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Developing “Boyfriend Radar”
This is an advice column that I wrote for San Diego's Gay & Lesbian
Times magazine. In it, the writer says that as he gets older, it's
harder for him to meet someone who has both an attractive body and
personality. He asks me for my advice.
By
Michael Kimmel
Dear Michael:
I
am in my 40’s and the older I get, the harder it is for me to find
guys that I really want to date. Am I getting too picky? If so, is
this bad or good? When I was younger, I easily got laid and found
plenty of men who I considered potential boyfriends. Now, I rarely
meet anyone who has BOTH an attractive body and personality. Does
this mean I’ll probably be alone for the rest of my life because my
standards have gotten higher as I get older and wiser?
Not
sure this is a good thing
Dear
Not Sure:
First
of all, I hope you can relax when I tell you that you are totally
normal. It’s common for most of us to get more selective as we get
older. With wisdom comes discernment. When we’re young and
experimenting with who we are and what we like, any guy looks like a
possible lover. We usually don’t have very refined “filters” yet. In
our 30’s, we start to fine-tune who we are, what we want and don’t want
in our work, friends and lovers and naturally narrow the scope of what
we find acceptable and desirable. Not that we have to become bitter and
rigid. We still – if we’re emotionally healthy – keep meeting new
people all the time, but we don’t just automatically open our lives, our
hearts and our legs to them.
As we
enter our 40’s, most of us are clear on what we want in a
boyfriend/partner. We’ve probably been on dozens (hundreds?) of dates
and slept with many, many men. We have clarity about the kinds of guys
we really connect with, those that are merely “OK” and those that are
unacceptable to us. In the course of therapy, most of my clients
realize that they want the same basic qualities in their lovers that
they have in their closest friends…plus sexual attraction. If your
boyfriend is radically different (morally, ethically, personality- or
interest-wise) from your best buddies, there’s probably something off.
Similar values and ethics are among the most crucial commonalities for
the happiness and longevity of a relationship. After all, as you and
your future husband get older, what will the two of you do when you no
longer go out all the time? If your conversation doesn’t flow, there’s
not much laughter, you have radically ideas of what’s right and wrong,
and you haven’t much in common, your relationship may not make it. A
recent article (on loving relationships) in Psychology Today claims:
“you may be attracted to your opposite, but if you want the relationship
to last, you need lots in common as well”. continued
