Okay, stuff is occurring to me as it gets later and later after midnight.
I’m going to try to lay it out.
As a guy, I think there are four basic impulses that make up my entire social being:
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Protect
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Compete
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Build
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Destroy
This is how I relate to the universe productively. Note that these are not conscious things that I think about or reflect on normally; rather, I feel as though every form of me relating to the world is some genre of the list above.
All of the above are deeply visceral; they feel like they’re “built in” at some preconscious, biological level that has been steadily evident my entire life. Everything else feels like a rationalization.
These are the things I can feel in my bones and in my spleen.
— § —
I raise this because, like any divorced guy, every now and then I look into the possibility of finding a new partner. And like, I suspect, most of the guys who are older than about twenty-five, finding a new partner seems to be one of those things that really doesn’t sit well, not for reasons related in particular to any person, but instead for reasons that have more to do with the current culture.
— § —
Aside from “adventure,” “travel,” “yoga,” “hiking,” and so on, here are the things that are universal to the dating profiles written by women these days:’
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Don’t need a man, but…
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Looking for someone to share “adventures” with
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Looking for companionship
The thing that I don’t think women get is just how (literally) unattractive this is. As in, there is no attraction—no draw—to any of these things.
— § —
There is no protective need here. I am deeply drawn to things that (a) need protection and (b) are a part of the “tribe,” i.e. affiliated with me.
One way to be “attractive” is to need protection. As a guy, I feel so hard-wired to protect. But if protection is not needed—okay, cool, no need for me on that front.
— § —
The whole “share adventures” thing is just uninteresting. Now, if you had said “go to war together” or “build an empire together” or things like that, I’m possibly in.
But “share adventures” leaves me cold. Who cares?
“Share” is woman talk. What will we make? What will we win? What is the nature of the competition? Sharing does absolutely nothing for me. In fact, it feels like drudgery or at the very least like work.
Sharing is what our female teachers made us do in grade school while we really wanted to battle it out.
Guys don’t share things with each other, we fight it out and to the victor go the spoils and that feels fulfilling, win or lose.
— § —
Same thing with “companionship.”
Who cares?
Give me a choice between a woman looking for “companionship” and a guy looking to “test my skills against another guy” and I’ll chose the latter every time.
“Companionship” can potentially mean several different things, but it has the whiff of egaliatarian “sharing” about it. This is so terribly uninteresting to me at a visceral level.
“Companion” feels like just another voice that wants a vote but can’t contribute very much. If that voice is a member if the tribe and needs protection then fine, I’m there, but it’s already been stated that this voice doesn’t need a man, so now it’s just in the way.
Now, tell a man you’re seeking to co-architect greatness, or you want to compete against him in every aspect of life and see who wins, or you need protection, etc., and he’s there.
But “companion?”
Men don’t like companions. We don’t like each-other companions and we don’t like women companions. A companion is someone who keeps talking while you’re trying to analyze the situation or who interrupts you with all kinds of unimportant shit while you’re trying to catch the fish (or whatever animal) that is the actual goal of the trip.
No to companions. Hello to collaborators, fellow soldiers, and damsels in distress.
— § —
I can hear the feminists howling at this one from a mile away and that’s fine. I don’t begrudge anyone their perspective or opinions or positions or whatever.
I’m just here to say that for me as a man the most common female approach to opening the dating stakes is also the one that I find least attractive, as in, most completely generative of total apathy.
Women tend to do the I’m independent, I don’t need protection, I don’t need a man, I hate competition, I’m just looking for companionship thing right out the gate.
Which I find so unmoving. I don’t hate it. It just makes me not care. As in, “okay, so whatever, good luck to you and have a nice life,” etc.
Meanwhile, a really attractive (as in, I’m drawn to it) package of items like:
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I really need a guy; I need someone to protect me and help me
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And sometimes I’d also like to compete with you and see how I stack up
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And I’d really like to build together, let’s build and/or conquer an empire
…never, ever happens or gets said.
Because of course women are different from men. I presume that they actually do want “companionship” or whatever.
— § —
I don’t know how we got to the point where women and men just aren’t attractive to each other any longer, but a lot of signals tell me we’re there.
I know it’s been seven-going-on-eight years since my divorce. Off and on I’ve seen a lot of dating profiles. I have yet to see one that seems “attractive” or “interesting” to me rather than just “girly” in the “sounds like the stuff that girls think that I don’t really get or feel” way.
And though I know there’s a whole essay to be written in feminist terms about this, I’m not interested in it and I just don’t sort of care, at a visceral level, in just the ways that feminists would call out (i.e. sure, accusation stipulated to). Because… I’m a guy.
— § —
Thing is, it would seem that women want men to be full of passion and deep compulsions about relationships. But we already have a list of the historical models that have worked:
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Woman needs protection, encourages her man to build in the world
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Woman needs protection, encourages her man to compete against other men
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Woman needs protection, encourages her man to destroy enemy/enemies
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(More rarely:) Woman competes against her man
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(Even more rarely:) Woman is mortal enemies with her man (but they can’t live without each other as a direct result
All of these inspire in me, as a man, deep, visceral feeling.
But “companionship” and “sharing?”
That sounds like what mom demands that you do with your grandma because “she’s not always going to be with us.”
It sounds like homework and stuff you make yourself okay with as a matter of social propriety.
It also doesn’t cause you to feel things. Or at most, maybe in the “heart.” But in fact (and most women don’t seem to get this), the heart is not so very visceral for a guy. That’s female talk. How about the guts?
If women want to feel stuff in their heart, men want to feel it in their guts. If it makes you burp, vomit, grimace, or double over, that’s real feeling.
“Sharing” and “companionship” (i.e. grandma stuff) does not get felt in the guts. It probably does, in fact, get felt in the “heart,” which means it doesn’t resonate so amazingly well. It’s not going to get us up at 3:00 am or cause us to sacrifice much. That is to say, it’s “cute” but not “important.”
Cause us to feel in our guts and we are drawn to a woman like nobody’s business.
— § —
I guess this is my “seven years without a date and I haven’t even seen a woman I’d be interested in spending time with” post.
Once you’re too old to be moved by the raw dating call of just a pretty face, what’s left is the reality of the rest of life and what your role in it is. Right now, women and men just don’t need each other and don’t care to need each other.