only worse; they get some domestically (Norway), but then they have to import the rest.

I'm really wishing I had gone into medicine instead of engineering.... you're absolutely right.

However, my mother was a hospital nurse for a while, and I think that turned me off to that a little. But it definitely would have been a better profession than engineering, that's for sure.

However, what can an outsider like myself do to get in there? Some kind of volunteer work I guess?

I think you should be more charitable; you sound a bit snobbish.

I'm not trying to be snobbish, I'm just expressing that I do not care for, or really even respect, Southern redneck culture. Do you like Middle Eastern Arab culture or northern African culture, where Islamic fundamentalism runs strong and little girls have their vaginas sewn shut? I don't, and I don't think it's "snobbish" to say I look down on that culture. It's the same with Southern culture for me, just to a much, much lesser degree. So I avoid women who appear to be products of that culture.

I deliberately act less intelligent when I am with women.

Ok, there's something really wrong with this. Not necessarily with you (you gotta do what works for you), but with our culture. I guess this is another example of America's extremely anti-intellectual culture. I don't even consider myself that much of an intellectual or even all that smart, just someone who aspires to it and tries to keep as educated as I can, but much of this country (and not just the Southern rednecks who like NASCAR and pork rinds) seem to actively dislike anyone who seems more educated than them.

Best of all, they would do girly things like cooking

Chef Gordon Ramsay would like to have a word with you (as would Chef Puck and many others).

As for their liking NASCAR, the girls I am talking about tended to like what some previous boyfriend had shown them to like. They would soon adapt to anything else though, like standing on the side of a football pitch, or sitting in a classical concert if that's your thing.

Sorry, I don't buy it. People are largely products of their upbringing, and get set into their ways by their mid-20s, more or less. They can (if they're smart and adaptable; "dumb girls" by definition are not) grow and change after that, but only so much. You're not going to take a redneck gun-loving, pitbull-loving, NASCAR-loving girl and turn her into a sophisticated NYC-type woman who likes classical concerts when she's already 35-45. Maybe you're talking about 20-year-old girls, but I'm not young enough for girls like that.

I think you need to reconsider. If you want to have the whole family-and-kids deal, you don't have that much time left to find someone worthwhile; women can't have kids past 40 usually, remember, and the longer you wait, the worse your dating pool is (more women are divorced and already have kids as you get to older ages). Don't wake up when you're 40 and realize you should have made a move earlier. Get out of your comfort zone; there's a better life out there than what Wichita has to offer. If you're anything like me, the problem isn't you, it's the area you're in: you're just not a fit for that area and the denizens there. The women you're looking for probably all left that town when they went to college, and the women left there aren't ones you're interested in, amiright?

Yeah, I'm sure there's tons of well-read women in Manhattan going to NASCAR races every weekend....

News flash: NYC is nothing like the rest of NYS.

I haven't been paying really close attention, but it's usually been my observation that Sony electronics are more expensive than everything else.

Anyway, Sony -> rootkit fiasco, DRM, and many other things. So there's no way I'm going to give them my money.

And now with all the stuff about Smart TVs recording your conversations, those are out too, no matter who makes them.

The culture I described was never the culture of New England or the rest of the northeast, among many other parts of the US. You're seriously deluded if you think that San Francisco, LA, or NYC have ever been places where NASCAR, guns, and 4-wheeling are popular pasttimes.

On average, yes, the male one is larger and more prominent and bony. Mine for instance has a very sharp, protruding ridge on it, which probably wouldn't look out of place on a Klingon. I can't shave it because the razor would just cut it open.

It's hard to understand an American who's unhappy where they live on account of it being too American.

This shit isn't "American culture", it's Southern culture. The South is not representative of America as a whole, thankfully.

Well that's my impression too now that I'm on the market again, but the place I'm living in probably isn't too different culturally than Kansas, and that, I think, is the #1 source of my dating problems.

Do you have any plans to move out of Kansas? I'm already working on planning my exodus from this place.

That's just cartilage

No, it's not, it's a bone called the Hyoid bone. It's a unique bone in that it it isn't rigidly connected to other bones: from the article: "Unlike other bones, the hyoid is only distantly articulated to other bones by muscles or ligaments." It does start out as mostly cartilage, but turns into bone with adulthood. But you're right, it isn't prominent in all men, and can be trimmed surgically.

I agree about the other factors though: hand size, voice, and shoulder breadth.

Neither hand size nor shoulder width are terribly apparent in pictures though. I guess it's like buying a used car that looks good in the picture, but when you get up close to look at it, it has a shitty paint job.

Unfortunately, this is true for everyone, not just trannies. Most people try to find photos of themselves that look best, and avoid posting photos that don't look so great. Back before I got married and was meeting women from online for dating, this happened to me a few times: a woman looked good in a single photo she posted, and then in person she was not attractive at all.

I have some experience in Aikido; I attended a dojo about 12 years ago for a while, got up to yellow-belt. That dojo definitely didn't have any hippies; that's funny. I might have to check this out again now that I'm back on the market.

My only worry is that any dojo here (Aikido or otherwise) would be heavily dominated by (ex-)military types. My prior dojo was run by a couple of them. I'm not a big fan of anything military these days (which really doesn't help me, living in an area where it's a big part of the economy).