June 30
...serving up your daily dish.
In the world of dating, women of a “certain age” are faced with less than stellar prospects. Every available female over the age of 40 knows the three types of men:
If you are lucky enough to snag that rare guy who isn’t one of these types, hang onto him for dear life. Meanwhile, I’ve sent this link to all my single female friends so we can all feel a little bit better.
June 30, 2005 in Don't Ask: Dating in Baristaville | Permalink
Talk about insects (insex?) and life extension ... I'd hate to be a male praying mantis!
Posted by: Chris | Jun 30, 2005 3:36:59 PM
Well, maybe not TOO much younger. I just read that Terry McMillan is divorcing her 30-year-old husband-- (she's in her 50s)-because he's gay! He's the one who inspired her novel "Waiting to Exhale", about the joys of falling in love with a younger man.
Posted by: latebloomer | Jun 30, 2005 8:02:15 PM
This research suggests a fourth group of men -- the oversexed ones who died young.
Posted by: walleroo | Jun 30, 2005 8:47:32 PM
Oops-- the book was "How Stella Got Her Groove Back".
Posted by: latebloomer | Jun 30, 2005 10:26:07 PM
Sounds like bitterness to me. What are the stereotypes for the women who men over 40, and wishing to date in their age group, find available?
Posted by: Bruce | Jul 1, 2005 3:09:29 AM
Bonjour from Paris,
I am here for the summer but I live in Montclair during the year, teach French in Livingston and I love following all dating sagas since I am in the middle of it myself. I would like to recommend a book that is very matter of fact on excuses men and women make about "dating-interrupting". Basically what men say instead of 'I am not that into you' and what women say when they refuse to admit it. It is called: "He is just not that into you".
Good luck to all of us, whether they are 40, 10 years younger or older... As long as it works out.
Au revoir.
K
Posted by: Frenchienoire | Jul 1, 2005 6:42:07 AM
So perhaps Parson Malthus was correct, after all? He claimed that there were only two compelling motivations in life: that to couple, and that to eat. Since population grew geometrically and food only arithmetically, he predicted doom unless we all quit fooling around in the bushes. I suspect his moral stance wasn't very popular, even back then. Sounds familiar, though..."Just Say No." Who knew?
Posted by: conan the grammarian | Jul 1, 2005 7:46:20 AM
Interestingly one of the central ideas of Malthus was to regulate the birthrate of the lower classes. Don't let the poor have more children than they can feed. The one state to adopt such a policy on a massive scale was Communist China. Ironically due to collectivization the Communitst Chinese brought on a famine even larger than Stalin's. While Stalin's famine is estimated to have only killed 7 million, the Chinese (having perfected the craft) managed to starve 30-40 million people to death.
And, perhaps, also interesting is the fact the the Church of England (no doubt following the lead of "progressive" churches in the US) has decided to divest from Israel because of its treatment of the Palestinians. Odd, really that they have no problem with investment in Communist China. I wonder why they look more critically at Israel?
Posted by: Right of Center™ | Jul 1, 2005 9:14:46 AM
"Don't let 'people' have more children than they can feed."
Sounds like common sense to me. Notice I removed "the poor" and replaced it with "people." If you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em.
Now that the US population is living longer than ever before, there's just no need to keep having all these babies. More people using up more natural resources, which are already being depleted spells disaster.
Where are we going to put them all?
Posted by: Miss Martta | Jul 1, 2005 9:40:46 AM
Martta, I am shocked that you, being a libertarian, have left the word "let" in your rephrased statement!
Whenever I hear the "stop having babies now" argument it fills me with despair. Firstly I think of the same kind of "stop development now" refrain so often heard regarding new houses. And second, I notice that both notions always take effect post "me". Always. It is a truism. "Now that I am born and have a place to live - STOP making more houses and babies!"
It all seems to speak of the "guilt of existence" some people have. Or maybe a type of selfishness? No, not quite I suppose. More a kind of vanity albeit in a negative sense. "we are the worst thing to inhabit the planet and therefore must stop." (now that I have been born that is.)
Isn't there a noble and worthy purpose to mankind's existence? I think so. Isn't it better that Rome existed? Even with its duality of intense beauty and savagery? But, on a more "natural" level if some want to "be more like the animals" shouldn't we then also accept (and even celebrate) the instinct for survival and multiplication hardwired into us? We do just what any species would do if given the chance - [become] "fruitful and multiply". We just happen to be wildly successful at it.
Take note that the one thing upon which all future generations (our descendents) to the end of time (and that is a LOT of people) would surely agree: "it is a good thing that we were 'let' to be born."
Posted by: Right of Center™ | Jul 1, 2005 10:24:50 AM
ROC: The world's population will surely not die out if people limited themselves to one or two kids a couple.
Do you really give the green light to people who are already living below their means to keep having children? How does that enhance life on this planet? How does having kids who are born on the dole or into poverty (or perhaps destined to become wards of the state) enhance the lives of these kids in any way? I fail to see it.
By the way, some animals in the wild kill their offspring if there is not enough food to go around. Now, I certainly don't advocate this, but just because something is "natural" does not always make it good. Just because we have the ability to do something (i.e., impregnate a 63 year old woman) doesn't make it right.
Posted by: Miss Martta | Jul 1, 2005 10:50:41 AM
Pammmela:
Certainly this article won't be encouraging. I'm glad i didn't come of age in the big cit-ay.
Posted by: E. | Jul 1, 2005 12:39:42 PM
"Do you really give the green light to people who are already living below their means to keep having children?"
"give the green light?" Not mine or anyone's to give. 'Tis an inalienable human right.
"How does that enhance life on this planet?"
Might or might not.
"How does having kids who are born on the dole or into poverty (or perhaps destined to become wards of the state) enhance the lives of these kids in any way? I fail to see it."
I avoid pronouncing value or the "enhancment" of the lives of others.
Posted by: Right of Center™ | Jul 1, 2005 12:46:31 PM
E: I read that article. Very disturbing. A real train wreck.
Posted by: Miss Martta | Jul 1, 2005 1:52:01 PM
Your partition is unjust and inaccurate.
In my thirties, I had no interest in any woman under thirty. At age forty, I married a woman of age forty. And as a married man, I have no interest in any woman but my wife. Moreover, the same is true of every man I know who divorced and remarried in his middle years.
Women in their twenties almost never have any conversation in them, or any depth to them. That makes them suited only to the attentions of men in their twenties, who are primarily interested in 1) the pleasures of the flesh and 2) impressing their pals with arm candy.
Middle-aged men with some substance to them -- and that's the overwhelming majority of us -- know that we can't spend our lives in nightclubs and bed. Which suggests that your search methods could use a little work.
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto | Jul 2, 2005 1:42:27 PM
"Middle-aged men with some substance to them -- and that's the overwhelming majority of us -- know that we can't spend our lives in nightclubs and bed. "
HELLO? What country are you living in? Certainly not the good old US of A! Middle-aged men with or without any substance to them gravitate towards YOUNGER women just to prove they still can.
And I know where of I speak (and no, dear, it is most definitely not 'sour grapes' so don't bother going there...)
Posted by: Karen | Jul 2, 2005 11:22:27 PM
"We do just what any species would do if given the chance - [become] 'fruitful and multiply.' We just happen to be wildly successful at it."
Fine. Let's just let Mother Nature handle it then. When the world becomes too overpopulated, she'll just do what's she's always done to keep things in check: introduce microbes to solve the problem.
Posted by: Miss Martta | Jul 3, 2005 6:59:00 AM
Why would food only grow arithmetically? Maybe the availability of food grows by the Busy Beaver function.
In any case, resources, to the extent they are finite, consist of atoms and energy. The atoms aren't used up at all and we use far less energy than is in the sunlight hitting the Earth.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger | Jul 4, 2005 5:18:53 PM
By the way, some animals in the wild kill their offspring if there is not enough food to go around.
We're not animals; we're plants. When there are more of a species of animal there is less of what that animal eats. When there are more of a species of plant, the resources the plant needs either increase (soil) or stay the same (sunlight).
The only resources that humans treat the way animals do are fossil fuels and wild fish. Both of those should be obsolete soon.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger | Jul 4, 2005 5:32:32 PM
