See, I don’t think of this as settling at all. What you’re looking for in a mate has changed, that’s all. Settling, to me at least, is being with someone you’re not in love with. You could love them, sure, but you’re not in love with them. In your scenerio you can easily be in love with a man that has the qualities you described. Thus, there is no settling.
You’re right, actually. I think the term “settling” does not really apply here.
The post was more or less meant as a reply to this part of the OP:
What I was trying to say is that just because women give up on the “wild fun guys” does not mean they are selling out and trading in love for the second-best of security. It may just be that they really are over those type of guys and that they really do end up going weak in the knees over someone actually suitable. Shock horror. 
But yes, if you take “settling” to mean “dropping standards” by definition then I agree no settling is involved. Perhaps I was looking for “settling down”. Sorry about the confusion.
Is my marriage like a romance novel? No. Is it fun and frustrating and joyous and comfortable and annoying and lovely? Yup. It isn’t ideal, but it’s real. I’m happy with that.
Wow, I could have wrote practically the same thing. The girls I fell for head-over-heels were usually much younger than I was (21 while I was 29), were a blast to be around, looked gorgeous, and were on the wild side. It was a challenge to convince them to date you exclusively or even talk about a long term relationship.
But man, they made you feel 21 again and made your heart pitter-patter. A couple of them really broke my heart.
Then I met my future wife. 26, more of a girl next door, really liked hanging out together, could just kick back and do nothing for the night, kind of girl. No big sparks, just a mutual admiration of eachother. She moved in with me and we were married a year and a half later and have been for 3.
She’s awesome, I love her, I’d never leave her, and I can believe her when she tells me the same.
Funny that she never gave me the same feeling as those girls I was so infatuated with. But as I get older I see it as just that, infatuation. Those utopian pipe dreams I had of some trophy party-girl wife died a while ago.
Dude, well spoken. There’s fantasy and then there’s reality.
At this point, just having a girlfriend at all is the fantasy. And I’m left with nothing but mixed feelings from the advice in these threads, although I do appreciate everyone trying to help, I just have no idea how to process it all.
-I need to aggressively pursue a girl if I’m attracted to her, but I also need to pretend I’m not interested in her at all.
-I will never find love if I look for it too hard, and yet I won’t find it at all if I don’t get out there and look. I don’t usually approach anyone, let alone women, so if I see a girl I’m attracted to, I’m going to talk to her for one reason and one reason only. I’m not going to go in there thinking “golly I’d sure like to be friends with her!” I’ve been told too much about the dangers of the Friend Zone to risk being friends with a girl I find attractive.
-I need to be myself. Unfortunately being myself would involve doing what I’ve always done: sitting there quietly while girls approach the guys who can be themselves and actually get girls to notice them. I, on the other hand, will have to put on an Oscar-worthy performance in order to give off the impression that I’m someone worth approaching.
I don’t even know who or what I have to be anymore. Apparently being myself isn’t good enough, but if I’m not myself I won’t get anywhere either. And it all goes in circles like that, at least in my mind. It’s all so confusing. Why can’t I just be someone better than me? Someone who has an easier time with all this shit.
Some of us really don’t enjoy the ride. Personally, I hate and am terrified of dating. It is not fun for me. I never got the memo that dates were supposed to be anything more than hellish nightmares suffered through so that you can one day wind up in the secure comfort of a stable live-in relationship.
My perspective on dating is somewhat skewed since I wound up staying with the first person I ever dated for four years. I can’t handle short term relationships now; I think everything is going to last for years and when it doesn’t it really upsets me. What I’d really like is to go into a fugue state and wake up two years into a great marriage. But staying with the first person who can pull me out of dating hell is a good runner up. Because unlike some other people, I really do not enjoy being single. You can learn to love almost anyone, and I figure I’m already ahead in the game by having fallen in love one time. Some people don’t have even that. So yes, I would settle for someone I am only lukewarm about if it meant that I wouldn’t be doomed to spending my life alone. Because it would be better. (No offense to older singles out there, but I just couldn’t do it.)
OK, drinking, eating, and smoking are all superficial things. The $64,000 question is: Are your core beliefs, values, and attitudes similar?
In the last year or so I’ve managed to change some of my attitudes and perspectives on dating, and it has helped a lot. I can totally feel and identify with Soapbox Monkey’s rant a few posts above, so I’m going to try to take a stab at some of his points.
OK, let’s break down the progression with women into 10 steps. By the way, I got this list from David DeAngelo. I have most of his stuff, and would highly recommend subscribing to his free newsletter. Anyway, the 10 steps.
- Approaching her (just walking up and saying ‘hi’)
- Getting her phone number and e-mail
- Date request
- Date
- Hand holding
- Kissing
- Alone in private
- Make out
- Clothes off
- Sex
When you talk about getting a girlfriend, you’re talking about at least step 6. My guess is you aren’t comfortable with all the preceding steps (I’m not fully either). One thing that will help you get a girlfriend will be to, obviously, get better at the underlying steps.
A good place to start would be to get more comfortable with approaching women. Don’t even worry about getting her number at all. One thing I did once in a bar was to walk up to a woman and say “Hi, my name is (Engineer Dude) and lately I’ve been doing this exercise to overcome my fear of approaching women…especially the ones I find attractive. Anyway, thanks for participating.” and I shook her hand and started walking away. She said to me, “That’s it? You’re not even going to stop and talk to me?” So I talked to her for a while, and she started telling me about how other guys try to use corny pickup lines and about how men shouldn’t be so intimidated by women. I then got her e-mail a few minutes later and walked away.
By the way, some women will kinda shrug it off and be like “OK, sure”. For those, it doesn’t matter. There’s an inexhaustible supply of women. Just go up to the next one. The goal is just to become more comfortable approaching women, remember? You’ll have brightened her day and will walk away slightly more confident and less intimidated.
That’s black and white thinking. You need to be somewhere in the middle. I would say, act intrigued by her rather than attracted to her, like you can’t decide whether you’re attracted to her or not and want to know more. If she picks up on that attitude, she’ll be the one trying to qualify herself to you rather than the other way around. By the way, whenever she does something annoying or out of line on the first few dates, there’s no problem with joking around and saying “You’re messing up your chances with me here.”
If by, “look too hard”, you mean, “act like I need it and that it’s the only important thing in my life”, then yes. Whether or not you find love, all of your work, school, friends, and family problems will still remain. So let’s not make it the only important thing in life, shall we?
That’s right. Anyone who says “It’ll just happen - like when I met…(fill in the blank)” doesn’t know the first thing about attraction. Once again, “I will never find love if I look for it too hard, and yet I won’t find it at all if I don’t get out there and look” is black and white thinking. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I think that, as humans, we all come pre-wired with the ability to attract members of the opposite sex. Just like we come pre-wired with the ability to learn language, art, and music. But, in order to learn language, art, and music, we have to learn from other people, practice, and get the skills. Attracting women is the same. You have to learn and get the skills before you get good. Some people may seem like “naturals” with women. There are no naturals; they have all had to learn. It’s just that some learn faster than others. I think I’ve probably progressed slower than most people (being an Engineer geek and all), but I’ve come to accept that.
Anyway, when people say “being yourself”, they are talking about removing all the filters and fears in your brain that hinder you from expressing your true self. So when you go up and approach women, you are not actually “being yourself”. If you can remove these filters and fears, then you can “be yourself” and actually be very charming to women. Everyone has something interesting about themselves.
Dude…you’re projecting the kind of person that chicks don’t dig. If you want to date, you need to put some effort into it. You need to DEVELOP traits that are attractive to the opposite sex. Or you need to be content in flying solo. Your choice. Quit whining.
Preach it, brother! It took me years to learn that what I felt in 8th grade wasn’t “true love”, just infatuation. And love and infatuation are two totally different things, that often have no bearing on one another. My husband was married once before. He got married at 21, and was convinced it would work because they were just so much “in love”. But no, really they were just very, very infatuated with one another. That marriage lasted a year. When he and I started dating, I was 22, he was 24. I never, ever had a feeling of “falling in love” with him. But, at the same time, by the time we got engaged four years later, I was very aware of just loving him. Infatuation fades, always, without fail. But I’ve happily learned that true, mature love, when nurtured properly, just gets better and better.
Soapbox Monkey, I think what people mean by “short-term relationship” is that you don’t have to go into a dating relationship thinking “this might be someone I want to marry”. You only go into it thinking “This is someone I’d like to spend some time with”. At some point you will either realize that you no longer want to spend time with her, at which point you’ll break up, or you’ll realize that you need to spend time with her, at which point you can attempt to move it up “to the next level”, as they say. But one thing is certain: no matter how wonderful, smart, witty, etc. you may be, at no point is any woman going to approach you and say “I just realized how wonderful you are! Would you like to get married?” (and if that does happen, run away! Only a psycho would do this!)
Goodie. Up until your post I was thinking I was the only one seeing things like this.
My current relationship lacks adrenaline surges and passion-wrought breathlessness and 24 hr excitement; on the whole, it is simply warm and comfortable and soothing, like a good hot bath with some incense on the side. I am fine with this state of things at this time in my life.
In a couple of past relationships I experienced the euphoria of love-encrusted infactuation, and the experiences were a thrill like most roller coaster rides are. But underlying those emotions I found was a profound insecurity. Always being worried that something will happen to make them stop loving you. Always reading into every word they say or thing they do for confirmation of their feelings for you. Always checking the mirror to make sure that you look good enough for them. Always needing to be with them or risk going into a semi-panic. It makes for stress that can really take away from the quality of life.
So right now I am perfectly fine being in a place with someone whom I can trust, share company with, talk to and be affectionate with. I don’t find my stomach doing sommersaults every time he walks in the room, but then again, I also don’t worry that he will find me unattractive just because a booger may be hanging out of my nose. The ups and downs that comes with a fairy tale romance are not a major part of my current relationship, and I’m not crying any tears over that. Sometimes I do miss the heart palpitations and constant physical craving, but then I think of all the other good things I have in their place.
As you experience people, you learn to appreciate different things. One person could look at my relationship and I say that I’m settling because I have sacrificed electric flames in exchange for something more subdued. But I don’t care what they think. The grass is always greener on the other side.
This is a brilliant idea. You would have made my day (or week, most likely).
When I was single, I didn’t have incredibly picky standards to whom I would go on a date with. As long as they didn’t give off a creepy vibe, I was game. What’s the worst thing that could happen, that it was boring or he was a jerk? Eh, I could survive a boring date, and I could deal with a jerk. A date does not equal a marriage, after all, and sometimes you meet interesting people.
The same philosophy gave me the courage to ask guys to dance. I’m not the prettiest girl in the room by any means, but I wasn’t afraid to ask guys to dance. I even had to remind a few who hesitated that I wasn’t asking to marry them.
So if a shy girl with crooked teeth can work up the courage to ask a man to dance, you can start asking girls out on dates. You don’t have to settle; just keep looking until you find the right person.
And let me also add that I didn’t settle for my husband. He’s my best friend. We spend sometimes hours a day just talking (sometimes late into the night). My heart doesn’t race every time I see him, and I don’t feel consumed by flames at the mere mention of his name. Goodness, but that would be exhausting. That giddy feeling espoused in romances is probably there for a perfectly good biological reason (probably to get us to mate as quickly and frequently as possible), but that feeling is not sustainable. It’s not settling to choose a spouse with whom you enjoy spending time, who makes you feel good, who will still love you when you look like shit.
This sounds really unhealthy. You would rather be with someone, anyone, than be alone? Not to sound harsh, but it seems like you may have some personal issues that need to be worked out before you can be a part of a normal, healthy relationship. You have to be comforatable being by yourself if you want to avoid a co-dependancy nightmare. I only say this because you sound exactly like my friend I posted about earlier and that kind of thinking did nothing but buy her a lifetime of misery.
If your not a wild’n’crazy guy, you don’t actually want to be a part of a girls wild’n’crazy times. I’m a punk rock girl with multi-hued hair, a great love of gin’n’tonics and a deep need to travel to third world countries. For some reason, this combination is attractive to kind of quiet, kind of geeky, homebodies. It never ends up well.
“Hey honey, I’m going to go to India for three months, want to come?”
“Uhh…no. Do you really want to do that?”
“Yep!”
“OK, I guess I’ll just hang out by myself for three months.”
It’s like this constantly- I always want to travel, go out, move, bum around. At two AM I’m pacing restlessly and whining “Whhhy don’t you evvvver want to have any fuuuuun???” It drives us both nuts. He thinks I’m flighty, evasive, destructive and restless. I’m always bored and feel cooped up. It’s happened time after time, and I’m never the one that ends up with the broken heart in the end.
See, this doesn’t sound like “settling” to me at all. A string of meaningless, albeit fun, relationships, the crazy drama of the early 20somethings, the (as you put it) insecurity of “madly in love - for now” relationships - those things are settling, to me anyway. The calmer, more rational and enduring love of maturity is the real deal.
Have to agree with Kalhoun on this one . . . there’s no miracle advise that’s going result in the love of your life waiting at your doorstep.
Let’s face it . . . what does this all boil down to? In my opinion, FEAR OF REJECTION. That’s the hardest part of dating or attempting to date. You put yourself out there and in doing so make yourself emotionally vulnerable, which is why it is so rewarding when it works and so devastating when it doesn’t.
There’s no easy way around it . . . if you want to start dating, you have to put yourself out there. And you will be rejected, there’s no getting around that either. But when you are, you have to brush it off and move on . . . and over time learn what works for you.
Remember Ferris Bueler’s comment about Cameron? I’d like to share it now, because I think it’s appropriate and that we can all learn from it’s wisdom: