Why is it you can be the "whole package" but still not find a decent partner???
I’ve blogged on this topic a few times, I would post about it more often except I’m not exactly sitting in the right spot to do so. Meaning, I’ve been with my man, in seventeen days, for thirty years, save for a brief separation where we both dated other people, which was fourteen years ago. I know NOTHING, except what I read, what my two single daughters share with me, and what my single girlfriends disclose about being single and dating in today’s world. So I generally stay away from this topic since I’m far from an expert on the subject.
Except when I’m asked to discuss it. When I’m asked to chat about it I will. Again, I’m still not a psychologist, or an expert on dating trends but, you know me, I’ll rarely shy away from giving my opinions on anything. Which brings me to today’s post.
Earlier this week I received a text message from one of my daughter’s oldest girlfriends. This girl/woman now, is that girl. The one who is a force to be reckoned with. She’s confident. She’s extremely intelligent. She’s gregarious. She’s kind. She’s thoughtful. She’s independent. She’s wildly successful in her field, and, to cap it off, she is truly one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Like I mean, EVER seen. She’s the whole package.
She’s not the sort of women you might see, lounging around on a yacht, using her youth, and her beauty to lure a rich man into falling in her love with her. This girl isn’t looking for that. What she is looking for is an equal partner (she’s already gone the dead beat, mooch off her route, and that wasn’t fun), so now she’s looking for her forever lover/soul mate/partner husband.
But, she can’t find him. Like my two single daughters, and all my super groovy, bad ass, talented, brilliant single friends, she too feels “un-dateable” as she is. Which is ridiculous, but true. She had one question for me; “what is your theory on why successful and attractive women can’t land a man?”
For me, this is a head scratcher. My immediate response to her is; I have no idea why, it really makes no sense to me why so many incredible women are sitting alone on a Friday night, while a great deal of other women, aren’t.
But theories I do have, and here are some of them.
- Regardless of how amazing you truly are, I do believe that many people, male and female have serious FOMO (fear of missing out)due to social media. You can be somebody’s entire package, you may even tick off every single box on what they believe is their ideal partner. But their heads are on a swivel; “what if that person I follow on Instagram, who posts like they’re super cool, and EVEN MORE of what I want in a partner becomes available to me???” Those of you who have been reading me for a while, know that I blame social media for a great many sins, and this, this thinking that there are going to be partners out there that are better for you than the actual living breathing person beside you, to me, is the worst. It’s given many people the idea that they can do better, because they’re better, and they deserve better. This is theory number one.
- Life is way more expensive than it has ever been before. Housing costs do not align with wages. Food costs don’t either. Plus there are fewer jobs out there that pull in salaries good enough to cover it all. So, what I’ve noticed is that most people are a) living at home with their families longer, which isn’t exactly conducive to robust adult relationships which rolls into b) they’re settling down older. This trend means that young women, like my daughter’s girlfriend, who are more than ready, both financially and emotionally to settle down, have fewer quality men to pick from.
- In her message to me she shared that men are so intimidated by her, that she has started to lie about what she does for a living. No joke. In order to “land a man” she feels like she has to tell them that she is a receptionist rather than the high powered, successful, independent woman that she is. Are you KIDDING ME? Are some men so fragile that all that she is, is just too much for them and they cannot accept her truth? Why? Don’t people want a content, solid, equal load carrying, self sufficient, financially independent partner to share their lives with??? Even within her career, on a daily basis men try to “school her” on her work. They attempt, without fail to catch her not knowing as much about her job as they, the customer does. It’s a mess.
Does she have these experiences because men want their beautiful women to be “seen and not heard?”
Does she have this trouble because men don’t want to be asked to be their best selves in a relationship, so therefore they tend to want to date beneath them so that their masculinity is never questioned??
Or, is it simply that this awesome woman is looking in all the wrong places for the right person???
Things that make me go “hmmm” indeed…
