Do we need a dating app for smart, independent, successful, beautiful, partly public women who have everything in life but a man by their side? If we are to believe the smart, independent, successful, beautiful, partly public women on social media, then the answer is an enthusiastic “YES PLEASE”! Because on Tinder, Bumble, social media and other elite dating apps, the men who hang out there are all just “rags”.

At least, that’s what German entrepreneur Bianca Praetorius posted on LinkedIn and Instagram in plaintive fashion with a call to action for non-loser men:

Dear non-loser men, are there enough of you?

Are there enough strong and mature men who can not only talk the talk, but also walk the talk with integrity & emotional sovereignty?

If I were to do that – it would probably need a male co-founder, with a male network. Because I would have more than enough great women.

What do you think?

But what actually is a loser man, is Praetorius’ claim true that there are no non-loser men, or is it something else? And what solutions would there be?

Everyone A Loser Men?

First of all, Praetorius defines – because of the many inquiries – what constitutes a loser man:

1. A loser man cannot stand a woman at his side who is at least equally ambitious, successful, strong;
2. A loser man feels “emasculated” or ‘small” as soon as she surpasses him financially and/or success-wise;
3. A loser man is stuck in old role models and insists on his privileges. He consequently takes only two months or less parental leave and lets the woman take over all the mental load & disproportionate amount of care work and thinks this is normal;

And Praetorius is certainly right that these men exist. After all, I even dedicated a whole book to them: CYBERF*CKED (in bookstores in November) deals with how such rag men, whom I call toxic men in the book, harass and threaten women on the Internet and what are the reasons how they become such rags.

And yes, these men feel threatened by such successful women and adhere to a rather stone-age – pardon: conservative – worldview. But honestly, that’s only a small percentage of men. So where are the non-rag men? And there, the smart, independent, successful, beautiful, partly public women have a different theory, and it has to do with quality standards.

Zig-Zag

According to smart, independent, successful, beautiful women, men are not very picky when it comes to finding a woman for life. A-Quality men, the absolute non-loser men, have all options open. They can marry an A-quality woman, or they can marry a B-quality woman. A doctor marries the nurse, an entrepreneur his secretary. The B-quality man, on the other hand, does not choose the B-quality woman, but the C-quality woman. The civil servant the receptionist, the craftsman the fashion saleswoman.

Women, on the other hand, are choosy, they don’t marry down, that is, the A-quality woman marries the B-quality man, but only on at least the same level or higher. And that leads to a problem, as the following diagram shows.

What remains are the A-quality women and the D-quality men, i.e. on the one hand the smart, independent, successful, beautiful women, and on the other hand the absolute loser men with whom no one wants to have anything to do. And allegedly this diagram is also a proof for the life wisdom “Stupid fucks well”. But more about that another time.

Back to this cascade. It starts very early, and in some countries it’s already over for women over 25. They are either married or so-called leftover women. In China, for example, 27-year-old unmarried women are considered such. They have paid more attention to their education and career than to their relationship and family planning. And despite a surplus of 33 million more men in China – an unexpected result of decades of one-child policies – these women are no longer finding A-quality men.

At least, that’s what they say. So are there really no good men anymore? Let’s take a look at another continent: America.

All successful, smart, beautiful women?

New York relationship expert and dating coach Rachel Greenwald heard the same complaints over and over again from her female clients when she began her career two decades ago. There just weren’t any good men left, she said. Greenwald, on the other hand, learned about all the assholes, liars, weirdos and commitment-phobic men the women had gone on dates with. And with sympathy for her clients and this wealth of experience, she wrote her first book.

But her satisfaction with the book didn’t last long, because she encountered another phenomenon: more and more of her female friends and clients were frustrated because after the first one or two dates with a man, he had stopped calling them. The women had been ghosted by the men. This was despite the fact that the women thought the date would have been good and that something longer-term could have developed.

Greenwald had an idea: she had them give her the phone numbers of the last five men her clients had gone on dates with, so she could conduct so-called exit interviews with them. Just as the human resources department conducts a final interview with employees who leave a company in order to find the real reasons for the departure and thus have a chance to make improvements within the company, Greenwald conducted interviews with the men in the same way in order to find out the reasons why they did not want to go on any more dates with the women.

The more than 1,000 exit interviews resulted in the book Why He Didn’t Call You Back, in which Greenwald describes the process and her findings. It’s a treasure trove of what can go wrong on a date without realizing it. And the results were surprising to the women. Greenwald had asked each woman what she thought the reasons would have been that men would not have called her back. The women predominantly gave three reasons:

1. He wasn’t ready for a new relationship;
2. He was afraid of intimacy;
3. He noticed her vibes of lack of readiness for a relationship and therefore would not have called her again;

All three reasons are at the same time ones where the woman has no control to improve anything about the situation. But as it turned out, the real reasons lay somewhere else entirely, with only 15 percent of the women getting it right. In other words, the women had no idea what had gone wrong here.

Thanks to the interviews, ten patterns of women’s behavior that the men had described led them to break off contact with the woman stood out for Greenwald. These were patterns of behavior that, as Greenwald points out, had turned men off at this early stage of getting to know each other. And in the interviews, Greenwald was struck by how nice the men were. For the most part, they had been sincere and honestly interested in a long-term relationship. Greenwald learned just the opposite of what the women had told her: here they were, all the good ones, all the non-rag men. More than a thousand of them.

But which types of women did the men find so irritating or uninteresting that they no longer invited them? Let’s pick out two that come into question for the question raised by Bianca Praetorius.

The number 1 type: the so-called Boss Lady.

Men had nothing at all negative to say about these women. They were often very impressed by them, found them inspiring. But whatever the men said prevented further dating. “It felt more like a business lunch than a date,” said one. “I would have hired her on the spot,” said another, but just not married her. And something like, “Her attitude was ‘This is how it’s done’ instead of ‘I think we could do it this way, but I’d like your opinion.’” Or one man said, “I experience enough aggression against me during the day at work, I don’t need that at home then, too.“

In other words, these smart, independent, successful, beautiful women behaved toward men in their private lives as they did in their professional lives. They could not switch, they considered men as a project to work on, with intermediate goals and a schedule. Provided, by the way, she could squeeze in time for him in her busy life. Too often, work was more important than working on the relationship.

With the mostly also financial success of a Boss Lady, it is not surprising that she also treats herself. Expensive clothes, jewelry, handbag and great car.

The number 4 type was the Park Avenue Princess. This one dropped brand names without further ado, flashed her preciosities, and mentioned her short trips to expensive metropolises for shopping on the side.

For the man, the main signal here was not that she was financially secure and independent, but: I can’t or won’t afford her. The Park Avenue Princess, with her display of possessions, appeared to men as too money- and self-centered, as difficult to please, and as someone who could not enjoy the simple things.

If we compare this with the reasons the women gave at the very beginning why the men had stopped calling and inviting them, we realize how much off the mark the women’s assessment of the men is. Not just the women, by the way. The men, too. Because according to Greenwald, she was also convinced by her female clients that they had been judged too harshly by the men. But a first date is very short, and thanks to the Internet, the next woman is just a click or swipe away. And if the first few minutes or the first dinner too often seem to confirm certain stereotypes, men move on. Without the woman having the slightest idea what exactly had happened. And sometimes really through no fault of their own.

Dating App to Find Non-Loser Men

Bianca Praetorius ließ sich, angespornt vom überwältigenden Feedback der vielen klugen, unabhängigen, erfolgreichen, wunderschönen, teils in der Öffentlichkeit stehenden Frauen zum Launch einer Dating-App überreden. Cherrish heißt sie, und Interessierte können sich bereits in eine Warteliste eintragen lassen.

Bianca Praetorius, spurred on by the overwhelming feedback from the many smart, independent, successful, beautiful women, was persuaded to launch a dating app. It’s called Cherrish, and those interested can already sign up for a waiting list.

Nothing more specific is yet known about the app, nor about the selection criteria that on the one hand distinguishes losers from non-loser men, but also how smart, independent, successful, beautiful women, are defined.

Because one thing Rachel Greenwald already meant: whenever a woman told her that her friends would congratulate her on her fashion and appearance, she not only listened more closely, but even more so had the wardrobe shown to her. After all, what women found fashionable and attractive, often killed the romance in men.

So what women saw as smart, independent, successful, beautiful in women, men saw quite differently: as cold, controlling, too argumentative, not feminine enough, and not caring enough.

For Bianca Praetorius, Cherrish and their search for non-loser men, this means first and foremost: in order to succeed, one must not only understand men and get away from blaming the male gender alone for women’s failures and try to fix them. These supposedly so smart, independent, successful, beautiful women, should look inside themselves and ask themselves the honest question of whether they have even understood why they are obviously not behaving very smartly and successfully in relationships and in their search for relationships, and how they are really perceived by men. And that is often completely contrary to how other women perceive them.

Only then can a dialogue and a relationship at eye level begin. And that starts with women no longer talking about the loser man.

Final call

There would be much much more to say about this. That’s why I’m working on a little book called “Are Men Losers?” where I will go into more detail on this subject. Who has examples and hints for me, please send me an email or contact form.