I read this reader comment today, it was both interesting and somewhat pathetic at the same time. I imagine that this guy’s experience is a lot more common than one would think except most men are probably too reluctant to expose themselves in such a way. Take a look. Tell me what you think:::
“Love sucks.”
“I’m one of those 40 something guys trying to meet a 30 something girl that the author is talking about.
I’m a 43 year old single male who has never been married and never had kids but this isn’t by my own choice – I’ve just never had any luck with women because they were too busy looking past me trying to find something better. I literally feel this way most of the time at parties and bars and clubs when I walk into a room as though I were invisible to the women present.
I’m a degreed engineer and a licensed pilot who makes a good living but I’ve never been clever with the pickup lines or the dance moves and I’m no male model so I’ve really never had a lot of luck in picking up women or in dating. When other guys were partying in high school and college – I was too busy working or studying and my luck with women as the author accurately describes was actually much worse when I was younger in my 20′s and 30′s anyways.
My entire life, 99.99% of women have written me off before I even say hello and the most of the remainder have written me off after a few dates because I wasn’t “exciting” enough to be their “Mr. Right” whatever that means to them.
I read part of the author’s book this afternoon at a Borders bookstore mostly because of the catchy title and cover art – but it really makes a lot of sense. It truly explains my dating problems to me or at least confirms my own belief on why guys like me are constantly passed over for guys with long hair, tattoos, motorcycles, bad attitudes and no jobs:
Women have a really screwed up sense of reality derived from watching too many screwed up TV shows (e.g. Sex in the City) and movies (e.g. Failure to Launch) and from reading too many unrealistic women’s magazines articles on meeting and marrying the non-existent “Mr. Right.”
The simple math of it is that – no – you aren’t Jennifer Aniston ladies so why are you holding out for Brad Pitt? – It didn’t even work for her.
On the other side of the equation: What do men learn about dating from popular culture?
Being exciting and mysterious, good looking, wealthy and tall with good hair are important traits. Being a good dancer is important. Being a nice guy or a smart guy or a stable guy or a respectful guy is actually a disadvantage and gets you labeled as “weak” or “geeky”.
According to popular culture, to be “successful”, we men are supposed to be players, not honest with or respectful towards women. We are supposed to treat women like sex objects to be exploited for a while and then we should move on to fresh game.
Women foolishly reward this “player” behavior in their mistaken belief that they actually want one of these “exciting” guys and can “fix” all of his flaws and “domesticate” him and that they can trade sex for love with these guys while they do so.
It never works.
I wish I could be one of those “player” guys but I’m just not good at it – my problem is that I realize irresponsible actions have bad consequences and I just don’t know how to pretend they don’t.
Right now I’ve known two girls over the last 5 or so years that I thought I could be serious about:
The older one is 44 and desperate to marry any guy at this point – apparently with the primary objective being so that she can try to have kids as opposed to a real marriage first and then kids – but she has totally unreasonable expectations of that guy with respect to putting up with her many pets (10+ dogs, a cat, a bird, and a turtle), her dramatic mood swings, poorly kept house, unwillingness to cook or clean even for herself, extravagant spending on clothing, jewelry, art, furniture, and fancy restaurants, and her unwillingness to be supportive of the man’s career decisions when her own salary is far less than his, etc., etc.
Her constant comment is that she isn’t in her 20′s anymore and that she doesn’t want to play around anymore and that she wants to get married soon and have kids – yet she fails to realize that what that really means is that she isn’t nearly the hot little blond she was 25 years ago and she needs to be making MORE not less compromise in her lifestyle if she wants to get married, i.e. she needs to make herself as “low maintenance” to any future husband as possible – but she has gone out of her way to make herself as difficult as possible to get along with.
In short, while she’s clearly very desperate for “Mr. Right Now”, she hoped that I was even more desperate than she so that she could have a relationship and life totally on her own terms without any compromise or consideration of my side of things.
A few years ago she aggressively pursued me and we dated for a while but in the end, the bitterness, the hassle and constant hostility, the arguments and total lack of flexibility towards me from her just weren’t worth it to me.
The other girl is 31 and we get along extremely well – we really seem to “get each other” and we never fight – She is highly intelligent, emotionally mature and personally interesting, she has a professional job and a good income of her own and therefore doesn’t look on me as an ATM to fund an extravagant lifestyle – in short she leads a much more “low maintenance” reasonable lifestyle than the other girl. She keeps a neat house and as a bonus, she is an excellent cook and actually enjoys cooking for me – almost unheard of these days.
I am never happier than when I’m spending time with her and she seems to be very happy when she is with me also – we talk for hours and hours and never even realize where the time goes – but whenever I’ve discussed my feelings about her with her she says we can’t be a couple because she doesn’t feel “it” with me and eventually she disappears from my radar from time to time when she meets some new “exciting guy” that she dates for a few months.
She has dated a succession of these guys who appear to have treated her badly in the last 5 years that I’ve known her and then after a while we end up back in touch and we spend more time together till the next player comes along.
She is at the other end of the author’s examples, a younger girl who thinks that one of these “exciting” guys is still out there for her to be her “Mr. Right” and that she shouldn’t settle for me, although I can’t help but love her anyways and I think we would be wonderfully happy together if she were ever willing to marry me.
I suppose that if the author is right, then things are looking up for me as I get older but I’m still unhappy and lonely most of the time and don’t want to settle for the 40 something high maintenance nightmare girl who is desperate to have a baby and who clearly looks upon me only as a sperm donor and ATM not as a real husband or equal partner and who doesn’t want to change her lifestyle at all to make an effort to align it with mine.
Nor seemingly can I do anything to make the 30 something girl see that I’m really the “it” she’s been looking for all along and I probably won’t be able to do so until it is too late.
I have tried to meet other girls over the last 5 years but that really seems to be getting less and less plausible as time goes on for me too. Appropriate women (early 30 to early 40 somethings) really aren’t out in the bars any more and I have never had much luck approaching women in bars anyways. I work in a highly male dominated profession and dating in the workplace has become so dangerous and taboo that I haven’t even considered it since the mid 90′s.
I’ve not really found other non-club good places to “accidentally” meet women despite being told that bookstores and grocery stores and gyms and other such places are good places to meet a girl. Most of my guy friends are either married or worse yet divorced and none of them really have ever really helped me out by setting me up with a girl and the female friends I have don’t really even try to set me up with their friends – apparently if I’m not good enough for them, I won’t be good enough for their girlfriends either.
The only times I really have met girls that I connected with have been purely accidental and I really can never really recreate the circumstance later on at the same club, place or event – it is like lightning striking in that it only happens once and seems to be totally out of my control which has really discouraged me from even trying in the last few years.
I don’t know what the answers are for myself but I think the author is on to something. I only hope women out there are listening.”
