I’ve been single now for more than eight years.
So I suppose it’s only natural that every now and then I go on the dating sites to see what’s there, thinking to myself, “It can’t be as bad as I make it out to be, can it?”
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There is basically one listing repeated over and over again shared amongst all the women on the dating sites. They repeat that they:
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“Have their shit together” and want someone who also “has their shit together.”
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“Own their own house” and have financial stability, stated as evidence that they “don’t need a man.”
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Are a “great conversationalist” and are looking for same.
It’s like none of the women out there who are single have ever met a man in their life. It’s doesn’t matter how you look or how many kids you have or whatever, the three statements above are 100% disqualifying and massive turn-offs. Let me explain how these read to me.
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Want me to “have my shit together” like they do:
This woman is going to mother me. She is going to mother and mother and mother some more and nag so f*cking hard about every little thing that I just want her gone.
She is going to correct the way I do my laundry, cook my food, eat my food, put on my shoes, wash my hands, get into bed, open the mailbox, floss my teeth, everything. She is going to lecture about everything as though I’m twelve years old and tell me that there’s a “right way” and a “wrong way” and I’m doing it the “wrong way.”
No thank you.
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“Own their own house and have financial stability” so they don’t need a man:
Everything is going to be a battle about money. Every soda at the gas station will lead to a fight. I will be asked to sell the Playstation but buy more dress clothes, and be expected to wear them. Football games are out, too, but somehow, bringing a $150 bottle of wine and a $400 hair-and-nails refresh to a party that I don’t want to go to but that has become part of an ultimatum will be fine.
Even with separate money, my pocketbook and every little spend I make in my life will be under a microscope.
No thank you.
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Are a “great conversationalist” looking for same:
She’s going to talk. She’s going to talk too much. She’s going to talk so much that you don’t want to include her in anything. When you’re at a movie, it won’t be a movie, it will be a conversation. She’ll ask to be invited to your stuff, but then when you invite her it won’t be football, it will be talking. It won’t be fixing the car, it will be talking. And if you stop talking for even a few seconds in a row, it will lead to “serious” talking about the state of the relationship and why you don’t invest enough in it emotionally, and why you’re not “vulnerable” and you don’t “communicate.”
And then you’ll say it’s so . god . damned . much . talking and she will say you’re a misogynist even though guys will also exclude guy friends who won’t stop talking, because most guys just don’t like to talk all that much unless they have set out to talk as a specific activity once every now and then and not more. Definitely not every f*cking day. And if you’ve set out to do something else? Guys do not want to talk. If we’re fishing, we’re fishing. We’re not f*cking talking.
Endless talking about how much we are or aren’t talking? No thank you.
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How do I know these things? Don’t forget that I got married late, I had a lot of years of dating under my belt. I’ve been around the block. I’ve heard these phrases and seen what they actually mean.
The dating sites are full of women who post this stuff in their profiles, for real, and in so doing also telegraph to every man looking that they will be a Whole Bunch of No Fun to date.
What’s the “good profile” that I never see look like? Just invert it:
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“I may not have my shit together from your perspective, but my ways work for me. I’ll give you the same respect—your ways are yours and I assume they work for you.”
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“I have my own house and my own money, yes, but—I need you for your company and partnership. I won’t try to revolutionize your space or control your money, I just want to not be lonely and do stuff together!”
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“I love how men stay on-task and don’t need to talk all the time. My father was that way and I miss it a lot. I won’t nag you about how much or when you feel like talking, and if you’re watching the game, I’ll just join in and watch too—without ruining it for you.”
Now that’s a profile I could get behind. Have never seen one like that in my entire life, though. And, incidentally, that’s the end of my annual-ish stroll through a couple dating apps when I get that “maybe I’m missing out” feeling in my bones.
Nope, not missing out. The women who are left think men are women. Ah well, such is life.
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Basically, nobody who’s left at this stage actually wants to be in a relationship with the opposite sex, I think.
And my ex was right, all those years ago, when I thought she was wrong. I’m not the “marrying type,” which doesn’t mean (as my young self thought then) that I am somehow opposed to it, it just means that I will find generally unsuitable any realistic configuration in which it is actually likely to occur.