RelationshipsFML: Dating After Harvard (for women)
Posted by Some Dude on February 7, 2012 at 11:30 am
Got a relationship question you want to ask, or a situation you want thoughts and advice on? Email me at somedude.harvardfml@gmail.com, and watch this space for my answer! Anonymous writes,
Nice article. Do one for girls too, Some Dude!
I’m not going to sugarcoat it: in the post-college dating world, men have it easier. Women tend to mature earlier, which is great for them at the time, but over their 20s men are finally catching up. There’s a silver lining to that though: the quality of the best men available increases, so don’t fret if you haven’t met someone you really click with yet: he could be worth the wait.
So, how do you meet those higher-quality men? As I recommended to men last week, the solution isn’t to go looking for places where the best single guys look for girls. Why not? Multiple reasons, actually. The competition, of course: it’s easier to stand out when you’re standing alone, rather than in a pack (and you’re also more approachable that way). But also, in places where women go looking for relationships, you will often find a lot of opportunistic guys looking for just sex. If what you really want is a relationship, don’t settle.
Instead, look for places where single guys congregate when they’re not looking for a date — not necessarily only guys, or even only single guys, so long as single guys are part of the mix and there are very few single women looking for single men. My favorite go-to example is PAX East, an annual video game conference in Boston. There will be many undateable guys there too — but any woman present will have first pick of any guy she wants because there are so few women. (Yes, even the best quality men play video games.) Similar situations can be found at a variety of volunteer projects, particularly outdoorsy ones that are more likely to attract guys.
Singles Map of the US, c. 2006
Another idea for post-college women: move to a city on the West Coast. The Boston Globe ran an article a few years ago on concentrations of single men and single women around the country. Boston is very usual, in that there are tons of both single men and women here, in nearly equal proportion. You can literally boost your luck by moving somewhere where the odds are stacked in your favor, as they are on the West Coast.
While men are often totally oblivious to how to improve their dating lives, women are usually painfully aware of their biggest flaws, but only see the hardest possible path to overcoming them and get discouraged. I hear over and over from women who are worried about their weight or their bust size — how attractive you are to a guy isn’t bound up in those, and the sooner you break out of that thinking, the better. Expensive plastic surgery or significant lifestyle changes are hardly required. How you move, how you dress, how you sound, and more can all be used to give yourself an immediate boost, with much less effort.
Some other good news: in most US cities, women in their 20s now earn more than men. Money can’t buy happiness, but it does buy stability and confidence, which helps every aspect of your life, not just dating. A woman’s life after college looks pretty good all around.
Special Thanks to A.C., A.S., A.B., and Stop & Shop’s house brand of Mac & Cheese, which is way better than Kraft’s. Email Some Dude at somedude.harvardfml@gmail.com.
Hmm. Not sure about that PAX East suggestion. Another place where single men congregate is Vatican City. In both locations, the men are pretty preoccupied with weird shit, and they’re unlikely to have much in common with the average American female.
A [female] friend of mine volunteered to join the PAX East staff when it first came to Boston, and received attention from dozens of interesting men who were also volunteering, at least several of whom she considered very desirable. One of them has now been her steady boyfriend now for almost two years. They moved to the West Coast together a few months ago.
As gaming has gone mainstream, there are lots of very desirable guys who play and appreciate games. Teenage boys make up only about 17% of American gamers nowadays.
[...] now, a close reading of Relationships FML: Dating after Harvard (for women), a dating advice column written by “Some Dude” affiliated with Harvard lifestyle [...]
I tried to post this comment (my response to IvyFed’s “close reading” of the above post) on IvyFed but it wouldn’t let me, so I’ll just post it here instead: Some of Jasmine’s criticisms of me were valid, but she substantially misread a lot of what I said. Let’s take this one point at a time, without the vitriol:
First, not all women (or men) are straight, obviously. I do not believe all are, nor do I believe all should be. My writing is admittedly largely unscientific, based on my own observations and experiences, and I’ve said before (http://verynoice.com/2011/02/relationshipsfml-how-to-attract-men/#comments) that I exclusively talk about heterosexual relationships only because I feel I lack the knowledge to give good, thoughtful advice to LGBT individuals on their relationships. It would be tremendously clunky to disclaim that every single time I write “men” or “women,” and broadly I think it’s self-evident enough that it doesn’t warrant explanation, but you should read “straight men” for “men” and “straight women” for “women” throughout. I’ve been asking around for a RelationshipsFML guest author who would like to write on LGBT issues specifically, since I don’t feel qualified to write on them myself.
I apologize for implying that women don’t mature after college. That wasn’t my intention, but on closer inspection of my own words, I definitely botched that one, and I’ve edited that bit of my original post accordingly. Everyone continues to mature – emotionally and otherwise – over the whole course of their life. What I meant to say is that most men arrive at college less mature than most women, but catch up over their 20s, the point being that women’s previous broad maturity advantage RELATIVE to men declines.
Next, competition: my problem with competition isn’t that we sabotage our peers, and I’m not sure how Jasmine read that into what I wrote. Rather, the problem is on the other end: faced with many options, we’re less likely to choose and be satisfied with any one of them. This is true of both men and women. An attraction blossoming in an environment of less competition is more likely to grow and thrive. But the reason matters less than simply that minimizing competition works better, which I know is true.