Marry me.
Do your travels ever bring you to Boston? You seem to be a big hit with the locals.
If I’m ever there, I’ll let you know 
. I have friends there, who it would not be out of line to visit.
Have you considered settling?
I don’t say that to be cruel, but you have established quite an extensive list of prerequisites for a long term relationship. Let’s be honest, hunky, high-income, highly-educated, funny, nice, interesting people that also are currently unattached are not a dime a dozen, and only a portion of these will you have, “chemistry,” with. A smaller portion still will not have some other disqualifying feature.
You seem quite attractive yourself and I’m not urging you to settle for just any taker. If you want to date and have fun, date and have fun. If you’re dating with a view of entering a relationship with the potential for marriage and children over the next five years, cast a wide net and consider your most important criteria and the fact that humans don’t live forever to optimize the chance that you’ll end up with what you’re looking for.
It seems like this particular individual is someone that fails too many of your criteria to be a significant prospect and I wouldn’t continue seeing him out of some sort of sense of duty to politeness, but I’d also urge you to keep an open mind in the future.
[Insert gratuitous line here about looking me up if you’re ever in Philly]
I’ll be the lone voice in the wilderness and say that I think eHarmony is a goldmine. You just have to be brutal and weed out the weak ones. No picture? Closed. Say something I don’t like? Closed. Love Jesus? Closed. Fatty? Closed. Ugly? Closed. Obviously lying about age? Closed. Won’t move on to the phone call within 3 communications? Closed. Don’t answer in a week? Closed. Just boom boom on down the line. You do that and you’re left with a handful of applicants, most of which I’ve found to be very much in line with what I would consider dating if I met them in real life. But to get to that part, you have to aggressively close out the losers because otherwise they clog your inbox up and eharm will slow down or stop your matching.
Come to think of it I guess I should sign up for that again, it was fun to have something to do at work.
Sattua, let’s look at your situation from a different angle.
Would you still be able to respect (not just love, but respect) a man if you are the main breadwinner of the household? Generally speaking, most men would want to be respected for their ability to be the provider of the household regardless of the quantity. If he’s happy with his current job, would you be able to be happy with his decision and still respect him as a man? If you can’t, then you really would do a favor for both of you and move on.
On the flip side, if you try to change your socio-economic status for him, you eventually will be miserable and resentful. You are already signaling to us that there are some of these situations that crop up and you really haven’t dated him too much. When things get closer and tighter between the two of you, these situations go from mildly embarrassing to become major contentions. I of course am generalizing when it comes to men being the provider of a relationship.
Lastly, avoid shiny things. Red mustangs do not make the man, and shiny things tend to blind a person from being aware of their own surroundings. Sounds like you could buy your own red mustang, so look for a man who is willing to fulfill your true needs…emotionally, physically, spiritually, etc.
Seems to me that a person who is kind, friendly, happy, well spoken, attractive, and good company is offering quite a bit already. You also don’t mention exactly what type of warehouse job he has, I imagine that many of the roles involve a significant amount of responsibility, and are solid, well paying jobs one can raise a family on.
You enjoy his company, there are worse types of people to have a few dates with.
It is just a date. You don’t have to marry him to go out and have a good time for a few hours. Who knows, maybe he is your other half but you won’t know for sure until you go out with him!
Sattua, I dated someone who could be your guy’s virtual twin. He was very smart, but completely not interested in education beyond his high school diploma. He’d been in the Navy for four years so he had money available for college but just never got around to it.
I did date him, for three years in fact. However he never changed and he never moved beyond very low level entry jobs that he hated. It was no surprise he hated those jobs, because he really was quite smart. But he lacked experience and moreover he lacked any desire to go GET more experience so he could get jobs he might like more.
After all that time (and for other, just as important reasons) I realized he needed more than I could offer in terms of cheering him on. And I realized that I needed my SO to be interested in his own life and achieving goals. This guy (can’t call him a man) didn’t even have goals.
Good luck making a decision.
The last several posts have all made very good points.
threemae: I very much want to meet someone who I want to marry. I don’t think that anything I’d call “settling” would be a good idea, for me. On the other hand, a lot of the things you list aren’t requirements for me–he doesn’t have to be good looking, he doesn’t have to have a lot of college degrees, and he doesn’t have to earn a lot of money. He can even be shorter than me . He does, however, have to be completely comfortable with himself and with me. And to be able to take me on, conversation-wise.
Yeticus Rex: as above, I don’t mind if he makes less money, as long as he does have a nice solid job. Again, I need him to be comfortable with himself. That’s the main thing. The vibes I’m getting off of Mr. Mustang are that he isn’t comfortable with himself when around me.
Cheesesteak: no, he just drives the forklift. And I agree, there are way worse people to have a few dates with. Which is why I’m not dismissing him out of hand, but rather smearing my whole thought process across the interwebs 
.
Exactly. And date other men as well. This guy is getting far more attention and scrutiny than he deserves at this point. Thirty minutes with the guy over coffee will tell you far more than you can find out from posting to a message board.
And I think it comes from the fear that he’s unable to provide for you since your pretty much self-sufficient. He is probably thinking that you are way out of his league (that’s not a fault of yours, of course) and he may see himself as a simpler person who you might get tired of because he is unable to communicate and express himself on your level, let alone feel like he’s contributing his share. I don’t envy his position. On the good side though, he’s conscious of it and it bothers him, which means he’s not a freeloader.
As a former forklift driver of 10 years, let me give you some bit of hope. I still found a way to get a couple of degrees while working full-time (as a lift driver) only to go into business with my wife in her field, in which I was the motivator while she had the know-how to implement the business. We have had issues regarding roles, responsibilities and the “who is supporting who” conversations, but we did come to this conclusion…She is the engine of the company, and I am the gas. One could not do anything without the other.
But let me ask you this…Does he seem motivated to do anything to meet you half-way on any level?
Definitely. But since she asked for our opinions, we will definitely give them. 
Jah. Opinions. Iss gut.
I just went through all the matches eHarmony has delivered and either closed them, or opened communication. No sense messing around. Of the approximately 60 profiles I read, Mr. Mustang’s is in the top 5. Which makes me feel better.
Sounds like a good catch to me. But then, I’ve never cared much about finding someone who makes as much money as I do. I like the fact that having plenty of money to support myself frees me from having to find a mate who can support me on his income. Since most of womankind is busy trying to snag a rich doctor or lawyer, I get my pick of the awesome, intelligent, kind-hearted blue collar guys.
Quite possibly this is just because you two don’t know each other well yet and are still feeling each other out. A guy who was confident from the start might morph into a total arrogant jerk by the time you know each other really well.
In other words, he’s honest, unlike all the other men on the site who are going to decide if they like you or not based on your photo but then pretend that they were won over by your charming words. I hate to break it to you, but the truth is that very few men out there spend time masturbating to their girlfriend’s grad school thesis.
Honestly, I think the only reason he would get defensive is if you keep implying that blue collar people are inferior to those who are more educated, which is kind of how you come across. Your reference to his family being “astonished and confused” by higher education makes me picture a bunch of cavemen being astonished and confused when someone shows them how to light a fire. 
Blue collar folks are not necessarily lazy or unmotivated. Hell, I think it is far harder work to stock shelves, dig ditches, clean up after hotel guests, fix plumbing, etc. than it is to sit in a climate-controlled classroom or office engaging in mental masturbation all day.
(I say that as someone who is working on my own professional degree, by the way - I freely admit that I’m kind of lazy, far too lazy for manual labor…just happened to be born with a knack for academics).
If he’s happy with what he’s got, why SHOULD he want to change? It seems pretty smart to me to enjoy what you have than to keep pursuing more and more, putting yourself through a lot of hassle and expense when you were satisfied with what you had before.
Obviously I’m being a little flippant here, but honestly, the majority of people in this world don’t have a bachelor’s degree, let alone a grad school degree. If you try to screen out people just based on education, you’ll overlook a lot of good men and maybe even end up alone. Or, you may in fact land the educated, rich hot shot guy and then find a few years later that he leaves you for his cute little secretary (you’ll notice that MEN do not worry so much as we women do about the education or even intellect of their partners).
One of the most controversial suggestions Susan Pinker makes in her book The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the real Gender Gap (though by no means the main thrust) is that women who wish to marry, have children ***and ***pursue a professional career should marry “down” socio economically. This means to find a man whose work is less well paid / requires less education etc. etc. This is to avoid a “clash of the titans” over whose career has to take a hit when the kids come, or when the woman’s work requires relocating, etc.
The catch, of course, is that finding a man of lower socio-economic status who’s OK with this is more difficult, because it’s often the more educated / higher S.E.S. men who are more enlightened about not tying their masculinity to their work and to their prestige ranking in the marriage. In other words, to perpetuate a stereotype, blue-collar men are likely to be more macho and touchy/defensive about who “wears the pants in the family”, and so are their buddies.
This matters to you, dear OP, is that a guy like mr. Mustang may actually be *good *for your professional aspirations if, and it’s a big if, you can actually like the guy, and if he can manage to make decent conversation. Does this fellow seem open to learning about new things? Does he show an interest in your own interests?
This would also argue in favour of not excluding candidates with less formal education than you in your search. There may yet be the welder or machinist out there for you with a deep and abiding love of English literature, a passion for Napoleonic period history, and who carves wood for fun.
The upside of this, is that such renaissance blue-collar men are often deeply unsatisfied with women of their own S.E.S., but a little intimidated by professional women, because of their own lack of a power career. This can make them more committed to a relationship with you.
I wish you luck, good times, and a happy denouement.
-trupa, stay-at-home Dad married to an oncologist, but, admittedly, with an engineering degree.
We had a really effin’ good date last night. If you can call it a “date” when it lasts eight hours.
I’m glad things went well. I’m not suggesting you put up with someone you don’t like, just that such an extensive list of absolute criteria might prove counterproductive to finding a happy partner for marriage.
Awesome! I’m happy for you!
So it was particularly good effin’?