Destined for lifelong bachelorhood...

[marshmlofluff]

I think you might be over analyzing the situation a bit. Your goal should not be to change your personality to fit the expectations of some woman who wants you to have a certain career path. Your goal should be to find a woman who is on a relatively similar trajectory as yourself. Someone who craves physical intimacy but isn't really married to corporate culture or jumping from one nice job to the next. People like that are out there. You're proof of that. Now it's just a matter of finding a female counterpart and going from there.

 

Yup.

 

And you know, when you are looking for something specialized that may not be available at your local Wal-Mart the Net can be a great place to turn. Although there is a tendency on eNA to malign the Internet as a means to meeting people, what applies to finding a good backpack can certainly apply to finding the right partner, too!

 

On an unrelated note, I will also add that you don't know what you yourself will be like, or what you will like, in the future.

 

If ten years ago someone had told me that I would be tired of my field, tired of a nomadic, unstable life, tired of teaching, or that I would care about how much money I made, I wouldn't have believed it. And if someone told me that I would ever be thinking of dropping my academic career and moving to be closer to a man, I would have tossed my head, looked in his eyes, and laughed.

 

The last laugh, of course, would have been on me. Sometimes when you meet the right person, or maybe just when you reach a particular stage of life, your priorities change. When you find happiness with someone, you want to keep it, and suddenly you really *do* want to settle down...

 

Not that everyone necessarily will go through the same process, but I suppose I am just saying that people change. Because you feel one way now doesn't necessarily mean you will always feel that way; the right person coming along at the right time can change one's outlook on life dramatically.

 

And finally, on relationships, responsibility, and freedom, an article link removed quotes Hegel as saying

 

"In love I regard you as of such value and importance that I spontaneously set aside my egoistic desires and interests and align them with yours: your ends are my desires, I desire that you flourish, and when you flourish I do, too. In love, I experience you not as a limit or restriction on my freedom, but as what makes it possible: I can only be truly free and so truly independent in being harmoniously joined with you; we each recognize the other as endowing our life with meaning and value, with living freedom.”

 

So...well, I will leave it there, as I can't say it better than Hegel did--except to add that if and when the right person comes along, perhaps commitment, and love, and responsibility will not feel like a burden.

[Puddincup]

"In love I regard you as of such value and importance that I spontaneously set aside my egoistic desires and interests and align them with yours: your ends are my desires, I desire that you flourish, and when you flourish I do, too. In love, I experience you not as a limit or restriction on my freedom, but as what makes it possible: I can only be truly free and so truly independent in being harmoniously joined with you; we each recognize the other as endowing our life with meaning and value, with living freedom.”

 

So...well, I will leave it there, as I can't say it better than Hegel did--except to add that if and when the right person comes along, perhaps commitment, and love, and responsibility will not feel like a burden.

 

Wow, that Hegel really has a very high ideal of what love is. I am happy when my bf opens my car door!!! I cannot imagine being that devoted to someone or having them be that devoted to me. It is almost as if your partner's desires are more important than your own and that is truly difficult to sustain. For those of you who do, however, my hat is off to you.

[LAYAAN]

If you are a man, you will NOT be a lifelong bachelor unless you CHOOSE to be that way. I can bet my life on it. You WILL get a girl if you project your image as marriage minded/one-woman man.

I watch in TV, news, jerry springer show what kinda men women choose to stay with. Not saying you are a bad guy at all. I don't know you. The point is, you WILL get a girl. Now, you may not get a certain type, but you won't stay bachelor. You may need to loosen your expectations a bit.

The truth is - beauty treads with money. That is a general rule. There are exceptions, definitely. Not many though.

[Clarity]

There's women who post on here all the time that their husband or BF doesn't have a job or a career but that they love them to bits nonetheless. As a man who has worked hard for his career and still has trouble finding women, I'll admit that frustrates me sometimes - but it should give you hope. There are women out there who could care less if you provide stability, they just care if they have fun when they're with you.

 

So if you want to use your career situation as an excuse for being single, go ahead, but it's not the reason you're single.

[Batya33]

I didn't need my husband to "provide" stability, I needed him to be financially stable just like I was (the relevant point) and I wanted someone with a similar work ethic and values when it came to education, life goals, family, etc. There's a world of shades of gray between "married to corporate culture" and "chronically unemployed/don't care". Right now I am not working outside the home (I am working my tail off taking care of our son, joyfully) and am just as much of a financial provider as my husband is because I planned for this time, financially. Of course the assumption is that a woman who is not working outside the home is financially dependent on her husband but my guess is that is often a wrong assumption (as it is in our case).

 

I don't relate well to women who expect a man to provide 100% of the financial support at all times without any attempt to build their own nest egg - of course people can't always control employment or what happens in life as far as money, so I am referring more to the mindset/attitude.

[LAYAAN]

right, I can understand what Batya is saying. But let me break it down.

- A successful woman, who has a job, has her life together, may not get together with a man just so he provides for her/her needs/luxuries.

- A successful woman, who has a job, has her life together, will look for a man who is at a similar level in areas like finances, general attitude towards life, sometimes education, in other words has his life together.

- Very rarely a woman who has her life together will get together with a man who is just wasting his time, has no goals, ambition, puts in no efforts towards achieving that. If she does get together with such a man, most likely that would be for sex/boy-toy. But that woman will not respect the guy and won't think about him for a stable romantic relationship.

 

It is well known that most women prefer to marry up, if not that, at least equal.

 

I would have a hard time mentally adjusting with myself if I was together with a lazy guy with no goals, no education. I would not have much difficult time supporting the guy if he is in between jobs and doing something to fill in this gap in his professional life. Like I said, I need to see efforts, talent, ethics. Rest is luck. You can't control that.

[AuthenticAuthor]

IntoTheWild--I'm the same way. I've been alone for pretty much all of my life, and I enjoy it. I have FWB, and I find I don't need anything more than that. The threads on here (and things I see in offline life) have made me convinced that I'm better off this way. I can't imagine dealing with that kind of limited freedom.

 

Yes, freedom. Its amazing how much we lose sight of all the other important things when we start obsessing of finding "the one". We fail to see that which is right in front of us. The ship that we have neglected to build or repair. The ship that is you. It takes you through adventures, defends those in need, and if you happen to meet someone who wishes to share its journey with you then all the better.

[marshmlofluff]

IntoTheWild--I'm the same way. I've been alone for pretty much all of my life, and I enjoy it. I have FWB, and I find I don't need anything more than that. The threads on here (and things I see in offline life) have made me convinced that I'm better off this way.

 

I would be cautious about putting too much stock in the threads on here as a representative cross-section of life. People generally turn to ENA because they are lonely or unhappy, or because their relationships are on the rocks. There are forums for Suicide, Break ups, Relationship Conflicts, all that--but nothing called "Happy Relationships."

 

After reading many threads on here I myself became paranoid about relationships, but then looking around myself returned me to reality: Most of my friends are, and have remained, quite happily married.