A 31-year-old friend recently started seeing two guys, let’s refer to them as X and Z. Both are charming, employed and cute – in fact, similar to the point where I can barely tell them apart. The only difference is that X (for Gen X) is a perfectly ripe 35, while Z (for zygote) happens to a barely-hatched 25. You would think that my friend is using Z “for fun” and X for serious dating, da? Nope. Much to everybody’s bewilderment, Baby Z actually courts her and cooks for her and even recently helped her build a bookshelf, while the “better on paper” X routinely benches her, messes with her head and generally drives her loco.
A friend’s wedding was coming up. I asked my friend if she was considering bringing either of them as her date.
“Maybe I’ll ask Z. X would freak out and ghost immediately.” The casual manner in which she said this, as though it is completely habitual for a grown-ass man to come undone at the idea of accompanying a woman he is seeing to a wedding, may have been scarier than the statement itself. It also played into my then-budding theory, which is that men in their thirties are completely undateable.
You see, as a 30-year-old woman living in New York City, I am, technically, surrounded by an infinity of age-appropriate dating options. I should, technically, be seeing one of the hundreds of thousands of 30-something eligible bachelors roaming this city, running down the West Side Highway, dining in Williamsburg, dancing at Casablanca, etc. However, I find said mission virtually f*cking impossible.
To prove my point, let me break them down into segments.
First we have the 30-32 set who can best be compared to puppies who have just been released out of their crates and are now intent on destroying every corner of your apartment. High on their first big bonuses and “adult” apartments, they believe that their entire lives have been leading up to this glorious moment when they get to hook up with half of Montauk and nurse their hangovers with $20 avocado toast. Anybody who dares disrupt this Golden Era stands to pay the consequences. Ok, next.
Now we have the 33-36-year-olds. Considering the 5-year maturity gap between the sexes, this should be my prime target range. They are slightly more seasoned, their interest in going out is waning, their hangovers are getting worse and they are realizing that most of their friends are married with kids. However, they also suffer from severely overinflated egos that come with the knowledge that they are (technically) an in-demand commodity. They start equating themselves to the Willy Wonka tickets of the entire female population, which spikes their standards to Level Unreasonable and causes them to balk at the first sign of “pressure.” Warning: steer clear of trigger words like “parents”, “wedding” or “cute baby” to avoid impromptou ghosting.
Finally there are the 37-40 guys. Here, the confidence (amongst other things) starts slowly deflating but is quickly replaced with something much scarier: complacency. Guys who are still single in their late thirties know they are a little f*cked up, but they are kind of okay with it. They become comfortable in their solitude and slowly stop looking for anything serious, reverting them right back to the 25-year-old dating circuit. In short, they become Eternal Bachelors.
Et voilà, I basically just wiped out an entire generation. I will, however, compensate by giving you a list of who you can date instead:
Twenty-somethings: Apparently they are God’s gift to women, all doe eyes and relentless libidos. As an aunt a 21-year-old, you won’t catch me going near nothin’ born past 1990, ever. But that’s just moi!
Forty-somethings: Could be hot in that Clive Owen-ten-years-ago kind of way, but generally come straddled with more baggage than a Moroccan donkey can haul on its back.
Divorcées: Always a decent option: they were married once, which means they are not scared of commitment. Try to find the child-less ones to avoid ex-wife drama, although (other people’s) kids are cute and knowing what they are like as fathers is helpful. Also, they can change diapers! +10,000 points
Jewish guys: Jewish men face so much family pressure to procreate that they basically end up in the same boat as women. Downside includes a Jewish mother-in-law nagging about grandkids / everything else in life.
Women. Because women are the best, duh!
My dog Chloe. She is single and a great makeout buddy. I would know cause I haven’t had another one in months.
AM I RIGHT? AM I WRONG? LET’S DISCUSS!
This is something I’d like to read over and over while working this Thursday afternoon.
However, please clarify where those Jewish boys are hanging. As someone who’s neighborhood in Moskva has both a synagogue and Evreiskii Centr Kyltyri, still haven’t met that nongoy.
Oh girl, Jewish men in Russia are not like Jewish men in the US / Europe. The Jewish culture was so heavily suppressed in USSR that the guys ended up being raised exactly the same as non-Jews, or at least so I think.
BUT aren’t men in Russia slightly more inclined to settle down at a normal age? Like, isn’t early 30s considered “late” even for a man?
So depressing, but so true 😏 Is there really no hope for us?? 🙈😂
Unmarried guys in their mid to late 30’s..roughly half of them have seen their parents get divorced and they have seen lots of their friends get divorced and may not be too interested in marriage.
Haha! W.O.W. I was just thinking about this the other day, having just been a Maid of Honor in a wedding and looking around at all the people in my life and how I literally only have 2 single girlfriends in my life currently. I will be turning 33 in a couple of weeks.
Really resonated with me, the 37-40 guys that are complacent. I live in LA and that is rampant here…. you see a guy in public who looks really smart, has a hipster like style and he only has eyes on whatever, I look to at least maybe make some eye contact to possibly flirt, but he is content with whatever menial task he is doing. But also this guy is a Comedian, an LA comedian who knows he can snag pussy and never commit and he is complacent with that.
Then there are the guys that I think replaced dating and interests in woman with running or exercising excessively and they have super inflated egos. There should be a name for this guy… how about ‘Mr. Runaway” or “Gym Jerk” .
Great post 🙂
sounds like a you problem regarding the gym loving guys. Imagine not wanting a guy to have passions.
High value men don’t need to commit. Your friend is seeing two guys. Those two guys are likely banging 5 or six women.
You’re delusional if you think a high value man is going to settle down with anyone over 30 unless your in his 60s. The only maturity gap is you still hanging onto your blogging, your laundry list or requirements, and your dog-who will age out and die long before you’re ready. And the poor dog you replace it with won’t meet your standards either because, again, you’re thinking like a child.
Solipsist.
Well I’m screwed. Nevertheless, as a 32 year old guy I found this article enjoyable, though I have a sadistic fascination with anything that appears to speak negatively of my demographic. I can only speak from personal experience but when I turned 30 I found my confidence in dating plummeted, despite the fact that I’d finished grad school and was making more money, etc. By then there wasn’t that raging testosterone coursing through my veins, and I began to approach all interactions with women, plagued by the thought that they, we, everyone, could all be doing better. I agree there’s some learned complacency developing with aging men. You get to a point where you start to think love isn’t going to happen, so you train yourself not to look for it, you put more into your hobbies, job, dog, whatever. I don’t blame women for the fact that us loser guys are giving up, but it is what it is. The culture we live in leads us to believe that something better is always out there, and it leads us never to be satisfied with anything we have. If I can find one criticism of this article, it’s with the scenario of the 31 year old women having to choose between the 25 and 35 year old guys, as if that is actually a problem. It’s a blessing to be in a position where one even has options, even if neither option is a perfect ideal.
Ohhhh this is so good!
Same thing happened to me. I thought that dating guys in their 30’s would be a very wise thing to do because they get more mature, and more stable, wiser. However, it didn’t really work out that well. At that age I noticed that they’d become cynical, had to give up on their dreams and experienced a lot of disappointments and were generally really unpleasant to be with.
I ended up having last two dates similarly like your friend. I was interested in one guy in his 30s who was chill, easy to talk to, relaxed and open-minded. The other guy was 21, and he was energetic, full of life (and hope), and engaging. He called me Babe and he was very flirty and he wanted to get out and have fun.
Because I felt bad dating two guys at the same time I picked the guy in his 30’s. Cos he was so chill, and relaxed. He ended up being so chill that he could be bothered to pick up a phone.
If anything, this experience taught me that people are more prone to making bad decisions because those decisions are safe.
Dating a 21 year old? Now that’s scary and UNKNOWN. But do I regret not giving him a chance? YES! He actually cared about dating, and getting to know me, and asked questions. Would it be so bad to try new things? To give a chance to someone who cares? To get out of my comfort zone? It wouldn’t be bad at all, just scary because it’s unknown territory.
I learned that it was me who needed to be open-minded, and if I wanted to get different results, I’d needed to make different decisions and facing my fears of the unknown.
Spot on.
I am so through with 30 something guys it’s unreal. Complete and utter wastes of time.
It doesn’t matter how high value a woman you are, it doesn’t matter how much they like you, they will ghost and flake.
Dating two men at the same time? Stopped reading the rest.
It’s ok. At least men are dateable even outside of the 20s range. Women over 30 period are undateable.
How so?
Did you read the article?
Single women in their 30’s have standards higher up in the sky than the Sun. They still think they can play games with dating like they’re in college, and they act like they’re sooo much better than the options they have.
They can’t face the reality that they’re single in their 30’s for most of the same reasons single men in their 30’s are single; they suck at relationships and instead of working on that, they just expect the world to jump as high as they say.
Author could stand for some of that complacency she hates so much. Might make her dateable.
agree with James.
I could not get a date in High School and college and started seeing escorts when I was 21. With my escorts we would do everything that you would do with a regular girlfriend without the rejections so it worked for me. I always had steady good paying work so I could afford escorts and it was no more expensive than dating regular girls.
All of the still good looking 30 year old men who are still single are fucking early 20something girls with daddy issues, not 30 year old women who still want to date around. Nature played a cruel joke on women when it comes to aging and sex. No need to be bitter about it, you won’t get any younger doing that.