"She's going to be stuck taking care of you when you're old and feeble, while I'll still be able-bodied and virile..." Of course, most women getting involved with an older man understand this, are warned about it, and they accept it as part of the deal.
This is bad reasoning, and I've heard it a lot. Not only because it makes less sense for me as I've been in better health than most (may God grant that to continue, but it may not, who knows), but mostly because it's just an excuse to fear something, claim some anxiety or paranoia and is based on very little. There's almost as good a chance, certainly depending on the person, that the woman will have a bad health outcome. And one should
always weight what is known greater than what is unknown, since you get direct instant benefits (or not) from the current reality. As a result, the young woman who chooses the older man does it rationally of course because she knows that he has the goods. And he chooses her because she has what men value, youth and fertility. It's very simple.
Do these women think they're going to shame men into wanting them?
They do and they don't; they mostly just do it because it's a shit hits the wall thing, they just throw it and hope. Why? They don't have power or any other tactic to try. Yes, it's stupid and insecure, which is the point here by you and me.
An allowance is even funnier the more you look into it. What are you getting paid for? Existing?
Yes, this is how bad feminism and the M:F ratio, money printing and simping has gotten.
This is why people need to look at relationships pragmatically, instead of from a perspective of finding a soul mate. It's an investment. You have a wife, is she respectful? Having sex with you? Gave you children that looked like you? If you received such things then it was a good investment, even if it ends up going sour. Sometimes you might even choose to ignore certain things for the greater good.
Totally. It's also why of course St. Paisios (Chrysostom said the same) generally says to choose a better person over wife who is prettier. Everyone actually knows that, and that's the rub, but it's much harder for men to do because of our primary values in women, which women don't have as a corollary. In modernity, though, since women have baseline resources or guarantees, they take on the masculine and start to try to require looks in a man, outsized to their nature. Not practical, and not with humility in that they lose most of their looks value very early; only have a short window so you have to give that to a man in order for him to feel good about the life sponsorship/provisioning, protection.
All of this is to again say that once you take women out of youthful ages, marriage makes no sense practically for anyone. That's the point of the thread, really, when this all is normalized it sabotages women (out of a family and fulfillment) and men in that they deal with older, jaded, lower value scammers and feel trapped by many things, including bad behavior, less sex drive, less fertility, and a legal entrapment as the final boss.
Put simply, freedom is a tricky concept for all humans especially in a society, and especially for women. Not restricting them with social norms, religion, and expectations that are good for families, husbands, and children does a disservice to everyone and limits the number and health of children, to boot.