During the just-concluded Spring Festival holiday, I believe that many young people have experienced the torture of being "urged to get married" once a year. We have seen many such reports, fierce young people fighting relatives and friends for this, anxious young people can't wait to go on blind dates once a day, and even have the service of renting boyfriends and girlfriends for the bold and active to choose, all of which are vivid portrayals of age anxiety and marriage pressure in our society. Among them, the pressure on women is often more intense, and the "cost" of not getting married in the mouths of elders is often described as more intense. But on the other hand, according to the data of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the mainland marriage registration data in 2021 hit a new low since 1986, and the trend of continuing to decrease in 2022 has just passed, and the decreasing number of first marriages and the increasingly delayed age of first marriage, rather than the "men should marry, women should marry" as the elders say, is the universal reality in society. No one resists a happy life, but there is indeed more confusion about marriage and love.
This article is about a group of professional women with confusion and a marriage coach who tries to solve the puzzle. The former are all independent women of the new era, they have their own careers, independent lives, and are also plagued by marriage anxiety, and the latter is another contemporary elite, who comes from a professional background and tries to summarize the "methodology" about marriage, and then set goals and implement them resolutely. Is there really a methodology for marriage? We don't judge right or wrong, but in the marriage coach's interactions with her students, we do see a variety of realities.
Written by丨Chen Xiaoyan Editor丨Zhang Rui Produced丨Tencent News Gu Yu Studio
One
Juno is an internet media personality based in Shanghai. At the age of 27, she felt a subtle change in the magnetic field around her: "Everything in society is telling you that the dividend period is about to pass, the market value of marriage will plunge, and you have to sell yourself before the age of 30." ”
On social platforms, a female leader of an advertising company in her 30s confessed: "It is a lie to say that (single) is not anxious. A male friend of the same age who has a successful career clearly told her that considering the fertility problem, if it is not for the large gap in conditions, if it is not for the large gap in conditions, she can choose a girl in her twenties, and definitely not a mature girl over thirty.
© Visual China
Juno understands why age anxiety still works for women today. The problems they face are more complex than previous generations. In the book "Starting at the Limit", Japanese writer Ryomi Suzuki writes:
"Maybe our generation is faced with the choice of 'be the president or the president's wife', and the weight of the two options is exactly the same, it feels as if there is drama on both sides, and both people want to be, so they hesitate in the cracks... Some women still expect the man to ask 'please date me', otherwise they will fidget, but they are rising step by step at work and do not put men in their eyes. They wear the afterscent of the ideology of romantic love, carry the scars of male power, hold the dignity handed over to them by the older generation, and the freedom to determine their own value, but they are also reluctant to abandon, so they have to run around and be at a loss. "
Probably no woman likes to reveal her marriage anxiety. No matter which set of scripts is old or new, it is an unwelcome twisting gesture. In the eyes of the older generation, not being able to marry represents a woman's failure; In the eyes of the new era, it was almost a betrayal of the independent women's camp.
This explains the anxiety of the female leader in front of her, which attracted an angry response from a female netizen:
"I wonder why so many girls still don't stand up in 2022?"
"Still worried about whether to marry or not, this kind of problem can only be said to be trapped in this pattern for a lifetime."
Juno had a similar contradiction: "It's really a shame to say that a blogger who advocates women's independence and advocates women's inner awakening is still fooled by marriage agencies." ”
At first, Juno just tried to sign up for an account with a dating app, and soon received a call from customer service asking her to go to an offline marriage agency store. She is aware of this routine and reminds herself that it is okay to see, but don't spend money.
© Visual China
In a small, well-decorated room, Juno filled out a personality test form and chatted with a relationship counselor. The atmosphere is warm and casual, and the other party behaves like a friend, sorry for her: "Looks, figure, temperament are all good, but it's a pity that it's age (older)." Then he turned up a 2020 mobile phone chat record, and the man in the dialog box rejected a 90-year-old woman: "Too old, not all 30 years old." ”
"You're 27, and there's still room for choice." The marriage consultant changed the conversation and introduced the high-quality male members in the institution: high income, good looks, prestigious school education, height above 175. The most important thing is that male members have a strong intention to get married, otherwise they would not spend tens of thousands to find a partner.
When he came out of the institution, it was already dark, and Juno only felt his mind drowsy. Within hours of her sanity being dismantled, she handed over thirty thousand dollars while ignoring an obvious bug. "There are really such high-quality men, who have long been robbed, and they will not circulate in the marriage market." She later realized that this was a market with a serious imbalance between supply and demand, "there are too few high-quality men, and too many high-quality older leftover women." ”
Meeting with two male members introduced by the organization, Juno noticed an anomaly. Obviously they had a good chat when they met, and the red lady also gave feedback that the man had a good impression of Juno. But after going back, the other party either does not return to WeChat, with a cold tone, or directly plays missing.
She experienced a period of self-doubt. Later, a netizen told her that some marriage companies will specially hire a good man as a marriage trust, blind date once, and give a fee of one or two thousand yuan. The resume and income range of the famous school on the data are true, except that they are not single.
Juno found a group of 300 activists. The number of rights defenders is increasing at a double-digit rate every day. 70% are urban professional women like her, from several well-known domestic marriage platforms, and the problems encountered are generally similar. A 30-year-old Beijing female group friend found an institution to refund the money, but was ridiculed in person: "At such an age, what conditions do you have no points?" ”
Juno eventually got back 80 percent of the refund. On the day she went to the agency to refund the money, she met another group of new female customers, with exquisite makeup, well-dressed, and brand-name bags. Another stubble of leeks.
This turmoil made Juno start thinking about the specific source of anxiety. During that time, she had just left an Internet company to become a cultural vlogger, her income became unstable, and she "subconsciously wanted to use marriage to cover up survival problems." To stay in a city like Shanghai, it is not realistic for her to rely on her own efforts. Marriage offered a shortcut, and she was expecting her partner to "earn three and a half million yuan a year and have a house in Shanghai." "This subtle attachment psychology is a remnant of the love script of the old era.
Two
But for some people, getting married shouldn't be difficult. "Doing it according to the book is like implementing an investment strategy, buying an index fixed investment for a long time, and about 5-8% annualized income can be achieved."
After the 70s, Xian Wenmin is a marriage coach who has been in the industry for more than five years. It has served more than 500 people. Most of her trainees are from first-tier cities, with an average age of 35 years old. 1/3 of consultants earn more than one million a year.
Fresh Wenmin © Fresh Wen Min
She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University. Before switching careers to become a marriage coach, she had more than a decade of Internet experience. Her initial methodology came from a summary of her personal practice – transferring the ability to work to marriage.
Initially, most of her trainees were 30+ working women with strong marriage goals and high executive skills. For such students, Wen Min has launched a set of interlocking systems:
"During the search for someone you like, help you self-package, identify your personal brand and target market; Implement more effective outreach and expand the dating base; And regularly review the performance and evaluate the implementation results. After the appearance of a romantic partner, through strict dating rules, ensure that the relationship is on the road to marriage. ”
She will set behavioral requirements and assign tasks to some trainees. Once the planning begins, no matter how urgent the itinerary and things, it is best to dedicate 10 minutes a day to the wedding plan. Content includes, but is not limited to:
Practice makeup, organize blind date matches/participate in group activities or blind dates once a week / ask a friend to help you introduce boys, or go to other departments to meet new people...
Fate is described by her as a probabilistic event: out of 10 people, there is no suitable object, there may be in 100, there is absolutely in 1000, and there is more than one.
"Brushing people" has become a corresponding strategy. Her basic requirement for each student is to meet at least one person a week and then get a 10:9 "repurchase" (meaning, 10 people are met, 9 people are willing to meet a second time).
Under normal circumstances, it is necessary to meet more than twenty people of the opposite sex to "brush out" the marriage partner you want. The fastest student, with a record of 14 people. Some trainees spent months meeting more than 100 men to establish a relationship.
Wen Min's friend commented, "This is using marketing to get married."
It sounds strange, but at the age of thirty-four, Wen Min was the first practitioner of this method. It took her a year to marry herself off.
© Visual China
Wen Min once described herself as a professional woman with a direct personality and emotional intelligence. At that time, Wen Min was single, the head of an Internet company, with a team of more than a dozen people. The leaders and colleagues around her are younger than her. She loves outdoor activities such as climbing and hiking, which is a natural opportunity to come into contact with the opposite sex. Climbing the mountain together on weekends, twenty people, except her, the remaining nineteen were all men. After walking around, no one sent her a signal beyond friendship. "Probably all my thoughts are on the road."
In order to complete the plan within a year, she almost took the posture of breaking the cauldron, "concentrating resources, stuck in this matter, it is more important than my work." Wen Min changed his job position and replaced the dozen or so regular employees he brought with him with three interns. The leader's face was a little annoyed. Wen Min could only comfort the other party: "I'll get married first, and come back to work hard after getting married." ”
"My personality is to do what I want." Wen Min registered a dozen or twenty blind date websites in one go, and selected three or four of them that were the most commonly used.
The working method can be migrated to the finder. She works in an Internet company, and one of the important work contents is to assess traffic, what kind of titles and pictures can bring clicks, and what kind of information is the easiest to drain. In the same way, the photos on the blind date profile, Wen Min will put four or five, and the one with the lowest click rate will be replaced, "eliminated at the end". Self-introduction can borrow from "ad copywriting strategy", which requires skillful packaging. A friend saw her profile and reminded her: "You can't let boys know that you like high-intensity exercise, you have to climb a snowy mountain once a year, and no one will marry you." Wen Min took this opinion, but she did not intend to hide it. In order to position the image as a more suitable object for marriage, she changed to a softer expression: she likes to walk in the mountains on weekends and take pictures of flowers and plants.
This is exactly what characterizes this type of professional women, who are not good at dealing with feelings, but definitely good at working methodology.
Later, an HR from a large factory became a student of Wen Min. She told Wen Min that she was too busy with work and lacked channels to meet the opposite sex.
Wen Min asked about the trainees' work and suggested that she start with the side. When you enter a large factory, you are in the midst of high-quality resources. In the end, the big factory trainees decided to first establish a single group within the company.
Resource development is the working mode of students' familiarity. She leads the company's single group to socialize with other large factories, universities, and famous enterprises. She is good at management, and also found two single interns to assist with miscellaneous and group management operations.
As a group leader, every time she joins other single groups, she can get personal introductions from other group owners. There is an endless stream of people who come to add her, and they will automatically report personal information.
From hundreds of people of the opposite sex, she selected more than 50 people to meet. The more people she met, the clearer she became of her needs. It doesn't matter if the income is not equal, "the money of the big factory people is earned by working overtime without sleep." Both of them are 996, how can they have time to live together? Eventually, she married an alumnus working in a state-owned enterprise.
Going back to Wen Min's own story, in 2015, after she set her goal of getting married, seeing at least one person a week became the indicator she set for herself, and Wen Min often appeared in a café in Wudaokou, Beijing, every time after work. On the other side of the table are the blind dates she has made appointments through various platforms.
Wen Min couldn't accept machismo. More than a decade ago, this alone excluded almost all the opposite sex around him. She likes science and engineering boys with strong professional skills, and "knows in her heart who 'is' and who is 'not'".
Six or seven months later, after meeting more than sixty men in a row, Wen Min met her current husband, a post-70s engineer, who loves photography and looks at her aesthetic point. Around the Spring Festival, the two received marriage licenses, a month before Wen Min's planned deadline.
Three
A common impression is that the older and better women are, the harder it is for them to get married. After more than five years as a marriage coach, Wen Min has found that the difficulty is not age or wealth background, and the reasons behind it are often hidden and complex.
Among Wen Min's clients is a 40-year-old CEO. Her request for her significant other sounds more like finding a strategic partner: a unicorn entrepreneur or an important partner with a valuation of at least $1 billion.
The contradiction is not in the men who do not meet the standards, she sent Wen Min a photo, and the CEOs sitting around the table, "The money is enough, but it's not my type." ”
She is a girl who is looking forward to sweet love at heart, and likes beautiful and white boyish men. Both of these points are indispensable.
Wen Min was puzzled, why did he have to die so wealth when he was obviously not short of money? After many times of communication, she found that this was the fear of the client's native family. The father is not capable, but he likes to make risky investments, which makes the family's finances a lot of holes. From childhood to adulthood, her mother whispered in her ear every day that her husband was not contending, telling her to find a husband with good conditions in the future. She was afraid to repeat her mother's fate. This fear is reinforced by many stories of women being exploited and exploited in marriage.
The scarcity from an early age inspired her determination to make money beyond ordinary people. Material achievements shape her self-confidence and reinforce her fears," Wen Min said, "and some of the things we lack in our hearts are unlikely to be filled by others by taking them." ”
A 30-year-old customer from a famous company hopes to find a "social elite" who is more capable than himself. But whether it is entrepreneurs or management within the system, all types of men have seen it all over again, but they have not been able to talk about the spark.
The unexpected love experience came from a literary youth five years younger than her. But rational considerations made her stop, her brother was very sweet in love, and marriage was hanging.
During the weekly contact, Wen Min slowly observed the trainee's repressed self. Her state is always tense. The work pressure is high, and the elders in the family are sick again, and they are still waiting to see the day when she gets married with their own eyes.
Wen Min encouraged her and gave the relationship three months. "I'll give you a vacation, don't care if you get married or not, you urgently need to rest now, fall in love, three months will not get in the way."
When they met again, the professional clothes that the trainees often wore were changed to hoodies and sneakers, and the whole person looked young and relaxed. Her boyfriend pulled her to play ball, watch movies, and the time spent at home after work was replaced by more entertainment. Under the epidemic, both parents hope that their children in other places can take care of each other, which has become an opportunity for the two to get married. Some time ago, Wen Min received wedding photos from trainees.
© Visual China
A trainee working in an administrative agency approached Wen Min and demanded that his marriage partner be at least as good as her ex-husband: handsome, emotionally intelligent, graduated from a prestigious school, and had development prospects in the workplace.
After the blow of divorce and the pressure of work, the woman in front of her is a little fat, but she can still see her beautiful facial features. Perhaps out of an inferiority complex about the change in her figure, she was a little repulsed by Wen Min's proposal of "brushing people" and "winning the repurchase". She likes to mix with online interest groups and hang out frequently with a boy who is 7 years younger than herself. Two people eat together on weekends, attend hobby classes, and wander the streets. But the trainees never regarded him as a serious person: "How can there be such a person, you say? Grow so fat, actually do not have any idea of losing weight, earn thousands of dollars a month, not inferiority at all, wear so ugly, I still feel very good. ”
The boy rightfully "lay flat", confusing the trainees. But after combing, Wen Min found that this is also the reason why the two get along happily. Boys are always enthusiastic about doing things they like, but there is no financial reward. Whether it's music, dubbing, games, it's all professional players. They share common interests, and with boys, the student's body anxiety, and self-condemnation of not being motivated will disappear temporarily.
But when Wen Min suggested to her, try it together. The trainee refused again, and she oscillated between her goal and feelings about choosing a mate. Wen Min gave her a card game of self-exploration. The student's inner demons, "is the education of her parents, as well as the social environment, all require her to go up, go up, and become a person of more social value." The trainee told Wen Min that her parents would continue to learn foreign languages every day after they retired. She also had a social elite ex-boyfriend who had a good career, and would say when she was on a variety show: "Watch these wasted time, why not do something worthwhile." ”
But she herself lacks intrinsic motivation. Under the influence of the external environment, she "intermittently struggled, periodically lay flat" and felt frustrated by such a self. She attacked herself: lazy, unmotivated, unable to lose weight. Although there is a stable job with a decent income, it has never created any social value.
"The appearance of this boy made her reconcile with herself," Wen Min explained, "She realized that she longed for this kind of life, but intellectually did not accept it." Someone gave her a model of self-acceptance. The good family situation of both parties also gives "lying flat" a realistic basis. The boy who was initially used for the task eventually became the client's husband.
© Visual China
In front of marriage, everyone's needs are arranged in a very different order, as a marriage coach, what Wen Min can do is to observe from the sidelines and analyze what is most important to customers. Marrying well is the appeal of all female customers. But Wen Min wants to help girls break down those unrealistic imaginations about marriage:
Not all men will hand over financial power, and the complexity of people determines that marriage is by no means a single model of "can't do XXX or don't love me";
From time to time, Wen Min will meet some girls with ordinary conditions who hope to achieve a large leap of class through marriage. When encountering such customers, Wen Min will politely refuse. 'The overbearing president falls in love with me', this probability is similar to winning the lottery jackpot. ”
4. What kind of marriage do contemporary urban women need?
In the four years of working as a marriage coach, Wen Min discovered an interesting phenomenon. A third of her students chose sibling love. In 2021, the proportion of sibling love among couples who entered the marriage hall with her help was as high as 70%.
This phenomenon is not difficult to understand. For some financially independent working women, traditional machismo, "popular men" who always want to educate girls, or boys who are too "daddy" have long been excluded from marriage.
And the love experience brought by my brother is brand new. A girl from a big factory gave her boyfriend a cultural shirt issued by the company. The boy turned his head and wore it into the company, revealing a conspicuous LOGO, expecting others to ask, and introducing his girlfriend. Even if you are surpassed, you can be proud of your partner from the bottom of your heart. Women use this to break through the barriers of traditional gender and cultural positioning in relationships, and they enjoy the feeling of being recognized and worshiped just like men.
Of course, not all relationships are risk-free. In sibling love, there will be "a small amount of bloody incidents", such as one party approaching the other party for money. There are also students who have some concerns, they are 30 years old, but their younger brother has just graduated for a year or two, and he is not in a hurry to get married.
"Some risks are obvious, so learn to manage relationships." Wen Min said. In her opinion, most urban independent women are mature, they can take responsibility for their choices, predict risks in advance, and take corresponding self-protection measures.
"If you know it will be thunderous and rainy, you should bring an umbrella with you", instead of rushing into marriage in a romanticized longing for marriage.
Although some girls recognize Wen Min's methodology, they are always hesitant, "using a purpose-oriented approach in matters involving feelings... I worry that I will have a pimple buried in my heart for the rest of my life after achieving my goal."
© Visual China
Wen Min talked about a female student who had read many Southeast Asian economic books that she loved in order to have a common topic with her favorite man. Some customers questioned, "Do you still need to work so hard?" "This is too 'scheming', right?"
Wen Min is not without similar concerns, "(If I engage in this business), my husband knows that I used these methods to marry him, and I lost my marriage." ”
To her surprise, after her husband found out, he felt happy, "What's not to be happy about being pursued by others?" ”
Once, her husband sent her an article about "The Trick of Flirting," and he told Wen Min that you are different from the person who wrote this.
To many people, deliberate practice seems to deviate from the original purpose of romantic love. Love should come from the heart, and partners are born to fit. "But how can people be born to fit?" The more cases he came into contact with, the more Wen Min believed this.
Throughout the conversation, the marriage coach exudes softness from time to time, making the word "technique" seem thin and inaccurate.
"Although I often use the word 'take', all techniques, if not based on 'sincerity', will not last long, marriage is a lifetime, and nothing can cheat time." Wen Min added. These things that transcend the technical level cannot be taught or learned, but can only be understood through one's own experience, and the same is true of one's own marriage.
Wen Min loves trail running. In one race, the sun was setting and she was running in the drizzle on a dimly lit mountain road, riveting her strength to enter the top ten. At the finish line, I found myself eleventh. Wen Min sat on the side of the road in frustration, saw her husband's call, only briefly explained a few words, and hurriedly hung up the phone. Comfort seems superfluous at this time. But not long after, her husband's phone came again, reminding her to see the speed of one CP point (punch point) for the eighth runner. Wen Min found that the data was wrong, and in the last ten kilometers, the data showed that the speed of the female athlete even exceeded that of the men's champion.
Wen Min fed back this abnormal data to the organizing committee, and after confirmation, the organizing committee re-ranked according to the results, and Wen Min finally squeezed into the tenth place, which was her best result.
After the excitement, she reacted that her husband did not like running, did not understand the format of trail running, and did not know how to segment and timing. But that time, he checked all the results of the ten contestants in front of his wife, and even found flaws that other professionals overlooked. Wen Min understood that her husband had either secretly calculated her pace in private or tracked her performance online the entire time.
Wen Min, who is difficult to be impressed by romantic details such as tying a shoelace, sending a bag, or sending an umbrella on a rainy day, only remembers this incident well.
© Visual China
Sincerity is mutual. Her husband loves to walk with her and enjoy time alone. In the past, Wen Min often shunned this too inefficient pastime, she needed to run, and there were many races waiting for her to participate. But starting this year, any time, as long as there is no work, she will put down what she is doing and accompany him for a walk.
One night, two people walked hand in hand through the park. My husband suddenly asked her, is it boring to walk with me? Wen Min pointed to the pitch-black path that had just walked: "Look, if this road is taken by one person, it is a horror movie." Two people walking, it is a romance movie. In the darkness where he couldn't see the other party's expression clearly, Wen Sensitive could feel it, and the smile lines on her husband's face spread in the air.
◦ The head image is from Visual China.
Copyright statement: The content produced by Tencent News shall not be copied and reproduced without authorization, otherwise legal responsibility will be pursued.