Commitment-phobic men are often the reason that women 'delay' starting a family

[Petal02]

A lovely friend of mine is in bits because her latest relationship has broken down. She is 41, would love to settle down and start a family, but has been unfortunate to have a string of boyfriends who didn't know what they wanted, or wanted to keep their options open, or didn't want children now but might have wanted them in the future. You get the picture.

She was 'told off' by her GP about 6 months ago (when she mentioned the subject of conception) for 'hanging around too much and not getting on with it.'

Yet you read so much about women who allegedly decide to wait til their 40s before starting a family; I suspect some of them would have started far earlier if only there weren't so many idiotic men about.

Sorry, just wanted to offload. Makes me very sad.

I have a few friends / friends of friends in the same position too.

All are normal, attractive, hard working with nice personalities, and they're not overly fussy about men either.

What I mean by ''not overly fussy about men'' is that they're not bothered about career or wages of a future partner for example; they just want a nice normal guy who they find attractive.

I've read this whole thread and I take issue with the earlier comments about middle class/high earning men see having family as a disadvantage. I work in a very male, traditionally upper middle class city profession, very nepotistic and a few fathers and sons work alongside each other. All of the men in my department are married by early 30's. I can think of only 2 players, and 1 possibly in the closet. Tbh the culture from senior management down is very much family orientated. Our clients are all the same.

However most of these men had a period of sowing their wild oats, and I've noticed that all their wives are what I would class as educated girl next door types, probably not the sort who they went out drinking shots after work when in their 20s.

I suspect a lot of my male colleagues have perception of the woman who would make a good mother, and a woman to have a good time with. Probably not dissimilar to some of the 'he must be tall, educated, funny...' Requirement some women have.

But I accept that in some professions the men are total players. I have come across a few wanker bankers, my BIL is one. I've lost count of the number of women he's led on. He thinks he's going to find some young thing to have kids with when he's 50. I feel desperately sorry for any of his gfs until then who will be too old.

I've told him what I think of his behaviour but I might as well talk to a brick wall.

Mary, thanks for your reply; yes we live together and he has discussed marriage many times but we haven't been getting on that well recently. He already has daughters who we have regularly and I am very integrated with his whole family.

To those who have said it is my fault for wasting time on the wrong men unfortunately the con man who I bought a house with kept me thinking that when he came out of prison we would pick up where we left off. So when he ran off with someone within weeks and then spent 2 years trying to get as much money out of me as possible over our house it left me with minimal unforeseen options. Again he had a good family and was middle class husband material. Life isn't always straight cut. In that time other male friends who I would perhaps have ended up in relationships with and a childhood sweetheart who would have liked to get back together and would have been my perfect match are now married or engaged themselves. Timing is a bitch.

By the way in addition to my last post firstly; thanks Lurcia for your kind words. Secondly I guess that people are reading my posts probably thinking what an idiot; it must have been obvious the con man was what he turned out to be... Well actually no. I sat through the whole court case and read every scrap of evidence and even now all these years later am not sure if he actually did what he was imprisoned for. He was well educated, a sports coach for an elitist sport, always held down well paid, high end jobs and was a reliable polite sort. Mixed with those who could be considered posh and was well travelled. We got on very well and had few arguments. I wouldn't just buy a house with anyone I didn't trust. We discussed marriage and children on many occasions. I'm just trying to say that sometimes you really can't tell and I did what I thought was the right thing by standing by him.

As for my partner now he is also a high earner and a good family man with shared values which makes it hard to just jump ship because potentially we are just having a bad patch. Even if I did leave him and start over it would probably leave me too late to start a family by the time I had found someone else compatible. I never foresaw my life working out how it has but there you are. Shit happens! Decisions decisions eh?

LardyLardy: "My DP gets companionship, half bills paid, gets to live in a nice area with a live-in housekeeper/cook and gets ferried about by muggins.
Wouldn't surprise me a bit if he jumped ship for a younger model if the figures added up."

Statements like these really do baffle me... Why, for fuck's sake, do you keep doing all these things for him and then complain about them? For the love of God, JUST STOP DOING THEM. Stop being a mug! I know leaving someone you love is not that easy... but surely no one is forcing you to cook for that person every day of the year, clean after him and iron his shirts... Are you really telling me all you have to expect of life is to serve your husband until he finds someone younger and kicks you in the ass? Really???

My ex, why. i adored but ditched for messing me around, has recently married a woman he met over the internet from Thailand. He proudly introduced me to her at an event he knew Id be at. She doesn't speak much English and doesn't work. Hes an incredibly good looking man who turned down a lot of more 'local' women and his obsession with internet dating is why i dumped him. Thai brides are not unusual here (UK city) but they don't come over to live with the man until they are married!

My other ex, who I ditched at uni for messing me around, married a very plain woman who doesn't work (after telling me I wasn't glamorous or big busted enough for him).

Outside the traditional professions, most men I know socially are living together with long term partners of them he same or similar description above and openly flirt with other women or try to cheat with other women (at least theyve tried it on with me). Their girlfriends seem to blame the other woman, even though theyve turned the man down, and centre their whole life around this man.

I don't know any decent, attractive single men. The few female friends i know who are single are attractive, well educated and have good jobs.

I don't know what to make of this, except that the decent, non calculating men mainly meet quite nice women by their mid twenties round here and get married after a few years.

I don't think it's fair to place the bulk of the blame on men. A lot of women are picky and the average man who would be interested in starting a family in his twenties is sniffed at by ambitious types of a similar age. If a man is not showing any desire to commit, why would you stay with them if that's what you wanted? I was laughed at for marrying in my early twenties, fair enough in some respects, but some of those who laughed hardest are those who now say it's so hard to find a decent man who wants to settle down (now in my mid-late thirties).

I don't think the "too picky" thing stands analysis though. (I'm very glad for you Mimi that you did find someone who is right for you -but I'd hope and trust that at the time you didn't feel you were settling). This is, after all, someone you're expected to have sex with, regularly (and I could not have sex with someone I didn't fancy), talk to over breakfast the next day every day for the rest of your life (so you'd damn well better find them interesting), find compromises that are mutually acceptable when life throws you a complicated situation to navigate (so you'd better like them, respect them and trust them to see things from your perspective as well as theirs... and vice versa). I can't see how you could make a life-time's committment work if you just settled, if all you wanted was the married status and not the person themself.

That's true whatever age you marry at though and it seems to me they are are more desperate to 'just settle' now than I ever remember feeling in my early twenties (felt no such urgency but just didn't have that 'there's someone better out there' mentality either).

I got married young as well like you dh was 19, I was 20. I think you are less likely to settle at that age as you want the spark, the attractiveness, the best friend, the decent sex. The good men always marry first as they are family orientated, good in the home etc and the ones who love being married as they are making an active choice to do something different and marry so early in a time when its rare.

The reasons it gets complicated as your older as well are thinks like I own this and he owns that how do I protect it, I work here he lives there and both in decent careers how will it work, Im set in my ways as been living alone a long time now have to make compromises, I need to get with literally anyone breathing as Im 30 as some of my friends have now started doing just to have children etc. Its much harder imo.

If I'm right about the mis-match in percentages, it's like a game of musical chairs - except if you're lucky enough to find the right chair early in the game, you get to take it home with you, thereby restricting the number of chairs still further!

But it strikes me there have always been eternal man-children, and the social set up which constrained them to marry in order to have sex and a live-in house keeper wasn't actually any kinder to women. My grandmother had the misfortune to marry one. He left her for another woman when he couldn't cope with parenthood - then had the cheek to say that he'd take her back if she'd come out to join him (in what was then colonial British East Africa), leaving my dad in boarding school in England. Very sensibly, she sued for divorce instead - but it really, really hurt, it wasn't an easy option either financially or socially. I feel blessed that a woman who is a single parent can now have an easier life than my grandmother did.

Lurcio - I think it is true that some men are eternal man children. I also think it is true that men who want to marry will do so quite early in life as georgesdino said.

However, I dont think it guarantees marriage success although it might enhance the chances that the woman will have a child earlier in life.

I met DW on interview at university and we have been in a relationship since 1984 and married 25 years this September. We knew maybe half a dozen couples who were in similarly committed relationships at university and went to get married soon after - indeed one couple we knew got married as students. All went on to have children quite early but none of them stayed together. The women had children but they still split up afterwards. Various reasons including several extra marital affairs.

I think its different back then morebeta as everyone did that. We have been married 10 years and the ones who married when we did have had no divorces as you have to be extra marriage minded to be like that in this day and age.

I agree that women are picky when young. I know I was! Many women I know have considerably lowered their sights as they have got older. Ok, not lowered their sights necessarily, but certainly altered their initial requirements. And so many people comment about various husbands, "Oh, Graham, he's so lovely, Sue is so lucky." But you can bet your bottom dollar that they wouldn't have given Graham the time of day when they were 25.

I was never 'too picky' in my 20s, unfortunately non of my relationships lasted perhaps because I wasn't picky enough and accidentally ended up attracting a string of losers (bad boys, addicts etc).

Also there's that 'spark' which is the most important thing to me - if it isn't there then I won't 'settle' for someone without it.

I've had that 'spark' with some men but it's been the wrong men - eg. married men who I refuse to have affairs with, or players who have no intention of settling down etc etc.

It wasn't my choice to not marry in my 20s because I just didn't meet the right guy, and I've been quite unwell for the last 5 years or so and only been on a few dates because of that since then.

It annoys me when people make out that you can choose to marry in your 20s because you can't get married to someone who isn't there!
And if you marry a man who you don't fancy you may as well have an arranged marriage!

Having said all that I do know some women who've 'settled' both in their 20s and 30s, and they are either quite unhappy or having affairs.

I would rather be single than unhappily married, I've seen too many friends and family in that situation or divorced (some more than once or twice too).

It is perhaps fair to say that some people are not very appealing when they are young, and need time to grow up (even, in some cases, to 'grow into' their looks: the teenage Keith Richards was a weird gawky-looking thing but, before the substances completely pickled him, went through a much nicer-looking phase in his late 20s). The shy, spotty nerd who remains shy and spotty up until about 25 may miss out on the post-University wedding rush indluged in by a lot of mundanes, but might blossom in his early 30s.

But I have to say (and ok, this is anecdotal rather than real evidence) looking around at my own friends, a lot of us are actually very happy being single and therefore suspicious of the relentless 'Women! Stop thinking you can live without A Man and hurry up before there are none left!' propaganda. TIme and time again, studies show that the happiest categories of people are married men and SINGLE women, with married women the unhappiest of the lot.

The anecdotal thing can be so misleading - looking at Beta's post, it would appear I'm exactly the same age (and a similar educational background) yet of my contemporaries, only 1 married straight after university, most in their 30s and 40s, very few are divorced (and I think there's only 2 of us in our original friendship group who are still single).

And I totally agree with SGB about being happy and single - when I look back on life to date, I have done an enormous amount of stuff, both in terms of career, travelling and interesting stuff. And I have a lovely DS (courtesy of donor sperm). I would also say that most of the interesting stuff has been done in the periods when I've been single; my experience of long-ish relationships has been that they always seem to involve me burying my interests while fitting round my partner's - and when eventually that becomes too much, I usually bail out. I'm not sure whether that tells you that I'm not good at compromise and negotiation, or that socially, the expectation is for the woman to be the good little wifey (certainly, looking at married friends I'd say in the majority of cases it is the man's hobbies which continue unimpeded by children while the woman sees herself as lucky to carve out one evening a week for an evening class or fitness class). Either way personally I think I am a happier person when single. If only I was good at casual sex, I'd consider that I had it all .

Lurcio, the only two couples I know who married straight after university don't have children, which as far as they've said out loud is by choice.

Looking back I can see that I was very unconfident and dated men who were quite manipulative and that made me unhappy.

Now I'm 37 I'm much more confident and in a better place mentally to meet a partner, it's just a shame I don't have so much time on my biological clock.

I think the answer is more feminism, not less

Absolutely.

And so many people comment about various husbands, "Oh, Graham, he's so lovely, Sue is so lucky." But you can bet your bottom dollar that they wouldn't have given Graham the time of day when they were 25.

That is so right. My sister married young, to a very bright, good-looking and thoroughly decent geek. There were plenty of women in her set who would have passed him over as dull, and as a post-grad he had no money. Now he helps run the world one or two people have been known to whisper how my sister got 'lucky' in a way that implies she latched onto a successful man to keep her.

Er, he's successful (as he will happily tell you) with a fantastic family life in large part because he married my sister whose earnings kept them going at times in the early years.

"Statements like these really do baffle me... Why, for fuck's sake, do you keep doing all these things for him and then complain about them? For the love of God, JUST STOP DOING THEM. Stop being a mug! I know leaving someone you love is not that easy... but surely no one is forcing you to cook for that person every day of the year, clean after him and iron his shirts... Are you really telling me all you have to expect of life is to serve your husband until he finds someone younger and kicks you in the ass? Really???"

Hmm you've filled in a lot of blanks there.
I wasn't complaining. If I wanted to complain I'd start a thread.
I was repling to Beta's post that men like DP do exist.