Retort: Where have the good men gone- WSJ, Kay S. Hymowitz

This morning I was reading through the journal and came across this article by Kay Hymowitz.  The gist of it is women are set to start making a family and become an adult well before men who now relish in video games, one night stands, and binge drinking trips to Vegas.  From spending time in 3 major cities from my early twenties to now being thirty-one I’ve come to dispute this to a degree.  Each city has its own culture and within that you have multiple sub-cultures that exist.  The singles scene in Dallas is entirely different in LA and neither is like Austin.  From everything the author says I’m going to assume that she lives in NYC.  Her opinions as well as the comedian, Julie Klausner, she references are ripe with prejudice from their industry and cities.  As a comedian making a living your living situation isn’t stable.  You’re constantly on the road, working late hours due to the scheduling of comedy shows, and the allowance for routine isn’t readily available.   As a writer almost the same situation applies as above.  I also know from personal experience the dating pools in both LA and NYC are fairly lacking.

The mindsets of women who are dating in today’s time are considerably different in the real world then the writer gives credit for.  Women in major economical powerhouses such as Dallas, LA, and NYC aren’t mainly focused on settling down or dating in the traditional sense in their early to mid twenties.  I think a portion of this comes from the “I deserve this” attitude handed out by Sex and the City, the reality TV shows, and idolizing people for their whorish ways.  Women want to be neck deep in the scene factories these cities produce.  They want to be with the $30,000 millionaires, they want the appearance of living the lives of celebrities and all that entails.  The women in Dallas have an idea that you should provide for them the life they think will make them happy.  More often than not this revolves around materialistic items as opposed to emotional support.  The women I’ve hung out with and dated in and around these major metropolitan cities will let you in their body in a heartbeat, ask them something to let you in their mind or heart and you have a better chance of winning the lottery.  Women these days want a guy that is built in the image they have for prince charming.  This idea they have built up to have every piece exactly as imagined is a humorous all be it ambitious way to go about dating.  From my experience the majority of women in these cities aren’t looking for an emotional need; the ones that are have been the exception.  Women don’t seem to want to settle down until they start getting near their 30’s.  They don’t want a relationship with someone who is emotionally available.

Guys, in general, seem to see how far they can take something before they get their hand slapped.  In the case of relationships or as a lot of people call it these days, “hanging out”, guys will continue on the one night stand/ hook up with someone until they aren’t allowed.  From an age of friends with benefits where courting someone has become such an oddity can you really blame the guy for the situation?  I have a good number of girl friends that have fallen into the trap of allowing the following scenario.  They meet at a bar with their friends, later in the night the guy shows up with his friends and they leave together at the end of the night.  The next morning the guy or girl leaves bright and early.  This also happens when one person sends a txt around 1:00 with the intention of meeting up after 2:00 when they leave.   This relationship of sorts continues like this for weeks or a months until one of the people assumes they are dating and they wither become a couple or separate because of differing opinion.  The differing opinion is what gets me.  There is a test I use when I look to see if dating is in play or this is just hanging out. 

1.       Do you see each other in environments that do not involve alcohol?

2.       Does the communication routinely start before 9:00pm

3.       Is there an assumption from either group of friends the other will be joining you for plus one situations?

4.       Have you had any sort of in-depth conversation where drugs, sex, cartoons, or movies weren’t the main focal point?

5.       Have you ever spent the day with them, tubing down the river, partying on the lake, attending a beer garden or football games does not constitute spending a day with this person.

If the majority of the answers are no then you aren’t going to end up dating the person you are hanging out with anytime soon.  Most likely never unless the hanging out had recently started.  I firmly believe you can’t force the transition from hook up to dating.  If one party’s idea of taking the relationship to the next level is inviting them to pre-drink with you before going to the bar things won’t work out.  Girls, for some unknown reason, tend to gravitate towards project guys.  They want to fix and mend then mold this person until the person they really think they are capable of being.  The problem is, most guys don’t care who you want us to be.  You push, we run.  Numerous relationships start out with both parties not looking to be in a relationship.  Girls see a guy (or vice versa) who they think is very attractive and has a devil may care attitude which they find sexy.  They’ll date him for a few months, usually finding out very quickly in the relationship they are low on this persons priority list.  I’ve found that girls want a guy that isn’t too available.  Since they aren’t looking for a relationship they continue on this redundant process. 

I think the author of this story negates to address the problem as a whole.  Guys or boys or men all have routines.  We are simple creatures by nature and easy to understand.  The issues come when a woman tries to apply her logic to a guy; it’s nowhere near the same.  It’d be like comparing simple arithmetic (guys) to wave mechanics (girls).  We just don’t over analyze and complicate things as much as you all.  One of the funny quotes in the article, “They watched movies with overgrown boy actors like Steve Carell, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Farrell and Seth Rogen, cheering their awesome car crashes, fart jokes, breast and crotch shots, beer pong competitions and other frat-boy pranks”.  What the author doesn’t seem to understand is that this really is the essence of the male.  At some point we all partially grow up.  By partially I mean we can be corralled into doing dinner functions and present acceptable behavior in some public situations.  I have some very intelligent friends (I don’t lump myself into that category); more lawyers than I should know, a soon to be dentist, investment bankers, network administrators, and a doctor.  Yet we all go into hysterical laughter when someone gets hit in the nuts.  We get speechless at the site of a beautiful woman who is a little cold and “it’s a wee bit nipply” style jokes come out in droves.  These same people do and say everything the author things is boyish.  As a man, in age only, this is who I am.  It hasn’t changed since the dawn of time, yet for some reason women tend to believe they can change who a man is fundamentally.  Note the author in the article cited multiple physiological experiments, DNA tests, statistics to come to her conclusion.  She could’ve gone to a local pub and done an hour of observation to get the same loop sided conclusion.