I don't think so. I mean, that is a change that has occurred, but I think the more important change was women's liberation. Society used to enforce that women could not attain social status or sustain their own quality of life except via a husband. Now that women can have careers and operate independently in society, they have significantly reduced pressure to couple and consequently tend only to do so on their own terms.

This is good if you believe in egalitarianism, as I do, but it does have consequences. It would seem, though I'm not sure to what extent available data backs this up, that women will tend to couple only with a relatively small percentage of men, and without societal pressure to behave otherwise, are either willing to share them or simply not couple at all.

Unfortunately for them men who aren't in that category, their hormonal drive to mate is significantly stronger, and our culture still ostracizes and humiliates men who are unsuccessful with women. The upshot of which seems to be that there are an increasing number of sexually frustrated young men in society, and they are held in very low regard because of it, which one has to imagine is a very dangerous and destabilizing trend.

> Society used to enforce that women could not attain social status ... except via a husband.

That is such as 21th century culture perspective when viewing history. Take any litterateur work of art and reduce all the women in it down to their husband and what you get is nothing like what is described. The classic definition from 19th century when we read about what they viewed as the most respectable upstanding woman of highest degree usually refereed to family attributes such as class, titles, blood line, heritage, honor, grace, and wealth. A husband and his family would add to that equation but social status would still combine the attributes of both families. A woman from a low class that married up was still seen as coming from a low class family, and I see this as a common trope in many old dramas. The common scene is that the new wife joins the other women in that social class and she instantly get put at the bottom of the social status because of her heritage regardless of her husband.

It could still be the egalitarianism event after the second world war when women got equal rights in regard to work, but then the data is not that clear cut. Sweden have had equal work force of both women and men for decades now but the trend of lower marriage rates, increased loneliness, increased disproportional amount of childless men, has not topped off and is still worsening. The question is why it then hasn't stopped when equal amount of both women and men are working and sustaining their own quality of life. Is it just culture moving slow or is it possible that something else is causing the change?

It's just perceived selection pool, mostly consisting of guys they despise and use for feeling better about themselves and desirable (they will tell you openly once they are comfortable with you they would prefer those guys not to exist at all), or momentarily top guys that are difficult to reach even for the prettiest/smartest of them, and where there is a literally brutal competition between them.

If you are one of those top guys, you have to invent elaborate schemes how to reject a female so that she thinks it was her decision and leaves you alone ("how much nice/beta do I have to go until I start repulsing her?"), or just state/enforce expectations you have with them, maybe being shocked by mind-blowing admission that they would be willing to share you with other women only if you kept them as well.

The problem of this is that it leaves females that are used to one-time attention from a top guy thinking that's their attractiveness level for the rest of their life and anyone marrying them walks straight into hell of "being never enough". So overall for society enforced monogamy might be way better than what we have now, i.e. most females flocking to top guys and using the rest for money, validation or easy life until their attractiveness fades away and they become broken shelves of persons.

But hey, they front-loaded their life, trading exciting time in their prime for desolation of middle-to-older age. Just please don't force men to support them with taxes once they fall through the bottom. Those men didn't study/work hard to trade their prime years for supporting women that didn't give them time of day when they still were interested in them. That's not fair either; no wonder many of those men go for pathetic sex dolls and VR porn, or just leave society completely.

I’m not judging but this reads, to me, like you’re bitter. The majority of men and women may pursue mates based on superficial qualities but there are plenty who do not.

I separated three years ago, divorced recently and met someone a month after deciding to date. I used Bumble. It was easy. She’s beautiful, smart (smarter than me), kind, honest, athletic, hard working, loving and a wonderful mother to her 10 Y.O.

I live well below my means and only after commiting to a relationship did I realize just how poor she thought I was. My advice to you is that any women who would pursue a man for his looks and money isn’t worth your time. If you can’t find what you’re looking for you either need to work on your self or you need to look somewhere else.

Again, I’m not judging but the idea that enforced monogamy is better for society leads me to believe that you’re the problem.