Why can't I find a "good guy?" (dates, men, attracted)

[jobaba]

My friends who got married in their 30s are still together for the most part, mostly all of them.

Which some of it is surprising to me because some of them I didn't even think were good matches at the start.

The people I know who got married much earlier, a different story.

I think a large part of that is 'staying together through kids'. Not necessarily FOR kids, but kids take up so much of your time and life and sort of supplant any problems you might have as a couple. And then by the time that's over ... you're like 55 and the pool of potentials is pretty small, so ... what you have is probably better.

People who get married earlier may only be 35 by the time their kids are almost adults and so divorce and finding a BETTER mate is a much higher possibility.

I think a lot of it is a matter of comfort and practicality though my best friend's parents divorced after ~ 40 years.

[Always Needmore]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

Because I work mostly remotely now, when I am in the office, I am stationed out in the ranks so to speak.
I am surrounded by younger employees, mostly young women. I am flooded with their chit chat and for many, it is the same topic. Young ladies in our office (meaning 25-35) are often talking about their frustration in finding a guy. They also talk about their limitations in what they consider a “good guy”

The keep asking, “Why can’t I find a ‘good guy?’”

You start out at a small disadvantage in that there are more men than women to begin with, but the difference is fairly small.

If you want someone in your general age bracket, then you are cutting things to about 25% of the men. Unless more than +/- 10 years is workable for you. Maybe 15 years older is OK, but 10 years younger is not (only 5 years), so the impact remains about the same. Slightly but not much impact on the odds if you expand the age range some and if you expand it a lot – well ick.

Somewhat less than half the men under 30 are single or uncommitted. So, now you are at 12.5%. Of course, if you expand the age range, or you are older, that number drops substantially (even though many of those married before 30 are getting divorced after 30, still a good number get married for the first time after 30, so it balances out even at older ranges.

It is estimated that roughly 3% of men are gay, asexual, or some other letter that is incompatible with being in a relationship with a woman. 9.5%

One of the most common comments I hear from young women is they will not date short men. Defining short as 5’9” (the national average), you are cutting the population in half again. 4.75% If you define short as shorter, like 5’7” and under then your odds are a tiny bit better. If taller – then your odds go down. I have heard quite a lot of your women say they are not interested in anyone under 6’. That is going to drop your odds by half again or more, but I will ignore that for now.

Many women also say they do not have any interest in men who are self-centered, self-obsessed, or narcissistic, or looking to replace their mother who has always taken care of them. Being generous with the under 30 crowd, this takes out another half, so 2.375% remain. However since most of those are going to be the ones who are married, you better take half again. 1.1375%

Take away other unacceptable traits. Bald, fat, skinny/scrawny, too muscular, too hairy, undereducated (no college), chew or smoke tobacco, foreign culture (especially misogynistic cultures), pot use, drug use, video game player, heavy drinker or alcoholic, doesn’t earn enough, conceited or snobby, hair or eye color, unacceptable habits (spitting, nose picking, farting in public, etc), bad teeth, acne or acne scars, too religious, nor religious enough, simply ugly. . . . Now you are down to a small fraction of 1%, depending on how many of those conditions apply.

Now take away those to whom you are not attractive. The ones who find you too skinny, too fat, too hairy, too plain, overly made up, breasts too small or too large, butt too small, too large, too flat, too round; over or under-educated, hair color, eye color height, too silly, too serious, overly or under religious, too smart/dumb, too OCD or not clean enough, etc. Now you are down to about .001%.

“But I want a guy who will make me laugh” .0005%

You have about 0 % chance of meeting an eligible guy. If by some miracle you find one, you also have to somehow outdo your competition.

Better off playing the lotto. If you win guys will come flocking to you and your odds of winning the lotto are about the same as they are of meeting that magical unicorn – the good guy.

So, what you are saying is, people with an extremely fine sieve (women in this case) tend to end up alone, complaining how all the "good ones" got away? Whoudathunkit?

[Sonic_Spork]

I don't consider a relationship a failure just because it ends (this was some back and forth a couple pages back)... I rather ask myself, if I look back at a relationship, whether one I'm in or one in my past, do I feel regret? Do I feel that I got nothing good out of it, that I kinda wish I just had not met that person, had never slept with them, had never started down whatever road to whatever it was?

There's only one I really...kinda/sorta/mostly..."regret." I remain not totally committed to that mindset, because as I often say, I have no idea how my life would have otherwise gone and frankly given how I was at the time, it could have been so much worse. I do have a number of past partners where it wasn't anything really negative but it just didn't really need to happen. Very "meh, that happened...moving on..." Don't consider them to be successes, or failures either really.

But I've never been obsessed with the idea of finding one single person to spend the rest of my life with.

Especially given how a lot of ya'll strict monogamists talk, "I want the honeymoon phase to last forever!" and "It is wrong if they have opposite sex friends" and all. It feels to me like some folks want to be locked in isolation with one other person forever and think that it's supposed to somehow be bliss. Just constant boinkin' and obsessive dreamy eyed staring at each other, for like 50 or 60 straight years, or what? That sounds like my idea of hell.

So yeah, for me, success or failure has less to do with whether it lasts or it ends, and more to do with how I feel about it in the rear view. A number of those that ended, I feel very happy that I got to have them in my life even for a limited time. I would do it all over again even knowing it wouldn't last, in a heartbeat. I get to keep the memories forever and that's great. Some I even got treasured friendships from that I DO expect may very well last for life. Wouldn't surprise me anyhow. The romantic/sexual label was not the best fit, we evolved the thing to friendship, and that turned out to be just right. If I got something out of it that I value, then it isn't any kind of a failure. Not at all.

I dunno, I think my mindset about all this is just more easygoing than a lot of people's. I don't want to clutch and grasp at expectations or ideas and demand things of the universe where life or love is concerned. I want to be able to chill and smile and enjoy whatever comes. Be happy if things meet my expectations, and also be happy if they don't.

But again here we've got some super salty sounding individuals, showing up to 'splain how this has got to be math and science, because damn it they say so! Alright man, fine. Math says it's hopeless. If you need to give up, ain't nobody gonna stop you.

Like is this what happens when we defund all of the art and humanities stuff and insist that STEM is the only area of study that's worth a damn? Is it? People forget how to interact and date and enjoy life? Sure as hell seems like it.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

People forget how to interact and date and enjoy life? Sure as hell seems like it.

Sure does, and I think that's a huge root of the problem.

I used to think it was the internet generation. It didn't exist when growing up for me, so we went out and played together, or whatever.

Now I wonder how much its that academics over everything, and STEM more than anything else. I see so many posts from (mostly young men) where they haven't interacted with women socially, and I'm like... how? Never mind class, but what about band, theatre, madrigals, chorus, marching band, clubs, whatever. I know wind ensemble and pit band for school plays is really where they uh, early extracurriculars ramped up in high school . You'd be really hard pressed not to interact with women if you even got involved ine one these activities. It sure wasn't happening (for me anyway) in soccer/basketball/baseball.

(This is my abridged TED Talk - signed, old man yelling at clouds)

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Sure does, and I think that's a huge root of the problem.

I used to think it was the internet generation. It didn't exist when growing up for me, so we went out and played together, or whatever.

Now I wonder how much its that academics over everything, and STEM more than anything else. I see so many posts from (mostly young men) where they haven't interacted with women socially, and I'm like... how? Never mind class, but what about band, theatre, madrigals, chorus, marching band, clubs, whatever. I know wind ensemble and pit band for school plays is really where they uh, early extracurriculars ramped up in high school . You'd be really hard pressed not to interact with women if you even got involved ine one these activities. It sure wasn't happening (for me anyway) in soccer/basketball/baseball.

Regarding "the internet generation" I watched a video on Youtube about how multiverse theory in entertainment is a metaphor for nihilism and a film I really enjoyed recently was actually about a generational conflict between existentialism and nihilism with the internet at the heart of the issue. It was a damn good video.

But yeah I do see a ton of hopelessness and fragility and a very dark kind of nihilism in younger people and it worries me, and it reaches out and touches dating as much as anything. Especially younger guys. And I feel like...at least for me...the creative stuff, though the Boomer elders to my Gen X self really hammered that it was pointless and frivolous, it is the very essence of what makes life worth living. Without art, music, writing, theater, storytelling... What, really, is the point? I mean, don't get me wrong, I dipped my toes in some nihilism as a teen, too, but it turns out it was only a thin veneer, a layer of black nail polish, if you will, over something else. It was more "making excuses for hedonism" than "nothing matters, and I give up."

<Insert everything bagel metaphor here.>

I do think that the internet is at least a big part of the problem though. I mean, it's amazing and I don't expect we ever go back from it now that we've got it, but like...when it comes to human engagement and especially dating, it is so...not real. And I also think it's encouraged a mentality of "I have a right to be an a-hole and everybody needs to just be fine with that"...a lack of social accountability for those hiding anonymously behind keyboards, which probably holds a lot of guys back in dating.

At first I used to kinda think that women now know more about red flags and are more apt to avoid toxic men...but I don't think that's necessarily true, though. People who are at a place where they're gonna make bad decisions...are gonna go right ahead and make them even if they "know better," to some extent. It's just that when discomforts arise later after the initial hormones are outta the way, they have new words to label problems, whether those terms (like the over-used "narcissist") are accurate or not.

There are several things going on that are having a big effect on people. I just wonder how long it has to take before those who are struggling wake up and...try something different, perhaps?

[Euskalherria]

The 'inside' seems to always take the backseat to the 'outside'... nothing new there.

Frankly, if people are deeming others 'good people' over things such as skin color, eye color, hair color, height, weight, size & shape of body parts, career - or no career, salary, make of car, type of home, etc. and excluding inner qualities - qualities that REALLY count after all is said and done - then, IMO, those people who are 'doing the deeming' are not really 'good' people and, to be candid, are unworthy of a genuinely good person.

[Formerly Known As Twenty]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Sure does, and I think that's a huge root of the problem.

I used to think it was the internet generation. It didn't exist when growing up for me, so we went out and played together, or whatever.

Now I wonder how much its that academics over everything, and STEM more than anything else. I see so many posts from (mostly young men) where they haven't interacted with women socially, and I'm like... how? Never mind class, but what about band, theatre, madrigals, chorus, marching band, clubs, whatever. I know wind ensemble and pit band for school plays is really where they uh, early extracurriculars ramped up in high school . You'd be really hard pressed not to interact with women if you even got involved ine one these activities. It sure wasn't happening (for me anyway) in soccer/basketball/baseball.

(This is my abridged TED Talk - signed, old man yelling at clouds)

Regarding band, choir, theater, and the like: I've had this convo with my man on several occasions in that he really missed out on some great opportunities with the opposite sex when he was in high school because he wasn't in band, although he did meet a fair amount of women through theatre.

To paraphrase a popular phrase: the goods might have been odd at times, the but the odds were really, really good for both guys and girls who were in band/choir/theatre--far better odds than for even the most popular of jocks. (Guess which busses carried the cheerleaders to away games? It wasn't the football/basketball players' busses. )

Carry this into band/choir thing into college and this is where I and my college classmates met most of the folks that we dated (or just hooked up with); most of my college friends were/are still married to people who they met through band. Good times. You just get to know how to interact with the opposite sex when you participate in those groups. It's darn near impossible not to--especially on the collegiate level. Most of us were *not* music majors, by the way.

The same definitely still holds true even with the current crop of young 'uns, i.e., most of the guys who are involved in band/choir have few issues with finding someone to date. Proximity and at least one shared interest really helps people to see each other as, well, people.

[fleetiebelle]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Now I wonder how much its that academics over everything, and STEM more than anything else. I see so many posts from (mostly young men) where they haven't interacted with women socially, and I'm like... how? Never mind class, but what about band, theatre, madrigals, chorus, marching band, clubs, whatever. I know wind ensemble and pit band for school plays is really where they uh, early extracurriculars ramped up in high school . You'd be really hard pressed not to interact with women if you even got involved ine one these activities. It sure wasn't happening (for me anyway) in soccer/basketball/baseball.

We often get posts from guys on this board who seem to have spent their entire college careers locked in their rooms with their laptops. They get out of school declaring that they are now ready for the next achievement (i.e. women) only to find out that they're socially at least 5 years behind everyone else. So they come here resenting everything.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by Formerly Known As Twenty

Carry this into band/choir thing into college and this is where I and my college classmates met most of the folks that we dated (or just hooked up with); most of my college friends were/are still married to people who they met through band. Good times. You just get to know how to interact with the opposite sex when you participate in those groups. It's darn near impossible not to--especially on the collegiate level. Most of us were *not* music majors, by the way.

Absolutely. I wish I was more forward thinking. I played euphonium (I thought it was sexy...). My brother sax, but switched to percussion. That opens up the door to not only pissing our parents off, but being in rock bands. Which rules for meeting the opposite sex, and making good guy friends. Dammit. I was so short sighted.

Originally Posted by fleetiebelle

We often get posts from guys on this board who seem to have spent their entire college careers locked in their rooms with their laptops. They get out of school declaring that they are now ready for the next achievement (i.e. women) only to find out that they're socially at least 5 years behind everyone else. So they come here resenting everything.

Yeah, it's something else. Part of me kind of gets it. I might have done that when I went to college if it was an option. I couldn't, so did the college radio thing (not great for meeting women), but then got involved in the music scene in town, and of course there are classes. Doesn't anyone (cough) study together anymore?

My nephews didn't have TV and had super limited (for academic / educational) internet access growing up. Strict, for sure, but they became voracious readers (and not coincidently are great writers), but also became super involved in community stuff. People just need to get offline and interact with people. I'm fully convinced if they do as youths, and continue to, chemistry happens and the rest follows naturally. People are trying to skip all the basic of relating to each other in person, reading signals, flirting, ramping up the flirting... and trying to skip right to "getting sex" or "getting a girlfriend". Yikes. No. Walk before you run.

[Florida2014]

As one of that 0.0005% of perfect men, I'm taking applications. Photos of duck lips or Snapchat filters will get you immediately eliminated. Good luck.