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WHY ARE SO MANY WOMEN DESPERATE?!
Some women seem to fall easily—and big time Head Over Heels—for men who are not all that. Not getting or keeping one of those unremarkable males can send them into a tailspin. If we are going to change the status quo of the sexes, we need more than good jobs, workplace equality and great vibrators—we need a new attitude.
Before I put the survey results together, I expected to find that women fall into the desperate state at predictable life confluences of age and situation, for example:
- 22, fresh out of college, under-employed and no boyfriend;
- 38, unattached yet wanting a baby and a husband to help raise it;
- 50 (or over), unhappily married or single and broke.
Well, not exactly.
This is the first survey in a long time that generated more responses from women (283) than men (175). Moreover, two-thirds of the women said they were or had been desperate—and three-fourths of the men said they had been with a desperate woman. While I did find some of these Desperate Women falling into the behavior at 22 and 38 and 50—over 100 were various other ages, mostly 22-30, 38-45 and 50 up to 61, the oldest respondent.
Defining The Desperate Woman
First, let’s clarify our terms: I define a desperate woman as having low self-esteem, believing she has no choices and must settle for whatever follows her home.
But my new friend Cecilia, 25, single and gorgeous, adds, “A lot of desperate women have unrealistic expectations. They are waiting for the perfect man, the man with a lot of money, the Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet. He doesn’t show and they feel desperate.”
Good point. Desperate is a state of mind, not the reality of how a woman looks or what she has to offer—but a mental state influenced often by unrealistic expectations and throwback societal attitudes about the comparative worth of male and female.
Why such prolonged desperation in women?
I turned to M, a man who has practiced both monogamy and polyamory, including swinging—but truly a man who loves and respects women. Unlike Pick-Up Artists who look for a woman’s weaknesses to use against her in the quest for the score, he is interested in learning who a woman is for the sake of enriching his life by knowing her and enriching her sexual experience by giving her what she desires. He responded, as he always does, with thoughtful and encouraging advice for women—which I will post separately because it deserves the space—that grows out of his understanding of why women are so damn desperate. M exemplifies the wonderful men who read SexyPrime: they are real champions of female sexual empowerment.
How does she act out her desperation?
- She may act out by indiscriminate sexual behavior, for example, having drunken hook-up sex or throwing herself at her best friend’s husband.
- Or she may assume the role of the judgmental prude, coming down hard on other women for their sexual behavior.
- Or she may simply retreat into an icy celibacy—even if she is married.
Some answers on what makes a woman desperate from the survey—
PREGNANCY AND AFTER, WITH LITTLE OR NO SUPPORT FROM THE FATHER
--“I had three children in five years while my husband was in the military. When he came home, he cheated on me with the wife of a friend who was still serving, and gave me an STD. I stayed with him for four more years because I was so beaten down—desperate for any bit of love or kindness, lacking in self-esteem—until he asked me why I stayed with him. That did it for me. Looking back, I can’t believe how pathetic I was,” 34, divorced.
--“I have been a Desperate Woman. I’d just had a baby and my husband hadn’t touched me in months because he was skeeved out by the pregnancy and then overwhelmed with the financial burden of losing my income and health insurance benefits, all after started a new company. He got an extra job at a nightclub and hung out with his new service industry friends. I know the service industry. It’s full of long late crazy nights and often drugs, alcohol and sex.
“I was suspicious when he started talking about this one girl a lot. I felt fat and I was
breast-feeding. There was no money for me to go out even if I felt like it. When I met her, I saw how she behaved around him and I knew. There is a recipe for desperation,” 37, married.
--“My Baby Daddy was hot. I knew he was cheating on me with more than one girl. I suffered from post-partum depression and before the meds kicked in, one of the girls came to tell me she was having his baby too. I was so desperate, I thought about suicide. My parents came and took me back home with them. For a year, I was an emotional mess. Then they told me I had to go to college—there is a state university in our town—or they would file for custody of my child and throw me out. That big kick in my ass saved my life,” 42, “happily married professional.”
TOO LONG SINGLE
--“I haven’t had sex in over a year. I’m so tired of being alone. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I find someone who cares about me? I would settle for one of those average men. My last relationship was one-sided, on my side. I totally let him call the shots,” 40, single.
--“I know you are fairly contemptuous of drunken hook-up sex. If I didn’t have that kind of sex, I wouldn’t have any sex at all. I’m not getting any younger. If something doesn’t happen for me soon, I am leaving New York City and going someplace where men take women out on real dates and get serious about them,” 37, single.
[Note: Honey, I am not against hook-ups, just drunken hook-ups and drunken sex in general. Too much alcohol deadens the nerve endings. Nobody has good sex in a stupor. Either they lie about how good it was or they were so drunk they really believe it was that good. Smart girls who want to hook up stay sober and carry condoms, individual packs of lube, vibrating cock rings and small vibes. I love the lipstick-shaped ones. It all fits into a cosmetic bag.]
--“I like this boy, he’s not anything spectacular, not worth the effort, an average person which bothers me even more. Everybody knows I like him but he doesn’t like me as much. If a boy likes you, he’ll do whatever to get you. I am convenient for him.
“He contacts me every few weeks, we go out to nice places, but no sex though I think it will happen because he really wants it. I want to wait for marriage. No phone talk, no text between dates. He has a good job. I want to marry him,” 25, single and a virgin "from a typical Asian-American family".
And this one is very similar to the other 27 responses from Desperate Women over 50:
--“I’ve been divorced for fifteen years; and I have gone as much as five years between dates, five years without sex so I get really nervous about having it again. Nothing close to a marriage proposal. The men I see are also seeing other women. I can’t even get one ordinary guy all to myself,” 55, divorced.
COMING OFF A BAD BREAK-UP
--“I was devastated when my fiancé broke things off a month before the wedding. The humiliation was like the initial bruising and swelling from a bad fall. But underneath that I was all broken and the bones of identity heal slowly,” 34, single.
--“I am that stereotype: a middle-age woman whose husband left her for his younger pregnant girlfriend. For three years, I was a Desperado. I drank A LOT. I hooked up with younger men I met in bars. I slept with my friends’ husbands, who, in all fairness came after me. One day I overheard two men at the country club calling me The Club Slut. I walked away from the martini sitting on the bar and never looked back,” 57, in “a very satisfying relationship with a younger man.”
WEIGHT GAIN, WRINKLES AND OTHER BODY ISSUES
Many women blamed their desperation on body issues. This response is a typical one:
--“The first time I was standing at a cocktail party with champagne flute in hand, all aflutter because I knew the handsome guy heading my way was coming for ME only to have him walk around me as if I were a potted tree and head for the younger woman behind me—that day I looked in a restroom mirror, saw my wrinkles, bags and sags and became desperate. For seven years, I was desperate, trying to forge a relationship with any loser who asked for my phone number. I can’t tell you why the cloud lifted. Maybe it was hormonal,” 47, single
What Is The Tipping (Into Desperation) Point?
--“For me, it wasn't just that my husband wasn't fucking me, or that he was fucking someone else, or that he was prevaricating about it, or that he was going out without me, or that I felt unattractive after just having had a baby. It took all of those things together to push me into desperation. But I know other women who have much different thresholds, and even just one of those could be the tipping point for them,” 37, married.
--“When she starts to believe she deserves less than what she wants and will settle for what she can get,” anonymous.
Yes, I agree with that. The tipping point may be different for different women, as the first commentator suggests, but the bottom line: You get what you believe you deserve.
That does not contradict the advice to expand your concept of who is an acceptable partner. Many women said: Consider older/younger men, men of different races, ethnicities or nationalities, men you’ve written off as not your type. They did not mean: Settle for some guy who treats you badly, manipulates and demeans you.
Finally, and sadly, 80% of you have dated Freddies.
These responses say it all:
--“I have not dated anyone as bad as Freddie, although my Guy From My Time of Desperation had some similarities. He was a has-been - a guy in his 30s who'd been an athlete in high school and college, but who now was bald and had a big ol' belly and was bitter and sensitive about it. He saw pictures of me pregnant once and said flat-out that he would not have been attracted to me then - even though his NON-pregnant belly was bigger than mine when it was full of baby. He would make comments every once in a while about me tightening up a little here and there, and he'd jiggle my soft parts. Very controlling behavior, especially for someone in a more fragile emotional state. I wanted to please him - at least HE was fucking me, and he was doing it pretty well, too. I didn't want to lose the physical stuff he offered, even to the point of enduring the emotional crap he was dishing out,” 30s and married.
--“In hindsight I think my biggest love was a Freddie... though I didn't see him as such until lately (27 years later). He feels he is God's gift to women, a constant womanizer, even directly in front of his meek wife. He does love women (I don't believe Freddie actually does) but uses them for his own purposes and moves on but most of those women would take him back into their beds in a heartbeat,” late 40s and married.
In the coming days, I will post M’s advice to desperate women and responses to the “low hanging fruit” question—which opened up the proverbial can of worms—and the delicious stories of Sexy Beasts.
Tomorrow: The SexyPrime Desperate Women and Beastly Men Survey, Part Two: The Beastly Men. Frederick Ebel is the ultimate Beastly Man. His prized little white mustache reminds me of lab rat hair. But I will let him speak for himself--beginning with his story of sexual initiation at 14 by a 60 year old woman.
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