Love is a Man's world

B"H

I have noticed over the years that for men, the pool available to them love wise is like a pyramid. For women, however, it is an inverted pyramid.

For those of you who don't understand what I mean by this, as men get older, there are more available women whereas for women, as we get older, there are fewer men available.

Why is this? There are several things that contribute to this. But the main two reasons for the pyramid phenomenon are disproportionate number of male deaths at each age level vs. female deaths and the disproportionate number of older men marrying younger women vs. older women marrying younger men.

When I was younger, I initially went with the flow, so to speak, looking for men who were older than I. When I was 20 or 21, I went out with someone who was 32. But over the years, I have found that while I may go out once or twice with a man who is older than I, but the men I end up having longer relationships with (this I define as more than two dates) are generally younger (the last two are 8 years younger than I).

The problem, of course, is that once a woman gets past a certain age, she is in that age range that men avoid like the plague -- she's in the dead biological clock zone (cue theme song from a certain 60s sci-fi program -- di-di-di-di, di-di-di-di.... cue blood-curdling scream). And, once you enter that zone, men who are up to 10 years older than you consider you "too old".

The weirdest thing is that this happens even with men who already have children and men who claim they don't want children anymore. For some bizarre reason men have these "rules" in their heads and, for the most part, they have decided that men should be older, taller, smarter, stronger..... but the woman should be better looking. Those are the rules. And most men cling to these rules no matter what.

I have actually met a few men for whom this isn't true. But, for the most part, the men I run across are slaves to these rules. And this is a shame because they don't know what they're missing.

Men, for the most part, have this need to procreate, but often have no matching need to help with the raising. Despite advances in feminism, women still perform the bulk of the parenting jobs but it's the men who need to have children. But for some reason, unless they happen to marry and then find out that they can't have children, they won't even consider adoption. There are many children out there who are already born and who need loving parents and a stable home. Being a parent to these children is a mitzva. But most men use children as a means of attaining some level of immortality, not as a way to follow Hashem's example of giving love. Raising the children who really need love is more Hashem-like, in my humble opinion. And it would be nice if there were more single men willing to give love to these children. And it would be really nice if there were more single men who would see women as more than just incubators.