Posted on 09/17/2005 6:59:48 AM PDT by teldon30
Dear Amy: I'd like to be in a relationship again, but I never even get asked out (unless you count frisky 85-year-olds and drunks at the corner bar). I'm a 32-year-old woman who's happy, sociable, and attractive. (I paid for college by modeling and continue to take care of myself.) I'm second-in-command at a big company, financially secure, and own a beautiful home. How can I meet men in general, and more specifically, men I'd actually want to date?
Deluxe Chopped Liver
Dear Deluxe: To scare away vampires, it takes garlic and crosses, which make ugly bulges in sleek, satin evening bags. Luckily, all you have to do to scare away men is pull out a business card that says ''senior vice president.''
''Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,'' said Henry Kissinger. Sure it is unless you're a woman. Research by Stephanie L. Brown and Brian P. Lewis, published in Evolution and Human Behavior (Nov. '04), seems to confirm what many lonely women at the top already know: When guys go for the woman in the boardroom, it isn't the woman running the meeting but the secretary who wheeled in the coffee and croissants before it started.
Sure, plenty of men will scamper up the corporate ladder for a one-night stand. But, according to Brown and Lewis' study, men looking for dates or relationships tend to prefer their subordinates to their colleagues or bosses. The researchers hypothesize that men evolved to want women they can control as a means of guarding against ''parental uncertainty'' unwittingly raising kids fathered by the Neanderthal next door as their own. Brown and Lewis think this may also explain why men are suckers for ''behavioral expressions of vulnerability'' women who act like they might not be able to make it across the street
(Excerpt) Read more at mcall.com ...
Every man versus woman thread on FR has always had 4 or 5 posts by men and women that state "men are simple creatures" and all knod in agreement.....not one time have i ever read a post that says women are simple creatures....'nuff said.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding you but are you saying you don't wear your wedding ring so you can talk to single attractive women?
Please say it ain't so!
Watch out for them ashtrays!
Ultimate example: the stereotypical man who sleeps on the couch after having an argument with his wife.
Early example: ten minutes before he is scheduled to meet her for a date, she calls up and cancels with a flimsy excuse. He tells her with a weak little laugh, "Oh, that's all right...we'll do it again some other time," instead of, "You know, I expect people to follow through on their commitments. Call me some time when you think you are able to do that."
Men are too often willing to take unlimited amounts of BS from women they are attracted to - and women sometimes do the same from men they are attracted to. The difference is that women will very seldom give away all of their power to a man they just met ten seconds ago, whereas men do this with beautiful women all the time.
If both men and women start out with and maintain zero tolerance for BS and flaky behavior, both keep their power and the relationship that results is a lot happier.
Women LIKE bad boys. Cads, or whatever you want to call them.
I will explain it to you.
In life, aggressiveness can get one further than ability.
And so women have evolved to be attracted to what they see as aggressive men.
You think women (intuitively) want to endow their children with the genes of nerds?
Not the best survival strategy from the standpoint of evolution.
The trick is some women are too stupid to differentiate between aggressive and borderline psycho.
And, of course, if a man is seen as aggressive and clever, too--then he's all the more attractive.
For the same reason, I strongly suspect that as much as women say they dislike a spouse who cheats on them--I suspect they secretly find it titillating; as once again having children by such a man would help to ensure the wide dissemination of your genes throughout the ensuing generations.
Wow, you sound like us except I sent her to school on the front end. Now after twenty years together, we're expecting our first.
Yep. :-)
Yes Hitman you have been a male all your life but NOT ALL MEN ARE LIKE YOU!
In my experience, quite a few "powerful" women, especially those with a strong feminist ideological grounding, have had bad experiences with stalkers, control-freaks, and other psychos. At least they seem to talk about such experiences a lot.
This naturally tends to reinforce their low opinion of men. It seems just as likely to me though that the constant barrage of hostility, suspicion, and man-bashing from these women might tend to exclude any men who are not hyper-aggressive and neurotically possessive.
An admittedly extreme example:
I didn't date for two full years after my wife died. It wasn't a limit I had set, it just took that long to start feeling like it again.
A couple I knew then set me up with my first date, and it seemed like a good one.
The woman was none other than a well-known science fiction writer whose work I liked. I got on her good side right away by taking along a couple of books for her to autograph. We hit it off very well at first, though we did argue a little, in an academic sense, about what she called "women's issues."
Then, after a couple of dates, I ran into her on campus and asked her join me for a cup of coffee. As we were sitting in the local IHOP, she started in about stalkers and other evil types. I said, almost rhetorically, "You've seen that I'm not anything like that, haven't you?"
At that point, her face changed, she started to become livid, and she almost shouted, "You better not be! I'll take you down if you try that s*** with me! I've got a gun at home, I'll blow your f***ing head off if you try it!"
*GULP*
People were staring at us, perhaps wondering what I had done to her. I suddenly remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere (anywhere in fact) and excused myself. The door didn't hit me on the way out and I never spoke to her again.
Interestingly enough, her writing career has gone down the toilet the last few years. Her navel-gazing feminist schtick has worn thin and she doesn't seem to have a replacement.
I agree with you, of course. But I do think that in this narrow example, more men are like me than are dislike me.
He must have felt, deep down, that he would always be trying to measure up to the success she had achieved. It isn't always just about what she thinks of him, it's about what his friends and her friends and relatives and her corporate associates that he is going to have to deal with at social functions are going to think of Mr. Blue Collar and will they be whispering behind his back about why she married so far beneath her station. Some men stare into that abyss and decide they can't handle it. In this guy's case, it sounds like he made a big mistake.
I agree with everything you said, and it's true for males and females.
That a girl! My wife of sixteen years (yesterday), and I shot competitive trap shooting when we were dating. Competitive shooting is full of conservative men who are well off, since it is not exactly a cheap sport. Now all you have to do is meet a gentleman that fits your standards and let nature take it's course, not to mention that shooting firearms is really fun. My wife likes to shoot bowling pins with a .44 magnum, she lets out these evil little giggles.
WOW, that should be in a Top Ten List of Scary Dates
re: giving up power
Mr. J explained it very well. Keeping your masculine power is essential to emotionally satisfying a mate in a man's life.
Now that's the way to be successful with women! LOL
Just kidding
Lets think of this womans life as a port. ( igore the sexual conotation here) there are many ships that would like to pull into that port, sometimes there is no room, some times the harbor master says get the hell out of here, some times there appears to be a plague flag flying over the dock,and sometimes in years before good ships came but the harbor seem to ignore these and wanted only the Pirates ( bad boys) in port. How many good clean respectable ships ( good guys ) did you pass up because you wanted the rebel? There is no room to complain that all you have now is a drydock. ( Okay , I cant help it the metaphor is just going this way)
There needs to be made a reason for that ship to stay in port. A ship brings good things into that port, a port brings good things for a ship. If the ship is there to just dump his load (another sexual conotation) he will and go for the next port. If there is a berth that offers all sorts of incentives the ship will stay.
If ther is a port that seems to be full all the time ( with other interests) good ships are going to find a home port elsewhere and not wait around for a tug boat to pull them in.
I know far far to many women that are in their late 20s and mid 30's that bitch and complain about not finding a man when I know they had great opprotunities to be married early on but rejected that person because of their "career" or more often they married the right guy and went through a mid life crisis between 27 and 34. Almost always generated by some girlfriend of theirs that just got divorced and now wants a friend to go around the bars with her. So she then begins to tell that girl how miserable she is in her marriage. All the sudden she now sees all the bad in her marriage and thinks being single will give her this sexy life. Divorce happens and then 18 months later she is writing into dear abby saying how hard it is to meet men. When it was far far easier for her to have maintained the relation she had.
Sad to say, he'll attract more of them if he leaves it on.
Yes. The 'nice guy/jerk' paradigm is oversimplified and much more in line with what you wrote.
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