If women keep saying there aren’t enough good, marrying-aged, stable men to choose from and men keep saying there are plenty of good men to choose from, except women aren’t choosing those men, which one is right, men or women? Honestly, the answer is closer to, “both” than either party being outright wrong. While there are plenty of reasons for why this situation exist, today I want to focus on the evolution of the lazy man and how his rise to power complicates the dating environment for everyone…
In the Beginning
When it comes to pursuing women, most modern men of potential marrying age and reasonable stability are lazy.There, I said it. There are a number of reasons why men are lazy, and not all of those reasons are their fault, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are lazy when it comes to dating, courting, and well, just about anything that doesn’t directly benefit them or have a defined, measurable return on investment. How did this happen?
Most young (and some grown) men are not self-sufficient.
When men are young and generally have nothing to offer the dating pool other than game, a winning smile and a charming personality, they are beyond aggressive when it comes to pursuing women. More importantly, they don’t need to justify their pursuits. The only thing they desire is the company of a woman. They don’t demand that she know how to cook, remain beautiful at all times and always weigh a certain amount, or whatever other arbitrarily subjective measurement of a woman Twitter/Facebook is arguing about this week. No, all men want for their efforts when they’re young is a woman.
If you disagree, you need travel no further than your local 18 – 21+ club and bask in the the vigor those young men will demonstrate in their pursuit of everything that resembles a woman. It’s almost awe-inspiring. Using myself as an example, my college-aged friends and I literally referred to this period as, “chasing” or “putting in work.”
Note: If you’re like the psychologist from the beginning of Baby Boy whose narrative explored the unspoken meaning of words behind black men referring to their home as “the crib” and their friends as “boys,” you might take a moment to reflect on the meaning behind the various slang terms men use to opine on their feelings toward any given number of actions. Above, we referred to approaching women as “work” in one instance, even though many women think approaching women is easy and men enjoy doing so. This is not necessarily the same viewpoint men have of the action, but we recognize it is a necessary evil as a means to an end – meeting women. As another slang term goes, “a close mouth doesn’t get fed.” However, when’s the last time you referred to a hobby you enjoyed as “work”?
Since we didn’t have much to offer women in the form of drinks and other material purchases (a nice way of saying we were broke), we had to find a way to get women to find us interesting, worthy of their time & phone numbers, and worthy of their companionship by using some form of persuasion involve significant monetary expenditures. Compare your younger observations with a club; lounge; or happening spot where marriageable-aged people frequent. Of course, if the atmosphere of places where you hang out isn’t noticeably different from when you were closer to 21 versus 31, then you might want to re-evaluate some other areas of your life. No judgement!
As we get older and our station in life improves, men start to become, you guessed it, lazier. Before, we’d go to the club and we’d consider it a “bad night” if we didn’t get at least 10+ numbers between the group. In our mid-20s, we found we spent less and less time in the sole pursuit of women. Quality overtook quantity. Why chase after 10 numbers from five 2′s, three 5′s, and two 7′s, when we could apply ourselves and maybe get 3 numbers from two 8′s and one 10?
Some nights we were content simply heading out and having a good time. If we got 10 numbers or 0 numbers it really didn’t matter. The experience became greater than the pursuit. It wasn’t that we weren’t interested in meeting women. It’s that our priorities changed. Meeting a woman or group of women was cool, but it wasn’t the only determining factor for whether we had a “good night,” especially when experience had taught us that the majority of women we meet will not result in something particularly meaningful – and that was ok. We can all have a good time and it doesn’t have to go anywhere (see the VIP lounge). But, as men, we had to find other measures of what defined a good time besides meeting large quantities of strange women with no future beyond 24-hours.
We slowly accepted that we didn’t have to live the “YOLO” lifestyle every night, because chances are we could do it again another weekend, in another club, or in another city. While we didn’t see it this way as men, women began to view our approaches as increasingly lazier. They were right, too. We weren’t chasing them as much and some in the group even began to declare that they were over chasing women and putting in work, period. They were “retiring.” When it came to courting, some men were content becoming more like…women.
Instead of pursuing women and impressing them, these men began to expect women to pursue and impress them (known as ‘Diva Dudes’ in some circles). In their minds, they had put in sufficient work in their younger days. Now that they were in a better place, their expectations of what they should be expected to do to meet women changed as well. As a former well-paid Director confided in me once, “you have to work really hard to get to a point where you don’t hardly work.”
Rise of the Lazy Man
Today, right or wrong, it’s as if modern men have to be sold on the benefits of a committed relationship/marriage. Entire groups of marriageable-aged men are perfectly content not approaching, courting, or putting in any significant amount of work to meet marriageable-aged women. Even worse, a lot of them don’t have to. Grown men whom I’ve personally witnessed chase women across clubs, lounges, bars, parking lots, stores and everywhere in between in their youth now see a woman of interest and let her walk on by, no Isaac Hayes. “There’ll be another one,” they claim in tones ranging from apathy to contempt.
When men are young, women treat them like they aren’t in demand and they’re not afraid to let him know it. As an older man, he has the opportunity to feel what it’s like to be in demand himself, which dictates how he approaches dating. As the saying goes, “absolute power, corrupts absolutely.” In some cases, these men becoming increasingly lazy and their search for women is itself much pickier. Before, he was simply looking for a woman; whereas now he is looking for a wife, maybe. Although, without balance, his standards/preferences may dictate that any woman he settles down with must be perfect.
Rather than pursue 10 women in which he might only have moderate interest; he focuses on the one or two women he has a definite interest in. So, in addition to being lazy, ”good men” are selectively approaching; whereas, women are still approached by the same young men and men who have nothing to offer, since these men must overcome having less by approaching more. Since many women – regardless of age – wait for men to approach them, it might seem like there are fewer “good men” available, because from her perspective it’s rare that a “good man” ever shows up.
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