Photo Credit: "Red Heels" by UltraKiley on Photobucket
The shocker: Many men and women wrote at length to say they are not that happy with dating nor are they often satisfied in hooking-up. Yes, even the men report next day buyer’s remorse, rooted in the knowledge that she didn’t come and he didn’t perform well. People, listen: Try doing it NOT drunk. Drink a little to relax—and then cut yourself off.
Some conclusions from the results—
- Black male professionals and white women over forty dominate the game (as do black women when they get out from under the crushing weight of cultural expectation and expand their pool of acceptable men.)
- Women in their thirties are fed up with hooking up and have retreated in cynical non-dating or internet match dating or just plain old desperate dating (I love Liz Weber’s comment on why she tried internet dating: “I know how to fall in love and how to fuck, but I have never dated.”)
- My perception is that many young women in every racial group, but especially minorities, are not fully sexually empowered
And the respondents themselves were unafraid to draw conclusions, usually negative, about the other gender.
A 45 year old divorced white woman wrote, “Older white men (over forty) are evolved and likely unavailable or creepy or clueless.”
From a fifty year old divorced white man: “I thought everything was great. On a Sunday morning after spending the night—good sex!—she said, ‘This isn’t working for me’ and she left. Who understands women?”
Yet men and women are driven to mate—even knowing they will have more disappointing first dates (or hook-ups) than not.
A married white man in his thirties said he never considered a relationship with a woman who had sex on the first date—but did call her after because “I didn’t want to ruin it for the other men.” Someone married him? Really?
And a 38 year-old white single woman wrote, “I just want to find a man of my own. I’m lowering my standards. I want a husband, home, baby. And I am tired of dating and hooking up!”
That attitude is what got the above jerk married, isn’t it?
Europeans are more casual about relationships—and seem to enjoy them more too French women don’t get fat eating bread, cheese and chocolate and drinking wine—and they don’t obsess over men either.
The happiest daters in SexyPrime’s Dating/Mating/Hooking-Up Survey were women over forty and men under thirty. Hmmm……that would be cougars and their cubs, wouldn’t it? There’s something to be said for the absence of biological pressure.
From Emo Man, an ever hopeful dater whose heart breaks easily: “I don’t like one-night stands. They work into a two to four week fling at best. What if you want more than that?”
What if most of us want more than that even if we won’t/can’t admit it? We are stuck with dating and hooking-up, with the possibility of rejection and disappointment, with taking some risk or we aren’t very likely to get anything. Remember that joke Woody Allen told at the end of “Annie Hall,” the classic relationship comedy and one of my all-time favorite films?
A man says to his therapist: “My brother thinks he’s a chicken, but I can’t tell him he’s not because we need the eggs.” Yes, we all need the eggs.
(See Who's Dating Now? for more survey comments.)
Here are the major stats:
Age: 21-67, with 70% between 25 and 40.
Gender: 54% men, 46% women
Race: 58% White, 12% African American, 7% Latino, 5% Asian American, 16% White European, 3% African
Relationship status: 23% married, 21% in a relationship, 41% single and dating/hooking up, 15% single and not dating/hooking-up
32% date or hook-up outside a relationship, including marriage.
Sex on the first date?
Yes, 64%, No, 36% with men and women split almost evenly.
Does he call after first date sex?
60% of men say they have.
Does she care if he calls?
89% of women say they do want the call—though more than half reported turning down the second date request.
We want them to want us even when we don’t want them? No wonder men lose their hair.
copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime
God, how I miss the game sometimes. Good times. Good times indeed.
Posted by: Dom Rose | March 24, 2010 at 09:56 AM