Live R Perfect Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/sto...1356094,00.html Ben 'the new Bridget' Jones? He's a geek or a freak or both So the new Bridget Jones is a man? Well, maybe, but just what sort of man is he? Marie Phillips is not impressed. Saturday November 20, 2004 So it seems that God, when not busy fixing elections for George W Bush, has seen fit to take time out to answer my lowly prayers - the Office of National Statistics revealed that there are now almost 400,000 more single men in their thirties than single women. In fact, there are twice as many men living alone than women - 16 per cent to our 8 per cent. V.g. as Bridget Jones might say. But who, please, are these single men? Are they men any woman would want to date? According to research done at Edinburgh University most single men living alone have never been married or in a long-term relationship - unlike women for whom the opposite is true, You'll excuse me if this is not exactly a selling point. Is it that these men don't want to be in relationships? Or that they can't be? Neither is that attractive a prospect. Toxic bachelors to the left of me, pathologically unloving ones to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle, by myself. More to the point, where are these men? I can't help but think that most of them are in bed - with each other. Depending on whose statistics you believe, anywhere between 2 and 10 per cent of the population are gay and gay relationships are never counted in research, because as we all know from watching television all gay men are either hopelessly promiscuous, or providing sexless best-friendship to single female women. Goodness knows where the demand for gay marriages has come from - but anyway, that still leaves us women with a mere 6 per cent to play with. Advertiser links Shopping Around for Financial Services? Shop around for financial products with the financial... fsa.gov.uk Jupiter Group PLC - ISA Investments Jupiter Group PLC provide investment management services for... jupiteronline.co.uk ISA Server 2000 - £868 Specialists in Microsoft Servers UK supplier. Next-day... spellsoftware.com And as we've already discussed, plenty of this 6 per cent of supposedly eligible thirtysomethings are either spending their free time propping up the bar in meat-markets and trying to cop off with 18-year-olds, or playing Dungeons and Dragons, alphabetising their collections of rare Led Zeppelin bootlegs, and bidding for anoraks on E-bay. Further, an unscientific study of my newspaper suggests that many more single men are far too busy getting involved in street brawls, dealing drugs, and committing burglaries to take me out to dinner. And that's not even counting all those who are waging the war on terror. Or indeed having that war on terror waged on them. Then you've got to minus the workaholics - it's singletons, according to the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, who are keeping Britain at the top of the working hours surveys, because they haven't got anybody to go home to. And then there are the 'fifty quid blokes' that marketing gurus wax enthusiastic about, who are at home, but are happy by themselves with their CDs and their DVDs and their Playstations. You can't get many women for fifty quid, so I've heard, and the controls are much trickier to master. A further significant percentage are the sports fanatics, who devote all their free time to playing and watching football or rugby or golf with other men - folk like 36-year-old Nick Jenkinson, who was proud to tell the Observer that since his twenties, he has spent "nearly every weekend playing or refereeing in paintballing competitions," and then concluding that "I can't put my finger on why past relationships haven't worked." And of those few men that are left, don't forget the group who have recently been identified by New Scientist as 'asexual' - with no interest in sex whatsoever. Is it any wonder that I haven't met any of this so-called surplus of single men? That my dating life has a no-fly zone precisely spanning men from the ages of 29 to 41? Still, it's not all bad news, for any of us. We women get to enjoy our toy-boys and our sugar daddies, the vigorous and the mature; and as for all the poor singleton men in their thirties out there, don't worry, you'll be forty soon. Roll on the new, loved-up middle age. Link to post Share on other sites
pyromancer Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 LOL!!! Perhaps, instead of writing off anyone with a hobby which doesn't involve the sexual version of full-blooded foxhunting, she tried developing some hobbies and interests of her own, she'd find lots of interesting blokes? I'll never understand the obsession with "dating" - people talk about it as if it was an activity all on its own, surely in a healthy society it should simply be a side-issue for people who meet through shared interests? Link to post Share on other sites
ApolloSeek Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 Getting a date or GF/BF is not all that much an accomplishment. Since most people seem to get one or both at some time. Therefore it can't be too difficult Even Hilter had girlfriends and presumably dated them. Link to post Share on other sites
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