Are there any decent men out there ?!

[lemonbabe]

I'm in my early 40's and separated. At first I was quite excited by the thought of meeting a normal, loving man and building a future together. Fastforward a couple of years down the line and a trail of failed relationships/dates and I'm becoming more and more disillusioned with men. It seems virtually impossible to meet someone who's not already taken, gay or mentally unstable. Is it the age ? Is is modern life ? Is it men being @rses ? Or all of the above ? It's hard being a single parent, doing everything alone. Friends are great of course but I'd love to meet someone special. I just feel too young to throw in the towel and begin imagining the rest of my life alone. Anyone feeling the same ?

I went on a few dates with a 'new' widower and it was awful. (She'd died about 15 months earlier) After about 5 dates he was really clingy and suffocating, and made me feel like I was being too fussy not to continue dating him. I tried to end it and he managed to persuade me that as I never got past 3 dates I just didn't know what real life/relationships were, unlike him of course. I know all widowers are different but he needed a raft and therapy. Even though I hadn't considered introducing him to my kids he was implying that he would have to think carefully about whether he wanted to be around somebody like me He made me feel like some malevolent female presence his kids would need to be protected from whilst simultaneously trying to lock me down through guilt and inferences that I was delusional not to cling to him.

ps, wriggled out of that after about 6 or 7 dates and blocked him on WhatsApp and POF. A while later he created a new POF account and contacted me with a sneer to ask if I'd met somebody better than him yet.

Give me a divorced man any day of the week. Sorry for multiple posts there. That experience totally changed my perception of widowers.

The problem is some of these single men do not branch out and mix/socialise so they do not realise they need to work on themselves and just generally cheer up. Of course a bereavement will run its own course but if they aren't ready they shouldn't just rush after a woman to fix them they should take time to recover and join something. Meet up dot com or gym/squash anything.

I was losing the will last year - another idiot guy who didn't know what he wanted messing me about. Was about to give up then went on a date with my now BF - hot, lovely, bright, thoughtful, fun, feminist (!!!) and just utterly wonderful! Just celebrated my 40th together back at my parents and they think he's fab too.

I think there are good guys out there but it takes perseverance and that means having rock solid boundaries and not putting up with crap so you are in a good place when a nice guy does come along.

(Obvs this could all go tits - but it's been brilliant so far!)

There is also an occasional man out there who has potential but needs coaching and steering in the right direction on a subtle level.

If you can be bothered that is.

17/03/2014 15:44 MadeMan

"...but when I ask them to name me some decent single women they know and could introduce me to, blank faces."

It could well be why men go for younger, less encumbered women but I think it's down to looks personally.

Ive noticed though that if you take any sample of friends, they all seem to be similar, so all single or all married - it's very rare that couples mix with singles (unless the single person is newly single where previously they were in a couple). It's the same with the child-free and thise with children. People just dont mux because their lifestyles are different.

That's why as a single childfree woman, I know lots of other single childfree women. I dont know any single childfree men though and couples wont socialise with singles.

Anybody else feel this?

Loving dogman by the way!

I get this too as a single parent. Couples and wives shun us socially but generally I find single parents and single women without children far more interesting company to start with. In general that is.

I am always up for hearing from people who live near me and are single women or single parents if anybody wishes to message me! I am in my early fifties have a 12 year boy and live in the middle of the country. Without stating exactly where I live.

Perhaps we could meet as I scarcely know any independent women who don't have a boyfriend where I live. They don't seem to know how to function without one, even if they choose not to live with them they see them an awful lot. Up to them of course but does not leave me with any social options. Also meet up is a bit limiting where I live so that website isn't an option.

Sorry if I am going off the point of the thread!

So true. Married friends have reprimanded me for OLD !! Ive been told "the way to meet men is through friends". I felt l8ke saying :"which friends? Cos you're my friends. A lovely single colleague fixed me up on a blind date with her brother! We liked each other as friends. But I appreciated it.

It is very hard to meet men "through friends"
It's OLD or stay single forever I think.

There is meet up dot com for social groups and there the focus isn't on finding a partner so you get out and mingle.

I think if you are a single parent with children to care for, OLD must be massively draining. I would hate it. Also it would take a lor for me to want to date someone, so nothing worse than having to spend an evening with someone you don't click, whilst paying for a babysitter etc

I also second the idea that it is hard to fund a good partner at any age. I met my fair share of idiots in my 20s and 30s...

I also agree I would rather be with someone divorced and with kids as they would have more in common with me and understand what it is like juggling priorities.

Having said that I am happily married right now, so maybe the reality would feel different...

There are no decent men your age out there. Single older men are a pathetic species and they want to go out with supermodels 20 years younger than them because they have a massive over inflated sense of self worth.
Get a cat and save yourself the grief.
A prime example of this is a flat I went to see yesterday, I was cosnidering it to buy to let. Single 50 year old bloke lives in the flat underneath, has let the front garden go to shit, his back garden looks like a minefield where all the mines have gone off, the front gate is hanging off the hinges. I knocked at his door because I wanted to ask him about the shared freehold and the interior was a depressing shithole. He had a scruffy beard and his flat was a tip.
This is what single men are like over 40 - if you find one be prepared to be his servant while he sits in front of the box.
I'd concentrate on women friends and your own social life like I do.

I have some lovely single male colleagues in their 40s. However, they are mostly shy, geeky blokes who have "given up" on the idea of romance and are just quietly making comfortable lives for themselves as bachelors. Most of them would faint with fright if a woman approached them (okay, I work in a very geeky environment, so these guys are probably not typical - but they are lovely people).

However, on OLD, my experience from browsing sites is the same as Mermaid's above - the blokes who go for OLD want women 10 to 20 years younger than themselves. And blokes 20 years older than me (I'm in my 50s) are, frankly, too old for me. I still want to do active, outdoorsy stuff. A guy in his 70s wouldn't be able to do this - or at least not for long. (Before anyone says that's shallow, and their parents still love each other dearly in their 70s, reflect that there's a huge difference between growing old together after 40 years of a fulfilling marriage, and signing up to a relationship with someone who's already old.)

So I potter along being single. It's not bad. I have my emotional needs met by friends and family, I have a lovely son, life is actually pretty good.

I was single for 4 years and because I'm no looker and coming into my mid 30s in London I thought I'd just better get used to it. Tried OLD earlier in my 20s, it wasn't much fun then, and my friends who were doing it post 30 said now it was just a lawless hinterland of entitled sociopaths and rampant sexism.

So I was tootling along just focusing on work and friends when suddenly I met a friend of a mutual friend last May at a BBQ. He's 10 years older than me, never married no kids. The thing is until a few years previously he'd been very overweight due to various self confidence reasons. Now he's a healthy size. He had some 6/12 month relationships that didn't work. He still thought he'd never really meet anyone and was just trying to be happy as a bachelor.

We hit it off - the main things are he's kind, generous, thoughtful, makes an effort, funny, talkative and outgoing (where I am an introvert). We're engaged and will get married next year.

But by god was he a fixer upper. His bachelor flat was a pit (funny how when people have sort of given up on relationships their home gets really grotty), he had some ED issues that we are working through and it's getting better (thank you, viagra, from the depths of my heart), his hair (and eyebrows and ear hair) needed a good sorting out. His tummy will never be a rippling six pack (TBF neither will mine...).

It's funny - I never thought I would end up with a guy like him but here I am very happy.

No point to make - other than to emphasise you don't know when it's going to happen, there are good 40+ men out there but they probably need a bit of a fair light and following wind to see their best side to start off.

A large percentage of decent men in their 30's and older are already taken. It's that simple and very depressing. I have dated loads of divorced men and after a few dates with many of them I can see why they are divorced.

I've got ten years on you and just cannot for the life of me see another relationship happening. It's part of why I'm finding it so hard to move on.

What nastywoman16 says is on the one hand encouraging perhaps but it also sounds like settling and a lot of work. Saying that, when I started internet dating 18 months ago I set my height settings to about 5'8" and now I'm dating a man who is (he says) 5'7" but I think he's a great guy. No idea if I'm settling for him or if he's settling for me. He's my age and perhaps that's settling for him. Everybody says all men want women 10-15 years younger. But unless women are all accepting that entitlement the men will remain on the shelf. As an hilarious poster on here (Trills perhaps) said the men who want to date women 15 years younger than they are at home making mashed potato for one.

Making mashed potato for one I love that!

Mermaid How ridiculous, sexist and condescending and what a sweeping generalisation.

I'm a 43 year-old single man. I am not widowed or divorced. I have been single some years following the break up of an 11-year relationship with a woman who was 10 years older than I was (so, there's one of your "facts" about men only wanting supermodels 20 years younger blown out of the water). When I was using OLD (which I hated), I looked for women 5 years older or 5 years younger.

Oh, and my flat is not a shit tip, and my back garden is well kept. Two statements I can't make about my neighbouring flats, where one is an absolute shit tip inside and the other's garden is full of dog shit. Oddly enough, both are lived in (and we all own) by single women, non-parents, in their early 40s. However, I don't assume all single women are the same, otherwise

I also don't have a beard.

Most single men I know keep tidy homes. I think it depends on the person.

Yes, it depends. My own dear brother, his apartment is the dirtiest filthiest petri dish i've ever passed through quickly. I dated a ''commitment-phobe'' last year and unfortunately his house was clean, white, uncluttered, minimalist and everything he brought was classic, retro or Danish and generally beautiful in its simplicity. I dated a love-bomber after him and his 700 sq foot apartment was horrendously cluttered and it stank of mould. The first time I walked in to it I felt revulsion which I did my best to mask but it was hard. He was storing his ex wife's first (late) husband's record collection - argh. It gave me hope though, that one day a woman will not be put off by my brother's apartment ;-p

I say unfortunately because it only made me believe fool fool that we were super compatible.

Maybe these non-decent men read MN and see the number of times women have been told not to worry about being single, being single is great because it allows you to do what you want, when you want, you don't need to worry about what anyone else things and if you want to leave the place untidy, it's your place and you can do what you want?

True. But then there are a lot of us singles on the marie-kondo thread too! We chuck out what doesn't spark joy! crappy novels, spare sieves, jackass layabouts, out it all goes! I read Mermaid's post and thought, wow, that's kind of how I try not to feel when I've just been screwed over by a jackass I was too good for anyway. We're all allowed to hit a trough I think. OLD is hard, but I've only met 22 men and I seem to have met a good one. I was willing to keep going to 50 before I gave up for ever! I still want a tidy house though. I could have built a kitchen extension with the money I've spent on babysitters going out to meet men it didn't work out with. That is a bit shocking. But all a learning curve.

I've been off the dating scene for a while now - although still single, sadly - but despite meeting some total flakes, or women who were dating when they shouldn't have been because they weren't over their ex, or women who lied about the fact they had kids, or women who revealed they had lied about their age, or who felt men should pay for every day.... I could go on. Despite all that I don't believe for one minute there are no decent women out there or make the sort of comment Mermaid does.