This Single Life.

I've been meaning to write about this for a couple of days, and if I don't get it on virtual paper, it will be gone into the place where half my coherent thoughts vanish these days. It's about being single and the dating pool. It's SO not what I thought it would be.

I was raised with this stereotypical, sitcom, Doris Day Movie view of how male-female relationships work - she's desperate for one, out to "snag a man," while he wants his freedom. Over 40, it's supposed to be so much worse. Now we're supposed to be frantic, throwing ourselvs on anything with a pulse, because we're "older" and alone. I have a small posse of over 40 single female friends, and to a woman, we have had the same experience:

He's over 40, he's single, usually divorced, and he's Desperate. I mean, my God, he wants an instant relationship, he brags about being a romantic, he's all planning the next 30 years after a 20 minute conversation. I could pitch a series: "Desperate for Housewives." Every man I encounter wants to find a Relationship Right NOW!!! He was divorced in 2003 and has had three live-in relationships that didn't work out since then, and dated a few people, and he's frantically searching for the Right Woman!!! Because he wants to get married!!

Dude. I have a life. I am not against a relationship, but I own a house and I'm not looking to move in with you tomorrow. I have a job and I'm not available to follow your midlife crisis on a sailboat (that you don't own yet) to wherever. I don't want to change to be your fantasy. I don't expect you to change to be mine. That's usually where it breaks down - he's desperate, I'm not.

Hilarious comparing notes over lunch with new boss T - she's hit the same phenomenon. We concluded that women are much better at being single than men, because if we've been married we are used to having to do, if not "it all," at least a shitload of it, so it's a relatively minor adjustment to doing it all. We jettison what we have to, make do, and make it work. When men get suddenly single, suddenly nobody's taking care of all the details of wife life, and it SUCKS!!! It's so HAAAARRRD!!! Why don't I have clean socks and why was the electricity turned off? Apparently I've hit on a dirty little secret: men are more desperate for women than we are for them. This shocked the hell out of me, let me tell you. I was prepared to be in this depressing half-life of the older single woman, and I'm actually fine. But I see so many of these older single men who are REALLY REALLY on the hunt for a NEW WIFE. It's so weird!

Maybe it's because if you're female and single, voluntarily or involuntarily, you've already been doing everything he's now learning how to do, and if you're okay doing it, you're freaked out by men who aren't. I'm honestly neutral about the idea of getting married again, though I'm not "too old," or anything, because I am happy as a single woman and I don't want to take on some big baby who needs a woman that desperately. And I don't want to raise his kids, either. I'm holding out for a man who has mastered single adulthood and isn't looking for a mommy-wife, but a partner. So far, it's all Desperate for Housewives. Having seen the market, I'm quite happy with my life.