shortages
by rantywoman
http://www.philosophersmail.com/relationships/how-we-end-up-marrying-the-wrong-people/
One is never in a good frame of mind to choose a partner rationally when remaining single is unbearable. We have to be utterly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to have any chance of forming a good relationship. Or we’ll love no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us being so.
Unfortunately, after a certain age, society makes singlehood dangerously unpleasant. Communal life starts to wither, couples are too threatened by the independence of the single to invite them around very often, one starts to feel a freak when going to the cinema alone. Sex is hard to come by as well. For all the new gadgets and supposed freedoms of modernity, it can be very hard to get laid – and expecting to do so regularly with new people is bound to end in disappointment after 30.
Far better to rearrange society so that it resembles a university or a kibbutz – with communal eating, shared facilities, constant parties and free sexual mingling… That way, anyone who did decide marriage was for them would be sure they were doing it for the positives of coupledom rather than as an escape from the negatives of singlehood.
When sex was only available within marriage, people recognised that this led people to marry for the wrong reasons: to obtain something that was artificially restricted in society as a whole. People are free to make much better choices about who they marry now they’re not simply responding to a desperate desire for sex.
But we retain shortages in other areas. When company is only properly available in couples, people will pair up just to spare themselves loneliness. It’s time to liberate ‘companionship’ from the shackles of coupledom, and make it as widely and as easily available as sexual liberators wanted sex to be.
thebitterbabe 
Well, I don’t understand why wanting to pair up because of fear of loneliness would be a bad thing. I think it makes a lot of sense, actually. I don’t see any other primary reasons for marriage or LTRs.
I disagree. The problem with pairing up with someone because of a fear of loneliness is that you end up being in relationships with people your really not attracted to. I’m currently single and a male. I rather be alone and lonely than be in a relationship with someone I’m not attracted to(or there not attracted to me). To me that is a fake relationship and you and the other person is being inauthentic.
The purpose or point of marriage or LTRs is to raise level headed, healthy children together as a unit. (Yeah I know a single parent can also raise a healthy child and I agree) but let’s be honest here and put political correctness aside, it’s makes life much easier having a partner to help with child rearing.
From my personal experience I don’t know of any ‘in love’ couples who do not have kids together unless they couldn’t conceive or are same sex couples.
Yes, you got a good point there: child rearing. But even that would not be the main reason to pair up, in my opinion. Companionship would definitely be the first reason.
‘One is never in a good frame of mind to choose a partner rationally when remaining single is unbearable. We have to be utterly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to have any chance of forming a good relationship. Or we’ll love no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us being so’
No. This is self-help-book-nonsense, sorry. When remaining single becomes unbearable one goes out there and ‘un-singles’ oneself. The more effort is put into the endeavour, the more chances one has to one day find oneself in the right place at the right time. If people waited until they were ‘at peace’ with themselves to couple up the world would be full of eternally single (and very depressed) people. And for most, being alone is preferable to being with someone they have no feelings for.
To conclude, not every LTR is about children. There ARE couples in this world who are together in order to share lives and not reproduce – by choice.
No. This is self-help-book-nonsense,
Bingo.
Online dating as a way of forming a LTR is very much overlooked in my view, particularly for introverts. Many of the sites allow you to filter on members who are actively seeking a LTR. That people have been conditioned by talk show hosts and psychologists to believe that somehow admitting such a goal is a weakness instead of simply a fact of life, and that so many single women have internalised this, is quite sad, tragic even.
Unfortunately, “individualism” has permeated every aspect of Western culture and left a path of destruction in its wake that is felt most deeply at the individual level.
Of course, if a man claims to want a LTR and you like each other you have to verify over time that he is telling the truth. This is what dating is for.