Gender cultural and political polarization is creating legitimately incompatible views of the good life that make marriage impossible. If men wants the white picket fence life and the women want to be focused on career ambitions, that’s going to be hard to reconcile. While compromise is inevitable to get and stay married, some divides are so fundamental they can’t be bridged.

There’s a quip attributed to Henry Kissinger that, “Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.”

But while no one can win, maybe both sexes will end up losing.

The Wall Street Journal ran an essay last weekend about how women are turning away from marriage:

After a handful of underwhelming relationships and dozens of disappointing first dates, Andrea Vorlicek recently called off the search for a husband.

The 29-year-old always thought she’d have found her life partner by now. Instead, she’s house hunting solo and considering having kids on her own.

“I’m financially self-sufficient enough to do these things myself,” said Vorlicek, a Boston-based accountant. “I’m willing to accept being single versus settling for someone who isn’t the right fit.”

…

Stories of women complaining about the lack of quality men have long infused pop culture—from “Pride and Prejudice” to Taylor Swift’s oeuvre. Yet women throughout history rarely questioned whether finding and securing a romantic partner should be a primary goal of adulthood.

This seems to be changing. Over half of single women said they believed they were happier than their married counterparts in a 2024 AEI survey of 5,837 adults. Just over a third of surveyed single men said the same…A rise in earning power and a decline in the social stigma for being single has allowed more women to be choosy. “They would rather be alone than with a man who holds them back,” Cox said.

…

The share of women ages 18 to 40 who are single—that is, neither married nor cohabitating with a partner—was 51.4% in 2023, according to an analysis of census data by the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, up from 41.8% in 2000.

…

Katie spent the first half of 2024 going on three or four dates a week with men she met on apps, such as Hinge and Bumble, in the hopes of finding a husband before turning 30. By the end of the year, she had ramped down the search, calling it “the only thing you can put 10,000 hours into and end up right where you started.”

Many of the men Katie met, she said, either seemed turned off by her ambition or weren’t career-oriented enough for her. She felt discouraged by just how many of her male friends similarly said they expect their future wives to prioritize their families over their jobs.

…

For Christina Ralstin, a 31-year-old wildland firefighter in rural Republic, Wash., who didn’t go to college, buying a house was confirmation she didn’t need a partner to be content. She paid $90,000 for a two-bedroom on half an acre of land in 2022. “I’ll have it paid off in the next two years, so I don’t feel like I need to be tied financially to somebody,” Ralstin said.

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