Mid-life break ups - do men find it easier to find new partners?

[Whatsgoingonwithmyhead]

The men I know of who have become single again in mid-life (late 30s onwards) all seem to have found it easy to find new female partners (including both new flings & new long term relationships), irrespective of objective attractiveness.

Whereas women have found it harder, even if attractive.

Is this a thing?

And at least 6 will already be thinking about theses talk they’re going to try and ‘charm’ you with

Whereas a woman will get dozens!!

True. Most of them being 'fancy a hookup? No? SLUT!' and 'here's a picture of my aubergine'

Yep I've found this aswell
Starting to consider that being single for the foreseeable is how it's going to be ripe old age of 41, where's my ex has had 6+ boyfriends since we split 3 years ago .. but she does get every weekend to " mingle " so this is again possibly why.
More free time to meet people it seems

Try winking at 10 different guys and I guarantee you’ll get a response from at least 7 of them!!
I wouldn't do that as, like most women, I don't want sex pests thinking that I am a good target. I don't want them sending me pictures of their penis. I don't want them searching for me on Google based on the few pieces of information they can glean from my profile. I don't want them acting pleasant and arranging a date, then turning up at the date, assaulting me and saying that I must want it as I was the one who approached them.
Imagine a guy trying that!!? lol
Imagine a woman doing that and it could help you attract women. Empathy is a big turn-on :)

Whenever I go out with my mid 40s married girlfriends , there is always a period of the evening where they moan about their husbands together.

Men not:
Showering for 10+ days
Picking their clothes off the floor
Doing anything in the home
Pulling their weight with the kids
Accepting no sex
Initiating or wanting sex
Organising their lives

The list is endless...

Wherever I say, then ditch them, don't put up with it, the safety and security of the marriage is too much for them to contemplate leaving. They prefer the bad relationship to being single.

I've had a FWB for a few years now. See each other every fortnight or so. Enjoy hanging out together. Talk about life issues at times. We have absolutely no ties to each other and no desire to merge our lives.

His clothes are often lying over his bedroom. I don't care.
He may not shower for 10 days. I would only care if he'd not showered before he saw me.
Sex always is on the agenda when we meet up.
Up to him to organise his life
Up to him to do jobs round his house

I have no part in any of this and I really love it this way. It would need to be a very good man offering a very good relationship before I was willing to give up the contentment I have.

There's a theory called the mid-30s flip which suggests this is indeed the case.

I was listening to the Love on the Go podcast where two matchmakers/online dating coaches were giving their perspective as to why they primarily work with men - their male clients were a lot less fussy than the women they worked with - as long as you match them with someone attractive and fit they don’t care about anything else. Sad but probably not far off from reality.

Biologically women are wired to look for different things in our mate than men. Reproduction is a much larger undertaking for women and highly risky in terms of maternal and infant health.

With no support or any help for physical protection and attaining food and shelter, a woman alone and pregnant or with an infant/young child in ancient (and not so ancient) times was in serious danger of death.

Therefore women (generally) want to take longer sizing up their potential mate to establish if he is going to stick around to help keep her and their child alive. The 3 Ps of Masculinity: Paternity, Protection and Provision.

Physical health and attractiveness in men is obviously important to women in terms of reproduction, but it's not enough. It's highly risky to just chose a mate on looks alone.

For men the reproductive risk is that no woman will choose them for reproduction, so their bar is a lot lower. As long as a woman is halfway decent and willing to bear his child that fulfills all the necessary requirements.

A form of marriage developed in all societies (before reliable contraception) so that not only would each party be required to stick around for their biological offspring, but so the rest of the tribe/society could prepare them for parenthood.

I am not suggesting that we are choosing our partners on such crude biological criteria these days, but that the biological tendencies of mate selection is still present with a lot of social layering.

Just read this by Stevie Nicks about whether she would want to get back together with Lindsay Buckingham, and it made me think of this thread:

"Nicks had a less ambiguous outlook. "Over my dead body," she told the magazine. "See, I don't want to be part of that darkness. He knows that. When we're up there singing songs to each other, we probably say more to each other than we ever would in real life. If you offered me a passionate love affair and you offered me a high-priestess role in a fabulous castle above a cliff where I can just, like, live a very spiritual kind of religious-library-communing-with-the-stars, learning kind of existence, I'm going to go for the high priestess."

Thing is, approaching menopause and as older women the priestess is so much more enticing, but when we are teens/young adults at the height of our fertility our body, including our mind generally prefers the passionate affair option.

Unless the world and everything in it will cease to exist, most who desire partnership can find it. . at any age.

There's billions of people in the world.
There's always options to choose from.

There are various reasons why people remain single.

Men and women both have it "easy" in regards to finding partnership.

I think a lot of men struggle to be alone and don’t consider anyone but themselves.

I was absolutely flabbergasted when my ex had been cheating with me with our next door neighbour, he had called her awful names over the years and detested her two children.

I was even more shocked when after she moved he actually moved in with her despite hating the kids. Her sons moved out due to them clashing.

He’s nothing but a cocklodger who works cash in hand, and can’t stop boozing. Our oldest son has disowned him and he’s missed out on the last few years of his childhood.

In the meantime I’ve re-built my life, enjoyed holidays with my children and time with friends. I can’t see me meeting anyone anytime soon as my youngest is only 5.

Progress has largely replaced things that Men as the bigger and stronger gender used bring to a partnership.

Physical security - Police and Army
Basic needs for self & children - Welfare system
Work - now mostly knowledge based rather than physical labour

But has failed to replace the things we provide

Sex
Childrearing and care
Emotional and organisational support

So yes, no surprise we are just fine on our own.

lol. Yep. That’s the typical feminist mindset. I don’t need a man. It’s all about what he can provide, or do for you. Nothing about love and companionship. Good luck to you.

Given that most men are overtly looking for what a woman will provide (in wifework, with the companionship and love being part of that wifework), I’m not sure why you’re framing this as dreadful feminists.

Many of us have plenty of experience of love and companionship where, actually, we were the ones doing all the work and not getting much back. When you find that you have to be the one doing 90+% of the caring (which is what the love and companionship is supposed to be), you might decide that actually he is bringing nothing to the table at all. Even more so if he starts getting angry about being ‘neglected’ and ‘ignored’ if you scale your effort down to merely 80% of the effort.

Maybe women don’t need to be scared of being alone (which is the implication of ‘good luck to you’ following a statement about how they don’t value ‘companionship and love’).

My take on it is men set their bar lower, in so much as someone is better than no one.

I know of some men who found new partners very quickly but it ended after a few years. They compromised and eventually that became clear to all parties.

I'd say it's far easier for the average woman to find a relationship than it is for the average man.

The two key factors though:

1. They struggle to find a man they actually want. Particularly online women are mostly swiping on the same few men and ignoring most of the rest.

2. Once a lot of women get into middle age/post-divorce they aren't that interested in relationships so set the bar high. The women who do want relationships will typically find them.

It's not that post divorce/middle aged women don't want relationships.
It's that being single is less bad than the thought of dating the men on offer (which is usually men who are 15 years older and in poor shape)

Men pursue beauty while women pursue capability.

After mid-30s the tables turn. Women no longer have the same power as they did in their 20s.

You've got to love generalisations right?

Absolutely. I’ve been single several years as have most of my friends. We would all love to have a relationship but just haven’t found any men that we connect with.
I don’t think our bar is ridiculous, just someone to click with but there’s very little out there

And I imagine he feels exactly the same, no one to nag him about picking up his clothes or do and jobs around the house that he doesn’t want to and sex on the agenda, I would imagine he is as happy as you are really

I think that’s really common actually, you see all these comments about middle aged men dating younger women & why is that? Because they can really,
these middle aged men have probably come out of relationships/ marriages with middle aged women and have no desire to get involved with another middle aged woman

Or the men that are out there are just not interested in connecting with you ?

the connections have to work both ways

I've noticed men are generally far less picky than women. Friends who are open to dating again (and many just aren't!) have learnt a lot from their exes and relationships. Men seem to just settle for the next woman who shows an interest, occaisionally swapping them in/cheating to ensure they don't have longer gaps. I don't think that means it is any easier for them than women, but man are just happy to be with someone asap (suspect for cooking/cleaning/mothering/sex rather than genuine affection given some of the choices I've seen!).