Posted on 01/03/2003 7:50:23 AM PST by TroutStalker
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:47:49 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Anyone who has ever struggled to find a house to buy should intuitively understand the difficulties faced by the legions of accomplished, educated, 30ish women currently roaming society in search of a husband. They are the stuff of mass entertainment now, these handsome, quick-witted graduates of higher education. On TV, they're the saucy females of "Sex and the City" and "Will & Grace." They surface in fiction as lovelorn Bridget Jones and the hapless heroines of Pam Houston's best-selling short stories.
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There are women out there who have DONE THAT to their husbands....??? Wouldn't the men kinda know this going into the marriage?
I call them "casualties of the sexual revolution". Sad things, really. I met one the other night at a party. We struck up what I thought was a freindly conversation and even though I was wearing my wedding ring she flew into a maniacal rage when I told her I was married. Totally psychotic. I had the mind to tell her how much of a crazy *itch she was, but I pitied her instead.
How dare you not grant her entitlement? Don't you know that you are supposed to come clean about being married within the first 30 seconds, or never mention it at all, so that she can have plausible deniability?
That's it; you are going on the N.O.W.'s enemies list. You, you, you.....MAN!
I did a lot of fishing in this pond from age 43-46.
Truer words were never spoken.
34, 35 and unmarried can be quite problematic.
When I was a boy, we called girls who slept around "ruined".
We were right.
By too late I mean early thirties. You stated that "after 35 we know women's fertility starts to decline a bit." Actually, by 30 a woman's fertility starts to decline dramatically. The caveat here is the time of first conception. Women who started having children young are, on the main, more fertile throughout their lifetimes (meaning that they ovulate more regularly, have more regular periods, produce more viable eggs, and remain fertile through their 40's, etc.). Women who wait until after 30 to conceive for the first time have many more problems than women who had their first child in their early to mid-20's.
You may ask why I am harping on this. It is simply that by the time that these professional women begin to want hearth and home (because they have spent the first 10 years on their career), it is too late to find husbands and start the families. These women think of themselves as being catches but in reality they are damaged goods. They have usually had one or more abortions, they have political and ideological beliefs that are inimicable to a happy home-life, and they are "past the expiration date," age-wise.
By whom?
Can you show me a few?
Abortion,
Beating,
Rape,
Job Firing,
Drunken orgy,
Child,
Marriage,
Divorce,
Best Friend's Divorce,
Best Friend' Abortion,
Best Friend's paternity case,
which means usually you are stuck with those 23 or under.
I did OK with 26, but I agree with your exclusionary criteria.
I could never get into 18 and 19 year olds, but by all means, be my guest.
The brain fogs, with all the different responses I could make from that statement, but I will behave myself today.
This is not necessarily true. "To all those quick-witted graduates of higher education, here is something we guys have always known: Why buy the cow, when the milk is free? "
Fuentes has a better point - that men suitable for long-term marriage do so before they hit 35. Many men develop, at varying ages but almost always before male fertility starts to seriously decline, an intense desire to get hitched. My high school Spanish teacher, a Mormon, described that to my class and I didn't believe it until it happened to me 13 years later.
I had joined a small firm in the San Joaquin Valley after graduating from law school and working in political campaigns for a year, then had a fine time for about a year dating ladies desperate for an eligible batchelor, with absolutely no expectation of marriage by me.
Then BANG! it hit me. It Was Time. Somehow I woke up one morning with a completely different attitude. I considered all the ladies and thought, no. A few days later my secretary said there was someone at her church I should meet. Anna Margaret must have been telepathic - somehow she waited to introduce us until I was ready.
Candy wasn't much to look at but was easily the smartest of the bunch I'd seen since moving to the Valley, sweet, and I thought I could put up with her for 50-60 years. What I wanted was companionship. Lust had nothing to do with it, nor love. Something inside was screaming at me to get hitched Right Now, and she was the one I was most likely to stay with. Love came by degrees.
That was 25 years ago. I drove one son back to college Wednesday and she's driving the other today. Our daughter is a high school senior.
I've paid some attention to this since and the pattern I see around here is definitely that almost all men marry before they're 35 - and generally before they're 32. This means that the pool of suitable men for never-married women over 32 is quite small. Even divorced men tend to stick with their first marriage for at least 4-5 years, so they're generally still in it at the ages when they're age-suitable for never-married females over 32.
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