And the advice, ladies, is that the problem with all your relationships is you.
Here’s Evan Marc Katz, dating coach and author of a book on Why You’re Still Single, You Loser, to tell you that your expectations are too high, and you’ll never find a man what with having standards and all:
Last year, I met two women at a Halloween party. Both were in their mid-30s and were kind, passionate and intelligent. And yet I fear that they will remain single for a lot longer than they desire. Why? Because of all the arbitrary rules they’ve set up for what Mr. Right is supposed to be like. I asked one woman for further clarification.
“Of course, he has to be attractive, thoughtful and successful, but there are a few other things that are really important to me, which are kind of hard to find.”
I leaned in, wanting to hear more.
“Well, first of all, I’m Jewish, so that’s a deal breaker right there.”
OK, I thought. Jews only make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but preserving a religious tradition is a very common desire.
I asked her what else she was looking for.
According to his bio, Evan Marc Katz lives in Los Angeles, hardly a city bereft of Jews. They may not be quite as thick on the ground as they are in New York City, but they’re there, most definitely. And given his own name, and his prior work for J Date, there’s a good chance that he himself is a MOT. Oh! But what else was this impossibly demanding woman looking for?
“He needs to be as passionate about animals as I am,” she said. “I own two dogs, I volunteer for the Humane Society, and I want a guy who feels the same as I do. If there is a stray dog at the side of the freeway, I want him to stop whatever he’s doing to pick the dog up and bring it to an animal shelter.”
A cute, kind, ambitious, Jewish animal activist. Of course. There have to be at least…six of those in the greater Los Angeles area. But five of them are women. And the one man is already married. So I’ve got two women dressed as French maids who are wondering when Prince Charmingstein will arrive with three leashes and a 4 karat ring in hand.
Talk about a fairy tale.
Okay, let’s just spend a little time breaking this down. These women want men who are attractive to them. Uh, who doesn’t? Are they supposed to settle for someone who isn’t attractive (and note, nobody was demanding George Clooney, for Pete’s sake, just “attractive”) just to have a man?
Next, they want someone who is variously described as “thoughtful” or “kind.” You’d think that would be a minimum.
“Successful” turns into “ambitious” in Katz’s phrasing. But what does it really mean? He seems to think it means “4 karat[sic] ring” (and shouldn’t someone who makes a living berating women for being single know that diamonds are measured in carats, and karats are the measure of gold?), but it could mean simply, “Please have steady employment.” Particularly in the land of actors, freelancers, independent filmmakers and scriptwriters.
I just don’t know what to make of the skepticism a guy who used to work for J Date shows about wanting to meet other Jews. It’s rather an issue, the intermarriage. I have friends, an interfaith het couple, who got married a few years ago, and it was important to them to find a rabbi who would perform same-sex commitment ceremonies. They found more rabbis willing to do that than to marry an interfaith het couple, particularly where the woman was a shiksa.
And the animal love thing. Yeah, it’s really hard to find animal lovers. Besides, if you have pets, you want to make sure you find someone who doesn’t hate them on principle.
Is this really such a difficult concept? Is this really being picky? I mean, it’s not like they require the guy to have graduated from a certain college, or have a certain income level, or only engage in a particular kind of recreation, or own a Mercedes, or what have you. Now, that — that would be picky. “I want a Jewish guy whom I find attractive, is gainfully employed, not an asshole, and nice to animals” is very, very general. And honestly, mostly based on not being a dipshit.
That can’t be too hard, can it?
But women are often told that their standards are too high, that they need to be more open to men who are assholes, or that they need to “settle.” Why settle, if your criteria are as broad as, “not an asshole with an entitlement complex?”
Mind you, few people seem willing to make a living telling Nice Guys™ that they need to lower their standards, which trend toward the “the universe owes me a clone of Gisele Bundchen because I’m a Nice Guy™!”
I will note that Mr. “Why You’re Still Single” doesn’t mention a wife, or even a girlfriend, in his bio. Physician, heal thyself.
Then there’s this guy, David Zinczenko, who’s got 5 ways to keep your man from leaving. Which is interesting, because he writes for Men’s Health magazine, so you’d think he’d be writing romantic advice for, you know, men. But, no. The responsibility for the failure of all relationships belongs to women, and if a man strays, it’s the woman’s fault. Behold the five ways to keep your man from straying:
1. Circle the calendar.
Part of the reason men stray is because they’re searching for that rush of excitement – those things that satisfy their pleasure centers in the brain. It’s the reason why people get addicted to things like food and drugs; when their pleasure centers are satisfied, they seek more of whatever tripped their triggers.
But if a relationship plateaus, that satisfaction center stalls. By having a shared vision of the future – with amazing things on the horizon, be it vacations or parties with friends or special nights out – you keep him (and his pleasure center) pumped about the future.
In a way, it’s just like managing employees; to keep them focused and determined, they have to feel like they’re taking on new challenges and meeting new goals. If not, they’re more likely to sneak around – and get their satisfaction elsewhere.
If he cheats, it’s because you’re just not exciting enough or, worse, not goal-oriented enough, and you didn’t do your goddamned job. It’s your fault.
2. Plan Scrabble night.
Or movie night. Or wine-tasting night. Or 5Ks on Saturday. Or that trip to the Amalfi coast. So many couples – especially ones with kids – can fall into the same routine day after day, year after year.Go to work, come home, scarf down dinner, shuffle kids to practice, watch “Last Comic Standing,” and off to bed. One national survey showed that 54 percent of men want to spend more quality time with their wives – indicating that they’re dying to have more shared experiences and a little less routine. (Of course, 79 percent of men want at least some of that quality time to be in bed, but that’s a different story.)
And plenty of studies show that more wives would want to spend more time with their husbands if their husbands would help out with the housework, or the shuttling kids to practice, or the making dinner. We seem to be at an impasse here, but according to our boy here, it’s women’s fault if men who are bored with family responsibilities stray. Ladies, be more exciting and less demanding!
3. Send him off on guy getaways.
While staying home to shuttle the kids to practice and make sure the home is clean and tidy, of course. Because there are no girl getaways in Zinczenko’s world.
4. Protect his brain.
Recent research shows that men who have low activity in the prefrontal cortex of their brains tend to be more impulsive, more easily bored, and more likely to search for attention. All signs of a man on the brink of double-dipping, eh?On the flip side, men who have healthy prefrontal activity tend to have more empathy and thus make better husbands. How can you keep his cortex firing in a healthy way? Make sure that region of his brain stays clear from injury. That means less head-butting, yes, but also less alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine.
You can also help him by setting goals and sticking to them – the prefrontal cortex is all about anticipation and planning. All the more reason to follow reason No. 1 above and put that calendar to good use.
IOW, you’re not just responsible for bearing the burden of the social calendar, and responsible for his health, but you’re responsible for his frontal cortex. His very thoughts.
Is a single one of those thoughts spared for the state of your brain activity?
Yeah, didn’t think so. Not if you got a guy by following Zinczenko’s advice.
5. Give him a boost.
Every woman craves hearing how nice she looks, or how wonderful she is in bed, or how the earth slams to a halt whenever she walks into the room. A man needs his ego stroked just as regularly.
Some guys stray over self-esteem issues. Most of the time, it’s because it’s too low, and he may cheat to feel better about himself. (Granted, it can also happen because his self-esteem is too high, and he may cheat because he feels like he deserves anyone he wants).
He cheats because you don’t make him feel like the center of the universe.
You bitch.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 97 comments }
Here’s what I don’t like about Yahoo! Personals: their articles are all heteronormative (and mostly for the brain dead), and all of their website ads feature young white people. All of them. As if everyone on Yahoo! is young, heterosexual and white. I don’t think so.
He needs to be as passionate about animals as I am,” she said. “I own two dogs, I volunteer for the Humane Society, and I want a guy who feels the same as I do. If there is a stray dog at the side of the freeway, I want him to stop whatever he’s doing to pick the dog up and bring it to an animal shelter.”
Is that the same as “an animal lover?”. I think there are plenty of animal lovers that don’t stop for strays on the freeway. Are you an animal lover? Do you stop for strays on the freeway?
He cheats because you don’t make him feel like the center of the universe. You bitch.
Oh, because women don’t cheat? Why do women cheat?
“So I’ve got two women dressed as French maids who are wondering when Prince Charmingstein will arrive with three leashes and a 4 karat ring in hand. Talk about a fairy tale.”
It’s also nice that he adds that she wanted a ring (which she didn’t say). cause teh bitchez are always so materialistic!
Because men are at heart animals not in control of themselves… and you need to work around their impulses. Basically, he’s absolving himself of any responsibility for his half of the partnership and at the same time telling women that not only is everything their fault, if they want any kind of companionship, they have to be geniuses capable of second guessing grown, over entitled children, with the self control of Monty, for the rest of their lives.
He’s right about staying involved in the relationship, but like everything (that men like him willfully ignore) it’s a two way street. I’m more than happy to make dates, but if my boyfriend were incapable of surprising me or keeping me engaged, well… frankly, I’d talk to him about it, because I don’t think he’s an animal/child incapable of seeing where I’m coming from.
In a way, it’s just like managing employees; to keep them focused and determined, they have to feel like they’re taking on new challenges and meeting new goals
You nailed many other issues here, but just looking at this one, damn, isn’t that awfully insulting to both men and women? Instead of a partnership, the chick has to be the backseat driver, managing her man to make sure he stays “focused and determined”. (Of course, no credit should she do so and succeed – that’s her job.)
I look forward to the followup in which it is determined that women who take initiative and manage a household by these rules turn into shrews who drive away their mates by taking over and needing too much control.
Zuzu — Katz practices what he preaches. Instead of his dream liberal activist Jewish 19-26 year old (or whatever), he’s been seeing a 37 year old Catholic Republican for the past eight months. Then he talks about a terrific, energetic 64 year old woman he knows, who guys dismiss in advance because of her age.
So his message is “Maybe your selection criteria are keeping you from meeting some great people.”
Oh man, I had a rant about that m’self.
If you want hilarity, where by “hilarity” I don’t really know what I mean, start reading his column regularly. It’s really a big bunch of “Here are some points that would be good if it weren’t for my assholishness leaking all over the place”.
You know, I have wondered if the way women (and sometimes men) are advised to lower their standards really contributes to the high divorce rate in the US. It just seems to be very common sense to me that if there are certain qualities that you know you want in a partner, then you will ultimately not be happy with someone who doesn’t have them. What if the woman in the scenario he mentioned decides to drop the “animal lover” requirement and settles for a guy who could care less about dogs, or worse, one who can’t get out to the woods fast enough at the start of hunting season. If it’s a big deal to her, then she will probably bug him to change, or at least resent his lack of compassion for animals. I don’t see how any long-term relationship could survive one person feeling like the other was missing something important.
As for the other guy (and every other person tempted to write a “Why He/She Cheats” article), it’s very simple: he/she cheats because he/she is too stupid or inconsiderate to fix or end a failing relationship. That’s it.
Ya know, my father had this type of brain injury – viral encephalitis left him in a coma for several days and otherwise out of commission for much longer – when I was six, and what he’s saying about brain injuries is true. They get more impulsive, they lose their ability to empathize with others, they experience disinhibition, they tell their wives to mind their own fucking business when their wives suggest that perhaps they’ve had too much to drink (oh shit but I guess it’s her 5′5″ fault for not wrestling the drink out of his 6′1″ hand, right?).
You know whose fault all that was? A virus.
What an asshole that Zinczenko is for daring to use such a profound, family-destroying event as a traumatic brain injury to prop up a dating column. How dare he use it to shame women for not monitoring how many cups of coffee their husbands are drinking. Here’s a clue, Zinczenko: impulsivity, disinhibition, substance abuse – those are all consequences of a traumatic brain injury. They’re not tell-tale signs of impending infidelity that an appropriately-vigilant woman would be able to nip in the bud. Once you are at the disinhibition point, it’s too late. The damage is done and you have to deal with the fact that the person you knew before the brain injury is gone.
I can’t even describe how angry I feel at this author for trivializing this kind of injury as something that you should avoid so your hubby doesn’t cheat. How fucking dare he.
of course everyone has criteria for people they want to date. my Perfect Man ™ is a tall, dark, black-haired, blue-eyed boy who engages in political activism, performs some kind of art, dresses well like he always has somewhere to go, is very eccentric but charming, can write poetry, has a job he loves, likes travelling overseas, and can speak a language other than english.
but i am desperately in love with a rather tall, pale, blonde and blue-eyed boy who writes and performs music, kind of doesn’t care a flutter about political activism, dresses well only when the mood strikes him, is very eccentric but charming, could write poetry if he wanted to, has a job and major he hates, hasn’t really travelled, and only knows english.
i think everyone knows that a lot of times, they’ll meet someone not anywhere in their Perfect Criteria and they fall in love with them anyway. i don’t think anyone needs to be told to ~*lower their standards*~. that just makes things worse.
In other words, what Zinczenko is really saying is men are really just stupid children that never grow up, will have sex with any random person, and forget where they live – unless women are there to manage their lives so they behave properly.
Is this supposed to make marriage attractive to women?
Every woman craves hearing how nice she looks, or how wonderful she is in bed, or how the earth slams to a halt whenever she walks into the room.
—
Uh, no I don’t. I don’t give a shit about hearing any of this, much less regularly. If I did, I’d buy a goddamn parrot. I’m not so insecure or superficial.
If a man bought me a silly diamond, I’d sell it immediately and send the proceeds to charity. Probably Pro Mejur.
Neruda pretty much describes the relationship situation for me.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if-you-forget-me/
He “fears they’ll remain single for a lot longer than they desire”? Doubt it. Sounds to me like they’ll remain single until they get what they desire. He makes out like they came to his psychiatrist office in mental distress, when they were at a party most likely trying to get the loser to bugger off.
Yeesh,
All this “advice” basically implies that everyone concerned is stuck in some perpetual state of middle-class narcissistic adolescence with the fiscal resources and leisure time for various fun activities to “maintain excitement” in what is supposed to be a relationship between two reasonably mature adults. Funny that most families I knew growing up lived nearly everything in the “Go to work, come home, scarf down dinner, shuffle kids to practice, watch “Last Comic Standing,” and off to bed.” routine for years except shuffling kids to practice and watching late night TV part. Odd that most of my own and my classmates’ parents were able to maintain stable caring relationships despite not being able to maintain the levels of “excitement” required according to this “expert”.
After working effectively two or more jobs six or more days/week, most of our parents were lucky enough to come home to have a late night dinner with kids before heading to bed for what little sleep they could catch before the next workday started anew. Forget about “activity nights” or “guys night out”.
What has he been smoking?
But remember! It’s really Feminists that hate men! Because expecting them to act like fully developed human beings is just so mean spirited.
This pisses me off a lot. I’ve been criticized for having “high standards”… how exactly is that a bad thing? I’m supposed to take any guy who is interested? I’ve been horribly harassed in my local by guys, and had women who should know better tell me that I should “give them a chance.” Some guy I’ve never met RUBS HIMSELF ON ME and when I walk across the bar he follows me and yells at me that I’m a bitch. Gee, I really should just “give him a chance”? Fuck that.
I have seen (even in my own family) women who settle for assholes. They are miserable. I would rather die alone than live with a man who is emotionally abusive. I remember dating a guy who made me feel like shit, and when I went to my best friend about how I was unhappy, she told me I was “afraid of commitment.” I’m not friends with her anymore. And I will never, ever settle. If that makes me a Bitch… I’m happy to be a bitch.
My standards include: must be attractive enough for me to sleep with them; must treat me with respect; must have a sense of humour; must have relatively similar political views; must care about music and comedy. Really… is that so fucking strict? BLARG
My standards include: must be attractive enough for me to sleep with them; must treat me with respect; must have a sense of humour; must have relatively similar political views; must care about music and comedy. Really… is that so fucking strict?
Certainly not. But if he had to be a certain height, or exact age, or lacto-ovo-vegetarian, or Henry George adherent, or … you might be unnecessarily limiting your possibilities.
It isn’t that your requirements are so incredibly strict/unreasonable. It’s just a mathematical truth about populations. OK, you hypothetically are in the market for a man, right? So that’s 50%. He should be straight/bi; that’s 95% of 50%. You want someone who is attractive – say, top 50% of the males ranked by looks? Then within that group he needs to be respectful of women. That’s what, maybe 25% of men with luck? Then you want a sense of humor – let’s say half of guys get that. Relatively similar political views – well, let’s assume you’re something like a mainstream group in your area of the world, and say 40% for that. And then he needs to be someone who likes music and comedy; that’s a little vague, but let’s say that a quarter of the population fits the bill. Where does that leave you?
.50 * .95 * .50 * .25 * .50 * .40 * .25 = 0.29% of the population. Meaning that in a pool of 1000 people, there are just under 3 that meet your criteria.
Are your criteria unreasonable? No. Do they starkly limit your dating pool? Yes. Further, they limit it with increasing severity the more criteria you add. Lose the requirement to like the kinds of culture you like, and you go from 3 decent guys to 12. Put up with someone who can’t tell a joke, and you’ve got 24 Mr. Right Nows. Conversely, add a requirement that the guy like kittens (1 in 3) and your giant dance club full of people drops down to 1 decent prospect.
One is all you need – but it takes time to go through 1000 applicants.
If women followed this guy’s advice about “circling the calendar” and monitoring his alcohol / nicotine / caffeine consumption, we’d be labeled horrible nags who drove our man away with our bossiness and micro-managing.
What Lorelei said.
Also, for many of my friends, saying something like “Must like cats” doesn’t necessarily mean “Would go to the shelter and rescue 5 of them every day, even if I didn’t have time, space or money to take care of them”. My SO doesn’t “like” cats, he’s more of a dog person. But it’s not as if he would actively hunt down a cat on the road and drive over it. When the cat jumps up on the couch and puts her head under his hand so he has to pet her, he does, and he doesn’t complain about it. He kind of enjoys it, and thinks it’s funny even.
But he “doesn’t like cats”.
Hey Quiet Truths, the situation is a lot less grim than you portray. You’re assuming that all of the probabilities are independent and don’t overlap. There isn’t really a good reason why that would be the case.
And as for the whole “downgrade your requirements thing,” that’s pretty much why I suspect I won’t get married. Not because I hate marriage or because I don’t want to get married, but because it’s just not important enough for me to justify downgrading my standards for a partner. And when you’re a person with the kind of life, interests and political views that I have, it definitely isn’t easy to find someone who you feel like you can really connect with, and who really “gets” you and what you’re saying. Truly feminist men are not all that common in the first place; add in someone who is ok living something of a nomadic life, someone who cares about politics and is progressive but has a political passion other than feminism (I like my relationships diverse), someone who is ambitious and driven, someone who likes to read, someone who’s funny and who shares my sense of humor, someone who listens (this is kind of shockingly hard to find in 20-something guys) and someone who doesn’t expect that I’ll shape my life around theirs, and the dating pool becomes extremely narrow. Is that being picky? Sure. But if we’re talking about a life partner here, then you’d be an idiot to not be selective. And it’s one thing to want a 6′3″ soccer player with brown hair and green eyes and a British accent who makes at least $500,000 a year, and another to want someone who shares your interests and your values.
This criteria hasn’t stopped me from falling in love and it hasn’t stopped me from finding plenty of men to date, but it has stopped me from finding someone who I feel like I could permanently partner with. It has been the nail in the coffin of more than a few relationships.
The thing, though, is that I don’t feel entitled to a Perfect Mate, or any mate at all. Yes, I would love to find someone. But if I don’t, that’s ok too. I don’t think I deserve a perfect mate simply for existing. I wish that there were more progressive feminist men out there, and I wish there were more people who shared my values, but so long as there aren’t, I’d rather be alone than compromise. And I think that’s what differentiates many picky people from Nice Guys — we don’t feel slighted because there isn’t a Brad Pitt look-alike just waiting for us to mount him.
Shorter Jill: Being picky isn’t a bad thing if the pickiness is directly related to your ability to sustain a relationship with another person.
Yeah, just what I want in a mate- having to give the same level of care to them that I had to give to my infant son. Sheesh, why don’t these guys move in with their mothers and leave the rest of us alone.
Oh, yeah, their mothers scarpered off to a one bedroom condo in Boca Raton.
My friends and I have been round and round and round on this one. It’s true. Mainstream dating advice to women boils down to: How DARE you not jump at the first prospect who condescends to look at you?
And that goes double for you if you are not “pretty.”
Ugh, this is some pretty bad advise overall, and I agree with what everyone has to say.
I don’t want to be with a woman just to have her take care of me, I would like a woman to be with me in the same manner that I want to be with her, because we want to be, and not because it’s the lesser of two evils: settling for an arsehole or being single.
Not that I’m an arsehole or a Nice Guy(tm), but I used to be and even I wouldn’t want to date me back then.
But at any rate, I have to wonder if this view is something that’s wormed its way into Western society through television. I grew up watching TV a lot, and most of these views seem to stem from sitcom situations, with the men being played off as stupid cave dwellers, and women being entirely materialistic….
Example: The Flintstones, and Wilma Flinstone yelling “CHARRRRGEEEE it!” before rushing off to the store to make a huge bill for Fred to pay.
But it sounds so made up: E-van Marc KATZ!
The assumption behind the advice is that it’s better to be with a person that doesn’t meet your criterias than to be single.
I vehemently dispute that assertion.
I agree that this is an absurd notion, though I’ve seen this reasoning applied to instances of cheating no matter who does the cheating, in both heterosexual and gay/lesbian relationships.
Right, because high standards are just a problem for women. (Not that “employed Jewish guy who likes animals and isn’t a douchebag” is a high standard.)
And not, for example, this guy.
The other article isn’t even worth a reply. It’s more of the “you’re not good enough for him” mind games.
Thanks so much for this, and the post as a whole. I’m “picky” myself, and just had my first potential relationship in years fall apart before it really had a chance to get going (simple circumstance; he’s moving away for his career), and I was really grumpy about it, and (against my previous experience with this sort of thing) signed up for one of those online dating sites (plentyoffish.com) on an impulse – only to be horrified, again, at the “type” I seemed to draw: overwhelmingly creepy older men, traditionalists blatantly wife-hunting, and the basement dweller types. (People make a lot of comments on how great blondes have it, but really, we seem to attract the jerks more than brunettes, at least in my experience. I’m seriously considering dying my hair.) It was depressing, and I’ve been a bit down in the dumps about it.
But this post reminded me why I’d been single for so long before this incident. I like it, at least, I like it much more than being with the wrong person. There’s no game playing, no manipulation, no feeling of being used or underappreciated, no vague feeling that you’re taking care of the other person much more than they’re taking care of you. There’s no pressure to walk the tightrope walk of “taking care” of the man and “meet all of his needs” so he won’t cheat on you, while taking care to not be an “overcontrolling nag.” Life is so much calmer and easier to navigate than when you’re jumping through all the patriarchal-bullshit hoops. I mean, I can even listen to my iPod on a Saturday afternoon without having to hear about how much my taste in music sucks.
God, seriously, THANK YOU – this was a much-needed reality check – you’ve totally cured me of my week-long grumps.
I’m glad that mating and attraction patterns seem to enter the range of topics feminists are concerned about, for I believe they are the most important area of gendered behavior and have not received appropriate attention in the past – well, from no one, not just feminists. Still.
That said, I (male) am too picky. At least officially. A couple of years ago, when match.com still had the physical attractivity test online, I took it, and it turned out I’d make a great casting agent with my intuition to pick classic beauties, but the test result implied I’d have a problem finding a woman unless I’d look like Tom Cruise or George Clooney. You know what’s funny? The test was right about “my type”. It’s true that, in a club or a similar social situation, I tend to notice the more attractive women. Still, none of the women I have loved in my 15 years of dating history were actually “my type”. They were very different, visually as well as with respect to their personality. So either I only believe I have a type, or, in the context of the cited article, specific standards, or my standard is only something I use for visual scanning, not emotional interaction. Because even though the girls/women I loved in all likelihood weren’t going to win the Miss Universe contest, they were beautiful, and I never felt I was “settling” for something because I could not “get over the bar” I had put too high for myself.
So what’s the point? What we say about our attraction patterns and what they actually are, are (at least) two different things. We may have a “lovemap” – actually, that we have one seems to be rather certain – but we cannot draw it from our rationalisations about what we think we should choose. Only from what we have chosen, if a pattern emerges. Particularly, since attraction isn’t something that happens in an abstract realm but in a specific time and space, and is very depended on our chemical states.
That said, POOL SIZE does matter statistically. Barry Schwartz has written a very good book about this – it’s called “the paradox of choice”. Here’s a review from the New Yorker
Maybe our mental capacity will adjust to the new reality, but really I think it will be the social institutions that will adjust to accomodate our limited processing capability.
But women are often told that their standards are too high, that they need to be more open to men who are assholes, or that they need to “settle.” Why settle, if your criteria are as broad as, “not an asshole with an entitlement complex?”
Actually, I don’t think “Nice Guys tm” necessarily need to lower their standards, because, as I see it, that’s not what their problem is. They are just not able to express themselves as sexual beings, many of them, in my opinion, not least because they have wrongly internalised alleged earlier radical feminist “penis means rapist” claims. That said, there are a lot of people telling men to “lower their standards”, or more appropriately, not only be attracted by her looks. So while we may respectively believe that all the pressure of the supposedly demanded adjustment of the attraction pattern is required from our sex/gender, that’s just not true.
And of course, it’s hardly possible. Still, as I said, attraction patterns / lovemaps usually don’t have a lot to do with what people of either gender say. If they don’t do anything, though, it’s hard to say why. There are structural variables, some of which are likely affected by changing patterns of gender interactions and roles, some by economic and other social factors. It’s unfair to blame a rising population of singles on either sexes attraction patters, or, more specifically, their rationalisations thereof. But we should be aware that rising single populations are a problem for many individuals – those who aren’t making a rational decision to stay single but happen to be caught up in the social changes (many of whom are men) – and socially.
Putting aside the assumption that the probabilities are independent (which someone else addressed) – nope, it really doesn’t, because you’re not looking at “applications” and you’re not obligated to give anyone much of a chance.
Take attractiveness and gender. You can get a pretty good judgement of those pretty much instantaneously, and that cuts your “applicant” pool from 1000 to 250. Hang out at music venues, political events, whatever you’re into, and you’ll cut out a lot of the people who aren’t into those things. Talk to the interesting ones, and you’ll generally see pretty quick who’s respectful and who’s not. (Not a perfect judgment, by any means, but it weeds out the obvious douchebags.)
Of course, it’s not quite so easy. And there are unreasonable standards (basically, anything that doesn’t actually improve a relationship – if I avoid all blondes, or insist that my girlfriend must be a size 6, I’m making things harder for me because it’s that much harder to find someone who meets the standards that *do* matter). But having a baseline of what you’re willing to accept ain’t the problem.
It’s interesting that you’re reading that into the comments here, Hector, in two different comments. And while I understand that Katz’s thing is online dating, and that if you’re using narrow selection criteria to find people online, you’re going to be missing out, that’s just not what he’s talking about here.
He met two women at a party and asked them what they were looking for in a man. They responded with general, broad criteria. From this, he constructs a fantasy that they’re grasping, haughty bitches who are a little past their sell-by date and need to dispense with the pickiness if they’re to get husbands. His conversation with them had nothing to do with online personals, just general qualities they look for.
Yep. It’s something the antifeminist trolls comment on a lot — if you don’t stop being such a stuck-up bitch who thinks she’s too good for everyone, you’ll be lonely with a houseful of cats when you’re ***gasp!!!*** 31!
Some of them figure out that I’m a good deal older than Jill and Piny and still single, and make comments that I must be bitter and lonely.
Like Jill, I find it plenty easy to find people to date. I just don’t find it easy to find people I would want to spend my life with. Or, I find them but they don’t feel the same about me, they’re married to someone else/in love with someone else/hopelessly socially stunted and afraid of me/etc.
And sometimes it gets me down, that I’m not able to find a partner. But then I think about my parents, or my friends who’ve gone through awful divorces after awful marriages, and I think that I’m not so bad off.
Besides, it’s not as if anyone in NYC is in any all-fired hurry to get married, so one can be quite happily single and not stigmatized for it throughout one’s life.
“You know, I have wondered if the way women (and sometimes men) are advised to lower their standards really contributes to the high divorce rate in the US. It just seems to be very common sense to me that if there are certain qualities that you know you want in a partner, then you will ultimately not be happy with someone who doesn’t have them.”
Word. Not to mention that if they’ve got very different life goals than you, or are already in a situation not compatible with your goals, how likely are you to be okay with sticking with them through something you never wanted? It compounds any stresses the relationship is put under.
What’s really insulting about that first piece is that he assumes the women he “interviews” are expecting to get married soon and will be terribly crushed if they don’t. Because all women are commitment-bots, desperate to find a man, any man, ASAP.
Also, the other way to “prevent” a man from “straying,” of course, is not to demand monogamy in the first place. /poly proselytizing
Another thing to note: there is no one definition of attractive. Attractive means, “Attractive to me,” not attractive on some objective scale that everyone has agreed to.
Lowering my standards never got me anything but laid. Knowing what I want and what I will put up with got me an awesome man, who is my partner in life and work.
=/=
I understand that she was probably taking some poetic license with her preferences (or he might’ve just invented this statement to make for a better story), but describing what course of action someone would take in a specific situation is not a general, broad criterion. And being “passionate about animals” is way different than simply not hating a pet on principle.
The guy’s message, aside from the snideness about wanting a 4-carat ring, is pretty sound–you’re narrowing your dating pool a lot if you exclude on the basis of stuff like the abovementioend. If you don’t care, that’s fine, but if you do care–as these women clearly do, or they wouldn’t be complaining about it–you have to learn to make some compromises.
The second guy, though, is pretty much just a douche.
I’ve seen a couple of others mention this but it bares repeating. This dude’s advice only makes sense if you buy into the idea that any romantic relationship is better than no romantic relationship.
Since the premise is b**sh**t, how could the advice be any better?
I would also argue that perusing a relationship for the sake of being a couple is actually hurts your chances of building a relationship you will be happy in long term. If the relationship is the most important thing, it becomes very easy to sacrifice little bits of one’s personality so that our partner will “like us better”, or “to make things easier”. Then one day you wake up and realize you sacrificed too much and now you are miserable.
>>>In a way, it’s just like managing employees; to keep them focused and determined, they have to feel like they’re taking on new challenges and meeting new goals..>>>
Geez, like I wanna get home from work, and do MORE work.
Suppose you’re looking for a 3 in 1000 man. That means that there are 900,000 men in the United States that meet your criteria. And since people tend to sort themselves naturally by interest and similarity, that isn’t 900,000 men scattered randomly across the country, but large groups of men that frequent the same clubs, share the same friends, are more likely to live in certain cities, etc. Just find one cluster of them, and date away.
Katz and his defenders make the mistake of assuming that the relevant figures are the frequency of people in the population as a whole with the traits you desire. In fact, the relevant figure is the frequency of people in your extended social network with the traits you desire. If you’re Jewish, you probably know a lot of other people who are Jewish as well, if you’re progressive, probably most of your friends are progressive, and most of their friends are progressive, and so on.
And even if you want something that isn’t common in your social network, the much better answer than lowering your standards is to find a different social network.
RE: If you don’t care, that’s fine, but if you do care–as these women clearly do, or they wouldn’t be complaining about it–you have to learn to make some compromises.
—
What makes you say they were “complaining about it”? I didn’t see any complaining. When a woman is expressing what she’d like in a life partner after being asked, it’s not “complaining.” So, where’s the complaining?
I also noted how having a bit of decency to stop and help a stray animal or being willing to volunteer at a shelter becomes “animal activist” to Mr. Katz. What’s unfortunate is that this is apparently a severely limiting criteria, when it should be rather common.
I’m really happy to report that I meet such people (and am one) all the time, and I’m not even “looking.”
Robbespierre:
“So either I only believe I have a type, or, in the context of the cited article, specific standards, or my standard is only something I use for visual scanning, not emotional interaction.”
I’ve always said that I have a type that I notice, and a type that I date. I tend to notice androgynous-to-butch women, and the women I date tend to… not really be so easily classified on the butch/femme axis. I’ve never quite figured it out.
Zuzu — Katz practices what he preaches.
What he’s preaching here is that women who have any rules–even reasonable ones–for the type of men they will date are being arbitrary, materialistic princesses who will be sorry someday when they’re old ladies with only their cats to keep them company. (And really, could he puff up the Jewish Princess stereotype any more?)
More horrible online dating fun:
http://gawker.com/news/douchebags/nightmare-online-dater-john-fitzgerald-page-is-the-worst-person-in-the-world-309684.php
If people are talking about marriage and want to take marriage seriously, you should be really, really fucking picky! You’re trying to find a person with whom you want to build a life together, for the rest of your life, which — if you get married in your late 20s or early 30s — means spending sixty years with someone. That is a shit-ton of time, and lowering one’s standards is a way of saying that marriage isn’t that big of a deal, that the commitment isn’t really for life, and that you’re not really looking for a partner but rather a temporary filler in some future holiday card portrait. It’s a concept that’s hostile to men, women and the idea of marriage.
Now, being hostile to marriage isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s an institution that’s got loads of baggage and isn’t for everyone. But these advice columnists seem to be at cross purposes, indicating both that marriage is the be-all/end-all and yet undermining it at every turn. People should be picky if what they want is a lifetime commitment, and asking for less is a sure-fire way of fucking things up before they even get started.
Something else that bothers me about these sorts of advice articles (other than the many things others have said) is that there is so much hostility towards women as independent agents, and it really comes off as sour grapes to me. A man who is interested in a serious relationship shouldn’t get pissed at women who are too picky — he should be thankful that such a woman knows what she wants and won’t waste his time if they’re not a match. But evidently that ego blow is too much, and a woman must be blamed and hated and shamed for wanting someone who isn’t him (and that this is writ large in an advice column versus being muttered about on some person-to-person level seems a distinction without a difference). The idea that a woman is a loser for preferring to be single instead of trapped in a mismatched marriage is the height of perversity, but since being a single woman is so stigmatized, it works as a pithy insult nonetheless.
All that being said, I don’t tend to think it’s all that helpful to have arbitrary and hypothetical standards about what one wants in a partner. It’s not that having standards is bad, but it seems to me to make more sense to evaluate people on their own merits, as a whole person. It requires a fair bit of personal discipline in the face of our fairy-tale-obsessed culture, and it requires an affirmative rejection of the kinds of men like these douches who keep grilling women about what they want. But I think it also relieves women of both a certain type of pressure, as well as a feeling that have to modify their standards if they do find someone with whom they want to build a life. Evaluating people as whole people is generally what people do when they meet future prospects in the real world, and so it makes sense to me to avoid artificially limiting that evaluation in the abstract.
Or so I think, having more or less fallen into a happy marriage with a wonderful guy, some of whose qualities I would have written off had I had some abstract list (he loves sports, which I hate, after all!…except that it doesn’t turn out to matter to either of us). I don’t love that he’s smart or kind or can keep up with me on 80s music — I love that he’s him in a myriad of ways describable and indescribable.
Oh yeah, following Quiet Truths back-of-the-envelope calculations for the sort of man I’d consider dating…it seems he’s 1 in 100,000. Which means I’d probably be pretty unhappy in a small town, but in the two large urban areas where I’ve spent time, I’ve never had any particular problem finding men to date.
EMK’s example of the two women indicates he’s reading too much into the example the woman gave re the dog — eg, would she REALLY not date someone because he was in a hurry to get somewhere and didn’t stop? doubt it. But looking a little further, he gives an example of a 64-year old woman whom men don’t pick on dating sites but they’re losing out, and the fact that he himself has gone outside his criteria. My mom is a 64-year-old woman who can meet people IRL who might not pick her on a dating site. I think Katz deserves a little slack here. While isolating his initial example of 30-something women makes him seem like a sexist idiot, and not completely without cause, he’s actually not focusing solely on women’s pickiness here.
“Katz and his defenders make the mistake of assuming that the relevant figures are the frequency of people in the population as a whole with the traits you desire. In fact, the relevant figure is the frequency of people in your extended social network with the traits you desire.”
It makes a certain amount of sense if you’re talking strictly about online dating, where you aren’t meeting people before filtering them out of your dating pool, and the base group is “people who do the online-dating thing.” In real life, where groups tend to be pre-selected according to this or that trait, it’s pretty ridiculous. Unless, I suppose, you’re actively looking for someone with traits you don’t share, which seems kind of weird.
People to whom religion is so important that their partner must share it tend to already attend services filled with like-minded folks. People who love animals to the point of volunteering at shelters are probably going to spend that volunteered time surrounded by people equally fond of critters. It might be hard to find someone who fits the bill by throwing darts at the phone book, but chances are there’s a reasonable amount of opportunity within a person’s own social network, especially when you look at how nebulous and idiosyncratic the definitions of things like “attractive,” “successful,” and “nice” can be.
I can just see Mr. Katz working at a pizza joint:
Katz: “What would you like on your pizza?”
30-something Woman: “Sausage.”
Katz: “Picky bitch! Can’t you branch out and order mushrooms, or are you high-maintenence?”
Whereas I guess Zinczenko would just make her get up and make her own damn pizza, and some for him, AND hope it doesn’t take too long or else he’ll get fast food.
“And as for the whole “downgrade your requirements thing,” that’s pretty much why I suspect I won’t get married.”
I have a feeling that ten years from now, it will be much easier to find life partners without sacrificing any of your key requirements. Coming from a number of years past mid-20s (when I was also in law school), and as someone with a similarly oppressive list, ,my feeling is that it’s very difficult to make an informed prognosis at 25, let alone when surrounded by law school guys.
In my mid-20s, I was sure that I needed to have a tall, dark, handsome, fit, ambitious, prestigiously employed, Jewish guy, passionate about reading and writing, well read in feminist literature, actively involved in a philanthropic venture, experienced in more than one culture, medium to dark skinned, with a lot of bad-boy recklessness that only I could tame.
At this point, late 30s, I’ve been married to a guy for five years who is some of those things, except not fiercely ambitious (about career, anyway), half-Jewish, not a huge reader, not a writer (except of boring legal stuff), pretty pale, and a very non-bad-boy attitude. He’s read very little feminist literature and has no interest in online feminist discourse – but he is a true feminist, in word and actions.
“And when you’re a person with the kind of life, interests and political views that I have, it definitely isn’t easy to find someone who you feel like you can really connect with, and who really ‘gets’ you and what you’re saying.”
I think there’s a lot of truth here, but – and I’m a fan of yours – some arrogance too. For people who are politically liberal, feminist, articulate and bright, in addition to caring about fitness etc., it’s tempting to be melodramatic about the possibility that we’re so special and difficult to keep up with that nobody will ever be able to. And with this list, it’s true that finding someone 20-something (as you noted) who has the maturity to step back, listen, be flexible about the shape his life will take, make some compromises – is a low-odds proposition. Ten, fifteen years later? It’s doable.
Certainly, marriage isn’t for everyone, and there are plenty of ways to have a great and complete life without it. But if it’s something you want, a probability evaluation during or shortly after college or grad school isn’t meaningful.
About the animal thing: It depends. There’s a difference between stopping to help a stray at the side of the road (which is just common courtesy as long as you don’t have a real emergency yourself) and being actively involved in animal rescue, which generally means housing the strays yourself. If the latter is important to you, then yeah, you probably can be considered to have “special” needs in a partner. Not everyone has the patience (or the space) for that.
However, that’s a long way from saying that if that describes you, you should lower or change your standards. If your standard is, “Either I have a partner who wants to be involved in rescue or no partner at all,” there isn’t a damn thing wrong with that. People damn well should be picky about things like that. If you get involved with someone hoping they’ll become more of this or less of that, your relationship will be a whole lot of no fun in the long term.
It does not sound to me like the women in Katz’s story fell into that category, however; they just want a “generally kind to animals” sorta guy, which really isn’t anything close to an unusual request. I mean, really, is it asking too much that a guy not kick the dog?
And don’t get me started on the Men’s Health story. Wait a minute, this is Men’s Health, is it not? So is this advice actually aimed at men involved with men? Either way, it’s BS. Unless you know for sure you have a partner who wnats to be “project managed” and both of you get off on that sort of thing, this is the kind of shit that lands people in divorce court. What was it Carrie said to Samantha in SATC? “Samantha, he’s a man, not a brownstone!”
I did the whole Yahoo dating thing for a while. And Match and I lost track of how many other ones, too. And eventually (after about 18 months or so, off and on), I did meet the man with whom I’m now very happily shacked up.
I discovered very early on that it made a great deal of sense to be picky. “Lowering my standards” only ever resulted in a waste of time for both me and the guys in question. I tried to be flexible, but the truth is, I was never going to be happy with someone who has fundamentally different values or interests. So I stayed picky. And it worked out fine.
This reminds me of when I was in therapy discussing what kind of partner I was looking for, and I said that my absolute requirement was someone that I could talk to. Not just chitchat, but have long conversations.
My therapist made all kinds of noises about how that might not be a good standard, a lot of men weren’t inclined to talk (Mars, Venus, etc.) and I might need to change that and blah blah blah.
She had to admit she was wrong when she met the man I ended up marrying, though. ;-) Heck, half the time one of us ends up running late to work because we get into a conversation about something we read on blogs that morning while getting ready. (We read similar but slightly different blogs so it’s not a total echo chamber.)
Ha. Back after a good night’s sleep, and (now sober) I am highly amused that after expressing my dislike of being told to “lower my standards” and how wide my particular standards are, I immediately was
1) handed a false assumption about extra, stringent, unreasonable standards I must also have, and
2) told that I should lower my standards because OH NOES YOU’LL NEVER FIND A MAN.
Thanks to everyone else for having something reasonable to add after that.
And to everyone who mentioned that they’d be better off being single than settling… well that was pretty much what I was trying to say. Really, wanting someone who actually has something in common with you is not unreasonable. And I bet living with a guy with no sense of humour would be a super fun happy awesome way to spend your life!!
Ouch. Those hurt the brain.
I can definitely understand somebody pasionate about animals would want a partner to be similar- If a philosophy is really important to you, of course you’d ideally want someone who shared it. That’s not necesaarily religion, because many people aren’t that religious, but something like being very pro animal rights, or a feminist? It’s probably me maddening to be dating someonw who totally believed the opposite of you. To be honest, I thought her requirements were eminently reasonable. Too bad it’s considered picky to want to only date decent human beings.
I loathe the ‘it’s your responisibility, ladies, to ensure your man’s every whim and caprice are catered for!’ advice. It’s moronic how we women are always told we are responsible for men’s happiness all the goddamn time. I’m not. I’m only responsible for MY happiness.
I think this guy went about it the wrong way, but he seems to make a valid point to me. People fall in love with folks who aren’t “their type” all the time. The more things you have that will keep you from even getting to know people, the harder it will be to meet somebody that does it for you. Maybe that person won’t give a damn about some of the things that you care about, or disagree with you about those things. Still, you can connect with their personality on a different level. I think the real key, as far as marriage goes, is to be in love, and have similar life goals. If you want to end up the same place, then it’s much easier to go there together. Other stuff will work itself out.
Perfect example: the only girl that I’ve ever really been in love with disagreed with me about nearly everything. We argued about politics (and other stuff) incessantly, and neither of us was going to budge. She went to political events and rallies for candidates and causes I found ridiculous; I voted for people she thought might be the devil. But in spite of all that, we got along great. She was funny, smart as hell, fun to be around and had a kind of earnestness that a cynical bastard like myself naturally responded to. In short, she was beautiful, and none of the things that would have counted against her if I’d stopped to weigh them mattered at all. When we broke up, it had nothing to do with our relationship and everything to do with changing life circumstances. It’s one of my great regrets, but the point is I’d never have never have had the chance to be with her at all if I’d have discounted her because of my “criteria”.
Mnemosyne: Sometimes I think you’re describing my relationship. ;p
It’s kind of like the argument that I lay down for certain corporations when my more feverishly activist friends accuse me of brand loyalty to evil companies: if you just automatically assume that all corporations are inherently evil, you let them off the hook. You can show that it’s possible for corporations to better conduct their business by holding up real examples. I’m not going to indict them all and then just shop at Wal Mart because there’s no where else to go. I’m holding out for the business that deserve my patronage.
Hah, not that men are like corporations, but you know… my point is that assuming they’re all bad (anyone) means they don’t have to be better.
Mnemosyne,
well, I agree that most people would want someone they can talk to (or for those who don’t talk a lot, laugh with). But then again, those relationships are what friends are for. I’m not saying you should not hop into bed with friends, I’m just saying that usually “being able and willing to converse” may be a necessary, albeit not a sufficient condition. And yes, men DO like to talk. Just differently, and often about things women may not enjoy… like physical attributes of other women ;)
For you. You may have other deal-breakers. Which is kind of the point.
And, yes, I was looking for a man that who would also be a good friend, because sex will only take you so far if that’s all there is to the relationship.
Again, speak for yourself. My husband and I have no problem having conversations about a range of subjects. We don’t spend a lot of time discussing the attributes of people we find attractive, but just as I don’t want to hear about how hot that girl is, he doesn’t want to hear about how that guy’s ass is the best I’ve ever seen in jeans.
What, you thought women never watched men walking down the street and discussed their physical attributes? You really need to get out more. Even my mom will start talking about the hot firefighters down the street when there are no men within earshot.
If you all want an eye-opening (and often depressing) look at online dating, read the forums of this free dating site :
http://www.plentyoffish.com
One thing that stands out to me is how few women there will admit to being feminists.
it’s so funny to hear people are clearly rationalizing their failures to find a partner. they have certain criteria that are *dealbreakers* and such, yet don’t give a second thought of what they bring to the table. i would venture to guess that the stricter the cirteria, the more flawed they are as human beings. you’re projecting folks!
part 2 of rant.
i have been married. i’ve been in relationships. i hoped for the best and they ran their natural course. i can truthfully say i have grown as a person from them even though they didn’t turn out to be *lifetime*.
the point is: how can you know how to be in a relationship when you don’t even get yourself involved?
Mind you, few people seem willing to make a living telling Nice Guys™ that they need to lower their standards
Well, one of these days I’ll learn how to use these tag things.
Another happily married feminist here. For my part, I would have never met the man I married (and am wildly in love with) if I hadn’t made a conscious effort to RAISE my standards. I was wasting my time trying to “give a chance” to arseholes I knew I wasn’t that attracted to or interested in.
Rich, you’ve already missed the deadline for inclusion in Feministe’s Next Top Troll. But fear not, for Miss Jill will undoubtedly host a new season.
Oh, it’s not just the blondes. Redheads get their share too, believe me.
Ginger: seconded.
Again, assuming we automatically reject almost any man who comes our way. I don’t have a set “type” that any contender has to be. I don’t know why this is always thrown at us.
I know a lot of people, I meet new ones almost every day, and I have an active social life. I expect to meet someone at some point; but since I’m happy single, I don’t sit at home feeling sorry for myself. I also don’t feel compelled to take the first dude that comes along.
And as for “dealbreakers,” I couldn’t date a conservative since I find the I-have-mine-so-screw-everyone-else position morally reprehensible. That does not leave me feeling deprived in any way.
I think I stole her man.
Some people told me I was too picky and I should just settle. Especially since I’m not super model gorgeous. But I kept looking and hey, I finally found a vegetarian, ambitious, smart, funny, kind, deceptively innocent looking, guitar and chess playing pinko commie to marry.
Here’s my advice to those people seeking long-term romantic relationships (I should write a book):
1. Make a short list (5-10 items) of the things that are most important to you in a mate regardless or how common they are. (eg. don’t let the fact that only 2% of the population is Jewish or the fact that only 4-10% are vegetarian sway you. If you want it, you want it.) My list was something like: vegetarian, wants kids, funny, smart, can manage money, politically left leaning, good in bed, easy to talk to.
2. Ignore the petty stuff. Tall, dark, and handsome? Nice, but not necessary. Don’t turn down dates with people who meet your short list but who have flaws. We all have flaws, that’s part of being human.
3. Tell your friends, coworkers, loved ones that you’re looking for a person with XYZ (xyz=your short list). They’ll help you. But make sure you mention your short list, otherwise, they’ll try to set you up with people who meet their short list, not yours.
4. Be upfront and honest early. The point of dating when looking for a long-term relationship is to get to know a person. Share your passions early on. Don’t let your relationship get to the six month mark without knowing that your partner is anti-choice and loves Bush and hates to read. Find this stuff out quickly and if they don’t measure up, leave.
5. If they don’t meet your short list, don’t waste your time. Move on. The longer you stay in a relationship, the hard it is to break-up. So just do it soon and get it over with. You’re better off alone that with someone who doesn’t share your core values.
Sorry, I missed RKMK’s reference to Plenty of Fish above. That’s what I get for drive-by posting while at work. Anyway, on the one hand I’m tempted to call that site “Plenty of Conservatives”, as it seems to draw a reactionary crowd. On the other hand, though, that’s what you get on the other dating sites I’ve seen, too. I wish I knew why.
The idea’s been bandied about here and at Feministing about feminist dating services. After perusing the currently available dating sites, I wish even more that there were such a thing.
I’ve never understood people who can date someone with radically different political pov’s. One of the things I looked for (and found) in a partner is someone who can be a reality check for me, another set of eyes and ears in the world … I can’t imagine someone, who, say, thinks that S-CHIP is a really bad idea, or that women have too much power in society, playing that role. I want someone whose perceptions I can trust.
I think part of the problem in this discussion is that it’s hard to describe a prospective mate in the abstract without using either extremely vague (e.g., “successful”–does that mean $500K a year, any professional, anyone who likes his/her work and is good at it, anyone not currently on parole?) or too-specific (must love jazz and hate Wes Anderson) terms. Which means that other people define the vague terms the way they want (“How dare you demand a successful man! I thought you were a feminist! You’re treating men like ATMs!”) and take the too-specific ones as more written in stone than, probably, they are in the mind of the speaker.
When single, I had high standards, but broad ones. Politics mattered, as did intelligence, sense of humor, conversational ability, the willingness to let me take the lead when someone had to and it made sense for that someone to be me, and a few other intangibles. Age, profession, level of formal education, religion (as long as not fundamentalist), and looks didn’t matter. (Obviously they had to look good to me, but a lot of conventionally ugly men do.)
Oh I didn’t mean that it’s about being special or extra-smart or difficult to keep up with. Not at all. It’s more about the fact that not a whole lot of men are interested enough in feminist theory to even care to understand. Which is fine, but it’s been a point of contention in every relationship I’ve had — because once my head is full of feminist stuff, it’s pretty hard to separate it out from my daily life. And, let’s face it, a lot of relationships do fall into traditional gendered patterns. So what’s frustrating is not being able to properly explain to my partner why this is problematic for me. It’s not because there aren’t smart, politically active, attractive men — there are loads of them. It’s because men by their very status as men are coming into the relationship from a position of privilege, and that skews things. Finding a guy who really understands that, beyond the superficial explanation, is not easy. It’s not a matter of intelligence or sophistication or being special; it’s a matter of basic necessity. Men don’t have to understand it, so most of them don’t.
And yes, maybe it will be easier in 10 years. We’ll see.
I agree with octogalore about the ages of the guys you’re running into — I didn’t meet my now-husband until I was 31 and he was 29. He freely admits that in his early 20s, he was definitely a classic Nice Guy(TM), but he grew out of it well before we even met. And, like octogalore, it took me a while to grow out of the notion that drama=romance. Drama, frankly, sucks, but it took me a lot of years to learn that I hate it.
What really irritates me about stories like these is the bottom-line assumption that women only really care — or should care — about the prestige of getting and staying married. As someone who has been married and divorced largely because she wasn’t picky enough at the time, I can tell you that the utter loneliness of being mis-married is more painful by far than being unattached. Not that my XH is a bad guy, we’re friends and everything. But both of us compromised way too much of ourselves to get together. It was not pretty.
Yeah, every relationship takes a certain amount of compromise. But neither one of you should have to try to change your being in order to make it work. That’s a formula for getting more people down the aisle, maybe, but not for happy lifetime partnerships. I myself would much rather see fewer bad marriages and fewer divorces than fewer singles. No contest. Even as someone who is now quite happily coupled, I’d hope that if I ever got smug about it someone would feel free to turn the powerhose on me.
My husband says he was an asshole in college, a Nice Guy after college, and now he’s pro-feminist. Reading feminist blogs and books and listening to my rants and seeing first-hand sexist damage, from experiences he’s vicariously lived through family or friends has helped sway him.
Sometimes it feels like men are too privileged to ever ‘get it’ and that it’s just not worth it. But if that were true inter-racial relationships wouldn’t be worth it either, nor would relationships between people of different classes or abilities… And well, that’s just silly. So, yes, some men do ‘get it’. But often getting it requires experience, which often requires years on this planet, which means decent men might tend to be slightly more mature (in years and other things).
Well right. Of course some men “get it.” But my point was that they’re few and far between, and even fewer and further between when you’re in your 20s. So I’m hopeful that it’ll get better, and it’s nice hearing that it apparently does. But if it doesn’t, I don’t feel entitled to a partner, and I won’t be all that devastated to do my own thing.
Since you asked, by Cary Tennis: Infidelity, adultery, promiscuity, deceit — is she a sociopath? | Salon Life
Amusing? She might be a sociopath. Then she’s not. Then she might be again. Then she’s not. If she feels good about herself, whoops, she may be.
Actually, my last boyfriend (still one of my best friends) is one of the most genuinely feminist people I’ve ever met–loads more feminist than all the girls (and guys) I know who toss around the word “slut” or such small but profoundly irritating behaviors–didn’t give a fuck about feminist theory. He was just an incredibly good person who just got it, inherently.
And a lot of women don’t get feminism either (“but WHY is it that when you’re mad at someone you criticize her sexual activity?” “cuz she’s a slut.” “…sigh.”)
That said… I feel pretty much the same way about marriage. Heh.
Just admiring how Robbespierre stuck that in there.
I know! All of these people talking about how absolutely terrific and awesome and PERFECT they are, not even making any effort to be better human beings! Amazing, isn’t it? And funny, how they make it such a point to reject everyone they meet at face value by running down a checklist of traits. What a shame.
(Are Rich and I reading different blogs?)
“Actually, my last boyfriend (still one of my best friends) …didn’t give a fuck about feminist theory. He was just an incredibly good person who just got it, inherently.”
Isabel’s got a great point. Sometimes I think it would be wonderful if my husband read the feminist blogs I read, the books I read, etc., and wanted to engage actively in all the discussions. But he’s about as interested in all that as Isabel’s last boyfriend. On the other hand, he will often get very interested in the daily operation of gender and how it plays out. He’s always been more engaged with practice than theory, whereas I like to get into both.
But that’s ultimately OK. When I was younger it seemed critical to me that my passions intersect with those of Mr. Right, whenever he made his appearance. At this point, it’s more important that he walk the walk. And that’s not about reducing standards, but about realizing that it’s inevitable and even kind of nice that we have separate interests, as long as our values are aligned.
“So what’s frustrating is not being able to properly explain to my partner why this is problematic for me. It’s not because there aren’t smart, politically active, attractive men — there are loads of them. It’s because men by their very status as men are coming into the relationship from a position of privilege, and that skews things. Finding a guy who really understands that, beyond the superficial explanation, is not easy. It’s not a matter of intelligence or sophistication or being special; it’s a matter of basic necessity. Men don’t have to understand it, so most of them don’t. And yes, maybe it will be easier in 10 years. We’ll see.”
I always hate when people tell me “oh, you’ll see in a few [or more] years” (although now they don’t say it quite as often). But that said, a lot of the time there’s something to it.
The thing with guys in their mid-20s or thereabouts is that real-world experience is very low. They haven’t had many if any non-superficial relationships. While women who haven’t had much real-world job experience still usually (not all the time, of course) “get” that sexism is out there, guys often don’t have the same gut-level experience. Academia is far from perfect, but it’s pretty innocent compared to the rampant sexism that hits thereafter.
Once they’ve been working for a number of years, (some) men get more savvy. They are more open to hearing and to seeing women’s experiences. Many of them have sisters, girlfriends, moms, etc. who have born the brunt of second-shift issues, discrimination, harassment, the way poverty can affect women uniquely, etc. After the heavily ego-driven and competitive environment of school and just being 20-something, a portion of these guys – granted, a much-smaller-than-ideal portion – will start to take a look around and figure some stuff out.
When I try to evaluate if my husband was marry-able, or even serious-relationship-able, in his mid-20s, it’s a joke. He was just out of law school, living high on the first real money he’d ever had, going to Vegas every weekend and blowing it in various stupid (well, he didn’t think so at the time, but) ways. He had two older sisters he learned a lot from and was always a “nice guy,” but wasn’t really fully baked. He had no idea what he wanted to do professionally as he was realizing how miserable law firm practice made him. He lost a lot of savings in the market crash. And after hearing from a number of women he dated that this career and financial instability made him unfit for serious consideration, as they expected a man to be “set” on his career path, he was more focused on that issue and on feeling bad about his failures in that regard to be outwardly focused enough to be a good life companion. Ten years later, a number of these dynamic shifted.
So yeah. Ten years. Bet on it.
I found that guys in their 30s who are single are getting a little weird about it. Like, they want to settle down RIGHT NOW! because they fucked off in their 20s.
Personally, I’ve had much better luck with either guys in their 20s or guys in their 40s. The 20s may be fraught for women, but IME, the 30s are when the men start thinking they need to get paired up and start getting weird about it.
You know why that is? Because that’s when their mothers start getting weird about it. I never got the “when are you gonna get married and have some kids” thing, until last year when I turned 30. Then all the sudden my ma’s all freaked out that I haven’t had a “serious” relationship recently. Even though I mention that the Corps ain’t the best place to have a relationship.
“Personally, I’ve had much better luck with either guys in their 20s or guys in their 40s. The 20s may be fraught for women, but IME, the 30s are when the men start thinking they need to get paired up and start getting weird about it.”
Could be. I met my dude when he was 40, albeit that’s only one data point. Could be a coastal thing. I think guys in NY or CA, for example, tend to feel pressure to settle down a bit later. (BTW, I think we may have gone to the same law school, and if you’re still in that area, then this could be a mini-demonstration of that point).
I can understand that, though my experience is somewhat different. Being in academia, I’m still around a lot of people – men and women – who are still single in their 30s and don’t seem to be in any hurry to “settle down”.
I myself didn’t fuck off much in my 20s at all, so I’m doing it now in my 30s. I think I can keep doing this for a while.
I’d just like to say the Rich in #61 is not me. J’accuse!
I think it’s interesting that “spinsters” were originally known for being self sufficient, and choosy.
Jill wrote:
I think that’s a very healthy, honest statement.
I look at my marriage and I think how incredibly lucky I am. And I think my husband and our relationship is extremely rare. And I’m probably right. There are very, very few men worth dating and even fewer worth marrying. The belief that “there is someone for everyone” is complete bullshit. It’s used to perpetuate couple-centricity, feelings of inadequacy that help sell products, and to make people feel like they have to settle for less. (When you settle for less in relationships, you’ll probably settle for less in government, in the workplace, in consumer safety…)
No one deserves a partner, not a Nice Guy and not a feminist. Relationships are partially earned and partially happenstance. (I think a lot of it is good timing.) They are not a God-given right. And no one should to settle for average Joe when they want anarchist Joe. That’s a recipe for unhappiness.
I remember identifying my desires in life (to have children, own a home, travel, etc) and choosing to go ahead and work on those goals regardless of whether or not I had a partner. So I bought a condo. And I decided I’d have children with or without a partner. And it turned out that doing those things made me more attractive to my eventual husband. He was looking for a whole person to share his life with, not a half person to begin a life with. Turns out sharing your life with someone is better when you have something to share.
(But even if I’m not right in thinking I’m lucky, even if there are a million other men who’d make suitable companions for me, and a million women suitable for him, I think it’s healthier to believe that this one is rare because then I cherish him and our relationship more. And that can’t possibly hurt a good relationship.)
The best way to meet people who share your passions is while you’re pursuing the passion. So the animal lover should check out the shelter volunteers. Now is a good time for political animals to volunteer for a presidential campaign. Etc.
But, that stop and help animals on the highway seemed unnecessarily specific. Plus it’s not always an unmixed good. Pet owners: make sure your dogs are securely indoors on the Fourth of July. Here’s a SF Chronicle story from 2004:
A stray dog on a San Jose freeway led to a crash that killed a 12-year- old boy and injured four others, the California Highway Patrol said.
The accident occurred around 7:30 p.m. Sunday when the driver of a minivan, Catherine Silveira, 41, spotted the dog on Highway 85 near Leigh Avenue.
Silveira pulled over to the shoulder to let her husband get out and rescue the dog, but part of the van still blocked the right lane.
The van was struck from behind by a pickup truck driven by David Rodgers, 23.
Silveira’s son, Tomas Clinkenbeard, sustained fatal injuries from the impact. Two other children in the van — Jefferson Silveira, 7, and Katrina Silveira, 6 — suffered major injuries and were taken to local hospitals. Silveira and Rodgers were being treated for minor injuries.
And I’m a little annoyed at the thought that dating a non-Jew exemplifies a woman lowering her standards. I have known both assholes and great people of every and no faith.
Hector B.,
Though I sympathize with your annoyance, I also understand that for some people, religious and cultural commonality are so important that dating/marrying outside would be considered “lowering” his/her standards. Though it is not as strong among my generation (under 30), I still encounter plenty of individuals who would only date those from the same religious and/or cultural backgrounds.
One of the most common reasons I keep hearing for this is that this commonality of backgrounds would reduce potential conflicts arising from such differences, especially on a subject that can be explosively divisive. I’ve heard similar reasonings from both people IRL and some commentators on this blog to explain why they would only date/marry someone with the same/similar political backgrounds.
Speaking for myself, I am an agnostic so as long as someone does not attempt to evangelize, I am pretty mellow on the subject. On political issues, however, I would prefer not to date anyone who has fascist (i.e. Japanese militarists) or communist (i.e. Maoist) leanings because both political ideologies have gravely impacted older family members (i.e. Deaths, beatings, becoming refugees). I will certainly feel I am “lowering my standards” if I started dating anyone who has sympathies with such bloodstained ideologies.
I’m not very familiar with US legal system: what are the odds of this guy being sued by John Gray for plagiarism on his usual bullshit?
Come to think of it: would it set a precendent for Cosmo to sue John Gray for the very same reason?
“And I’m a little annoyed at the thought that dating a non-Jew exemplifies a woman lowering her standards. I have known both assholes and great people of every and no faith.”
If it would make you feel better, you could think a woman to whom a prospective mate’s religion is very important being told that it shouldn’t be and her standards are too high exemplifies a woman being patronized from hell to breakfast. I mean, seriously, if her religion wasn’t very important to her, she probably wouldn’t give a rat’s ass.
But it presumably is, and she does, and she wants a potential husband to have a compatible-with-her qualification or two beyond “he’s a really great person” before making a huge personal commitment. Telling her to shelve that thing that’s very important to her and give everybody who can pass the “great person” test a crack at her time, affection, and uterus is basically telling her that she’s wrong for caring about it and couldn’t get it anyway.
Oh, and I doubt her wanting a Jewish man is her way of saying “Jews are better people,” or people commenting “Then she should hold out for a Jewish man” are really saying “They are so much better than other people.” I’m sure she’s aware that there are really awesome people out there who aren’t Jews. She just does not want to spend the rest of her life living, copulating, and raising a family with them. That kind of standard is really not the sort of super-personal face-slap some folks seem to like to turn it into.
Shorter Evan Marc Katz;
“You loser, why can’t you lower your lofty standards to include meeeeee!!!!”
A partner would be nice, but if I can’t find a partner that’s good for me (and I him/her), than I rather be alone, than to play pretend with the likes of Evan Marc Katz and assorted ‘Nice Guys’ and concern trolls.
- MG
…and I don’t feel sorry for these needy “nice guys’ at all. If I want such a big, high-risk, high-effort, single-sided responsibility, I’ll adopt violent street kids with a traumatic past, those are the people in need of TLC, not the privileged entitlement jerks of the patriarchy.
Whoa how’d I miss this thread?
OH yeah very few men get feminism. It seems they have to have read at least a little feminist theory or feminist blogs. It seems like a picky thing but it affects the little things in life which aren’t little things. Like why housework is a big deal to women. Why doing the dishes and buying groceries is appealing.
After a while, it’s a pain to explain why you’re mad.
AS far as compatibility, I have a feeling the eharmony personality profile matchup thing works so I kept it from several years ago. Basically, you’re compatible with someone with your temperament.
DUDE. Yes. Very much so. I thought it was just a San Francisco thing – my coworker (28) keeps grousing about how he needs to get married now b/c his hair is thinning and who will want him when he’s bald, and another guy I know (30) told me he spent the summer on match.com and other dating sites trying desperately to meet a long-term-relationship partner …
I’m in my early 20s, and I’ve been reading the thread thinking “wow, I’m so lucky to have found a life partner already.” Then I got to the “well, wait ten or so years” and realized, duh, my partner’s in his late 30s.
How about this for a radical idea – the only reason to compromise and limit your personal freedom by co-habiting/getting married is to form a family unit to raise children. If there are no children involved then either party (of any gender) is free to live where they want (and living in another country doesn’t have to mean the end of the relationship – if the person really is something else and miles ahead of the competition it’s worth the travel). Young children on the other hand may forget what the other co-parent looks like and seem to like a family home. And in order to avoid all the infertility trauma, wait until someone is pregnant before marrying. I first co-habited with the father of my child when I was 7 months pregnant and coming to the end of my flying time.
Comments on this entry are closed.