No. I wasn’t “exciting” enough, so she shacked up, married, and divorced some guy with daughters from previous babymommas as old as she was.

Some years ago at San Diego Comic Con, I ran into the one who had matchmade us all those years ago. She filled me in on the latest developments (including the divorce and the ugly details of what led up to it) and ended with “She would have been a lot better off with you.”

But I wasn’t “exciting” enough, so I was history. I actually believed her when she said she was saving herself for marriage (the only other virgin in California!) and didn’t push her. I didn’t try to get into her pants; I wasn’t an abusive creep, so I’m history.

As a 44-year old single guy (who does not “play the field,” is not gay, is not a priest, nor a combination thereof), I’m still trying to find a woman with a discerning mind, an open heart, and a centered soul. Of course, if helps if she’s also attractive on the outside as well as the inside (I’m not talking about being a knock-out supermodel… beauty is in the eyes of the beholder).

Basically just no freaks, flakes, or women with a higher degree of insanity than normal. Just someone who has a brain and uses it wisely. Someone who’s mature, compassionate, and knows what things in life are really important (and it’s ain’t the superficial crap). Someone who has gone through life relatively okay as a single person running the career-minded rat race (just like me), yet deep down we know that going to an empty home night after night sucks big time.

Being a politically conservative Catholic living in Southern California doesn’t help matters in trying to find a 30-something single woman who fits the bill, so to speak. P.S. Gold-diggers need not apply.

All my life I’ve sensed that there’s a part of me that seems “missing”… that feeling of being incomplete. Living the single life ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, despited the so-called freedoms it can give you. I reeeeeally hate the bar scene bullsh*t, which is why I rarely go to bars/clubs. When I do, it’s to check out the live music. And I find the modern, impersonal dating rituals (such as “speed dating” and “findyourperfectmateforanexorbitantfeedotcom”) to be a pain in the royal a**.

So, why have I remained single for so long? I’ve been quietly searching for “the one” and haven’t found her… yet. Well, there was one (I thought), but that was a long time ago… the “one that got away”. It’s not that I have set high or comparative standards, or narrowed my options, or have dated perpetually (actually, I’ve not dated much at all over the years… spent too much time doing other things).

Heck, I’m not perfect. And I don’t expect others to be, either. I have my own faults and issues and frailties, just like everyone else does. Yet I strive every day to at least try and make myself better while attempting to inspire others to do the same. When you finally find that person… “the one”… you just know deep in your core, and you hope that the feeling is mutual.

Ahh… there’s the rub.

Am a recently (1.5 yrs ago) divorced 45-year old. Post-divorce I went on a number of dates (did the online thing, which I won’t do again) and had an intense short-term relationship (which was great, but a dead end). After 20 years of marriage, and the above, I made the conscious choice to STOP dating and to STOP trying to find someone. Incredibly liberating!Most adults never try it, but it really changes your whole view on life and yourself when you just stop trying to find someone else. It seems every singl eadult I know is runnign around desperately trying to find someone/anyone to hook up with. It’s neurotic. Shocker for this male – there IS life without women! I have enough love in my relationships with my 3 daughters, friends, and family. I’ll keep my eyes open – just in case I meet someone wonderful – but it just isn’t as important as it was. The only thing I miss is the sex (which there are a few ways to deal with). I’ve always done well with the opposite sex, but at this point in my life I just don’t want to deal with the neverending soap opera of being involved with most women. It’s just not worth it. More and more men are finding this out. I suspect that after a few more years of breathing without women, I will wind up in another relationship – but only with the right type of person. Forming relationships just because you can’t handle being alone – or for any other reason EXCEPT that you found someone good for you and who you love being with – is a losing proposition.

After a couple of decades of educated “people watching”(B.A. in Soc Studies/History, psych/Bible minors,w/ honors, for Edu.), and having grown up in a church-society, interest in what once was the “institution” of marriage has waned to near non-existence. Though from a family/sub-culture in which divorce is “not an option”, and though having three siblings of which two are women, my personal observations from infancy on have not made me especially interested in ending my personal freedoms…

Whole books are written on the cultural shifts affecting the marital relationship in the Western world, but for me personally it is partly a mere logical approach(mixed w/ a touch of “incurable romantic”)that contributes, to the greatest degree, to my ambivalence toward marriage.

I make a living based on correctly figuring odds, and I am rewarded or punished based on how objectively-accurately I do so. The odds of “successful marriage”(NO DIVORCE, mutually edifying relationship, minimal conflict, etc…)are SO LOW, as to be a FOOLISH risk, especially when I have additionally figured in live personal experiences and experiences of friends and family. The assets at risk, actual and figurative, are ENORMOUS! I risk peace-of- mind/usefulness to fellow citizens/ALL of my property, and possibly even offspring. The laws are crafted to encourage women to raise children w/ the gov’t as “father” while confiscating all of my assets and handing them over to the “ex” as part of the bounty on my head.

As a “Man”, I am a bumbling idiot/fool/lecher/ selfish/helpless, unable to function mentally without a women butting in at every possible juncture, as constructed by the now “feminized” culture… But, in fact, I am numerically well in the minority, as there are substantially more women than men. Men do NOT have a “biological mandate”(I have no womb, no “period”, no real time limits in which I must produce, and no physical need for protection, or emotional drive to develop and maintain a social/emotional network, no breasts to feed children I am driven to produce, etc…), and as long as I don’t think with any part of my anatomy beyond the head on my neck, I have capacity to say “NO!” for the rest of my life, if need be, but I can only say “Yes” once and then have surrendered my total latitude of self-determination to another person.

Since I do not “need” an in-house cook/maid/ sex toy/therapist/ego booster, I find a smug satisfaction in not being subdued, “trained”, “domesticated”, “tamed”, or otherwise conquered. As long as the net gain for changing my status to “married” is not perceived as being substantially greater than my net loss (and that includes REAL potential “losses” as well) no woman has given me close to adequate reason to take the awesome risks involved in surrender.

…In other words…exactly *WHO* is “shunning” who”…

For most of human history (and even today in lots of the world) women and men had no choice about being single.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the concept of the arranged marriage. That cultural inertia even carried the US through the 50s. You got married. That’s what you did.

Consider it from the other side. Are most married people happy being married? You state that most would love to be a perfect relationship, which is probably true. But are most married people happily married, in their imperfect daily-grind relationships?

Given that 50% of marriages fail, I believe the answer is “no.” Add to that the number of people who are in bad marriages – abusive or just plain unloving – but stay because of economics, or religion or whatever. However you slice it, it is not the case that the vast majority of people are just so happy with marriage. (Or do you think people are perfectly happy in marriage except for that last year spent with the lawyers?)

Look at what is going on in Japan today. The men want to get married, but the women don’t want to sign up for the lives their mothers had. Marriage – and the role assigned to women – hasn’t changed all that much in Japan, but women’s expectations of life has changed. So they aren’t getting married.

For the record, I am 47-year-old single lesbian. Single in that I am not in relationship at the time. I live on a boat. While there are a few single women living aboard boats, mostly I see single men and few couples. Its funny, but since we are all doing what we want to do (except for the few spouses dragged kicking and screaming aboard), most of us are as happy as people get. Life is about pain and joy, and marriage – or so it seems to me – doesn’t insulate people from the pain, anymore than it increases the joy in life. You might get a different kind of joy, but I can say the same thing about my life.

You see I always get this argument… “I would be happier if [fill in the blank].” I can’t tell you how many people – friends, family, relative strangers – want to argue that I would be happier if I “turned straight.” When I guy tells me this I tell him to find the perfect man and sleep with him, if it turns him gay, then I’ll at least consider sleeping with the guy one time.

Here are some other arguments.

“Married people are happier.” Single are A) not home when the survey people come calling, B) are sleeping off the effects of last night or C) never answer a survey. (I fall into category “C” when I am not in “A”)

“Married people live longer.” Married people live safe lives. They don’t ride motorcycles, jump out of airplanes, get into small boats and sail out-of-sight-of land at quite the same rate as single folks. Do other crazy things that singles are like to do. Of course they live longer. (And having seen the end-of-life medical treatment several times for my mother, aunts, uncles, grandparents…. I’m not so sure I want to live that long.)

I am a 37 year old, non-gay male. I haven’t faced this yet, but I know it’s coming. For the time being, I get the disbelief reaction “…are the women in your area blind or stupid?” I’m asked. I’ve always been rather shy, so I guess I fit into the #1 catagory. Top that off with the fact that ever since I’ve been old enough to care, I’ve been told in various ways, that no women will ever be interested in me. These same women then turn around and say that they would never go with someone who hasn’t “done it” by whatever age. I make the effort, but I know how it’s going to turn out. Internet Personals are a scam. Sign up as a trial member and I get inundated with responses from eager women who use the above quote. But the moment I become a paid member – NOTHING. It never fails. International searches are no better; I get either scamming Russians or desperate Philipinas, neither of which I am interested in. I’ve long ago come to the conclusion that I’ve got a better chance of finding Bigfoot than actually meetibg a women who would even throw water on me if I was on fire. But it has its advantages, I can wear what I want (including “THAT”, eat what I want, watch what I want without having to apoligize to anyone. I like alot of alone time, no woman understands it now and none ever will. My ultimate goal is that If I live to reach old age and am living in a retirement community, I’ll still be single. I’ve heard that single men in such situations get alot of attention. If that is the case, I look forward to laughing in the face of the wrinkled old hags who were once the pretty people who used to put me down. I will have the last laugh!!!

Very well done. I\’m impresses with your insights.

I am a 47-year-old, heterosexual male who is saving himself for marriage. Categories 1 and 5 seem to apply to me. Actually, Category 5 was somewhat a result of Category 1. I was always socially awkward around girls/women. Since I wouldn’t admit my interest in girls/women to myself or to others until I was in college, I guess I would be classified a late-bloomer, assuming that I ever bloomed at all. Therefore, I invest large amounts of time on my career and hobbies, and this compensates for my complete lack of romantic social life. I can’t get too depressed about my lack of love life if I spend all my time working.
I’ve always been a bit of an introvert, but, as I get older, I find myself becoming more of a loner, more isolated. On rare occasions, I feel bitterness about my state of existence. At those times, I just stay away form people altogether until I can get over it.
I have never successfully initiated any form of relationship with a woman by myself. I was rejected by all three women that I got the courage to ask out during my undergraduate and graduate college years. The few dates that I did get (four or five maximum) were set up by third parties, either a friend or a couples introduction service (yes, I tried that!). Neither source of blind date led to anything substantial.
I’m one of those types of men who simply cannot do any better than become a woman’s “friend”. I’ve become convinced that no sane, non-desperate woman could possibly be romantically interested in me. Over the years, I have acquired four close female platonic friends that I wouldn’t trade for the world. We live far from each other now, so visits are infrequent. But we maintain contact by phone and greeting cards. The longest and closest of these friendships has lasted twenty years, so I would reject any accusation of “commitmentphobia” (a vulgar, quickie-diagnostic term applied to men by women who really haven’t taken any time to thoroughly understand the male side of relationship dynamics). These few long-term platonic friends are the reason why I haven’t completely given up on finding a romantic relationship — yet.
When I asked these female friends for reasons explaining my lack of success, I got the same responses that I have read in books or articles on this matter — “too much of a ‘nice guy’”, “too passive”, “too self-restrained”, “too inexperienced”, “too set in your ways”, “too serious”, “too lacking in confidence”, etc. I can’t make any sense of the ‘nice guy’ or ‘self-restraint’ criticisms; I always saw these as inherently desirable traits in people, as long as one doesn’t go to the extent of being a ‘doormat’ or ‘stick in the mud’. And people seem to forget that, unless one is grandiose and lacking in humility, confidence is, for most people, a function of achieving successes in some endeavor. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere; I don’t believe in the “fake it till you make it” philosophy. Furthermore, confidence in one endeavor does not necessarily translate into confidence in all endeavors; I can functionally interact with attractive females at work, but then still be at a total loss with how to positively interact with women in a purely social setting, such as a club.
One of the platonic female friends I mentioned before is actually an ex-girlfriend, the only one I ever had. I was about 37 years old, and she was a considerably younger single mother. We met at work. It had been several years since the last time I was set up on a date. But the friendship quickly escalated into a romance. The romantic part of the relationship lasted for two years. I was knocked off my feet by her initiation of the relationship. I was honest with her about my lack of dating experience, but that didn’t seem to bother her — at lesat not initially. This relationship did test my commitment to purity. I am happy to say that I passed this test, but, unfortunately, my abstinence was an added problem to a relationship that was quickly starting to develop some cracks in it. Without going into all of the details, the first year was pleasant most of the time, but the second year became disastrous, culminating in her dumping me. She was just too young and impetuous to wait on me to get used to the situation, even though she was made aware of my lack of romantic experience. After a very awkward transitional period, we were able to salvage a decent friendship out of a trainwreck attempt at romance. After all these years, there are still unhealed emotional scars and unanswered questions about what could have saved the relationship, but I also have no interest in rekindling a romance with her because that would put us right back where we started. I’ve invested too much emotional capital in her to risk losing the friendship I have with her now. It should never have escalated beyond that in the first place. However, I greatly respect the fact that she had the personal strength and fortitude to initiate the romance; she did what I hear too many women say they wish they could do without being negatively judged, but never have the courage to do it. There are lots of mildly passive/shy/introverted men who see actively initiating women as their best hope, if not their only hope, of having a chance at a romantic relationship.
I now see a lot of my forty-something male friends and acquaintances who are still bachelors. A few, like me, were always unsuccessful with women. But others had normal or even fabulously successful dating lives in their younger days. One found out the infidelity of the woman he intended to marry on the night he was going to propose; he is still bitter and scarred for life, and this was a friend who was never lacking for a date in college. I see middle-aged men who have had little or nothing to do with women for upwards of ten years, and I’m one of them. Some love their freedom and have no intention of giving it up. But most of these middle-aged bachelors are not swinging singles and relentless Peter Pan playboys. Most of this crowd are lonely men, burying themselves in their work and hobbies, either because they can’t figure out what went wrong in their love lives or because their spirit is too broken to do anything about it and end up living in a state of learned helplessness.
I used to think that I was the only one like this. But I have seen enough and read enough to know that there is a relatively sizable crowd of never-married middle-aged bachelors which is getting bigger as more men drop out of the competition for women because the rulebook for male-female relationships keeps changing. Quite logically, these men wish to spend their energy and time on work and hobbies, which lift their spirits and offer a certainty of success and approval, rather than waste time on the pursuit of women, which may break their spirits and offer a near certainty of failure and disapproval.
Furthermore, many middle-aged bachelors come to doubt in their ability to make the necessary sacrifices and compromises to be a good husband. And they worry about having the energy to be an active father if they have children. Another thing that people forget is that younger people have time in life to try again at marriage or parenthood if they don’t do so well the first time; older people don’t have quite the time or wherewithal to “do over”, so one whose first marriage is at middle age may feel more compelled to get it right the first time and stay with it no matter how disastrous the consequences may be. This is why I find it incredulous when I hear women say they would rather marry a twice-divorced man than a never-married middle-aged man because of the premise that the divorced man was at least “willing to take a chance on marriage”. I find it the gambling metaphor of comparing marriage with tossing dice on tables in Las Vegas offensive. One involves gain or loss of some money. The other involves improving or ruining the intrinsic quality of one’s entire life. There is simply no comparison here!
Men are human and have feelings that get hurt and spirits that get broken in relationships. But the social double-standard offers much less sympathy for men than for women suffering the same indignities. Maybe men make the mistake of convincing themselves that they don’t need help or advice in personal crises and end up stuck in a frustrated state. Women tend to be more adept at establishing social networks to overcome emotional crises than men do, and I think men secretly envy this about women.