Would you wait forever for your dream man or would you ‘settle’?

[Missgemini]

Random post that doesn’t actually affect my life, but I’ve been wondering about this.

I’m in my early 30s, married with kids (just for background). I have a couple of close friends that are single and looking. They’ve dated, but haven’t found anyone to be serious with.
It's not a case of a lack of men around. The ‘issue’ is the perceived calibre of the men. These are high flying women that have achieved a lot in their lives, so they only want men that have either achieved the same or higher. For example, one would not date anyone earning less than 100k a year.
I’ve tried to say on a couple of occasions that they’re probably missing out on lots of good men earning a bit less but with the potential to make more in future (not that I think that money is the be all and end all). Anyway, they disagree and say they don’t see why they should reduce their standards.

Disclosure: I got lucky and met a great guy who ticks a lot of my boxes and did not have to ‘settle’, so this really isn’t my business, but these close friends do discuss their dating lives regularly with me.

So, my question is: would you wait potentially forever for the man of your dreams if you’re single? AIBU for encouraging them to give some ‘Lower earners’ a chance?

That sounds like it's more about 'dream money' than a dream man. That really wouldn't be the influencing factor for me. I'd go so far as to say that it's even distasteful.

That has never been a criteria of mine so it's hard to say.

Surely it's really really individual?

The hard line for me is that your partner should genuinely care about your wellbeing. There are too many men who just see their wife as either a totally separate entity who doesn't matter, rather than being concerned about how she is doing and wanting the best for her, or worse seeing her as some kind of domestic skivvy existing for his purposes only.

Other than that, having children was very important to me so those are the things I'd look for. I wouldn't have written off children in order to be with a rich man. But maybe for them that is more important and if they can't be with someone ambitious then they would rather be single?

You’re OP isn’t about ‘settling’ it’s about ‘criteria’ for who to date.

No one should settle; relationships are hard enough whfn you start from the best place possible, settling simply won’t work in the long run. However, I would suggest they do some serious soul searching about why they think saying someone who earns less than 100k is settling. I can understand wanting to date someone who is ambitious and works hard but there are lots of reasons someone might be both of those things and still not earn a lot of money. Personally I’d rather settle for someone who happened to have prioritised something other than outright earning potential vs someone who was shallow enough to judge people based on their salary.

Agree! One of the many reasons I did not want to marry another doctor is the fact that medicine is a ridiculously inflexible career, and I didn’t want to be the person settling for a part time lower-paced career for family reasons (fine if you do of course, but I didn’t want to).

Instead I have married somebody who works in IT - decent salary (obviously wouldn’t match up with a city lawyer), works 10-6, from home, and can nip out to do the school run when I need him to. It wasn’t a conscious choice (we met at Uni), but it has worked out very well for us.

People have the right to impose whatever standards they wish. However, the more stringent and rigid your standards are, the more likely it is that you'll remain single!

I dont agree with "settling" as in "you arent what I wanted but I was scared of remaining alone" thats pretty offensive to the person you're with. I would hate for someone to feel they settled with me. So I dont agree with "settling" as in - you werent my first choice. If however, by settling you mean- acceptance that no one person can tick every box and noone is perfect then yes, I agree, we ALL settle because simply put, none of us are perfect and we all have our little annoying habits.

In my experience, the people who impose massively high standards (as in, noone is good enough for me) and ridiculous tick boxes often arent that desirable themselves and dont embody the qualities they seek. I'd never say that to them but its true from what I've seen. Thing is, you dont fall in love with someone just because they tick every box- if this were true then married at first sight would always work out happily and clearly, it rarely does. Reducing someone's attractiveness or appeal to a tick box exercise is really missing the essence of who they are. I also feel that those people would be pretty offended themselves if they were to be told by a guy they liked "You're such a great accomplished woman, but sadly you dont have blonde hair so its a no from me".

Tried 'settling', didn't like it. Have been on my own for a very long time and probably always will be. Life's good.

Yes. Since getting divorced 10 years ago (civil partnership), I love being single so much that my bar is somewhere up in the stratosphere & could only be jumped by someone who made me suddenly realise that I couldn’t face life without her.

I never wanted kids though, which might make things a bit different.

Exactly what I was thinking. A lot of high-achieving men choose wives to support their careers - not lacking in ambition, but ambitious for the pair of them as a couple and family.

Women can 'have it all' even less than men can, so it'd make far more sense to look for the type of guy who'll be her backstop and cheerleader.

Depends on where you work - if she is looking for a man in his early 30s earning over £100k in Barnsley, I agree she is on a hiding to nothing.

If she is an investment banker or magic circle lawyer in London, she is basically saying she wants to date colleagues, and friends of colleagues. So yes, still a very limited dating pool, but probably fairly achievable if she’s a catch herself, or willing to compromise on other things like looks, interests, etc.

This is an interesting idea.
In a society that constantly pushes coupling up, doing battle with instinct telling you that being single is nicer, people are subconsciously imposing impossible boundaries, so that they don't have to couple up.

I used to work in the city, around lots of men who earnt over 100k. Pretty much all of them ended up with women very much younger than themselves, very attractive, and ended up being stay at home spouses/SAHMs. Your friends need to be aware that whilst they have a right to high standards, so will the men they desire and there is a lot of competition.

Are you familiar with AIBU? It’s a forum about opinions. These are mine.

Also, and this is important, read the last line of the OP. She SPECIFICALLY asks whether she should encourage her friends to change their criteria. So next time, read the actually OP to help you dertermine the context people are responding within.

Hope that clarifies my post for you.

I’m a relatively high earner, and I’d be reluctant to go out with somebody earning significantly less than me, because frankly I don’t want to financially support a new boyfriend from day one. Obviously very different situation if your long term partner can’t work, but I don’t want to start a relationship where the expectation is that I pay for everything, and I’m treated like a walking wallet. Perhaps the OP’s friend has already had that experience and doesn’t want to repeat it.

£100k seems a high cut off to me, but maybe the friend earns £250k, in which case maybe it isn’t.

When you’re in your 20’s it’s easy to meet people, everyone is at their peak of attractiveness and energy and socialising, and most people aren’t married yet. If you get to 30 without managing to find the “dream man” then I think it’s likely he doesn’t exist. It’s only going to become more difficult to find this dream person after 30, as most people are married and focused inwards to their families, your friends have kids and stop socialising as much, and the pool of candidates shrinks and shrinks.

If you haven’t found him by 30 I think you have to have a serious think about your criteria, how realistic it is and what your priorities are. If you want to be a mother then some compromises might be necessary.

I do think some people are not going about dating the right way but it’s not on me to say. I think as well there’s a big difference in what some people mean by settling. You get some posts on MNs from women who are with some awful men and I think no one should settle for that as it’s far better to be single but I think some people can be caught up in unrealistic expectations. I also have someone in my life who doesn’t think pragmatically and it’s all about the butterflies in the stomach feeling, so she ends up in some doomed relationships. The last guy she met was jobless and homeless but that doesn’t factor into anything as when they met she felt a connection.

IME if you accept that there isn’t the exact man you want out there but that even unexpected people can turn out to be exactly what you wanted, it’s so much more productive than waiting for a man to meet your predetermined criteria or settling for someone because he’s there. I’ve had a couple of partners, my most recent ex and my DP, who wouldn’t have ticked off any boxes on my “what I want in a man” list (partly because I don’t make that sort of list but also if I had they wouldn’t have ticked the boxes). Even being brutally honest with myself about which criteria my first LTRs fulfilled, my current DP doesn’t fall within anyone. Sometimes the best thing for you is unexpected and it just takes keeping your eyes open to come across it.

If you haven’t found him by 30 I think you have to have a serious think about your criteria, how realistic it is and what your priorities are. If you want to be a mother then some compromises might be necessary

I agree with this. The older you get, the more likely it is that any partner you meet will have baggage. Thats not bad necessarily, but it is completely natural because the older people get, the more likely it is they'll be divorced, have kids already etc. Lots of my friends on facebook are on their second marriages now. Therefore, compromises will have to be made as people in their late 30s/early 40s arent in the same life stage as people in their 20s.

So many interesting perspectives. To answer some of your questions:

No, it’s not that they’re pretending to have high standards because they actually want to be single. They actually want to get married, have kids etc, and talk about it a lot.
I just think a lot of their peak fertility years have been and continue to be wasted on this ridiculous dating criteria.

@Saschka And yes, we are in London. They’re surrounded by successful men, but a lot are already coupled up.

The last time the 100k friend dated someone that met all her criteria (on paper), he turned out to be a complete douchebag!

There’s also a distinction between settling: thinking this is the best you can get so you have to put up with some things you don’t want, and making peace with the bits of your partner that annoy you or don’t fulfil your dreams of the perfect man.

I settled, I think. Not consciously, but it's the conclusion I came to. We had a good marriage u till we didn't and then a terrible divorce. I have subsequently been single for 15 years. Never been happier. Married life was not for me.

I was single most of my 30's after my divorce and dated a lot of men. I used to think that choosing men based on income and whether they went to university was shallow. However, I quickly found that however pleasant the gardener on NMW was, we had nothing to talk about because our lives and interests were totally unaligned.

I made a point then of not settling for anyone who hadn't gone to university and wasn't in a professional job. I'm a doctor and at the time was doing lots of exams so I needed someone who understood my life. As it was my partner now works in healthcare too, in a senior non clinical role. He earns slightly less than me but not much. He gets the pressures I'm under and he acts as a sounding board for me, as I do for him.

A man who is in a lesser role, who hadn't gone to university and worked hard at their career would just never be one I'd choose.

@Missgemini meaning no offence but those HNW men are very likely to be uncoupled pretty soon. I used to work at a very high-powered law firm where the top earners often had four or five divorces under their belt in their forties.

It only becomes an issue if they never find what they want and miss out on family,children etc or worse get panicked and "settle" with an unsuitable man and become miserable/resentful.

However, in general I believe that it's actually a good thing when women have good standards and boundaries and are strong enough to enforce them.

Yes, I imagine if you dig around, it might not really be about the money at all, they’ll find another barrier. Fear of failure, fear of being hurt, staying single keeps you safe?