Where have all the good men gone?

MSNBC.Com ^ | Jan 24, 2003 | MSNBC.Com

[sonserae]

Wow! You sound miserable. Your post makes me glad I'm single. Sorry, Bless your heart. Thanks for the warning! I was married for 7 years and it was such a miserable experience I appreciate being alone. I do not paint marriage out in a fantasy thing....quite the opposite. I have found that relationships are more burdensome than they are enhancing because the people that I've unwisedly been involved with ended up being little boys themselves. Fortunately, you two have a partnership and share the responsibilities. Someone told me that being in a relationship should be double the joy and half of the burdens. I've yet to experience that so until then I'm content being happy on my own.

[SoDak]

I often felt the same way, on the male side. I've done more than my share of teasing marrying friends about giving up the good life and all. Now, I'm looking toward 40, and am down to two good friends who are single, and one of those is "in danger" of late. I've become the cool uncle to all of my friends kids. My extended family thinks it's just too weird that I'm single. But, I've always thought that if it was going to happen, it's going to happen. If it doesn't, it certainly won't be the end of the world. By the way, I'm not sure if you write for a living, but you write well. I especially liked the juicy fruit purse. :)

[WFTR]

I searched chat before posting this article today (1/27) because I figured that it belonged in chat more than it belonged in news. I should learn that almost everything goes into news until a moderator forces it into chat. Anyone who wants to take a new crack at it is welcome to visit http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/830729/posts.

[Dan from Michigan]

It seems to me she's looking for a doormat. No thanks(The democrat thing as well is also a negative).

[weikel]

I could deal with the Sex and the City types, its the feminist you gotta worry about.

[Dan from Michigan]

As for where have all the good men gone? They're all in cowboy hats and chaps, guns at the hip, spending their time on cattle drives or cleaning up towns that need cleaning up. Oops. Sorry. I'm living in 21st century, not the 19th. Darn it.

Don't have the cowboy hats and cattle drives, but I do have the guns. :)

[Dan from Michigan]

Men say they want a smart woman, but most of the time when they actually get in a relationship with a smart woman, his low self esteem can't handle it. He goes into "competition" mode for some reason even though the woman's not competing. The man always needs to be smarter and richer than the woman or he can't handle it. If a guy disagrees with me, I dare you to prove me wrong. Meet me for dinner and prove to me you are a REAL MAN!!! haha....

I'll prove you wrong.

[technochick99]

There has to be someone in the family that makes the final decision.

I've always believed that two equals can reach a meaningful compromise on almost anything.

[Dan from Michigan]

Men say they want a smart woman, but most of the time when they actually get in a relationship with a smart woman, his low self esteem can't handle it. He goes into "competition" mode for some reason even though the woman's not competing. The man always needs to be smarter and richer than the woman or he can't handle it. If a guy disagrees with me, I dare you to prove me wrong. Meet me for dinner and prove to me you are a REAL MAN!!! haha....

I'll prove you wrong. :)(Italics be gone)

[weikel]

If a man has integrity, all other things fall into place.

BS at least 50% of women have a strong attraction to total degenerates with no redeeming qualities.

[weikel]

Good observations. Marry a nice gal back from India. Stay away from American women.

[Nick Danger]

So when I read the pronouncements of men on this forum that women are worthless sluts, that marriage isn't worth the trouble, that women over 30 are throwaways, and that a man should engage in a complicated dance to buy the favor of women much younger than he is, I am saddened. I would have thought that conservatives would, by dint of sheer logic if not faith, be traditionalists too. I would think they would know better.

Most do know better. Some of this is posturing and rhetoric. It will probably have to become even more sneering and even more contemptuous before it achieves its ends. There is much injustice that needs undoing. A kind of betrayal took place, by people who said they wanted to "have it all" but didn't mention "and all to ourselves." Things are sufficiently out of whack, legally and culturally, that a significant number of men are simply 'on strike' and will remain so, probably joined before it's over by more than half the men of marriagable age. Those who are lucky enough to be happily married tend not to understand this phenomenon, but to those not so fortunate, it is their reality. There is much bitterness to be overcome, of the sort that can only be defeated with even more bitterness. And so things will be ugly for a long while; probably another generation or two. It can't be helped. Certain technologies are necessary to right what has gone wrong, and they are not here yet. Ten, twenty, thirty years... I do not know when. But not a hundred. Until then... more of this.

[Dan from Michigan]

outside of a boxing ring with Queensbury rules.

Irish Queensbury rules? Is that with Jameson bottles, Pool Ques, and bar stools fully legal? That's how I learned them anyway. :)

[Kevin Curry]

It makes sense to go young, from almost any perspective.

What a shallow, superficial statement.

Reminds me of a verse from Sailing to Byzantium:

Those dying generations, at their song
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies
Caught in that sensual music, all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect . . . .

"Trading young" is the game play of a faithless self-obsessed man who fears his utter extinction, or of a stupid, grasping man who has never paused to consider it.

[Dan from Michigan]

Probably has something to do with the fact that she hates shopping, loves football, guns and sex, enjoys good meals, big fast cars, plays poker and actually said to me "Honey, why dont we get the 65" TV instead? I dont know if the 55" will be big enough"

Does she have a sister 20-28? :)

[Dan from Michigan]

I've read through all the posts here. I'm 24 right now, a year older than my dad was when he tied the knot. I'm not looking, nor ready for marriage yet. I don't know when I'll tie the knot, but it's "I'll know it when I'm ready type of thing"

I refuse to be a doormat. On the same note, I don't expect(nor want) my wife to be one. It's supposed to be a partnership, not a power struggle, and I won't be involved in a power struggle. I deal with power struggles all the time in my field and that's certainly what I do not want to deal with in what should be a sanctuary from it. I fully understand what my dad said about refusing to "Take his work home with him".

I won't be "molded and trained" into being some pansie. I'll walk out the door first. I am what I am what I am. That's good, bad and inbetween. I'll change on my own through age, as all people do. I wasn't the same I was when I was 21, 18, etc, and I'll be a difference person at 27 as well. Hopefully wiser.

I don't buy all the BLANKET stereotypes out there. MANY people fit em. Many don't. Maybe that view comes from my parent's being married over 28 years. I can also trust either of my parents with my life, and being in politics, that's saying an awful lot about somebody. I also know that my parents can trust each other. They didn't and won't stray from their vows. I won't take the Klinton approach either. A person that does that can't be trusted. Without trust, there's nothing. That is number one with me.

Everything else is secondary to trust.

[Green Knight]

Bah. Where're the good women ages 20-24 running around in Miami, FL? At this point, I'm starting to think I may as well live in a monastery, for all the luck I have meeting good and decent women (As opposed to the scads of, how should I put it, not so good and not so decent women). Ah well. Monastery's DO have their upsides. It'll definitely give me time to work on my singing voice, so I can get a nice monkish chant going. ;)

[sonserae]

BS at least 50% of women have a strong attraction to total degenerates with no redeeming qualities.

Well, since 98% of all men are total degenerates with no redeeming qualities, I think your statistic is way off! HAHA...LOL.

[weikel]

It could be true I try to hang around with the 2%.