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My daughter calls from the battlefield. She's tough. Been in the trenches for years. But she can no longer hide the despair in her weary voice. "It's grim," she reports. "It gets more brutal by the day."
Typical war. Bodies everywhere while decency, honour and intelligence remain in short supply. She sighs. "I think it's time to give up."
Too early to surrender, I say. You signed up for this. Might as well stick it out. I remind her of the wisdom of General George S. Patton: "Courage is fear holding on a minute longer than reason."
Easy for me to say from the safety of my home while she's navigating minefields, putting her life on the line. So I offer sage advice from another famous expert in conflict, Pat Benatar: "No promises. No demands. Love is a battlefield."
No amount of fatherly encouragement, however, can convince my 30-year-old daughter to persevere with the dating scene. I've wondered if she is too picky. I've explained to her that men with intelligence, good looks, humour and particularly modesty are extremely rare. She should feel blessed one of them is her dad.
But I've heard enough of her war stories from love's frontline to believe her. Many of her friends share her dismay and science is backing them up. At a time when the internet and dating apps guarantee love is just a click away, good men are becoming harder to find.
Single Australian households are on the rise - more than one in four are now occupied by people living alone. Of these, 55 per cent are women and an increasing number are in their late 20s and early 30s. And much of it may be due to a widening intelligence and compatibility gap between the sexes.
Australia now has 45 per cent more young women with a university education than men. With data showing women are more likely to search for a prospective partner with a similar education and income, that pool of potential soulmates has shrunk alarmingly in recent years.
A pool? Well, more of a stagnant pond, its surface choked with scum and its shallow depths occupied by predatory creatures who think high art is a close-up photograph of their genitalia.
"It's not that I'm too choosy or elitist," says my daughter, who even unbiased observers would agree is funny, smart and beautiful on the inside and out. "But it would be nice to meet someone who can hold a conversation."
It's not just women my daughter's age who are struggling to find a decent mate. My 50-something divorced sister has dabbled with the online dating scene and, along with several of her friends, found it an equally bruising experience.
First dates are often awkward. But many women now claim they've become a joke. You take your seat, ask your aspiring suitor questions and discover they're either frozen with nerves or have an IQ hovering at room temperature and are so dense light bends around them.
Even getting to the stage of a date is problematic. In pre-digital days an individual would be forced to say, "Sorry, but I'm not interested" - either on the phone or in person. These days the anonymity afforded by dating apps allows the gutless to "ghost" someone they have been flirting with and offering false hope to for weeks, leaving that person confused and crushing their confidence.
The superficiality of online interactions, where people carefully curate their image to present themselves in the best possible light, can also intimidate those seeking partners. And with texting replacing face-to-face communication, intimacy and emotional connection also become more difficult.
Yet the greatest challenge of dating in the digital era may be modern life's paradox of choice. Studies prove that the more alternatives we are offered - whether browsing the endless breakfast cereal aisle at the supermarket or looking for a new home - creates further indecision. This can often trigger commitment phobia because you never know if a better option lies just around the corner.
Online dating can't be all that bad, though. As the cultural shift toward marrying later continues, Relationships Australia says more than one in four Australians under the age of 44 met their partner on a dating app and the number is also climbing for older people.
Still, none of that helps my daughter and so many other women complaining about the lack of decent men.
Be patient, I urge her, before quoting Sun Tzu: "Know thyself, know thy enemy. A thousand battles. A thousand victories."
Just one would be nice.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Have you or someone you know tried online dating? If so, how was the experience? Have you decided to remain single? Do you believe dating apps have improved people's chances of finding a soulmate? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Bruce Lehrmann has been ordered to pay Network Ten $2 million in legal fees following the former Liberal staffer's failed defamation action.
- Sexual assaults in Australia are at their highest rate in three decades, the Australian Bureau of Statistics' sexual crimes data has revealed. There were 36,318 victim-survivors of sexual assault in data collected by police in 2023.
- A scheme designed to entice property investors to drop rents has been kicked down the road after an unlikely team up. The Coalition and the Greens joined forces to split the government's proposed laws off from buy now, pay later reform and send it to a Senate inquiry, which won't report until September 4.
THEY SAID IT: "The goal of online dating is to get offline as quickly as possible." - Amy Webb
YOU SAID IT: Clive Palmer's latest bid for relevance - bringing out US right wing firebrand Tucker Carlson on a speaking tour - proves some American specialties like aerosolised cheese will not take off in Australia.
"I hope people with views like Tucker Carlson's never get taken seriously in Australia, and that Clive sticks to trying to build another Titanic, or some other non-political hobby," writes Tony.
Murray writes: "Carlson has lost so much credibility in the US that he has to tour preaching to small crowds of the 'anti-woke'. But this is the thing. I am just an old fashioned conservative, and pay no attention at all to leftists preaching woke nonsense. Just let it go straight through to the keeper. I am too old a rat to be screwed about by mice. The left, on the other hand, tends to fixate on those who point out issues they would prefer were not pointed out. Not sure why."
"Clive has always been a frustrated rich athlete in a fat suit seeking Olympic prestige," writes Bill. "Prestige is important to Clive, but he lacks subtlety. Billions of dollars from digging up our coal, but our civics system restricts him somewhat from spending billions buying influence! Even the Nats eventually turned away his money and they lack any ethics. Clive wants a system like the US, where you can buy a pollie for not much. Or get serious, and buy a president."
Anita writes: "Clive Palmer/Tucker Carson would have their acolytes here in Australia. I count their number as being to the right of our established conservatives and put them on the lunatic fringe. Many would disagree; watchers of Sky News in the main. Not universal by any means but, I think Australians are by nature more cynical than our American cousins. This rules out a lot of potentially dangerous silliness like Tucker's views and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yuck!"
"Aw c'mon, John, I like peanut butter and jelly," writes Bob, "Otherwise you're spot on."
Roger has a word for David Pope: "What a powerful cartoon."