I don’t know if this is happening to me or not, but …
I’m a 37 years old guy. Never married. There have been only two or three women in my life that I could call “girlfriends.” I’m attractive, intelligent, not socially inept, but as I get older, I wonder if women are thinking “This guy is 37 and he’s never been married … there’s something wrong with him. Better steer clear.”
I know folks following up to this post, or people who have met me at Dopefests, may reassure me and say “there’s nothing wrong with you.” That’s fine. I want to know, though, if women really think that guys older than 30 who haven’t been married do not make good dating material.
I wouldn’t use it as the sole reason to rule someone out but, to be perfectly honest, it would put me a bit on guard. From my point of view, it would mean one of two things—
There’s some kind of issue that would cause trouble, or
You’ve simply not met the right woman yet and are intelligent enough to have not “settled”.
I don’t think it would take too long to decide which of those reasons applies, but I wouldn’t assume the first before ruling out the second. I’m actually on the other end of the spectrum. Only 25 and already have a failed marriage and two kids, so I know how frustrating it can be to feel as if you’ve been summarily tossed out of the dating pool before you’re even given a chance.
Out of pure nosiness, and feel free not to answer, why do you refer to them as “girlfriends” with the quotes? Were they serious relationships or not? Have you ever gotten close to marriage or even considered it with any of those women? If not, was it a mutual thing or were you holding back for some reason?
I don’t think so at all. Then again, I’m a 37-year-old woman in basically the same situation (never married, only a couple of significant relationships)… I would hope guys wouldn’t write me off so quickly in turn.
I can only speak regarding a very small anecdotal sample - 2 late 30s/early 40s coworkers. I know that both of them are unattached because they are picky. If a woman doesn’t meet a particular physical standard that each has, she isn’t considered datable. Brains, personality, talent, or what car she drives mean nothing - if she doesn’t match the mold, she’s got no chance.
Small wonder both of these guys are still single.
Now, if I wasn’t married and if I didn’t know “C” as well as I do, I would have considered dating him. He’s smart, witty, polite, and a nice guy. But I’m neither tall enough nor blonde enough to meet his requirement. It may not make him undateable, but it sure makes him less attractive to me now. And I suppose if I found myself to be suddenly single, I’d sure take my time getting to know a single man my age, based only upon these two guys.
One was when I was 19, we dated for about three months.
Another was when I was 24, and we dated for about a year. She broke up with me, but we’re still very good friends. We weren’t engaged, but we were close to doing so; we were naming kids and looking at houses, if that means anything.
The last woman I could call my girlfriend was a girl I dated about five years ago. She broke up with me after about three months, and it was probably for the best; she was manic-depressive. I know this might not be ethical, but two years ago, I found a Zip disk that I used when I was backing up her files while fixing her Mac. I looked through her correspondence, and found this in a letter to a friend:
Why the quotation marks? Two of those relationships were relatively short, and I don’t know if they would call me a “boyfriend” if they looked back on it.
No, certainly not. I’d much rather date a 37-year-old man who had never been married than one who HAD been married. (Not that I would absolutely rule someone out just because he was divorced, but I’d be expecting a fair amount of baggage and complications, and I’d have to think long and hard about it.)
IMHO, it’s the opposite. It has been my observation that as men age, they have the advantage. GROSS GERNERALIZATION ALERT!!
IMHO, women become more aggressive as they age and try to get a man. I think women in general are more, uh, scared, to be alone as they get older.
One of my employees broke up with his wife after 15 years and 2 children. He was in his late 30s and worried he wouldn’t be able to find someone new. He had a new girlfriend within 3 months.
Um…yeah. Did you ever see the episode of Sex in the City where Carrie met a “perfect” guy? She figured that he had to have something wrong with him so she ransacked his appartment looking for something to indicated he was a nutjob or something.
Well, he caught her and she realized…she was the lunatic.
I knew a few asexual guys like this in college. I always thought it was weird that they went through 4 years of school (in a fraternity no less) without dating, randomly hooking up or even going gay. One guy eventually got married at 30, the other is still single. So I guess the moral is sometimes people are just picky, sometimes they use pickiness to cover up feelings of inadequacies (or they’re gay).
As people get into their 30s, I think the pickings become slimmer:
-A greater % of people are married and thus out of the market
-A lot of people let themselves go so there are fewer attractive candidates
-People have a smaller circle of friends to network with. In high school and college, there are a lot of people around who you at least have a passing familiarity with. Even after school, you tend to run into people you recognize. This tends to decrease as you get older.
Anyhow, I’m 30 and I guess my girlfriend figures that even though I’m an immature freak-0, at least I’m her freak-o. (if I had a dollar every time I heard “huff:rolleyes: I’m so embarassed.”
I’ve dated guys mid thirties/forties who’ve never been married. One of them was a complete player who I later found out was in “committed” relationships with two other women, one was kinda flakey (41 and had never lived in a house without his mother until she died and then he’d moved in with his grandmother) and another that was an out and out nice, sincere, sweet guy that I would have been seriously interested in if I hadn’t decided to never ever ever under any circumstances get married again.
Never been married guys are attractive because they don’t come with so much emotional baggage. Also, the issue of kids can complicate things to a very large degree. I’ve only dated one guy with kids, and believe me, I’d much rather date a never married guy than a guy with kids who view me (quite incorrectly cause, as mentioned above, I’m never ever ever under any circumstances getting married again) as a potential evil stepmom.
auntie em, ah yes… mothers DO tend to adopt some interesting points of view about their offspring’s potential mates, don’t they?
Hello there, my name is JRDelirious and I am a never-been-married hetero male of an age where most of my old school buds are paying for their kids’ orthodontics. I look at them and think, I’m neurotic enough w/o having to worry about parent-teacher conferences
It’s not as bad as it seems, once we realize that it would be natural for the women in our same age group to be more wary and cautious about entanglements than back in their 20s. After all the truth is some of us men can be full of unpleasant surprises, of which the women may have encountered a few by their mid-30s.
I’m a 48-year-old never-married female. Obviously, this is not “normal.” It has been my observation that some people (depending on how cynical I’m feeling at any given time, I’d say “many people” or even “most people”) come to the point where they say, “Okay, time to get married,” and they look around for someone to marry. I’ve never had that moment. I have been in love a couple of times, and I have had a few longish (three- or four-year) relationships, but (perhaps because I’ve never wanted kids), I’ve never had a “time to get married” point.
Up till now I’ve mostly dated mostly never-married men. I’ve now gotten to the age where there just aren’t a lot of them, so I’m meeting more divorced men, and more men with children. This is more about the pool of available men – I don’t have an inherent problem with the never married, as long as the guy appears otherwise normal. (I’m excluding Amberlei’s “lived with his mom” friend here.) As a couple of people have observed, divorced men, and men with kids, tend to be complicated. Hell, we’re all complicated.
I think the most important thing is to be okay with yourself. Some women will want to date you because you’ve never been married; some will not want to date you because you’ve never been married. Ignore the latter group.
My wife and I first met when we were in our thirties. Neither of us had been married before, and I don’t think either of us were concerned about “over 30–never married.” I know I wasn’t.
When I was in my twenties, I observed a fair number of people I knew who had married before age 25 getting divorced or seeming to be headed that way. I figured there was perhaps some benefit in taking one’s time to find a mate. I believe over-30 first marriages are the norm in some societies (Ireland is one, if memory serves).
One of my wife’s aunts (senior citizen) went on about how the only older men suitable for a relationship were widowers. They had a proven track record respecting “till death do us part.” Divorced men either couldn’t honor a commitment or were jerks who ran off their wives, never-marrieds were either confirmed bachelors or mama’s boys.
I’d have to agree with others who said there is not a single widely held point of view on the matter.
I was 35 when I got married, in another country! No problem. To be bold, you just have to want to get some psy bad enough, and have a companion bad enough just to do it. I started my relationship with my wife by putting my hand on her leg. Of course she is not a Western woman, so results may vary.
Gerald Ford did not get married until he was 35 either.
Male, nearly 33, never married. I’m single because I only get interested in a woman when she pursues me, and even then, there are lots of things that cause me to lose interest.
I suppose that puts me in the “…something wrong with him, better steer clear” category.
auntie em, ah yes… mothers DO tend to adopt some interesting points of view about their offspring’s potential mates, don’t they?
