Over on Patriactionary, a proudly reactionary and patriarchal Christian blog, the blogger who calls himself electricangel is angry at himself – for not being an even bigger douchebag than he already is.
You see, he’s just heard from his wife that one of her friends isn’t happy about hitting the big 4-0. Apparently, his wife’s friend
broke down in tears, sobbing uncontrollably. What had hit her was the realization that she was 40, with no husband, no children, no prospects of either, and she was staring at a future of loneliness.
His reaction to this news?
I wish I could tell you that an evil smile of vengeance crept across my face, and the children this woman discarded were getting their revenge upon her. That this was payback for riding the cock carousel for years, always aiming at the guys she wanted, not the guys she could get.
But alas, hidden deep inside in his tiny misogynistic heart there remains a tiny fragment of sympathy.
But I cannot tell you anything other than how saddened I was at her tale, and how this sadness will rip out the hearts of so many women who did not set out to become lonely, childless spinsters, but whose families and societies removed the strictures on their behavior so that their own lack of self-control was left unbounded. This will be the ongoing social disaster of coming years.
I did say it was a tiny fragment.
But he still wants to use this woman’s story for his own ends.
In discussing this woman, I am insistent upon her becoming an object lesson to my wife, and especially for my wife to tell the beautiful, smart, virgin young women close to her about what happens to carousel riders. Life is a coin you may spend any way you like, but you may only spend it once. This woman spent it on an amusement park ride. Now the park is closing, she has been thrown off the ride, and faces 45 years of solitude.
Yeah, because no woman over the age of 40 is capable of ever finding a date or a mate.
Yeah, because her sadness at hitting 40 is going to last for the rest of her life.
Oh, and the bit about “the children this woman discarded?” She didn’t “discard” any children. She simply didn’t have any. She’s not “discarding children” any more than those with penises instead of vaginas are “discarding children” each and every time they masturbate to orgasm.
In the comments, not everyone is quite so restrained as electricangel.
“I don’t even know this woman and I’m pissing myself laughing at her,” writes one commenter going by the name Friendzone. “Fuck her.”
Take The Red Pill is equally unsympathetic:
I have NO sympathy for this woman whatsoever. Just like most Modern Women, she bought into the feminist deception with eyes wide open with never a thought about the future. Well the future has arrived and it looks a lot like a cold, lonely one for her – just like the cold, lonely youth and young adulthood that MOST men have had and continue to have.
Karma has come due, and the bicycles have realized that they don’t need fish, either.
When women like her are young, they treat decent men abominably – being as cruel and sadistic as they can be when rejecting an ‘unwanted’ man’s advances – simultaneously, they enjoy being ‘free whores’ for every player, dirtbag, and Alpha thug who crosses their path; then when they reach their thirties and are little more than ugly, repellent, diseased trollops (often with some thug’s illegitimate spawn or two in tow), they complain about ‘the lack of good men’.
Others adopt Electricangel’s more, er, mature approach. Will S. decides to be a pompous dick about it, while patting himself on the back for his enlightened attitude:
Indeed, it is proper to not gloat, but rather mourn what we have lost, as a society, and feel sorry for those who have made poor decisions – and try to help others not make such poor decisions, by pointing to unfortunate examples, that at least others might learn something from them.
Sometimes, schadenfreude is tempting, but we Christians do generally know better than that.
Because patronizingly exploiting someone’s (probably temporary) sadness to make other people feel shitty about their own lives is such a moral thing to do. Is faux sympathy better than no sympathy at all?
Our friend Sunshinemary jumps on the “let this be a lesson to the rest of you sluts” bandwagon:
We need not mock such women, but we need to hold up their tales as cautionary examples to other young women. The older women themselves cannot face that their lives should serve as an example of what not to do, and they will rationalize it forever.
Electricangel expounds on his plan to use this woman’s apparent misfortune for his own ends:
I am using her as a vector to drop comments to my wife about the dangers of the carousel. Next is the overt suggestion that she talk to some young women about this friend specifically.
Uh, I guess you don’t let your wife read this blog, huh? Because if I discovered that someone close to me was talking about me in such a creepily manipulative and patronizing way, that person would no longer be a part of my life.
Electricangel replies to Sunshinemary:
Yes, those who did not prioritize children will have their genetic tendencies to that behavior removed from the gene pool. Women do not have the sexual options that men do, and not letting them know this early and often is crushing.
But they must be pointed to, and shown as examples. I understand people who will laugh at and mock them; I thought I would. It’s just the enormity of a waste of a life, and the lives she threw away, and the realization that this is just the tip of huge iceberg that has gripped me.
Yes, EA, you’re such a deeply moral person. Posting an “I told you so, you whores!” post on your blog is no doubt exactly the way The Lord would like you to handle this.
In a later comment, he reiterates his plan to use this woman’s story to increase the insecurities of his wife:
I do not feel guilty at all about using this woman’s example to drop pellets of manosphere logic on my wife. It has the side benefit of my wife starting to ask me (because she’s asking herself) “What do I do to bring value to the relatinship?” It is a good thing.
First it was a sad thing, now it’s a “good thing.”
How exactly is this better than gloating? No, scratch that. How is this different than gloating?
Fembot: I am gay, and I was strongly turned off of watching gay porn when I discovered just how harmed the straight “fill-ins” in gay porn are harmed by acting in gay porn. I think it is a mistake to assume they are both being pleasured just because that is how it appears.
@Jarrod
Yes, that is true. That is why I watch very little porn in general. And I tend to follow the work of certain actors I know are gay. Authenticity is important to me. I find the odds are better that it is genuine with gay porn, because mainstream porn is so blatantly fabricated.
mainstream hetero porn, sorry
@Jarrod, I have searched and it appears you are a very occasional poster. (Apologies in advance if that is not the case.) In any case, I’m going to stick with the argument that you are not a known quantity, and so you need to understand suspicion…
I dunno whether to be sad or proud that I’ve been puked on while single. (Freshman + alcohol = terrible things. Ah, college…)
@Phil: “I’m not an MRA, but I’m definitely anti-feminist. I just have an honest question for the feminists here, or David if he’s reading this.
Assuming that this women spent her youth sleeping around, wouldn’t she have been better off using her 20s to find a good, strong but stable man to settle down with? ”
The problem with this question is that you make it sound as two mutually exclusive options. Either one sleeps around, or one finds a husband. It’s perfectly possible to be looking for a husband all along and end up alone. The universe doesn’t always reward a woman with a good husband just because she stayed a good girl and didn’t sleep around (just like the universe doesn’t always reward a man with a good girlfriend or wife just because he’s nice). It’s also possible to sleep around and stumble upon the love of your life in the process. It’s really not the case that being “a good girl” causes one to be happily married with kids at fourty, while being a slut causes one to be miserable and alone at that same age.
Some men are put off by sluts, yeah, but some men are also put off by virgins, and think it’s weird if a woman is, say, twentyfive and still haven’t had sex. Many women do choose to handle this by neurotically trying to walk a narrow line between prude and slut – others think that you don’t want one of those assholes anyway.
If you want to have a great husband/wife and a family, the best option really is to be yourself, staying true to your own values and treating others well. This may or may not work. As I said before, the universe isn’t fundamentally just and there’s nothing you can do that guarantee you’re rewarded with having the life you dreamt about. So it’s not a perfect plan with guaranteed success, but it’s definitely better than desperately trying to conform to what you think the opposite sex wants. THAT plan will most likely make you miserable, even if you happen to find a husband/wife that way, and it’s not guaranteed to find you one EITHER.
No, not particularly. If someone chooses to have many sexual partners instead of “settling down” with one person, it’s probably because they prefer having many sexual partners to settling down at that point in their life, and thus it is fairly obvious that they would not be better off doing something that makes them less happy.
The problem of “hitting milestones makes you think about roads not taken”? I suppose it sidesteps that, but given that that is, as previously mentioned, pretty much a universal experience, and not so much a bad thing as a necessary part of life, I’m not sure why we should be addressing it.
Nope! I would “admit” that people who want to be in long-term, monogamous relationships are better off seeking long-term, monogamous relationships. I see no reason why people who do not want to be in long-term, monogamous relationships should seek them out just because other people have decided that living life in a way that makes them happy and harms no one is icky.
Yeah, um, having lots of sex does not magically turn you into an anti-social pariah with no friends? Also, it’s entirely okay not to live with other people if you don’t want to?
Citation very much needed.
Also, does this apply to self-indulgence in general, or just in ways you find icky? I indulged myself in a cookie earlier – did the cookie make me sad and alone? Because I don’t feel particularly sad and alone. I mostly feel happy, because the cookie was tasty.
Because quite a lot of people don’t define “failure” the same way you do. Duh. I’d love to be a professor at a fancy-schmancy university someday, but I don’t go around yelling at everyone on different career paths, “HARVARD IS NEVER GOING TO HIRE YOU IF YOU KEEP BEING A PLUMBER! WHY ARE YOU SETTING YOURSELF UP FOR FAILURE?” Instead, I go with the crazy idea that maybe they are plumbers because they want to be plumbers, and they do not actually want to teach music theory to 19-year-olds for a living – and that’s okay!
My posse, preparing to make your life a living hell:
http://www.shaenon.com/yojoe.jpg
Phil, why are you assuming ‘alone’ and ‘sad’ are synonymous? Or that ‘single’ means ‘sleeping around’? They’re both completely mistaken assumptions.
@Phil-
“Assuming that this women spent her youth sleeping around, wouldn’t she have been better off using her 20s to find a good, strong but stable man to settle down with?”
*******************
That’s a big assumption. It also ignores the fact that a lot of people don’t have their stuff together in their 20’s. A lot of people look for a good partner but don’t find one for whatever reason. And with the current state of education and the sagging job market, a lot of people are focusing on simply SURVIVING, much less settling down and getting married/having babies.
I also know quite a few women who slept around a lot in their youth who got married in their 20’s to nice awesome guys who are stable and fun to be with. It’s not all-inclusive.
And I say this as a 27 year old woman who will be celebrating my 6th wedding anniversary this weekend with my beloved husband, and who is expecting her second (and final) baby.
I still don’t own a house. I still don’t have the fast car or the nice dress. But I’m out of debt. My family eats healthy nourishing food. We have health insurance. Our daughter is thriving and will be going to preschool in the fall. None of this shit just falls into your lap if you sit in the street and whine about how worthy you are of love. It takes mutual love, trust work and strength of character with the merest bit of luck on your side.
************************
“Sure, the guy on the blog is making insensitive comments, but doesn’t that sidestep the problem that this woman, and according to places like Jezebel and so on many other women, face in their 30s and 40s?”
************************
This isn’t a “woman” problem (although, because it is a sexual stereotype, I feel that this is probably one big reason why this trope shows up in women’s media a lot more often), it’s a human problem. There are plenty of people who get to their 30s or 40s and wonder what the hell happened. But it’s not always about love or relationships. A lot of people are seriously kicking themselves because the band broke up and they really wanted to do heavy metal instead of make copies for a living. Others are slaving away at some bland corporate job with little room for advancement because they have a mortgage and the kids need braces and good LORD when did everyone rest the weight of the world on their shoulders?
The thing is, we put relationships and sex into a special category of “things we want” as a society, even though a relationship is not a Thing, and neither is Sex. They’re more “expressions” and “interactions” than anything, and being as such, they are complicated to maneuver and navigate. It might be easier if you could be like a lab rat and push a button to receive love, but would it necessarily be as fulfilling? I would have no qualms with people using sex dolls and sex robots to fulfill their desires if they felt that the “button pushing” option was preferable. I just don’t think that forcing autonomous humans into that role is fair or morally conscionable.
************************
“Would you guys admit that women (and men) are better off not just having massive amounts of casual sex, living narcissistically (that is, for their enjoyment and exploration of themselves exclusively) and settling down and living for and with another person?”
************************
Last time I checked, the average partner count for the average person is about 6-10 people. That’s hardly “massive” amounts of casual sex. My own sex partner count? 2. And that’s coming from someone who was in a long-term dual closed relationship. Having lots of sex doesn’t mean you’re having it with a ton of different people. And if you’re the kind of person who LIKES sex with a different consenting person every night? More power to you. That’s not for me, but just because *I* don’t want to do that in my own life doesn’t mean it’s objectively a wrong choice.
And as for narcissists, well, that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. My mom married young, had 3 kids, and she’s still a fucking narcissist. EVERYTHING must revolve around HER at ALL TIMES or the world will fucking end. I would much rather she run around fucking the brains out of random consenting partners than drag her 3 kids (including me) through her “me me me” hell and pushing my dad around like a chump. Narcissism is a very serious personality problem. It doesn’t just magically go away if you “settle down” and marry.
************************
“Just curious, because this seems to me to be one of the greatest problems caused by the “free love” and “sex positive” movements: they sound great on the surface, until people realize that their hedonistic lifestyle left them completely unable to cope with living with another person and they’re sad and alone.”
************************
I’ve never really seen this in practice, but after reading “The Game,” that’s pretty much fitting the PUA lifestyle to a “T”. It’s not just a “woman” thing- it’s putting the needs and desires of social teachings (be a “stud”) or simply not listening to yourself that causes the unhappiness, not the actions themselves.
I mean, honestly, think if you forced yourself to do ANYTHING, no matter how innocuous, just because you felt that “everyone else” was doing it? Wouldn’t you be sad, anxious and unhappy as well?
The majority of people I see who are unhappy about sleeping around are people who feel that they MUST do so in order to be accepted by their peers and their friends. The only real solution here is to figure out that this is NOT OK of other people, and to stand up for yourself and find out what really makes you happy. It’s hard and it sucks and people might stop liking you, but you have to get to a point where you choose- do you want to do what you think everyone else wants you to do, or do you want to make a choice for your life based on what fulfills YOU?
*************************
“Obviously I’m not mocking this women, it really is sad that she’s going through this. So why not encourage men and women to stop setting themselves up for failure?”
*************************
You are not guaranteed success in pretty much everything you do. Sure, there are “safer” routes and those that are lower risk for lower reward, but often, if you want to open yourself up to possible awesome situations, you must put out more risk. Some people have a lot of sex partners without consciously meaning to- it just kind of works out this way for whatever reason (they want longterm relationships but keep pairing up with people who are bad at communication and only want casual, etc). Other times, it’s because they don’t know what the hell they want and are experimenting to find the EXACT THINGS that make them feel fulfilled.
And even the person who “does it all right” according to your “marry young stable guy” thing can still fail- over 50% of marriages that start out before people turn 30 dissolve within the first couple of years. Out of the people who got married around the time my husband and I got married, only one other couple is still married and has not divorced because of neglect/abuse, cheating, or simply growing apart.
Getting married isn’t the end-game. You have to work hard to keep your marriage relationship from stagnating, and that’s exponentially easier if you’re both also great friends and great communicators, but nothing is guaranteed. My husband suffers from bouts of depression that don’t seem to medically respond to medication or therapy very well. The only things so far that has helped is our cat, who serves as a therapy animal (this is also why my husband didn’t think twice about forking over almost 2000 bucks to help save the cat’s life, even though I know it’s going to cut severely into our finances for when I must go out on maternity leave). There have been some hard times, but none of those hard times ever got to the point where we were abusive at one another.
People who go into marriage thinking that they’re “safe” from having to deal with the complexities of sex and love and relationships are deluding themselves. Even after having sex with my husband over a half a million times, we’re still learning and growing as a sexual couple, and we’ve even integrated things into our sex life now that were not even on the radar when we were first together.
People grow and change- in a relationship, that growth and change must be harmonious and it must be consciously stewarded by everyone involved in the relationship. And even then, it’s not guaranteed. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. My husband could have some freak health problem that kills him. We don’t get a set amount of happiness or time. That’s why we have to do the best with what we have and hug all of our loved ones extra times to let them know how much we appreciate them NOW. You never know when it will be the last time.
Hells no! Dude, I’ve been to ORGIES and a party where we gave my best friend’s BF an anal gangbang and I got to carry out my biggest sexual fantasy ever! And then there was the queer cuddle party where I got to snuggle all night long with the queer I have a crush on! 😀
I wouldn’t trade ANY of that shit for a “strong but stable” man. (He doesn’t sound nearly as nice as my queer crush. 😉 )
phil: Would you guys admit that women (and men) are better off not just having massive amounts of casual sex, living narcissistically (that is, for their enjoyment and exploration of themselves exclusively) and settling down and living for and with another person?
No.
People are better off living the life which makes them happy; so long as the aren’t hurting other people.
You are question begging when you ask, “Sad and alone is the necessary end result of narcissistic self-indulgence anyway. Obviously I’m not mocking this women, it really is sad that she’s going through this. So why not encourage men and women to stop setting themselves up for failure?“, because the answer is implicit in the set-up, and is a forced conclusion.
But If one doesn’t assume the premise that, “narcissistic” self-indulgence is what is happening, and moreover doesn’t accept that, “ their hedonistic lifestyle left them completely unable to cope with living with another person,” your question is revealed for the facile tripe that it is.
What makes settling down with, a good, strong but stable man” when a woman is in her twenties such a good thing?
If it works (not a given) then power to the people who choose it. But this is the way I feel for everyone. My life choices won’t make everyone happy. They don’t always make me happy. But they are the things I think are best for me. Had I don’t different things I might be differently happy. I might also be miserable. I know that some of the choices I didn’t make would have made me miserable. Some of them (pursuing journalism past the point I decided to stop) might have been satisfying.
What I do know is that all of it is imponderables. I did what I did. I will do what I will do, and not one bit of it can be erased, and not one bit of it can be prescribed. Your question presupposes a one-size fits all sort of recipe for happiness.
I can say, with no reservation, or purpose of evasion, that you are wrong in what you describe. It’s bollocks, on it’s face. It’s stultifying.
In short, you are wrong, from beginning to end.
Phil: Pop Quiz.
Should men do the same? Find a good, but stable woman; of strong moral character, and settle down with her, in their early 20s?
Will this prevent them from being unable to form stable relationships in their 30s and 40s?
Do you think men sowing their wild oats leads to inabilities to form loving and lasting partnerships?
I mean look at me… I’m in a stable relationship. I have been in it for going on three years. My last relationship lasted 10 years. I seem to have no problem establishing such relationships.
But I’m one of those people whom you think led a life of empty hedonism. I am an outlier (i.e. I’ve had more than a standard deviation more than the norm of sexual partners). I don’t fit any of your paradigms.
Which is why I say your model is for shit.
There are so many layers of wrong assumptions in this statement, I don’t even know where to start.
Like, I’m going to skip over your ridiculous assumptions that people in poly or ‘free love’ are only into casual sex, that people naturally end up living with a single monogamous partner, that having multiple partners precludes the possibility of living with one (or numerous) people, or that all people need to develop a close monogamous relationship and cannot be satisfied in their need for companionship with a series of close friendships and casual sex. Particularly, I’m going to skip over the underlying heteronormative assumptions, since you did not explicitly state them. I’m just going to cede ALL that ground to you and assume some sort of universal desire to end up in a monogamous heterosexual relationship with the desire to have children, and all before roughly your 30s (because god forbid you marry and have children in your 40s… the horror!).
EVEN with all that ground ceded, the best strategy to finding a solid, stable relationship is to date multiple men and, yes, to ‘sleep around’ a bit (unless you happen to buy into the idea that terrible sex should have zero incidence on the quality of your relationship, which I am NOT going to cede ground on).
The “job interview problem” is a well-known game theoretic problem defined thus: you have a set of random applicants for a job (marriage) that we assume you can rank using some sort of ranking function. They arrive in a completely random order and you cannot know of their ranking until you’ve interviewed (dated, had sex with) them. Once you pick a candidate, you are stuck with it (monogamous marriage till death do us part). If you don’t pick any before they run out, you get the worst possible outcome (spinsterhood). The optimal strategy has mathematically been proven to be the following: you interview (date) a predetermined number of candidates X. You then *throw all these candidatures away* after ranking (fucking) them. THEN you continue dating and fucking until you find the first candidate that is better than all the previous ones, and you pick that one. This gives you the best possible odds of finding the best candidate of the lot.
See. It’s math. You can’t beat math.
Oh, also once you refuse a candidate, you can’t change your mind. Which is sort of a dumb assumption too, given that my best friend from high school has been in a ten years relationship with the girl he was dating in high school after they broke it off for a couple years to date other people. But still…
Sometimes I have to wonder why so many MRA types and “anti-feminists” come into these threads INSISTING that there is ONE TRUE WAY to be, live or love. It’s like they live in this world where everyone looks, acts and experiences everything the same exact way, even though we live in a world of such diversity.
One must wonder if they’re wearing blinders, or if they’re simply incredibly deluded and must resort to going on about the horrible LADYHIVEMIND because otherwise they’d have to come to terms with how their lives are a mess because they are sorely neglecting taking charge in their own destiny and instead are waiting around for a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl to come in, sweep them off their feet and make everything turn into a magical musical montage of perfect life moments.
Life is painful, stressful and often sad.
It can also be full of intense joy, pleasure and accomplishment.
If you are not willing to make the effort to attempt to meet your own goals for personal self-fulfillment (even if you might fail), then you have no one to blame but yourself (although I understand, it feels so good to just pass the blame onto someone else. It won’t make it better, and it won’t make it RIGHT).
Well our new friend Phil has a blog called ChristianFreethought… so I did have to pick myself up from the ground laughing before I wrote this reply.
Anyone who’s very glad that they didn’t marry the first person they were in a somewhat serious relationship with, raise your hand.
(Raises hand)
In all seriousness, settling down with the first person you meet who you like and who likes you may work out for some people, but that’s mostly dumb luck. It generally takes dating a few people to figure out what you’re actually looking for and how it differs from what you thought you wanted as a teenager with no relationship experience, and once you’ve done that you’re generally much more able to go find someone who’s a good match.
Notice that I say “go find”. Nobody is going to deliver that person to your doorstep, since Amazon.com does not sell life partners, and there’s no guarantee as to how many people you might have to meet and get to know before you find someone who’s a good fit.
Oh shit is that a terrifying prospect. I would seriously rather be alone.
I’m very glad that on Earth, “break up with this person and find someone better” is an option that doesn’t expire or have limited uses just because you had sex.
I think most men are glad too. How many men really want to be stuck for life with the first person they slept with?
@cloudiah
I am seriously confused as to what you think happened here, or why not being a daily poster makes it okay that it happened. If I heckled the MRA’s here on a daily basis, would that prevent people like Snowy from completely misrepresenting my claims? I mean, I do think I understand WHY snowy acted in the manner that they did. In places where a large amount of smart people gather, some of the less talented individuals will attempt to emulate them. Here, the smart people make fun of MRA’s, usually by either pointing out that their claims lead to absurdity (e.g. “rape aint all that bad”) or by mocking their language (e.g. “CANDLES ARE MISANDRY”). Here, I am assuming that Snowy felt I was somehow representing an unfeminist claim (I was not) and that it was their turn to take a whack. Unfortunately, unlike misandrist, making a distinction between descriptive and prescriptive claims is an actual thing, which makes that bit of rhetoric a bit silly. Furthermore, the things Snowy claimed that my position entailed were not logical conclusions of my claims, but rather, dare I say, purposeful and silly misreadings of my words. As someone who is considering academia as a profession, I can say that one of the most terrible things that can happen is having your words being misinterpreted (I always cry when I think of Nietzsche’s sad and prophetic “Have I been understood” at the end of Ecce Homo). I am just babbling now, but I hope you understand why I would not apologize when people incompetently tromp over my words like this. I understand the suspicion (descriptive!), but I do not accept the incompetence (prescriptive!).
Amen! If I’d thought a relationship was something I had to get right first time because I’d be stuck with it forever, I don’t think I’d ever even have tried.
I must be doing things all wrong. I’m not sleeping with anyone (ever) AND my only fear about turning thirty next year is that OMG I haven’t been to Europe yet!!
Women are not all the same person. Once MRAs can wrap their little brains around that we might be able to make some progress. I will go out on a limb and say … this will never, ever happen.
Of course, now someone will say I’m narcissistic and selfish for not giving sex to some dude, not marrying some dude who needs a live in slave, and having a desire to travel the world unchaperoned when I could be having babies I don’t want with some MRA guy and something something evils of feminism.
Jeez, I go away for a nice evening playing Betrayal at the House on the Hill and I come back this morning to several extra pages of comments.
Must have been some epic trollololololol.
Eh, I’ll catch up when I catch up. Or a new thread will come along. No big.
Lol! I’d like to know where all these “strong stable men” were when I was in my twenties and looking to get married!
It seemed to me, at the time, men were busy looking to have some fun in a few relationships. They weren’t ready to settle down just yet, so while they were open to getting married, they weren’t actively seeking it. They wanted to have several relationships, and sex with a few women, so they coudl be certain as to what they wanted and how to handle themselves in a long term relationship.
My choosing not to get involved in sexual relationships with the first few dates generally meant I got turned down after about the third date. That was fine,I’d far rather have my partners understand what I was looking for and move on than get involved with them in ways I didn’t want. That way, they were free to find what makes them happy and so was I.
At the time, I was looking to get married to the right person, but I was also doing other things I needed to or dreamed of. The end result was not putting all my eggs in one basket to get married, doing a lot of things I wanted to in other areas and finally realizing that marriage was only one part of my life and I was just as happy without it.
And that may be the lady in the posts problem, she was so focused on one area of her life to measure sucess and happiness by that she is neglecting or overlooking all the other areas she’s sucessful and happy in.
Also, I’ve met TONS of men who also lament not being married or in a stable relationship by the time they hit thirty or forty. TONS of men who wanted a family with kids by then. So no, its not a woman problem. Its a societal one that says you can only find true happiness in marriage, that you don’t count when you’re single, and that sets people up to have false expectations and assumptions about long term relationships.
/end blathering