There are so many active dating threads on the Board right now, I might as well get this one off my chest. I’m a 31-year-old heterosexual white male in southeastern PA with a college degree but a fairly low-paying job. (I’m back in school trying to improve myself, but it’s a multi-year project.)
I’m still putting out some half-hearted effort to see what’s out there, but it really feels like a waste of time these days. Granted, women often seem less uptight in their 30s in some ways, but then they’re far more demanding in others. To a point, I think that’s just fine. I mean, I WANT to wine and dine them, and I think they DESERVE to be wined and dined sometimes, but I can’t afford to even take myself out to dinner right now. Yet I also think 20-somethings are incredibly dull, even though they’re less complicated to please. Even the smart ones haven’t been around that much. It’s all very frustrating.
35 year old hetero man here in NYC area. I have a lot of male and female friends in their 20s and 30s so here’s a compilation of what I’ve witnessed.
Women are NOT less uptight in their 30s. They are acutely aware of the fact that their biological clock is ticking. Unlike women in their 20s who feel like they have all the time in the world to pick and choose, women in their 30s tend to be more open to meeting new guys. Unfortunately they are also quicker to latch onto them as a potential mate.
You may find yourself at a bit of a disadvantage with a “low paying job” as 30-something women are less inclined to waste time with a guy they perceive as not having his shit together.
Well, I meant they’re not more uptight in ways that bother me. I don’t care if they latch onto me quicker; it’s better than the waiting around wondering what’s going on or getting shot down without ever getting a chance that seems to be the norm with many (not all) younger women.
Yeah, I’m aware, although no one who knows me thinks I don’t have my shit together just because of my income. Although that type of thinking is far more common here, and I still can’t get over its presumption. (What if my income were low because I worked for a non-profit helping disabled children?) It’s not a permanent condition, so I’m not too worried about it.
One thing about women in their thirties is that, as has been pointed out, the biological clock is ticking. They’re more likely to be looking for a guy who can provide comfortably for a family. A 30-something woman may be asking herself questions such as “What kind of house could we afford?” or “If and when we had a child, could I afford to take a year off work?” In many ways, it wouldn’t matter why your income was low.
~OneCentStamp
34, divorced, actively dating, undereducated and overemployed.
Everyone likes their fruit different. I know I hate brown bananas. I see a brown spec on a banana and I’ll excise it like a dermatologist going after an irregular freckle. Right? Okay. If someone likes mushy bananas, more for them, everyone has different tastes. Nothing I’m about to say goes for everyone, boys and girls included. Exceptions to every rule, and etc.
Very generally speaking, the fruit that is woman will never taste better than in the years between 25 and 30. Those are the ripe years, the perfection years. That particular age range is the best she’ll ever be for purposes of meeting a man and falling in love. She’s still got the sweetness that makes her marvelous to contemplate; she’s hopeful that the future is still what she makes of it; she’s confident and skilled in bed, or at least enthusiastic; her body and face have blossomed while still resisting the effects of age. She’s radiant, she’s beautiful and she genuinely wants to be happy. She’s gained wisdom and avoided the bitterness of disappointment. And she is everywhere.
Dating in your early 30s is amazing because you don’t date women your own age. Instead, you take everything you’ve learned about women for the last 20 years, turn it around and apply it to the 25-30 age group. Eat, drink and be merry because…you know the rest. That fruit will never be sweeter than it is, or more accessible to you than it is, right now.
I’m 33 and I would trade every woman I ever knew in my 20s if I could just do the early 30s again. Well, okay, I might keep Wendy but hell can have the rest. Amazing years, dude. Seriously.
(The money is still going to be a problem though.)
Not all women give a shit about their biological clocks, guys. Plenty of us don’t ever want to have kids, and a few of us don’t even particularly care about ever getting married. For reals. So watch the generalizations when you’re trying to date a woman who is in her 30s – actually, it’s a good idea to always watch the generalizations when dating.
I am a 36-year-old hetero female who was dating until late last year. The biggest difference for me in dating now vs 10 years ago is that I have a much better sense of who I am now, and what I’m looking for in a partner (either long-term or short-term). I’m also less willing to put up with crap than I was in my 20s.
The down side is that I’ve been single for a looong time, so I worry that it will be harder for me to both share a household with someone and learn that it’s ok to rely on someone emotionally. I’m 10 months into a relationship and 8 months from moving in with him (we have a timetable due to my schooling), and some of these issues are starting to come up for me already. But then I’ve never been married or lived with anyone before, which I know is unusual at my age.
The money thing is more important to me now, too, but not because I’m thinking about buying a house or raising a child: it’s because I’m making more money these days, myself, and I want to be with someone who can afford to split our entertainment costs (not just our living costs). You may have a perfectly noble reason for earning 50% less than I do, but it means our lifestyles are probably incompatible. Not that I’m driving a Porsche and jetting off to Paris every weekend, but I’m comfortable and can afford to do most of the things that I want to whenever I want to: I can plan trips to NYC and Vegas, I can buy Springsteen tickets, I can buy a season ticket to my local MLB team, etc. I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to date someone who can’t even afford to pick up the dinner check, but it’s a lifestyle thing, not a judgment thing.
I found that when I was in my thirties (and now forties), the number of chances to meet women, and the number of available women, became much smaller. People do tend to get married in their thirties.
I’m not sure you can generalize too much here. Sure, SOME women in their 30s are desperate to get married and have babies. So are some women in their 20s.
Alternatively, some women in their 30s have either already had their babies, or decided they don’t need no stinkin’ babies, and are just looking for a good time.
Personally, falling into the latter category, the single biggest change between dating in my 20s and dating now is that I feel no pressure whatsoever to be in a relationship, and so I feel no inclination to accept annoyances that I would have overlooked when I was 25 in the interest of “making it work”. Now, I don’t *need * it to work, so it takes a whole lot less trouble to make it more trouble than it’s worth.
Oh I imagine you still have that. It’s just their reasons for shooting you down may have changed. On the plus side, theoretically since you are in your 30s, you probably are a bit more confident and comfortible with yourself.
I would go out and rent Sex and the City DVDs. They are an interesting study in the psyche of 30+ single women. Although much of it is specific to attractive upper-middle class Manhattanites, I believe it does show many of the things that women that age concern themselves with. Basically it appears there are four types of single 30-something women:
Career focused women
Women who don’t want to commit or settle down
Princesses who are looking for a “fairy tale” ending (IOW to be taken care of by a rich guy)
Neurotic flakes who will perpetually date the wrong type of guy
Apparently 30-something women are threatened by 20-something women. This is because they are dealing with real or perceived issues that either their looks are the only thing going for them or that’s the only thing guys care about. This is ironic as the more shallow and superficial the woman, the more acutely they will feel this.
Interestingly, 30-something men generally don’t feel the same about 20-something men. That is because men are more often judged on our accomplishments than our appearance and youthfullness. Although men who peaked in high school or college often feel depressed about getting older once they hit their 30s. This can affect their relationships as they may be inclined to pursue younger women just to make sure they still “have it”.
Oh, absolutely. And each of these situations presents its own set of issues. For one thing, however big a red flag underemployment may be to a woman who’s thinking of having kids, I assure you it’s an even bigger red flag to a woman who already has some.
If the woman is not particularly looking to settle down, and is just looking for a good time, Misnomer’s comment is apropos: you still want a guy who can hold up his end of a comfortable lifestyle that is secure, yet allows for some spontaneity.
Something that wasn’t made very clear by the OP is what he is looking for. Do you want to settle down? Or are you just looking to meet some new, interesting, cute girls and have a good time? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with either, but the two goals require very different approaches.
SatC is primarily an interesting study of the twisted, terrifying psyche of Patricia Field, Costume Designer. It’s about as accurate a “psychological study” of women in their 30s as Friends is of people in their 20s.
The characters portrayed in Sex and the City are a bunch of shallow, vapid whores. The only positive character trait I can attribute to them is that they don’t let romantic relationships get in the way of their core friendship.
Oh hell, what a question. The fact is I am psychologically willing and able to have a serious, long-term relationship these days, but not really able to in any other way. One reason I’m poor and underemployed right now is because I’m in the midst of a career change, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to go to school if I work on weekends. Can you imagine what this does to my social life? I’m practically flatlining. If it weren’t for my exes, I’d probably never get laid at all.
And I recognize that I need more financial stability to be a better “marriage candidate,” and just to help myself out, and that’s what I’m working towards. (I’m not poor because I can’t/won’t work I’m just not good at juggling lots of things, so I’ve simplified).
But I hear the other posters on the changes between the 20s and 30s. I sit in many of my classes with 20-something students, and I’m alternately depressed, impressed, and surprised. Depressed, because many of them seem to be clueless. Impressed because many of them work so very, very hard. They have so many balls in the air I don’t know when they sleep. Surprised, because in every class there has been at least one girl 10 years younger than myself who has more than a casual interest in me. Granted, I’m a hell of a lot smarter than any of the guys in the class their own age, but I’m also fatter and balder. But they don’t mind. If only I still cared about “hooking up,” I could wear myself out. But like I said in the OP, these are not the women I’m after. The end result is a rather strange arrangement.
I think that’s overstating the case (although so is calling the show a “psychological study”). It’s not fair to call the characters “whores,” because it depicts things that are normally kept private. How many of us would qualify as “whores” if every dtail of our lives were publicly known?
When I last dated, the vast majority of the women would latch onto you fast…but thinking of having a child with you? They were not interested in having children…just someone to help support and raise the children they already had.
30’s women without kids? They were either nut-jobs or hugely non-attractive.
The few 30’s women that didn’t have kids, wanted kids, were mentally stable and were ok attractive-wise…well they had huge choices to choose from and were really playing the field.
The idea that men gain in marriage market price and women go done is either not true or does not happen to women in their 30’s yet.
Well, to be fair, he did note that the rest of us are from a different planet, so I’m just assuming that his planet is very tiny and far away and populated with slightly different species.
Well…I suppose I should thank **BlinkingDuck ** for distracting everyone from me. :eek:
I suppose much of it is regional. BlinkingDuck appears to be from Minnesota. From what I’ve seen, people in more rural states tend to get married and have kids a lot earlier. I think they’re big on family out there or some shit.
Places like New York City, there are a lot more single woman and they do tend to be more career and status oriented. People get married later or sometimes not at all.
Also, keep in mind that the group that is currently in their 30s is demographically smaller than Baby Boomers and Gen-Ys.
