He was looking for a woman with particular attributes, hopefully a widow of a man killed in the struggle against Israel, without children, between 25 and 30, from southern Gaza. Her requirement was no less important: She was looking for a married man.
.. She is beautiful and a widow of a martyr at the same time,” Mr. Abu Mustafa said, using the word preferred by Palestinians for a killed fighter, often a terrorist to Israelis. She is the second of his two wives.
“When I get wealthy, I will marry the third wife.”
.. Some 1,400 men have been killed in the three wars with Israel since 2008, leaving many widows who would like to remarry. Tradition, however, can make it difficult for them to wed single men.
.. said he did wish to give “dignity” to a widow.
.. more than half the marriage requests involved men seeking a second or third wife (though not yet a fourth).
.. “In most cases the husband’s family pressures the woman to marry the brother in law to control her life and seize any financial aid she receives.”
.. if the widow’s husband is affiliated with a political party, it might intervene and pressure the woman to marry a man from the same group, and she will often agree because she is struggling financially and the group will pay her a salary.
.. “This matchmaking service is positive because it encourages these women to choose the potential husband without fear and pressure in this religious and patriarchal society,” Ms. Owda said.
.. Lina Zein, 25, a single woman from Gaza City, explaining that Wesal felt too transactional in its approach to arranging weddings. “It limits my ambitions in marriage to someone’s income.” .
.. “Polygamy has hit high rates in Gaza over the few past years, seemingly due to an increase in people’s religious inclination, especially after Hamas took power in 2007,”
.. Hamas itself has been trying to encourage marriage by paying the equivalent of $1,500 to any male who memorizes the Quran
.. “We also fight old traditions that say divorced women should not get married.”
.. while Mr. Sheikha is in favor of more options for women in the selection of a spouse, he is not a strong supporter of the choice to remain single. In addition to helping widows and the divorced find husbands, he said he hoped the site would also address “an increase in the number of spinsters in their 20s and 30s. The Arabic proverb says living in the shadow of a man is better than living in the shadow of a wall, which means that having a husband is better than staying unmarried.”
I mention that the Internet overflows with comments about how sexy he is, to which Dinklage drolly replies, “Hey, where were they when I was in high school? Too late, ladies.”
THE 4-foot-5 Dinklage has said his condition, short limbs caused by a genetic mutation, made for a “tricky” adolescence, growing up in Brookside, N.J., the son of an insurance salesman and music teacher, and going to a Catholic prep school full of jocks.
.. I mention that the Internet overflows with comments about how sexy he is, to which Dinklage drolly replies, “Hey, where were they when I was in high school? Too late, ladies.”
Women Who Make First Move in Online Dating Are Rewarded, Study Finds
It found that women who sent the first message were 2.5 times more likely to receive a response than men who did the same. And the men the women contacted were more “attractive,” as determined by how other users rate the men’s profiles for both looks and content.
.. OkCupid, which said it has 1.5 men for every woman on the site, said both men and women are aspirational in whom they approach — men send messages to women 17 percentage points more “attractive” than themselves, while women send messages to men 10 percentage points higher. So a woman who simply sifts through her inbox is most likely fielding entreaties from men less attractive than she is, while she’s most likely to get a response if she contacts a more attractive man.
.. About 12 percent of first messages men send turn into a date, while 30 percent of women’s first messages end up in a date, the site said.
.. Bumble requires women to flip the presumption that men are the dating aggressors. After a man and a woman indicate mutual interest in each other’s profiles, they’re both notified that there has been a match — but only women can send the first message. That makes women more confident and empowered, while the men are more flattered and relaxed, Ms. Wolfe said.
A Statistical Argument for Not Being Nervous on First Dates
When you’re attracted to someone, you overanalyze everything you say, spend extra time trying to look attractive, etc. But if your mutual attraction is really statistically significant and large enough to matter, it should emerge regardless of the exact circumstances of a single evening. If the shirt you wear can fundamentally alter whether someone is attracted to you, you probably shouldn’t be life partners.
.. I think there’s even an argument for being deliberately unattractive to your date, on the grounds that if they still like you, they must really like you. Imagine a cliched rom-com disaster [3]: you vomit on your date. This isn’t sexy. On the other hand, someone who finds you attractive after that is much more likely to still find you attractive when you’re puking during pregnancy or chemotherapy [4]. This is somewhat analogous to using a statistical test that makes very weak assumptions (here’s one example): if the test yields positive results, you can have high confidence they’re real.