This is correct. Women when they are young have a huge amount of power over their same-age male peers. They are desirable rather than disposable and have just enormous sexual and social control over the spaces they inhabit. They let that go to their heads and believe it does and will hold forever.

But it doesn’t, even though many still act as if it is eternal as they age. However, as men get older and their libido decreases a little — and they gain some wealth and prestige — they learn to automatically discard any woman who sees herself as the prize just because she has a nice smile and a functional vagina. That’s going to be a bad relationship and the man knows it. That delusional woman who still perceives herself as the catch beyond age 28 or so is doomed to cycle through men who realize how horrid she is until she’s an old cat lady.

I’m not on the dating market but if I were I’d be the catch now. And some women never get used to that transition due to the vast sociosexual power they held in their late teens and twenties. They never recover from the loss of de facto power. So in some ways it’s good that men aren’t raised to believe they are some unfathomably great prize. It makes them a lot less entitled.

I’ve carried a pocketknife since I was eight years old.