Women's rights general conversations

Good idea.

A downside of being single is the single income of course. But even if I were in a relationship I’d want to ensure I was financially secure enough to go it alone so I wasn’t trapped. Very difficult for single people to get on the housing ladder if they don’t have the help of family money.

There's an FWR thread about this now, you might want to link to the academics board thread one on there?

Universities legal obligation new report by David Renton www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4693942-universities-legal-obligation-new-report-by-david-renton

I'd seek out the women at the Fila conference above and harass them to be my new besties and set up a older single lady commune. Imagine how cool that would be? Friends with the old school feminists! Amazing!

We all experience grief differently of course, but I do wonder at the new wife being so happy to marry someone whose previous wife died only 6 months previously.

it would be a red flag to me to be honest, I’d be concerned about his state of mind and any unresolved grief and family issues and the impact on our relationship. But then I’m older than 31 and in the hopefully unlikely event that something untoward and untimely happens to DH, I would also consider myself done with dating/men etc. And build a new single life.

I can tell you that mine came out of the blue. I met him very briefly at a GUT meet-up and then again quite casually (on my part but not his) three months later when he offered to show me around a city I was visiting, and it all took off from there.

Such stupid fat fingers.

I’m not finding one of them is important enough to me to try, rather than just stay single.

I share the general lack of enthusiasm for re-coupling if my lovely other half was gone. I do have some very good male friends who do seem like decent sorts which makes me hope that there are other good sorts out there, but I don’t know that I would think finding one or t

@MavisMcMinty What did you say to the mother?

Tipping my cynical hat to you all this afternoon, I think it's because it's true what we often hear, that marriage is more advantageous to men than women.

Heh! I think not a few are looking to get looked after.

That. Married men and single women are the happiest.

@Kucingsparkles , don't tell anyone our ages. I've not mentioned it...

I do wonder why us blokes are more prone to look more quickly.

Tipping my cynical hat to you all this afternoon, I think it's because it's true what we often hear, that marriage is more advantageous to men than women.

Oh, I don't think there are rules about this. I was more observing what I've seen of two different men. One thing I've learned from bereavement is there is no one way to deal with it.

I do wonder why us blokes are more prone to look more quickly.

I would add that "replace" is a wrong way to look at it in my opinion. You can't replace a beloved. I talk about my first husband and things we did, and I have pictures of him that pop up on my computer all the time. I wouldn't have married Mr Brit if he'd been the kind of man who had a problem with that.

I met my second husband only a few months after my beloved first husband of thirty years died, and we got married eighteen months later. It was quicker than it might have been because of the distance involved and some other considerations related to my younger son, who came with me (the older two were both over 21). I lost at least one set of friends to disapproval and there was general concern that this was too soon, but we've been happily married for twenty years now.

<Adds 'won't replace me the moment I die' to the list>

Yes, mach, I had a 31-year old patient whose husband remarried 6 months after she died, to a woman who looked exactly like his dead wife. Her mother phoned me about it, deranged with grief that he had “replaced” his dead wife so casually, when she would never be able to - or want to - replace her daughter.

Oh that's on my shelf waiting to be read! Thanks for the recommendation.

The first para of my post should be in quotes.

Speaking (kind of) of the single life, I have recently finished reading Matrix, by Lauren Goff. It’s about a medieval noblewoman who is dumped into a convent because she’s too ugly and awkward for marriage, and how she turns the convent into, basically, a man-free paradise on earth. It’s brilliantly feminist, beautifully written, quite unexpected in some ways, and highly recommended.

Ha ha, yes! Wonder if it’s different for men? As a cancer nurse I was always quite shocked at the speed my dead patients’ husbands found themselves another wife.

The father of one friend was dating quite soon, within a year after his wife died. It upset my friend somewhat that he seemed to have got over her mother so quickly. He was early seventies.

Another friend's father was utterly grief-stricken and treated suggestions of finding someone else with silent contempt. By the sounds of it he's in a minority.

I’d get drunk, shag someone, and if I still liked or fancied them in the morning we’d hitch up.

That made me laugh.

I was brazen in getting together with Mr T. A group of us had been out together and me and him had been flirting for a while but, beyond a few chaste kisses, nothing had yet happened. After the night out, everyone went back to the shared house Mr T and mutual friends were living in and when it came time to go home, he'd already gone to bed. I thought 'Sod it, now or never', went up to his room, stripped off and got into his bed. That was 36 years ago and we've never looked back.

Heh. I did “date” one fella who was very good-looking and very rich - we went out for dinner having met doing am-dram, but he was really dull and I didn’t fancy him, as back then I only fancied rough-looking punks with tattoos and mohicans who were brilliant at playing pool.

Kuc, you summed it up perfectly.

When I think of men en-masse I go 'Ewww'.

This is the Scottish dating system you're describing, Mavis.