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Your bold section is targeted at me, since I'm a late twenties, never been married, and never had kids. For me, it's not about cougar status, but single mom's or older women in general have always been more my speed. I took a number of years off from seriously dating to get myself in a place where I could even support a relationship. I wasn't in the financial shape to stand on my own two feet.
You do bring up a good point that I've thought about dating myself. At 29, I do feel I get passed over by a lot of single mom's because I don't have kids and never beeen married. I will tell you exactly how that makes me feel too. I clearly bought into the the idea that if I have a car, place to live, job, and decent income, dating will be easier for me. What I have found out that while obtaining all those things, it's made my personal life easier, but it's made my dating life harder. Quite honestly, I'm feeling that I'm a bit intimidating to a single mom. For the same reasons that you stated, why would this single child free man want with me and my 1, 2, or 3 kids?
The problem I have with this idealogy, is just because you have children doesn't mean that you are any less of a person. If you have qualities that I'm attracted too, and you're trying to take care of yourself, we can make a relationship work. It will be a bit harder, but I don't think it will be much harder than dating someone who doesn't have kids.
Going back to kids and marriage. I made the decision to hold off on those things, because I was already near rock bottom with some decisions I had made. I put those things on hold till I could accomodate the time and energy necessary to make kids and marriage work. Now that I'm to that point, I do feel as if I'm penalized for waiting. Instead of being viewed as being put together, I feel as if I'm viewed as there's something wrong with me waiting as long as I have.
No one is going to rush me into kids and marriage. A couple years back, I was dating someone, and had to end it because she was ready to have kids and I wasn't. She quickly found someone else that was ready to have a child and she's married and happy as a clam. She was ready to take that step and I wasn't, so in my eyes it's no harm no foul.
So, coming from a guy who has no kids and has never been married, it's not about being a cougar chaser. I've always been attracted to women that were a couple years older than me. I've always felt older women had a better respect of where I was going or had been, where I felt younger women cared more about where I was at at that moment in time. Dating is hard for all of us, but it is harder for me now, than it ever was when I had no sense of direction. The only thing I can think of that has made it harder is that I come off as intimidating, even though that is not my intentions.
I have no doubt that you are genuine. I am friends with a man in his 30s who is very similar to you in that regard (I am too young for his tastes as I am closer to his age--he prefers women in their 50s). He's very sincere as well.
Maybe if a 20-something like you contacted me I would have given you a chance (I say contacted because all the 20-somethings that hit on me were though Online dating). But all of the 20-somethings that contacted me were very incoherient in their messages and sent stuff like, "sup. ur bootful", "hey sexy!" " ur one hot mama!" etc... it was very hard to take them seriously. My conclusion was they were looking for something other than dating/a relationship so I ignored them.
The youngest man I went out with ended up being 32. I didn't meet him though online dating. I think he thought I was closer to his age. He didn't want to date me after he found out I was older than him--he really wanted someone to meet, maybe marry and start a family with. I am done having children. So we weren't really a good match. But he was a nice man with a big heart and we have a pleasant date--I think someday, some lucky woman will find him.
I have no doubt that you are genuine. I am friends with a man in his 30s who is very similar to you in that regard (I am too young for his tastes as I am closer to his age--he prefers women in their 50s). He's very sincere as well.
Maybe if a 20-something like you contacted me I would have given you a chance (I say contacted because all the 20-somethings that hit on me were though Online dating). But all of the 20-somethings that contacted me were very incoherient in their messages and sent stuff like, "sup. ur bootful", "hey sexy!" " ur one hot mama!" etc... it was very hard to take them seriously. My conclusion was they were looking for something other than dating/a relationship so I ignored them.
The youngest man I went out with ended up being 32. I didn't meet him though online dating. I think he thought I was closer to his age. He didn't want to date me after he found out I was older than him--he really wanted someone to meet, maybe marry and start a family with. I am done having children. So we weren't really a good match. But he was a nice man with a big heart and we have a pleasant date--I think someday, some lucky woman will find him.
I have taken the stance of indifference with kids. If I have them fine, if I don't have them fine. If I date a single mom fine, if I don't that's fine as well. I would imagine those younger guys aren't what you're really looking for. I've messaged younger women and their sentence structures really frustrate me as well. It's even more frustrating when people older than me use it. Dating just takes time for all of us, and in the meantime, I can keep doing things that make me happy.
Last edited by weezerfan84; 10-11-2013 at 08:04 AM..
First I could care less if you or your company would not want to date me. Chances are probably just as much that I would have no interest in any of you. For me, I assess my standards by how well I am able to attract and have relationships with men that meet my standards. Like most people if I constantly found that the standards I set were preventing me from having a relationship because the men I want don't want me I would lower my standards or look into myself to figure out how to make myself more of a catch. On the flip side if I have found that 100% of the time I have dated men or attracted men that I wanted then I would not lower my standards or feel that I need to. My case is simple the latter. I have yet to meet a man that I wanted and was very attracted to that did not want me back that much more.
So I will reiterate and say that i am
Not concerned at all that you or your friends or the men that you associate with
Would rule me out. Chances are the moment I saw you I ruled you out and kept walking. I'm not cocky but we all know where we stand in the dating market. And EVERY time i go out, with my son even, I have men approach me. I have been asked out several times and get this i have rejected. Sure some probably wanted sex. but then again before i had my son there was always those men thar just wanted sex. nothing has changed on that. and while im at what if all i wanted was sex? lol interestingly enough ive been asked to be in relationships with men that meet my quality more than some of my childless friends. Yes as a single mom this is my reality. Who knows maybe I'm just that hot? :-)
99% of the world could despise me and I would care less, because the 1% that I want will want me to. So regardless of how you or any other man on the forum feels my only concern is with the men that I am attracted to and want. And I rule out a lot of men, a lot and I do not let my status as a single mom make it so that I feel the need to settle for anything less than what I desire.
That being said what you said you be right. but you still have not posted any stats that support anything that you've said... Why should we take what you wrote as fact?
That's good, but I've told you exactly why you'd not stand much chance. I'm generally not looking for a fling and I never was. None of people from my company did either and they married other women they knew for years and as a matter of fact, I've been on a wedding this year of one of my former colleagues and good friend of mine, they married as virgins, even though he never told that I've had the change to know by the way he reasoned about OTHERS (at one time in the past a dean of the IT university came to our company to discuss the co-operation that we planned with the university and employment programs, and this guy later said about her on his first thought: "of course she's married, see that she had sex and got a child" ... that's NOT what a guy reasons unless it's his upbringing at home that taught him that way).
And for the bold part - it is the key to your success and to my own. I reason that I don't need to be liked by everyone/don't need to have a pass for everyone, one person in total is enough if I like her, and only her opinion would matter to me.
I don't need to make any statistics out of my head, I just know that dating field has someone for everyone else, it just depends on what the people want and what are their own circumstances. It is very common that lots of divorced folks with children specifically end up with other divorced folks as well, even though those same folks never reasoned that way before they married and they had a huge mental block to even think of it before. Similar thing happens to single parents, especially single mothers. Young single mothers who previously dated only guys their age may end up dating single guys 10-15 years older and those guys aren't rich millionaires either, or they end up dating other guys who had children from previous relationships as well.
This comprises most of cases and it can be said it's a general rule and a proof of people "lowering their standards" because they'd probably never give those same guys a chance prior to getting a child. Like I said - there are LOTS of single parents out there in America, not every mother has the same circumstances of how she ended up being single mother, not every single mother has the same circumstances about her living or her options either and not every guy reasons the same way. But the main factor is that numbers of separated/divorced/single parents are approximately the same for men and women (except for residential custody), so for every mother with a child there's a guy who has a child from previous relationship. Many of them end up dating exclusively other single parents
Quote:
Originally Posted by 14Bricks
Yeah think? She doesn't even believe what's she saying. She probably read that in some self help book. And I seriously doubt that "high quality" men would want somebody which such terrible written grammar.
I never found anything that is making a communication impossible or that she has a "poor grammar" from her post, it must be the fact that English is not my native and I am tolerant to certain errors that may occur since I'm more prone to make them anyways. I never really paid attention to it until you brought it up.
I would not date a single-mother because our respective world-views would be diametrically opposed. I don’t condemn her for her sexual practices or judge her for putative failures in her prior relationships (had said relationship not failed, presumably she would not presently be dating, unless she were a widow). But I emphatically disagree with the basic mindset that favors reproduction. It would be akin to an Orthodox Jew dating a Wahhabi Muslim… not going to happen.
And yes, I do realize that this enormously narrows my potential dating pool… not by 80%, but more like 99.8%.
It's my demographic. Where I live, a lot of women get married between the ages of 18-25. By 30, there's a lot of eligible women divorced and with a child. I'm from a town that is heavily focused on family values. I see a lot of online dating profiles where the women were actually teen moms. I see quite a bit of 21 year olds with 3-6 year old children.
My area is heavily family focused and I understand that. There's plenty of men that are willing to help make a child, but not stick around to raise it. I've even seen pregnant women, yes showing their pregnant picture online, and still out trying to date. It's just the nature of my area. Many people want that family lifestyle and are more likely to accept less to make it happen as well.
This is the silly part of your post. Family values mean not fooling around, not hanging out in clubs, not wasting money, not having trial marriages, etc. IMO people are very lax even though they are far more knowing, educated and far less stressed and pressed by life difficulties than their ancestors ever were on so many levels.
It's just that many people want to, as you Americans say, have their cookie and eat it at the same time. This means they don't want to miss out on hanging around, having girlfriends/boyfriends, having sex and trying things out, but when the time comes they WANT and DEMAND someone who fits the old profile of a family type. Those two things are NOT compatible and people who do that are NOT family-oriented. They are self-oriented. I've seen it way too many times among women and I guess the same is the fact for women who date men. In fact, I've grown bold and arrogant when I'd notice the scenario playing out in front of me for who knows which time, by being on a date with a woman who THINKS that she's a perfect match, but she noticed that I'd write her off if I'd know a history about her, so she tries to deceive me because she thinks her friends will be impressed for some arbitrary thing.
That being said - I doubt that almost any town or state in USA is really family-oriented by most folks. My experience is with a big city though, but it was still a "southern state" and most folks in there are "nominally" religious or tend to emphasize it in some other way. But at the end of the day - religion means nothing about being family oriented or not, it's the personal attitude and actions. Atheists can be very family oriented and traditional and many in fact are.
As for the profile of teen moms trying online dating on the internet, it perfectly fits what I've said earlier. Lots of cunning single mothers would just want a chance to stat with the "troubled lady" story in an attempt to land the guy willing to fall for it. This thing simply killed it for other single mothers
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
And yes, I do realize that this enormously narrows my potential dating pool… not by 80%, but more like 99.8%.
This is what the OP WANTS you to believe, but it couldnt' be farther from the truth. Unless you're a single father or have children already and pay the child support, you have plenty of options with other child-free women. In fact, even among the women in their 30s, you'll find that majority of women who are in the dating pool are childless. That is so because many mothers will marry and stay married (about half of married couples will not divorce!), then there are numerous women with children who will remarry and those will often end up with other guys who have children of their own as well, then you have single mothers who never marry but aren't even attempting to date because they don't want to compromise on many things regarding the life of their child (or their own life in general) when it comes to profile of potential suitors, i.e. many single mothers in that age bracket don't want another person to have children and most child-free folks will opt for other child-free women.
This means that even women will show the same tendency as men, so you also have women who will sign off lots of men for simply having children as well, and then there's the fact that those men will need to economically support those children and economical factor is very important for women when they evaluate potential suitors as well.
It's just that men are under the attack by the media, this forum, even politicians, especially the social engineers, and they are prone to display counter-answer. Someone wants to emphasize that men's biology doesn't and shouldn't matter, but they want to hold a double-standard there. They want to make it into a world where mother would opt for another father, evict the old one, and the new father would act exactly as if he's the biological father. This double-standard will never work because, as I said it earlier, social engineers will never convince the mothers that their sons should accept that. Those women will become mothers and they will want biological grandchildren as well, so those mothers will advise their sons the same thing.
OP then gets it into a personal issue, but the fact is that if he married an aging woman with two teenage children as he says, he will probably do what numerous child-free men in his situation and in this modern world did - he'll end up without biological children of his own and only because of someone else's choice, while he'll also take obligation towards someone else's biological children and it's even questionable if he'll ever be accepted as the father either by the mother, children, or the other guy involved, there are lots of breaks there. But at that same time the mother may grow tired and break up and oblige him to pay for children that aren't his own, even if he would want to move on... which would cripple his attempt to start a new family or to find another woman who might want to have children with him. In a country of 310+ million people, there are probably millions of men who did that and most of them ended up exactly this way. Some of them will accept it, vast majority will never accept it. They'll often opt to help their nephews or they'll even adopt a young orphan with another child-free woman if they can't have children but want them.
The OP might be fine with this - but I can tell you that a mainstream profile of a guy wouldn't be fine, nor would his parents be fine if they had any say, nor would they advise him to do that.
For my part, the experience I see in my life bears very little relationship to the views of the posters on this board, the uber super male contingent in particular. I am old enough to know and to have known quite a few divorced people. The fact that they have kids seems to have no bearing on their datability.
I agree with you. I don't think people with kids consciously think they have a smaller pool to choose from, they simply go out and meet whoever is available to date, with no regard for actual numbers.
And in my experience, it's not that a person has kids that is the difficulty, it's what kind of parent they are, what kind of relationship they have with their children and their children's other parent, etc, and how they integrate a SO into that world.
I agree with you. I don't think people with kids consciously think they have a smaller pool to choose from, they simply go out and meet whoever is available to date, with no regard for actual numbers.
And in my experience, it's not that a person has kids that is the difficulty, it's what kind of parent they are, what kind of relationship they have with their children and their children's other parent, etc, and how they integrate a SO into that world.
That is actually the best option and the best way to make it work. Reason for it is quite related to "gravity fear". I.e. Isaac Newton is said to have died "paralyzed" in fear from the facts that he discovered about gravity which he applied to solar system. He concluded that the Saturn and Jupiter are heavily affecting the solar system, most notably their own elliptic paths and the Earth's path with their own big masses that also attract each other and the general conclusion was that it would bring the end of the world. He is said to have died terrified because he knew the facts of gravity and others have laughed at it. Many future scholars also feared it and even calculated those changes, but only later on in 20th century did we get new light on it that this was a fear for no reason, with the new calculations and things that were discovered. Newton could never know that, but to escape his crippling fear, Mr. Newton and many others had convinced themselves that God will not allow it and will take planets and put them "back where they belong". People who never bothered about it never had a crippling fear that stopped them from functioning and living their lives normally.
Bottom line of the story is - people who don't think of it and simply keep on going but accept the reality of a new person they center their life around, will NOT even feel any trouble at all. They won't be preoccupied about people who subtly avoided them, they'll tend not to even notice it. They'll focus on people who show signs that it doesn't matter for them or they'll focus on people who are in "similar boat" like they are for better compatibility. This means they'll simply adapt to new life that includes their children who live with them and they'll never be bitter about it. "Overthinking" about things you can't change or know for sure is a bad thing.
I'm so sick of single parent threads we are more than that! We are students, lawyers, hairdressers, nurses, beauticians, teachers, daughters, sons, brothers,sisters,aunts,uncles........the list goes on. We are individual people not just parents!! Some of you would do well to remember that!!
OP then gets it into a personal issue, but the fact is that if he married an aging woman with two teenage children as he says, he will probably do what numerous child-free men in his situation and in this modern world did - he'll end up without biological children of his own and only because of someone else's choice, while he'll also take obligation towards someone else's biological children and it's even questionable if he'll ever be accepted as the father either by the mother, children, or the other guy involved, there are lots of breaks there. But at that same time the mother may grow tired and break up and oblige him to pay for children that aren't his own, even if he would want to move on... which would cripple his attempt to start a new family or to find another woman who might want to have children with him.
Everything you said above is 100% false.
My GF's children have a father. He is in their lives, sees them regularly, and provides for them. I have no paternal role to play. They've both met me, and like me fine. They know I am good to their mother and they want her to be happy.
Frankly, the tone of your entire post is hysterical. You are obviously bitter, angry and resentful, and think I have some sort of hidden agenda. I don't. Your attitude says much more about you than it does about me.
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we are more than that! We are students, lawyers, hairdressers, nurses, beauticians, teachers, daughters, sons, brothers,sisters,aunts,uncles........the list goes on. We are individual people not just parents!! Some of you would do well to remember that!!
