I’m a 39-Year-Old Divorced Woman, and There’s 1 Infuriating Phrase I Keep Seeing on Dating Apps
16th October 2024
Huffington Post. (Of course.)
This kind of ‘female-entitlement’ attitude is at the root of a lot of today’s problems.
I became a single mother seven years ago. I ended my marriage because I simply wasn’t happy, wasn’t in love and believed I deserved to feel fulfilled. I didn’t want to merely exist in life or in my most important relationship. I wanted to be my authentic self. I wanted more.
This is why over 50% of marriages end in divorce, and over 80% of divorces are initiated by women. (Lesbian ‘marriages’ have the same problems.) The modern woman is a thoroughgoing Disney Princess: It’s all about her, she’s the prize, she deserves the Handsome Prince who will sweep her off her feet and deliver her to that great castle in the sky where she will be waited on hand and foot and be beautiful and adored forever after. When reality breaks into this fantasy, they continue on their hypergamous quest; whatever they had, even though that’s what they chose, isn’t good enough. As the author bluntly says, she wants more. She believes that she ‘deserves to feel fulfilled’.
She might want to wish for a pony while she’s at it.
My estranged husband and I divided our things and worked out a custody arrangement. I worried about the criticism I’d receive for making what still so often feels like an unpopular choice. I wondered if I’d be able to support myself and my kids. But I didn’t worry about dating, or whether it would be hard or scary. I didn’t worry about never finding someone or being alone for the rest of my life — not once.
After all, she’s a Disney Princess. Hot rich guys are just lined up to submit their applications. All she has to do is hang out the OPEN sign.
I had flings and some relationships, none which lasted very long. But each time I dusted myself off and returned to the apps — the place where most romantic connections begin these days — I started to feel a greater and greater sense of dread. It wasn’t exactly that I had grown tired of meeting people. It was that I started to feel as if I was no longer what a growing number of men were looking for.
Men aren’t looking for a Disney Princess. They’re looking for a wife, someone who will be a homemaker and a mother and a member of their team. They’re not looking for a diva. This is the harsh reality that they can never wrap their heads around. They’re also looking for someone quite a bit younger and more fertile with a lot less mileage. Don’t blame me–blame evolution.
Whether they were 28 or 58, they all claimed to want someone who “doesn’t take herself too seriously.” I saw the line again and again, on profile after profile. Bumble, Hinge, Tinder or The Stir (the dating app for single parents), it was all the same: This unserious woman request was everywhere. I couldn’t swipe through five profiles without seeing it. Each time I’d furrow my brow and spit out, “Nope!” Still, after the past few years spent mostly alone, I started to ask myself, am I just too serious?
No, that was code for ‘I don’t want a self-centered shrew’, which this woman obviously is. (The also don’t want a ‘single mother’, because they have no interest in raising somebody else’s child. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.
As long as she keeps her focus on what she wants rather than on what the men she’s trying to attract want, she’s going to wind up alone.