The Venn Diagram of Singlehood

[IronSoldierParticipant 55]

 

My father always told me to marry young.  “Those girls get swooped up early!” he cautioned, referring to marriageable women.

And if you believe that here are good women in the world, he was right about marriage.  There may be a narrow window of time to find a marriagable woman — or dateable woman (if you aspire to avoid marriage); it’s usually when she’s in her mid- to late twenties.  (Jack Weinberger, Bob Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, and The Beatles all cautioned, “Never trust anyone over thirty.”) After that, if a woman is still single, she usually falls somewhere on the following three-circle Venn diagram. Note that since men are traditionally (and still mostly) the pursuers and the women the pursuees, this diagram mainly describes the pool of women to choose from, and may not necessarily apply to the pursuing gender. The “pursuit” itself is a relevant factor in creating the environment in which this Venn diagram has evolved.

Circle 1:  Unattractive…for whatever reason.  Everyone has his own tastes, and what one person finds attractive, another may not.  But there are certain commonalities with respect to what men find attractive, and if she doesn’t fit into any of those commonalities, she may find herself still single.  People tend to pair with others who are roughly the same attractiveness as they are, so even Medusa and Quasimodo could find love together.

Circle 2:  Psycho — this is harder to detect.  At least someone who is ugly on the outside is recognizable on sight.  Someone who’s a psycho can’t be detected until you interact with that person, and sometimes the craziness is kept so well under wraps, that it takes months or even years before you realize you’re with a psycho.  No matter how attractive a person is, if she’s a psycho, she’ll be single eventually.  Be wary of the single woman who is extremely pretty.  If she doesn’t fit into the third circle, she’s most likely a psycho.

Circle 3: Baggage — Everyone has “baggage” of one sort or another, emotional baggage, financial baggage, etc.  But many single people aren’t interested in raising another person’s children, and if a person has kids from a previous relationship, or even just a psycho ex-partner who still has a hold somehow, that can be baggage that most won’t want to deal with.  No matter how attractive and sweet a woman is, if she has kids, that’s going to reduce the number of suitors she has.  Even just being divorced can be “baggage” — many single people want to meet someone who is in the same social situation…so a man who has never been married might not want to date a divorced woman.

And of course there is overlap, as in any Venn diagram.

One of the few ways to land a datable/marriagable woman after age thirty is the “ground zero” phenomenon.  Sometimes, a good woman gets into a relationship during that window of opportunity, and stays with the man for some years…but then, for whatever reason, the relationship ends:  maybe he died, or cheated, or they just grew apart, or he foolishly thought he could do better and left her.  When a good woman suddenly becomes single again under such circumstances, there is another, even narrower window of opportunity to woo her.  You have to be at “ground zero” when the break-up happens, and you can’t move in too fast, or she won’t have gotten over the break-up yet, and won’t be emotionally ready.  On the other hand, when she does become ready, you have to be the first in line or she’ll get “swooped up” as my father put it.  The worst part is, there is no hard and fast rule for when is the right time.  You had just better hope you’re there when it happens.

One note of caution: the circumstances of the break-up can have left her emotionally scarred, and can turn an otherwise good woman into a psycho, so…cave emptor.

[Author]

Posts