When the "Good Men" Retire from The Game

I was on the south side of the metro.  Was no reason to try to battle my way back home during the depths of rush hour, so I drove around, stopping in on different southern-metro friends, even got myself a cigar at one of my favorite cigar lounges.

The GF wasn't getting back till later as she was working for a side client that evening, so I decided to stop by and visit my buddy Craig.  It wasn't much past 8 PM, but you would have thought it was 3 AM when he answered the door.  He was in his plaid pajamas, wearing his old man slippers, and a fleece sweatshirt, I think he even had a cup of tea in his hand. 

Regardless, he was awake and not about to go to bed so we stayed up and chatted a bit.  Talked about his various business ventures, any new ideas he had or was pursuing, and what his financial game plan was for the next 10 years.  We spent nearly an hour discussing nearly every other social, political, career, and entrepreneurial aspect of his life, until I almost forgot that he recently became a bachelor and I never inquired about his dating life.

"So, any word from the girly girl front?"

And all he said was, "No, I have absolutely no energy for that.  I just want to pay the mortgage and go hunting."

And that was it.  That was the summation of his past year of dating life.  "No, I don't have the energy."

It wasn't an editorial comment.  It wasn't one of "I tried, but dem womenz be crazies."  It had no passion or emotion in it.  It was merely a statement of fact:

"No, I don't have the energy for it."

And though I had intuitively known this for a while, it was once again one of those things that had yet to make its way to the frontal lobes, turning itself into a concrete observation.

Men do burn out.

I had speculated about this before.  A theory about whether men have "unlimited energy" when it comes to the pursuit of women, or if there's a finite amount of energy and men will inevitably stop their pursuit.  And though speculate I did a few short years ago, in that time I've gained the experience, observation, and wisdom to realize the later is true.  Men only have a limited amount of energy.  And my friend Craig was proof of it.

Of course, while the fact men do burn out had consequences for my friend Craig, they also have consequences for women in his market.  For while Craig was sitting at home in his PJ's, sipping away at tea, preparing for a speech he had to give the next day at 8PM, it also, by necessary default, meant he wasn't at the bar or the club or online trying to pine for the affections of women.  He wasn't asking women out.  There was one less man on the market.  And one of those proverbial "good men" women are always looking for.

This made for an interesting juxtaposition, for while Craig was sitting there, comfy in his plaid PJ's and old man slippers, he conveyed to me the story of when he last went out socially.  He met up with some old high school buddies of his, mostly of the female persuasion.  They were all in their mid 40's, but while he was focused on work, his career, and various professional associations he joined, the women were all divorced, all had their children at the baby sitters and were living it up like they were 24 again.  Boozing, drinking "woooing."  He said, "I just don't get it.  I did that shit when I was 24.  It's the last thing I'd want to do now!  And here they are thinking it's fun or something."  He didn't leave in disgust, but because of boredom and having "been there done that."

However, the utter lack of anything genuine or intellectually stimulating ultimately led him to the observation and an explanation why he stayed in and had no incentive to even try to go out to date:

The amount of investment required to be successful in dating was not worth what he'd get in return.  And that is why this "Good Man" (TM) was at home with his tea, instead of out there looking in the dating market.  It is also why many 40+ women "can't find a good man."

In the eternal quest for women to "find a good man" and then immediately complaint of "why can't I find a good man" the answer, as always, can be found in economics.

Today, millions of 40 something men like Craig have to face a decision.  Do they spend the time, money, and resources pursuing women or do they invest those resources in something else.  And while at the age of 18 with hormones raging and economic opportunity costs near $0, the decision was a simple one - chase girls, at the age of 43 things are different.

At 43 men have garnered more and more economic success and more and more economic opportunities.  They have also likely develop hobbies, skills, and intellectual endeavors that also provide a positive rate of return on their lives.  And let's not forget they're no longer 19 year old horn-balls raging around the prairie. 

So when they look at what it precisely takes to get a woman on a date, let alone in bed, the costs are daunting:

10 hours a week hitting the clubs/dating sites/"hunting" in general
4,000 calories of energy being witty/funny/engaging to convince a girl to go out on a date
1/4 dates will flake, bail, cancel at the last minute
What dates you do have only stand a 30% chance of leading to a second
The second dates of which only have a 30% chance of leading to a third
And then the "lovely" last-minute-resistance of having sex

All in all you're looking at 2 weeks of labor, time, and money to "maybe" get laid, and that says nothing about whether the girl would qualify as long-term quality girlfriend material.

And while at the age of 18 when you literally had NOTHING else going on in life, no real man of any significance is going to have that much time to piss away on an investment with such a low expected rate of return in his 40's. 

In other words, ladies, the men are just plain burnt out.  They're spent.  When presented with the required investment to "maybe" be successful pursuing a girl, most men post 35 will scoff at it and do something else, hoping something lands in their lap.  And while you may not like that, or may find it "insulting," none of that changes the fact it's true.  The "good men" you are looking for are at home or at the office, and just plain don't have the energy any more to pursue you.

This means, as all major economic upheavals in markets do, that its participants change their actions.  "Wooing" it up at the bar, getting hammered at 43 while your dad subsidizes your child and mortgage is not a product that's going to get an industrious middle aged man to pursue you.  Going to the same old bar and club where the same old guys and men from 1994 using the same old "can I buy you a drink" tactic is going to result in the same results you had the past 20 years.  And wearing the same old clothes, whoring it up, will result in that one night fling you'll fakely claim you regret, but certainly not the "good man" you're looking for. 

Ultimately, you're going to realize that you get to live up to the feminist dream of being truly equal to men now.  You get to hunt, you get to strategize, you get to trial and error your way into finding a "good man."  And while you'll rapidly point out that men are thirsty at the bar for you, and your POF profile is full of e-mails (and that is all certainly true), we all know those aren't the "Good Men" you're looking for because you would have snagged one of them by now and would CERTAINLY not be complaining about the "lack of good men" today. 

So sorry girls.  Once more unto the breach....well, for you it will be the very first time.