A woman’s solitary life illustrates the danger of excessively high standards:
There is a name for people like me – “relationship virgin”. It is apt and accurate because I have managed to get to 54 without ever having had a boyfriend.
It is hard to believe, given that I haven’t been living in a cave at the bottom of the ocean, but it is the truth. I have never had a significant other, never been someone’s other half, never been asked out. Come to think of it, I’ve never even had a Valentine’s card – well, not unless you count the piece of paper with a love heart drawn in blue pen that Kevin from Sunday school shoved into my coat pocket when I was about seven….
I honestly don’t understand it. I am gregarious, have loads of interests, work out, have good dress sense – or so I am told – and am no more or less attractive than my friends, most of whom are happily married, or at least know what it feels like to be in love.
Just recently, my best friend – someone I have known since junior school – said to me that she wishes she had given me a good shake when we were at university. She was studying in the next city and would visit me for hall parties and other socials, and now says she could see what I was doing wrong. She says I made it such hard work for any boy who approached me, that I was too much of challenge.
I was invited to four weddings (no funerals, thank goodness) the year I turned 37. That is when I decided to join a dating agency, but it turned out to be one soul-sinking encounter after another with men who were inadequate, unsuitable or both.
So, being standoffish, reactive, and self-overrated is a handicap to pursuing relationships? Who would have ever imagined that? The truth is we see this sort of behavior in men as well; being a man, I see it even more often. The “pointy elbows, 2/10, would not bang” meme perfectly mocks this ridiculous, self-destructive behavior.
Look, men are not special because they are attracted to supermodels and women are not special because they are attracted to successful alpha males. That’s the exact opposite of special.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t trade up in one area where she trades up in another. But it has to be an area of superior value to them, not to you. No woman gives a damn about your loyalty, devotion, white-knighting or romantic nature anymore than you care about her academic credentials, knitting skills, or gossip network.
Never forget that in love, as in war, the other party always gets a vote.