Why women lose the dating game

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beer1982
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18 Aug 2014, 4:20 am

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... 1xdn0.html

I would like to hear womans persect on this article. Is there any truth to it?



The_Face_of_Boo
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18 Aug 2014, 4:51 am

I think one of the main reasons why successful 30something women complain they are not finding good men is, ironically, gender roles:
The more they become successful, the more they want to marry up, very few would accept to marry down; especially financially and achievement-wise. Most of what they call alpha-successful men (or with obvious success prospect) who they so desire were more likely grabbed by some other woman in their 20s; so men who remain chronically single after 30 are less likely to have the traits/assets that those successful 30-women desire, the more successful/wealthier the man is the more likely he'll get married sooner, It's a conflict of interests.

Studies show that even millionaire women want as millionaire or richer men; surely a millionaire woman wouldn't need a millionaire man for her and her offspring to survive. There might be a subconscious biological reason for all of this.



Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 18 Aug 2014, 11:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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18 Aug 2014, 6:30 am

Not me. I want an 'ordinary' man.



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18 Aug 2014, 6:49 am

I'm sure there's some truth in it, but this hasn't been my experience at all. I was fed a lot of this stuff though and fought against it - marrying someone who wasn't all of those things - but he was intelligent and funny. I should have waited. Honestly, I'd have been better off single in many ways - however, I don't think I would have ended up single.



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18 Aug 2014, 7:11 am

I think there's a lot of truth to that article. Karma is bound to catch up with many women who are full-of-themselves to a point where it doesn't make any sense.



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18 Aug 2014, 8:41 am

elkclan wrote:
I'm sure there's some truth in it, but this hasn't been my experience at all. I was fed a lot of this stuff though and fought against it - marrying someone who wasn't all of those things - but he was intelligent and funny. I should have waited. Honestly, I'd have been better off single in many ways - however, I don't think I would have ended up single.


Same.



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18 Aug 2014, 11:07 am

In my generation (and growing up in the south), as a female, if you weren't married by the time you were 30, you were considered an utter failure. With the odds stacked against me, I went for a career instead of a husband and kids. Lucky for me, I never had the "ticking biological clock" syndrome, so I didn't give a rat's ass what anyone else thought. In my early 30s I ended up marrying someone who was very smart, but not particularly tall, not particularly attractive, and certainly not wealthy, because I thought he'd make a great partner for me (turns out he sucked at that, too). But there wasn't any "one that got away" because I waited too long.

The article mentioned it being a generational thing. I'm fairly certain that if women having careers had been "the done thing" when I was in my college years/early 20s, I was just rebellious enough to have wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. :P



AlexanderDantes
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18 Aug 2014, 11:36 am

For one, I would not go near women who go around telling men to man up or be this or that.

No wonder these women struggle, haha, anyone who uses the term alpha makes is a douche.



AlexanderDantes
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18 Aug 2014, 11:48 am

On the other hand, I have mainly been involved older women and sometimes they have kids, 25-40 year olds and some of them were business women. The one I am involved with at the moment is a businesswoman whom employs many people.

I don't really discriminate against age, I just get along better with older women, I find they are more mature and tend to be better conversationalists



Last edited by AlexanderDantes on 18 Aug 2014, 11:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

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18 Aug 2014, 11:48 am

I think the article means that a lot of them probably "struggle" as a result of acting overly picky/stuck-up while in their 20s and early 30s. But then when they get a bit older come to the shocking-realization that men generally age a little better than they do.



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18 Aug 2014, 11:52 am

Venger wrote:
I think the article means that a lot of them probably "struggle" as a result of acting overly picky/stuck-up while in their 20s and early 30s. But then when they get a bit older come to the shocking-realization that men generally age a little better than they do.


Trust me, older women are better in the bedroom though and some do age well, look at Kylie Minogue. They are more likely to be into introverted and intelligent guys as well.



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18 Aug 2014, 12:09 pm

Choose partners for love and put love first and such things are immaterial.



tarantella64
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18 Aug 2014, 12:40 pm

Well, there's the problem right there, isn't it: "She's is now 39 and facing grim choices."

I don't see that the set of choices is grim. These are women with good lives. The controlling idea there is that life without a husband is dire, also that it's impossible to be a mother without a husband. I don't find either of these things to be true.

Anyway -- it's a standard notion, but it leaves out something important things. On the success bit, women turn out to be sensible in looking for equally or more successful men. And that's because there don't seem to be many guys who can tolerate, longterm, being with a woman who's smarter, better-educated, and more successful than they are. It really wears on them, as do the demands of the women's careers. What I've seen in friends' husbands -- often ex-husbands, at this point -- is that when they follow the woman's career, they become demoralized by the women's success, and it has to do with their own expectations of how their lives would go, how dominant they would be. When that changes -- and to some extent I think it is changing, as men slowly redefine success for themselves -- the education/career-success gaps won't be so important. It was instructive, though, watching the stay-home dad movement of the early '00s -- some guys made a very high-profile do of it, but nearly all of them were back to office jobs within a couple of years. The loss of status wore on them very hard. Essentially, more guys are discovering that the wifey/mommy job is kind of a s**t position as far as social status goes, and they aren't very happy with it, especially if they'd started out higher up the chain.

As for the going-for-younger-women thing...well, I've been that younger woman. And what the younger woman finds out is that the charming older man is actually pretty childish and irresponsible, also terrified of aging, and that's why he's going for much younger women. It's not a lot of fun to be used as a revitalization pill. It's true that it's difficult to find people, men or women, who are comfortable with aging and both respect and accept it. Death is scary, infirmity is scary, and our society punishes people for being old. But at this point I can't see being with anyone who said he "looked younger than he is" or was youth-obsessed. Again, it's part of growing up, part of human experience, aging, and it's important to be there for it, not run away from it. If you're doing that you need companions who are where you are on your journey.

And yeah, there are lots of stories about why the men aren't "growing up". But there's a "lost generation" every other generation or so, where people tut at how childish they are.



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18 Aug 2014, 1:53 pm

Eureka13 wrote:
In my generation (and growing up in the south), as a female, if you weren't married by the time you were 30, you were considered an utter failure. With the odds stacked against me, I went for a career instead of a husband and kids. Lucky for me, I never had the "ticking biological clock" syndrome, so I didn't give a rat's ass what anyone else thought. In my early 30s I ended up marrying someone who was very smart, but not particularly tall, not particularly attractive, and certainly not wealthy, because I thought he'd make a great partner for me (turns out he sucked at that, too). But there wasn't any "one that got away" because I waited too long.

The article mentioned it being a generational thing. I'm fairly certain that if women having careers had been "the done thing" when I was in my college years/early 20s, I was just rebellious enough to have wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. :P


:D i was of the first generation of dressers-for-success, and it was kind of headsnapping, how fast the attitudes had changed. My classmates wouldn't have dreamed of doing an MRS -- what's the point of college if you're just going to drop out? And while several friends married people they met in college, none of them married till years after college, usually after grad school. Having a steady boyfriend -- a "husband" -- was a bfd, though, not so much like now, where the girls are like, whatevs, I'm busy with finals, don't bother me.



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18 Aug 2014, 2:40 pm

tarantella64 wrote:
Well, there's the problem right there, isn't it: "She's is now 39 and facing grim choices."

I don't see that the set of choices is grim. These are women with good lives. The controlling idea there is that life without a husband is dire, also that it's impossible to be a mother without a husband. I don't find either of these things to be true.

Anyway -- it's a standard notion, but it leaves out something important things. On the success bit, women turn out to be sensible in looking for equally or more successful men. And that's because there don't seem to be many guys who can tolerate, longterm, being with a woman who's smarter, better-educated, and more successful than they are. It really wears on them, as do the demands of the women's careers. What I've seen in friends' husbands -- often ex-husbands, at this point -- is that when they follow the woman's career, they become demoralized by the women's success, and it has to do with their own expectations of how their lives would go, how dominant they would be. When that changes -- and to some extent I think it is changing, as men slowly redefine success for themselves -- the education/career-success gaps won't be so important. It was instructive, though, watching the stay-home dad movement of the early '00s -- some guys made a very high-profile do of it, but nearly all of them were back to office jobs within a couple of years. The loss of status wore on them very hard. Essentially, more guys are discovering that the wifey/mommy job is kind of a sh** position as far as social status goes, and they aren't very happy with it, especially if they'd started out higher up the chain.

As for the going-for-younger-women thing...well, I've been that younger woman. And what the younger woman finds out is that the charming older man is actually pretty childish and irresponsible, also terrified of aging, and that's why he's going for much younger women. It's not a lot of fun to be used as a revitalization pill. It's true that it's difficult to find people, men or women, who are comfortable with aging and both respect and accept it. Death is scary, infirmity is scary, and our society punishes people for being old. But at this point I can't see being with anyone who said he "looked younger than he is" or was youth-obsessed. Again, it's part of growing up, part of human experience, aging, and it's important to be there for it, not run away from it. If you're doing that you need companions who are where you are on your journey.

And yeah, there are lots of stories about why the men aren't "growing up". But there's a "lost generation" every other generation or so, where people tut at how childish they are.


This gender role thinking goes both roles tarantella, yes many men prefer women less successful than them, but also many women prefer men who are equally or more successful than themselves. The reasons aren't always rational like "if I go to a man less successful then he might get insecure and annoy me"; they say they just like successful men more.



AlexanderDantes
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18 Aug 2014, 2:45 pm

tarantella64 wrote:
Well, there's the problem right there, isn't it: "She's is now 39 and facing grim choices."

I don't see that the set of choices is grim. These are women with good lives. The controlling idea there is that life without a husband is dire, also that it's impossible to be a mother without a husband. I don't find either of these things to be true.

Anyway -- it's a standard notion, but it leaves out something important things. On the success bit, women turn out to be sensible in looking for equally or more successful men. And that's because there don't seem to be many guys who can tolerate, longterm, being with a woman who's smarter, better-educated, and more successful than they are. It really wears on them, as do the demands of the women's careers. What I've seen in friends' husbands -- often ex-husbands, at this point -- is that when they follow the woman's career, they become demoralized by the women's success, and it has to do with their own expectations of how their lives would go, how dominant they would be. When that changes -- and to some extent I think it is changing, as men slowly redefine success for themselves -- the education/career-success gaps won't be so important. It was instructive, though, watching the stay-home dad movement of the early '00s -- some guys made a very high-profile do of it, but nearly all of them were back to office jobs within a couple of years. The loss of status wore on them very hard. Essentially, more guys are discovering that the wifey/mommy job is kind of a sh** position as far as social status goes, and they aren't very happy with it, especially if they'd started out higher up the chain.

As for the going-for-younger-women thing...well, I've been that younger woman. And what the younger woman finds out is that the charming older man is actually pretty childish and irresponsible, also terrified of aging, and that's why he's going for much younger women. It's not a lot of fun to be used as a revitalization pill. It's true that it's difficult to find people, men or women, who are comfortable with aging and both respect and accept it. Death is scary, infirmity is scary, and our society punishes people for being old. But at this point I can't see being with anyone who said he "looked younger than he is" or was youth-obsessed. Again, it's part of growing up, part of human experience, aging, and it's important to be there for it, not run away from it. If you're doing that you need companions who are where you are on your journey.

And yeah, there are lots of stories about why the men aren't "growing up". But there's a "lost generation" every other generation or so, where people tut at how childish they are.


There are also women who don't grow up and remain caught up in office politics, gossip and general cattiness.