The Highest EQ Generation Has No Relationships

They learned to process feelings, not to build lives or families

I am often chastised for my admiration of American youth culture of the late 1990s and early 2000s. People criticize me for accepting a more crass, more sexual moment in our history as a country. Fine, I am not claiming it was refined. But it had one thing the present does not: people were pairing off in opposite-sex relationships. They were dating, forming relationships and were getting married. Even a slightly culturally sloppy era still produced men and women who actually wanted each other in real life.

Today, that is no longer true. No one has sex anymore, let alone relationships. Matrimonial desire among both men and women sit at record lows. And we are not talking about a few points down, we are approaching a point where disinterest in marriage is becoming the majority position. The moral crusade against hookup culture succeeded only in destroying sex. It was not replaced with marriage culture, it was replaced with celibacy culture. This is not progress, this is decay.

Most people these days do not want to date, and they certainly do not want to get married. They would rather sit alone in their apartments, anesthetized by Netflix, porn, and algorithmic slop, than risk the discomfort of human intimacy. This is not because they are uniquely broken, it is because the culture trained them to be this way.

Relationships are no longer encouraged, they are treated as distractions. Having a boyfriend or girlfriend is framed as unserious, regressive, or even embarrassing. Articles that shame attachment are published without resistance. The people promoting these ideas are treated as moral authorities rather than the pariahs they actually are. That must end. A culture that attacks pair bonding is a civilization that is committing suicide, and those promoting it should be treated accordingly.

These conditions are the predictable outgrowth of feminism and the ideological mutations that followed it. Allowing those ideas to fester unchecked has been disastrous. Young people are taught that they are complete as they are, that needing another person is weakness, and that dependency is shameful. This is a direct rebellion against the way the Creator designed the world and against basic natural law. Humans are not built to exist as isolated, independent hermits. We are built to form families, societies, and interdependence.

The hostility between men and women is not the root problem, rather it is a symptom. The deeper issue is a hatred for society itself, a hatred for natural order, and ultimately a hatred for G-d. Just as modern Satanism is not about belief in Satan but about opposition to G-d, so too is modern gender ideology a war against the natural order disguised as collective justice.

The collateral damage from this war is everywhere. People are not happier alone, they are anxious, bitter, medicated, and chronically dissatisfied. Hookup culture at least provided brief companionship while celibacy culture provides nothing. It leaves people sexually frustrated, emotionally starved, and permanently pent up. This is not a neutral lifestyle shift, it is a mass psychological deterioration.

The culture does not merely tolerate this loneliness, it actively markets it. Algorithmic slop push narratives designed to suppress instinct and rewire desire. People are trained to believe that wanting connection is weakness, that desire is manipulation, that attraction is dangerous, and that isolation is empowerment. The copium is nonstop. You are alone and you will be happy. The other sex hates you and wants to control/manipulate you. These messages are piped directly into people’s feeds until basic human instincts are overridden and reframed as moral failures. This is not liberation; it is sedation.

People are not stupid, they respond rationally to incentives. When sex is cheap, commitment is expensive, and marriage is framed as a liability rather than an achievement, people opt out. When men are told that pursuit is predatory and women are told that dependence is degrading, the safest move is withdrawal. Netflix and porn are not moral aberrations, they are the path of least resistance in a culture that punishes initiative and vulnerability.

Technology only pours gasoline on this fire. Porn offers infinite novelty without rejection. Dating apps offer infinite optionality without responsibility. Social media offers the illusion of intimacy without presence. These systems do not merely reflect cultural rot, they train it. They create a population that is overstimulated, underbonded, and addicted to the idea that the next option is always better.

What this culture did to men

Men were taught that their desire is primitive, their leadership is domineering, and their standards are oppressive. They were instructed to be sensitive but not assertive, vulnerable but not directional. When they internalized these lessons, they were blamed for becoming weak, unmotivated, and porn-addicted. A generation of men learned that doing nothing is infinitely safer than doing something wrong. Many men did not become bad, they became cautious. Then they were chastised for their caution.

What this culture did to women

Women were taught that needing a man is weakness and choosing family over autonomy is betrayal. They were promised fulfillment through independence, yet independence without attachment produces loneliness, not joy. Selectivity turned into hostility, and attraction turned into resentment. Many now demand partnership without polarity and intimacy without surrender, which is a contradiction, not a preference.

Sex requires difference and desire requires tension. Tension requires asymmetry yet modern culture treats asymmetry as injustice. The result is relationships where no one leads, no one follows, and no one wants anyone. What remains is endless negotiation, therapy-speak, and eventual silence.

Relationships are now optimized for emotional safety rather than meaning. Discomfort is treated as harm while conflict is pathologized. Boredom is framed as trauma. Every relationship is expected to feel like a perpetual aftercare session. Sex cannot survive in this environment. Marriage cannot survive when every disagreement is treated as a red flag and every sacrifice is treated as self-erasure.

Waiting is not neutral nor is time. In family formation, delay without movement is not patience, it is decay. The lie being sold is that one can wait indefinitely while remaining fully alive, purposeful, and on track. That is false. Waiting only has meaning when it is directed toward action. Without urgency, waiting becomes drifting, and drifting quietly converts years into excuses. Biology does not pause for self-narratives, fertility does not care about inner work, and communities do not survive on presence alone. Time is a moral factor here, and pretending otherwise is how people wake up ten years later with nothing built and no one to blame but the stories they were told.

Marriage is not supposed to feel easy and yes, it is supposed to cost you something. Sacrifice is not abuse, constraint is not oppression, and loss is not harm. Meaning is produced by trading optionality for obligation and comfort for responsibility. A culture that treats sacrifice as pathology will never produce adults capable of building families. What is being defended as compassion is actually fear of cost, fear of narrowing one’s life, fear of choosing and being chosen. That fear does not deserve accommodation. It deserves correction.

So the response cannot be gentle, it cannot be suggestive, it must be corrective.

First: re-normalize pair bonding as the default

Permanent, voluntary singlehood should not be treated as a neutral lifestyle choice. It is a failure to form bonds and a refusal to participate in the future. We must stop normalizing it, we must stop affirming it, and we must stop pretending that it is a valid destination.

Pair bonding must once again be treated as the default expectation. Dating should be encouraged and publicly affirmed. Couples should be celebrated. Engagements should be treated as wins, not traps. Marriage should be understood as the goal, not an optional lifestyle accessory. Singleness should feel provisional. Not stigmatized when temporary, but uncomfortable when indefinite.

In functioning cultures, people understand what is expected of them. Pairing off is normal. Building a life with someone is normal. Remaining indefinitely unattached is not. If your friend is dating someone decent, you do not interrogate them like they just arrived at Abu Ghraib, you encourage it. If someone gets engaged, you treat it like progress, not like they fell into a trap. We stop glorifying emotional bachelorhood as if it were a vaunted existence.

Publicly celebrate couples and publicly affirm dating. Treat relationships as achievements, not distractions. Stop pretending singleness is a permanent lifestyle rather than a temporary phase. Pair bonding should be the default expectation, with marriage as the goal and everything else should feel temporary.

Second: shame permanent singlehood

Shame is not cruelty, shame is how cultures enforce norms. A society that refuses to shame destructive outcomes will normalize them, then celebrate them, then collapse under their weight. Shame for permanent singlehood must return. Not ritual humiliation, not sadism, but blunt social pressure that refuses to coddle failure.

In healthy cultures, direct questions are normal. Why are you still single? What are you doing wrong? Why has no one chosen you, or why have you refused to choose anyone? These are not insults, they are social feedback. They signal that pairing off is expected and that opting out indefinitely is not admirable.

This shame should not necessarily sneer, but it should force uncomfortable self-examination. Why can’t you get a guy? Why are women repulsed by you? What about you makes people not want to build a life with you? These are not attacks, they are signals. They communicate that indefinite isolation is not an acceptable lifestyle choice, it is a personal and social malfunction that demands correction.

This does not mean publicly humiliating individuals, rather it means applying pressure instead of endless affirmation. It means refusing to reassure people that nothing is wrong when something clearly is. It means withdrawing status, not sympathy. It means telling people, explicitly, to get your shit together rather than rearranging society to protect you from that realization. This pressure is not aimed at people struggling despite effort, it is aimed at those who have decided that effort itself is optional.

A culture that wants families must enforce family-forming behavior. Anything else is just aesthetics layered over decay.

Third: don’t pervert religion to suit your spinsterism

It has come to my attention that COLlive has decided to jump on the bandwagon of subtley pushing singlehood with an article that uses theology to justify stagnation and dress personal failure up as spiritual insight. The absolutely asinine claim here is that because every soul has infinite value before G-d, no stage of life can be considered lacking, deficient, or in need of correction. This is an error in basic understanding, as equal worth before Hashem is not the same thing as fulfilling one’s role in the world.

As the author knows very well, no one is claiming that an unmarried person is less human, less loved, or less created by Hashem. That is a strawman so obvious that it is embarrassing and the argument exists solely to deflect scrutiny for being overly-picky and refusing to settle down. It reframes communal expectations as cruelty and responsibility as theological heresy, so that no one ever has to ask the uncomfortable but necessary question of why this person has failed to build a life.

Invoking “Ain Od Milvado” to erase obligation is not spiritual depth, it is avoidance dressed up as holiness. Maybe it’s the firefighter part or just another exile inspiring their avoidance. The fact that G-d is present in every moment does not mean every outcome is equally acceptable in His eyes. Hunger exists even though G-d is present, so does illness, so does failure. And so does self-imposed spinsterism.

Chassidus was never meant to tranquilize people into passivity; it was meant to empower action. A theology that teaches people to make peace with stagnation rather than correct it is not revealing Moshiach, it is delaying him. When spiritual language is used to anesthetize urgency, it ceases to be holy and becomes profane.

Here is the part that COL and the author do not want to confront: publishing this worldview in a communal outlet does not merely “affirm inherent worth,” it actively removes pressure, agency, and consequence. It rewards inaction and punishes self-examination. It offers people emotional relief instead of progress and reassurance instead of results. That is why this malevolence is popular and that is precisely why it is destructive. A community that tells its members that nothing about their circumstances needs fixing will get exactly that, nothing fixed. Platforming this ideology does not ease the shidduch crisis, it guarantees its continuation, while everyone involved congratulates themselves on their compassion.

Fourth: restore sexual polarity

Stop lying about men and women being interchangeable. Encourage masculine pursuit and feminine selectivity without apology. Reject the idea that leadership is oppression.

Polarity is not misogyny, rather it is the engine. When you destroy the engine and then complain that nothing moves, the problem is not so mysterious.

Fifth: make marriage aspirational again

Marriage needs status, marriage needs prestige, marriage needs to be framed as growth, not loss.

People do not aspire to things framed as loss. If marriage is marketed as a prison sentence, only desperate people will sign up, and then everyone will point to those desperate marriages as “proof” it is bad. That is not an argument, it is a self-fulfilling sabotage.

Sixth: reintroduce consequences and friction

End the idea that every relationship must feel easy. Normalize discomfort as part of bonding. Teach that commitment precedes certainty, not the other way around.

Most people are waiting for perfect clarity that will never arrive. They want the benefits of commitment without the risk of commitment. That is not wisdom, it is fear pushed by nimrods with degrees hanging on their walls.

This is not a call for kindness; it is a call for a reframe. This entire crisis persists because every corrective mechanism has been neutralized at once. Shame is called cruelty. Polarity is called oppression. Sacrifice is called trauma. Urgency is called anxiety. Theology and therapy speak are weaponized to erase obligation and incentives are inverted so that avoidance is rewarded and responsibility is punished. The result is not a mystery, it is math. A culture that wants families must encourage family-forming behavior in reality, not merely praise it in theory. Everything else is just aesthetics painted over decay, decoration on a structure that has already decided not to survive.