It’s funny how “specialists” get paid a ton of money to disseminate a lot of information amongst the general public; most of it being patently false, if not just incorrect. Case in point, I was reading an article yesterday that was entitled “The top 10 reasons men don’t commit.” Yes, it was in one of those women’s magazines—you know, the kinds that surveys its readers on how kinky they are in bed?—and why I was reading one is a story for another day.
Anyway, during the course of the article, the author went on and on about different, very specific things; such as how he wants to “have time for his buddies,” or what impetus could he possibly have to “buy the cow if he could get her milk for free?” And, while I am not going to argue that either of these are blatantly false, I’m fairly certain that she—and I stress that it’s a she who wrote this—missed the central issue here entirely.
And here it is:
Men don’t commit because they’re holding out for something better.
That is all. Listen to me, re-read that sentence over and over until you get it. It’s not about a man needing “more time to do his own thing,” or him being “unaware of your biological clock;” it’s about him constantly living under the hope (fantasy, more likely) that there is someone else right around the the corner who’ll rock his world in many more ways than you do.
He doesn’t see himself as being non-committal, he sees himself as waiting to commit… to her.
And you know why? It’s because men are stupid. They fail to recognise one of the basic tenets of reality: If you’ve found someone who lovingly dotes upon you, excitedly listens to you and participates in things that you care about (and you enjoy reciprocating), teaches and learns from you in delightful ways, … you’ve got to learn to let the little things slide. Put that romance novel down and realise that there is no perfect-perfect person who’ll be “all that you dream her up to be,” without any flaws whatsoever hiding in the closet.
She doesn’t exist.
The men who get this, happily commit and cherish the woman they have in their arms. The ones who don’t, well, they just end up bitter and all alone.
Your woman’s penchant for country music doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?
(I can still imagine many a man reading this and going, “Pffft, I fail to see the upside to this settling thing you speak of.”)
You know what? The “Men don’t commit because they’re holding out for something better” thing sounds a lot better than the “why buy the cow if you could get her milk for free  sooooo much better, actually. I’m happy now.
Is that extreme sarcasm I sense, J?