This is what I call a 5-Star post – it comes from Moxie:
The only way that will happen for you is if you let go of any preconceived ideas of how things are supposed to be. We are living in very different times now. Fewer men are graduating from college and more men are working trade or labor jobs for the security and benefits. Men are being let go from their jobs left and right.
A job is a job. As long as the guy isn’t looking to live off of you completely, you really aren’t in a position to be so choosey. You’re having trouble meeting these unicorns because there are fewer and fewer of them out there. If you’re going to insist upon placing income bracket and education at the top of your list, accept that you will be one of a few that such a man dates. Know why they do that?
Because they can. Because they are in demand and they know it. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. The doctor in that story above can afford to be picky. (Make special note of the fact that he was surrounded by well educated and professional women and wanted none of them.)
via Where Are All The Financially Secure & Well Educated Single Men?.
Even if you’re married, it’s worth a read.
Here’s what I’ll add…
I make decent money, am professionally employed, live by a work ethic that is stellar, own a home, own a car etc. Of my close friends, I’m by far the lowest salaried, but like most Americans who work, I consider myself middle-class. I have no children and have never been married. The punchline?
I have no intention of ever getting married. Cohabitation might be possible, but I’ve not been close to that. Moxie, in post after post, warns about men like me – we play around, we don’t commit, we … do what we do. As I read her, she’s not warning that we – men like me – are bad people (maybe we are – dunno, don’t care), but that American women must beware that what they expect is not in tune with reality.
She’s right – it’s not.
This isn’t to dog single women, mind you. We – the growing number of professional, American bachelors – do what we do based on a calculus of opportunity cost, or something akin to that. Moxie is responding to a recent divorcee in her 40s who wants to know where to find the smart, well-employed, professional men of the world. Politely, she’s saying “in your 20s is where to find those men” (my phrasing, not hers) and she’s right.
I dodder and dither and dabble, but the financial risk in a marriage that fails for a man such as myself is untenable, and I accept the notion that maybe I’m not marriage material – clearly at this point I’m not. My eye wanders, the grass is greener, you get my drift, yes? Beyond the financial, the corral that American men are put in regarding children if/when a marriage fails is not only unconscionable, it’s unacceptable.
Instead of whining about this setup, about this game, I just don’t play it. I’m honest about my intentions and up-front in my action, but at the end of the day, women my age are a non-starter. As noted in a prior post I’m a Romantic at heart, but I’m not stupid.
It’s not cruel, it just … is.
I’ve advised my teenage sons not to marry and not to have kids until the environment changes. Or else to leave the US to marry.
I guess another option is to marry and have kids and then kill the wife. Or to marry a non-citizen and then get her deported. I haven’t mentioned those options to the boys and probably won’t.
[...] Good men etc… « God’s Own Crunk [...]
I advise most men who really want to be married and have children to spend a month in Eastern Europe with the help of a matchmaker, and find someone who will be thankful for how good we have it in America. She won’t be fat, she won’t be entitled, and chances are, she knows the words “thank you.”