Yesterday’s New York Times Style section were built with a sobering little piece about single guys (mostly straight, though two?gay men were quoted too) in their 30s and 40s who are starting to realize that an effective career won’t massage their aching, aging knees and being the last guy to leave the club is not a good look. With most of their friends already married, these greying bachelors are torn up concerning the future. Something is missing. Is it time to give up a number of that precious freedom and entitlement to complete what they want, when they want, for something more meaningful and decidedly less fun, just like a relationship with someone they would actually consider marrying?
Forget asking if women can have it all, 2019 is all about asking if MEN can have it all.
I know. I had been around the edge of my seat too.
“Tonight I’m doing nothing,” French hairstylist Jean-Marc Choffel, 42, told the Times. All his friends have significant others?and kids, so there’s no someone to get out there and get drunk with. “I could go out, grab a woman, have sexual intercourse, have fun. But the sense of life is to have kids and then try to give them around you know. I believe in the power of the universe. In my opinion your day you go somewhere where you aren’t supposed to be, you wind up falling in love and achieving babies. Definitely, I’m not quitting.”
Ahh yes, a single man who is used to doing and becoming what he wants, bravely refusing to give up hope that even more is in store. It’s a tale as old as the universe itself, obviously.
But for some men, this anxiety about dying alone sends them “plunging – into a dark place,” because let’s say “all the truly good ladies who [they] would want to marry are taken,” as matchmaker Maria Avgitidis put it, being snatched up by men “four years younger”?
This is how I paused to do some mental math, and quickly remarked that, for a piece focused so much on age, it sure does tiptoe around coming to a direct mention of chronilogical age of the ladies these males are concerned they’ve overlooked. But with many sharing Choffel’s belief that the “sense of life is to possess kids,” odds are these lonesome straight bachelors are opting to date women with lots of child-bearing years left. And affirmed!
“I just turned 40,” Jonathan Lee told the Times. “Thinking concerning the math, the more I wait to start my own family, you begin to think, ‘When I consider someone to marry, I have to hire a company young enough to possess children. And also the age difference. What’s acceptable? What’s O.K.? What doesn’t work?’ There are plenty more challenges the older you receive, and I understand that now.”
Yes, I’m sure it’s very difficult to wake up one day, the hungover stench of male entitlement and vodka turning your stomach to the point where the nausea feels like loneliness, and realize that what you want is a wife and youngsters, so when you would like it’s now-ish, to be secure, you should probably stick to dating women under 35. Or 32. Maybe 29. Twenty-seven would not be too weird, wouldn’t it? Whatever. It’s challenging!!! Particularly when your competition is younger too! Can’t imagine what that’s like, nope, not at all.
Allow me to ask the issue the piece goes out of its way to leave unacknowledged: What about straight single women over 35 that need commitment and maybe even a household? If single 30- and 40-something men are either still out at the club keeping the Pussy Posse alive or tending to their sudden desire to have a far more “meaningful” existence by settling down with females who’re younger, where does that leave all the “really good” grown ass single women* who, FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD, would like to be treated like people and not costars the universe provides to boost the stages of a lot of men’s glacially-paced journey towards understanding that every day life is more meaningful when you actually provide a shit?
Exhale.
I found myself getting upset relating to this piece despite it being fairly innocuous – it even features the nice story of 40-something guy who decided he desired to settle down, went outside his safe place and wound up meeting the next wife and baby mama that my cynically-motivated Google stalking revealed is actually pretty?age-appropriate. It’s not that I completely lack empathy for single men in my age groups who’re but now starting to crave deeper bonds; I simply find it frustrating the guys interviewed, as well as?guys I understand,?seem to think being emotionally available is really a laborious buzzkill. It doesn’t help that trend pieces such as this one discuss “meaningful” relationships and experiences as though they are stuff you acquire once the keg is tapped and you’ve got gotten bored of playing with all the shiny objects within the room. It irritates me that even just really, truly caring in regards to a woman poses such a threat to male freedom; that it’s seen as an burden that can’t possibly be juggled until on that day arrives if they are suddenly “mature” enough to appreciate the methods in which it benefits them.
Of course, not five minutes to their quest to have what?remains of “it all,” these aging bachelors are already panicking that all the “really good girls” may be taken, especially since, heavy sigh, they’ll need to date younger too, so their seed can spread someday. And because they’re accustomed to doing what they want, when they want, they’re impatient as fuck about seeing?results.?Remorseful, but I, as a single 36-year-old woman who has seen nearly every?promising new relationship combust the millisecond I’ve even?hinted?at having?feelings and needs of my very own, I just cannot muster up the fucks needed to even raise this tiny violin to my chin, not to mention play it of these sad sacks.
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