I know there are many fickle and shallow women, but I think most women have a simple desire to love and be loved by one man. I have not dated around, and don’t care to. I wish the first guy I ever dated would have been the last I ever needed to. I see a recurring pattern in Catholic men over 30. They like their bachelor lifestyle, they are free of responsibility, and St Paul backs them up.
St. Paul also says marriage is ‘all honourable’, which he doesn’t say about dating around. There is also a difference between being single in order to be closer to God and being single in order not to have to deal with commitment and responsibility. So I’d hazard a guess that St. Paul might be more on your side than you’d think.
I know this is not all men. But I do think it is a huge problem in the Catholic Church now. There is so much talk about the assault on marriage from the outside, with issues like gay marriage, divorce, easy annulment, etc. But this seems like the last straw to me: this growing number of devout Catholic men who do not see the good of marriage.
Well. Perhaps that guy had not had previous opportunity to experience a relationship with a woman or otherwise the opportunity to learn to make his decisions faster or communicate them better. Or he might have lost interest in you despite a bona fide start. Or perhaps you wanted an engagement within a relatively short time span while he preferred a slower approach. (Which is not necessarily to say anything about your general approach or his; sometimes how fast we want to move to the next stage depends on the intensity of our interest in someone or some other factors, so this isn’t necessarily a constant for someone in all his or her relationship attempts.)
For the record, just because somebody’s vaguely ready for marriage doesn’t mean he or she has a particularly good idea of whom he or she would like to marry. And general issues with commitment or lack of readiness are a typical excuse of people who just can’t find it in themselves to tell the other person they are not sufficiently interested (any more)… as well as a common accusation by people who have been denied a relationship by someone else. I guess we all feel an urge to accuse the person who doesn’t ultimately want a relationship with us, after a period of dating, of not being ready, not having his or her priorities straight etc.
So I’d suggest just moving on, if I may. It might be a good idea to use the lesson to improve your filter and set the record straight on things important to you earlier in a relationship. But you still don’t want to drop the “marriage” bomb too early. It’s not like men fear it. Basically, anybody reacts with a measure of fear when this is mentioned a bit too insistently by a new dating or perhaps-dating-perhaps-not acquaintance.
Hah, I once had a could-have-been who was totally okay with hypothesising about being married to me (not in a bad way, in fact somewhat refreshingly candid and energetic about it, although surprising even to an eager stakeholder) in a long run, while totally balking out from anything resembling a defined relationship in the short run. That was the opposite or the reverse or whatever of the typical commitment phobia scenario.
We have to be in order to find a suitable mate
and I don’t think I’m that complicated. I know what I like and find attractive in a potenial mate and I know what I don’t like. How is that complicated?
With all due respect, it does not help you find a suitable mate. And not directly because of anything to do with the mate. It interferes with the functioning of your picker and impairs it. You end up not really knowing what you want (admittedly, I have a bit of this problem too) and you also end up picking the wrong guys. Following a simpler, less complicated, less (over-)dramatic course could have saved you that. One of the reasons you need a man for is to save you from yourselves (i.e. from sinking into that complicated thinking any further).
Call me sexist if you want — as long as you have cold beer, I don’t mind.
Sort of. So basically if a guy is decisive about what he wants (whether that’s a date or a friendship, but then he wants a date later), rather than waffling, we like that. I think I understand.
Not always. From the perspective of a man with plenty of battle scars, it’s hard to fit in in the woman’s ideal balance of decided vs waffling and what is preferred in the abstract (as in if you poll women on which quality is preferred) doesn’t have that much bearing on practical outcomes. I believe what ultimately matters most is basically your subjective attractiveness to a woman. If she’s sufficiently into you, then you can’t do anything wrong. If she just isn’t into you, then you just can’t do anything right. It just might be as simple as that.
Women, especially young women, should be careful not to mistake a man’s persistence in thoughtless impulses with his ability to decide and stick to his decisions. This is especially true when you send dismissive or mixed signals or outright tell him to go away and he sticks around, you could end up with a guy who can’t take a no or can’t see anything else than what he wants to see.
That’s interesting what you say about dating a friend. I hear a lot about this “friend zone” thing, especially from a lot of my guy friends who are stuck in it with various girls they would like to date.
There is nothing like the smell of friend zone in the evening.
Certainly not me.