By on the road, I mean traveling. I traveled for my job for two years, and have spent the last two years traveling internationally. Maybe that’s clouding my experience a bit. Because if you’re late 20s in a hostel you’re pushing it, and by the time you are 30 something, it’s a “dude wtf are you doing here” type thing.
I’m not saying thou shalt be married by the time thou is 30. I’m just talking about mindsets here. If you’re 27-30 and still living the 18-27 life, where you’re partying, in casual relationships, and doing the whole see the world thing, that has consequences. Don’t expect to turn 30, think hey, I want a long term relationship and kids, and then expect it to happen. Sure, there are people who slip through the cracks or life gets in the way for them. But the people that want kids and aren’t idiots, plan to have them early 30s at the latest.
This holds especially true for women. Men have more leeway as they have a much easier time marrying younger. A 31 year old guy is on a 26 year old women’s dating radar. The opposite isn’t true. Then there is the biologically factor of birth giving. Fertility begins to decline at 30, and drops off dramatically after 35. If you start trying at 33, there’s a decent chance that it won’t happen. People say you can adopt, but that’s naive. There’s no place you go and say one baby please. Adoption is a long and expensive process with no guaranty of success.
That makes more sense treis, I appreciate the clarification.
Is this really true? I only ask because most of my peers and I have never had the same standards for the women we sleep with versus the women we will seriously date. My dating standards have been the same for as long as I have been an adult (okay so if you drop out the portion of my life spent in school I have not been a dating adult for that long but that’s why I asked). Not to be crass but I do not need to be able to discuss theories of urbanization with a booty call. Double bonus if we can though.
This is very true among my professional female friends, at least. I think it’s also part of women’s higher standards in wanting more from a partner than a paycheck; trying to start a meaningful relationship with someone with whom you have vastly dissimilar experiences and perspectives does not seem like it would be easy or necessarily fruitful.
Or there is option #3, have a DIY baby. This is my “Oh shit i’m 35” back up plan. Even in the best of circumstances, women stand a pretty good chance of ending up single mothers whether they want to or not. I don’t think it’s too bad to just cut out the middle man and the potential for custody battles and just make it happen on your own. I’d rather be a planned single mother than an unexpected one.
Also, as power and income are leveling out, dating ranges are changing as women stop prioritizing security and start prioritizing attractiveness. Beach resorts, for example, swarm with young party boys who will be a rich older woman’s boyfriend for the week. You may have heard of this “cougars” phenomena. On a less dramatic scale, it’s becoming less and less unusual to date men 3-7 years younger than you. It’s not common yet, but it’s not too out there.
and if that doesn’t convince you, what would you categorize this as?
The commentary of the article in the OP is certainly founded on that idea. The first line:
I have no idea what article you read, but the entire point of the one linked to in the OP is that there are no (or at least fewer) good men out there. Look, it’s in the first line:
Look, you may find it useful to hear what you want to and call it a dialogue, but call me when the “I’m 40, single, miserable, and shouldn’t have let all those good guys get away in my 20s” article comes out. That would be a useful article for a lot of women. Rah Rah we’re so awesome and don’t need to change a thing isn’t going to be very helpful.
And this isn’t coming from single guy who’s been rejected over and over. This is coming from a guy who’s doing the whole the world is my oyster thing in my early to mid 20s. I am living the life, know it’s fun, but also recognize that if this is my life when I am 40 I will be absolutely miserable.
Inflation in Latin America? That’s some damn sexy pillow talk you got going there. Maybe I can woo you with my tales of DiffEQs and Psychometric Charts. Seriously though, I’ve never had trouble finding something to talk about with people that aren’t college educated. And it’s a problem if you are looking for a relationship. You are restricting yourself to a market where there are more buyers than sellers. And those sellers aren’t restricting themselves to just those buyers.
It’s not that women are flighty and irrational beings. It’s a cultural thing. How many of thousands of novels and movies end with the handsome and successful man sweeping a girl off her feet? How many ones of novels and movies end with the middling and mildly successful man getting swept off his feet by the beautiful girl? The cultural expectation is that the men chase the women. That may have worked before, but if you’re a college educated gal limiting yourself to a college educated man, then the numbers aren’t working.
Immature because it doesn’t have a rational view of the situation. Assuming that you can have kids whenever, or adopt if you can’t is foolhardy, and not a mature outlook.
Selfish because it’s, I’ll have kids when I damn well please, and if that means I’ll be 60 when Junior graduates high school, well sucks for Junior.
I think its selfish. I’ll play with other people’s kids at the playground because I feel bad that their dads are too old and fat to get off the bench. Raising kids is a young man’s game, like it or not.
And you’re not going to get anywhere with this “oh you’re just sexist against women” line of attack. I’ve repeatedly held both sexes to the same standard in this very thread.
By mentioning your “booty call”, you’re answering your own question. Sex has never been easier for men to obtain than it is now, so men can get their physical needs met while holding out for the lady that can stimulate their mind, heart, and body. Men are more self-sufficent with regard to sex in that they get by without being in a relationship.
Just like women are more self-sufficient with regard to finances in that they no longer have to be in a relationship to have a roof over their heads and food on the table. They can afford to be more selective in mates, in a way that’s basically unprecedented, because men aren’t their meal ticket anymore.
Dudes can’t draw a bubble bath and sip a glass of Chardonnay while watching Sex And The City?
I suppose that’s fine if your goal is to date The Situation.
Yeah I agree. I’ve never stayed at a hostel ever, but by the time you are 30 you should be staying places that accept Starwood points.
Well, it’s only weird if you are in your 30s and still hitting on early 20-somethings at the local college bar on dollar draft night. I still enjoy going to my favorite “Cheers” style bar and having a beer with my friends, surrounded by other working professionals of all ages or taking my girlfriend to our favorite Manhattan wine bar.
I think the flip side of that is that when you are 22, going to the bars until 5am seems freakin awesome. But now that I’m in my late 30s, there just seems something sort of sad about a bunch of people sitting around getting wasted looking for someone to hook up with for the evening.
I thought it was clear that I was using booty call as a light way of describing casual sex. I have not had a real booty call since I worked in a bar. Not even sure if it counts when you spend most of your week working until 3am. My female roommate, however, is a career driven professional who does have a stand by booty call.
Girls can hold out for Mr. Right while hooking up with Mr. Right Now too.
I was questioning to the supposed increase in standards. You make it seem as if men developed standards in the past few decades and are no longer aiming for trophy wives. I only question this because my parents and their friends share the interests of their respective spouses.
I find it interesting that the concept of women staying single all their lives is so “out there” that it rates an article in Atlantic magazine, reassuring everyone that the world isn’t coming to an end. Yeah, women marry for a meal ticket, and more unemployed men means that women can’t find what they want, so more women are staying single. No, that’s not sexist at all.
I’ve read that the trend today is for people at more or less at the same education and social level to get married, which is different from the Mad Men era when male execs tended not to marry female execs in no small part because there weren’t many around. I don’t think this was out of desire - in my generation, in the '70s, all my friends married women who had been to good colleges and who were quite able and willing to have careers (except for a few exceptions who were desperate.) However marrying “down” was not looked down on.
If today there are more women than men in college, and men are getting excessively screwed by the economy, if women want to marry “up” or at least equal there is going to be a shortage.
Men in the past worked their asses off getting started but got married also. Women without a lot of high career prospects were not insulted as slackers. Perhaps women today should try to find men like the women men found 50 years ago. If they dump the men when they succeed, we deserve it.
Perhaps we need a real gender roles revolution.
Planning on retiring? Planning on paying for college for Junior?
Being 60 with both kids out of school and paid for feels real good, and lets us save up even more for retirement - and gives us a shot at retiring at a decent time. We have a friend who is now being forced to retire at 75 with one kid still in college. He’s a professor, so can stay on longer than most people, and his wife is quite a bit younger. I wouldn’t trade positions with them, thanks.
It is not like having kids late is evil, but there are consequences down the road which might not seem so obvious at 30.
Well, what I was trying to get at is that for a lot of these women, their standards are unrealistically high, not that they’re justified in this attitude.
I keep coming back to a single friend of mine; she’s a marketing exec for a national company you’d certainly recognize. She’s blonde, pretty, and has a great figure.
At her core, she’s a huge sci-fi/fantasy dork with most of the MST3k episodes on DVD (she transferred them from VHS herself).
She desperately wants a long-term relationship, but wants a guy with similar career success, similar good looks, and a certain social ability/stature.
Problem is, guys like that don’t have too much in common with her, and guys who have a lot in common with her are usually nerdy, like all the rest of her friends.
Personally, I feel it’s heartwrenching to see her go through this- if there was a way I could grab her shoulders and shake her and say “Go date nerds! They’ll be stunned by your looks at first, but they’ll ultimately love you for who you are. They may also not be as intimidated as other guys by your career success.”
Instead, she dates rather douchebaggy guys because they fit her concept of who she should be dating considering her looks and career success, but those guys are both intimidated by her career success and also don’t have too much in common with her.
I never said anything about trophy wives. But it’s inarguable that men no longer have to get married to have a regular sex life. Casual sex exists in a way it didn’t in the 50’s , 60’s, and 70’s. Which means that the modern male can delay marriage without feeling like he’s missing out on action.
I’m not sure why your parents and friends alter this point. Also, the likelihood that female standards are changing while those of men have remained static is too implausible to believe. Years ago, how many men would say they wanted an intelligent, independent woman with a sense of humor? Three or four maybe? You’ll find plenty of men who value those traits now. Also, the majority of men I meet nowadays expect women to shoulder 50% of dating costs and other expenses, and would consider any woman who desires to be courted through classical “wining and dining” a gold-digging diva. Compare that attitude to that of men in previous generations.
The problem is that a good part of our dating behavior is genetic, not cultural and a gender roles revolution probably wouldn’t stick anymore than the efforts by Marxists to radically reform social orders failed. Stereotypically (so naturally there is some divergence but there is a grain of truth to this across dating spectra) men want women who can get pregnant and have healthy kids (ie young, attractive, somewhat slutty) while women want men who are able to provide resources for the kids, who are committed to them (the woman and the kids) and will stick around to help raise the kids and pass his resources onto them. You can’t throw that away and ask women to start marrying men who are broke and uneducated (since those men can’t provide for and protect the kids). At the same time, as the pool of high value men dries up the rules of dating change to reflect the values of men which are sex with multiple partners (so commitment disappears).
Women can’t have it all based on their goals. High value males aren’t willing to commit (meaning he’ll abandon the woman and kids) because they have too many options. Low value males will commit but have little to offer wrt resources to raise a family. It’d be like if men only had 2 options in women, nuns and horribly ugly sluts. The nuns are sexy but won’t put out. The ugly sluts will but nobody wants them.
I’m a fairly low value male (I have a reasonable intellect and good education and all, but my career/income is stagnant, I do embarrassing things which have tarnished my social status, and I’m not special to look at) so all this is amusing from the outside looking in. This must be what entomologists feel like.