|
 The Dating Doctor
The Dating Doctor, Serena Mackesy, brings her hard-won dating wisdom to bear on your problems. You can drop Serena a line about your own dating conundrums and catch up with her words of wisdom here every week. Read her latest advice here.
Where Are All The Single Men?
October 9, 2006
Why aren't there ever any single men at parties? This isn't just an urban myth, I'm afraid. The reasons lie in three places. Firstly, according to the 2000 US census, 2.8 percent of adult males and 1.4 percent of adult females defined themselves as gay or bisexual. This would suggest that there are more heterosexual women in the world than men; so you're at a disadvantage from the start.
But what about the rest? Where are all those single men?
Well, it comes down to two things: social structure and evolutionary psychology. Women are still largely the drivers of the social scene. They just are, you know it and I know it. As a spin-off of the multi-tasking thing, women are less objective-driven in their relationships - men tend to box friendships into work, activities, interests-in-common etc, and have only a handful of the sort of broad-base friendships on which women thrive. As a consequence, women continue to nurture friendships when their obvious basic function is in abeyance, whereas men don't. Although men and women can have strong non-sexual relationships, they are still not the norm by a long stretch of the imagination.
In the meantime, a man's competitive hard-wiring sabotages his relationships with single men. Put simply, the fear of losing female acquaintances is as strong as the urge to prowl for them. Put it another way: no man wants a rogue male prowling his turf; even if he doesn't acknowledge it. When a man settles, the friends he used to pack-hunt with (and therefore had a constantly competitive relationship with) become less attractive, while partnered men, who are less likely to make a move on his female, become more attractive.
After the tipping point of partnered-unpartnered males is reached, parties tend to be full of disappointed women making unthreatening small-talk while the single males sit at home, weeping into their TV dinners. Ladies, if you want more single men at parties, tell your friends' husbands they have to invite their lonesome colleagues. They'll be doing everyone a favor.
Read Serena's latest advice here.
|
