To think that the problem is not that there aren’t enough good men about

That makes sense. I was also going to suggest that women might feel safer reporting DV from another woman to the police, so reporting rates would be different.

We can’t infer that at all. We can’t just scrabble around for reasons the stats don’t support us. The fact is lesbians are very nearly as likely to perpetrate domestic violence within a relationship as a heterosexual man.

I would actually like to meet a regular, decent, kind, reliable man, but I have never been on a dating app, it's just not my thing at all, I'm 50, and I just don't think these kind of men put themselves on dating apps anyway.

I have a fairly big social circle but I have not met a single man my age that fit's the bill. I have no idea where they all are. I met a nice guy through friends that liked me and is really decent, but he's 10 years younger and I'm just not prepared to go that young.

@MagnoliaParks “mental that that would mean someone rules someone out as a partner (he doesn’t make me bath too!).”

Written down, it does seem mental! I can’t explain why certain things about men would put me off dating them.

Those women described are not being fussy, they are repeating the same mistakes every time.

You could say the same about men picking the superficially very attractive women and then finding them boring or unfaithful, or they want to be out every night partying with their girlfriends and coming home wrecked.

There has to be physical attraction, but you have to see past that a bit to see how compatible you are in other ways. If he's out with the boys getting hammered most nights do you really want that however gorgeous he is?

Maybe it's the bath bombs and bubble bath 😆

You are right, I'm the opposite.
Showers give me anxiety.

@MagnoliaParks “My DH is an absolute king compared to MN standards (does the majority of housework etc) but was single for years before we got together.”

Him being single for years would have put me off. I’d have wondered what was wrong with him. Obviously it’s worked out great for you.

I agree with you, OP.

I have a very good friend who wasted years of her life on men who may as well have had a red flag on their heads. The minute I met them, I knew. I do think she knew, too but she brushed her doubts aside (husband had walked out when their child was very young, she was lonely and hated attending big family events as the only single person).

Three of the red flags moved in with her for a time and the inevitable chaos happened.

Eventually, she got fed up of all that, took herself off all the dating apps and in time, married a lovely colleague she'd known for years.

At the ripe old age of 55, I have learned that attraction can take time to grow and you actually can't tell if you could become extremely attracted to someone based only on how they look in a photograph, for example.

I also think that when you are a confident, content and calm single person yourself, that you attract the same back. And this was why I remained single for a long time before meeting my lovely boyfriend.

Well I like a good soak and scrub in the bath, THEN I shower.

How else do people tend to their feet properly? You can't sit down in the shower to properly clean, scrub, pumice your feet / cut your toenails.

I think people who only shower must have manky feet and toenails.

😂😂 I’ve never admitted this in real life. but it seems less ‘manly’.

And some of it is women's fault the women who raise these men as little princes who never have to clean or pick up after themselves and tell they them their wives aren't good enough for them

Not necessarily.

He just hadn’t really met anyone tbh. He doesn’t go out drinking, didn’t do online dating so it wasn’t a red flag. We met through work and I asked him out on a date as he wouldn’t ever be so presumptuous. He has a huge group of male friends, but they were mostly Muslim (common where we live) so their socialising was based around food not drink.

The plus side of all that is I can’t see that I’ll ever need to post on MN about him rolling in drunk at 2am for the nth time this year and me not knowing where he was!

@MrsShawnHatosy This is very true. I wouldn’t think about the reason women were single unless they were my friends and were confiding in me. It would make me wonder why a man has been single for a long time. I would see it as a potential red flag.

I think this is maybe half true. Very young woman consider decent types boring. I certainly did. It is only the wisdom of getting older that you see men like that in a different light. I never liked laddish men, but did prefer someone with a bit of oomph. Now that I am 48 I now realise that oomph means something else entirely and I would settle for bland and dull. Because then you have a blank canvas to work on.

Imagine a man changing the way a woman dresses…

I liked a man with some ‘oomph’ when I was young. An ex of mine was very spontaneous and I loved that about him. We backpacked around the world when our first child was a baby. I still like some ‘oomph’ in a man over dull and boring.

Do these men not have fathers? Or any personal responsibility as adults at all?

Meanwhile some women love types considered more boring. I am happy for you. I wonder why OP is trying to get women to consider other guys they do not find attractive.

We are all allowed to be different. And we are all allowed to remain single if we don't find what we like.

I don’t think there’s a lack of good men out there, there’s probably a lack of single good men out there because all the good ones are taken. My DH is great, we work well together, share the burden of life and have fun (in many ways haha) together.

I think that women are allowed to not want a relationship with a man for any reason they see fit! If there's a behaviour or character trait that bothers them, why should they have to put up with it because the op things it isn't a good enough reason to reject a partner?

My view is that our bar for what a "good man" looks like isn't nearly high enough! I think the absolute bare minimum expectation is a man with consistently good hygiene, who does half the housework and half the childcare, respects women, carries half the mental load, has a job and contributes to society, has decent morals and can match their partner intellectually. That would be "good enough" not even "good". Almost all women meet this bar, and only a tiny proportion of men.

Society is just skewed in what it expects women to contribute to a relationship vs men. No wonder an increasing number of women believe it's preferable to be alone than with a man!