should be their priority to meet, get, and keep a husband. And the moment the biological clock starts ticking, whoa! Finding a man to settle down with and have babies becomes quite the priority.
Rest assured, it doesn’t work this way for little boys. Ever. There’s not a man I know who’s sat around dreaming about his wedding day. He may dream of certain women-more specifically, what he’d like to do with them-but trust me when I tell you this: boys and men don’t care about marriage the way women do, and we certainly don’t sit around fantasizing about it or worrying about biological clocks. Indeed, the way we look at relationships is so far the opposite of the way women see it that it’s a wonder, at all, that we even figure out how to be together.
But we do. It just takes a little while for the two of us to get on the same page.
To help you understand why, I thought it only fair to give a decade-by-decade breakdown of what’s on the minds of men as it relates to relationships-a guide, of sorts, that will go a long way in showing women what it takes for a man to get into a marriage state of mind.
A MAN IN HIS TWENTIES…
Is just starting to discover the cornerstones of manhood-who he is, what he does, and how much he makes. He’s deciding whether to go to college or not, whether to pick up a trade or not, whether to go to grad school or get a master’s, or not, and none of his decisions, at least in his early twenties, will help him come to any real conclusions about his future, himself, or his direction in life. Basically, he’s using this decade to figure himself out-to work out the kinks before he settles down to the awesome responsibility of being a husband, a father, a homeowner-a man who is responsible for the well-being of not just himself, but other people he loves. In most cases, you simply cannot expect that he’ll be ready to provide financial stability and family direction for you when he’s still trying to figure out how to make money, get solidified in his career, and make it on his own.
By his midtwenties, he’s going to be looking around in the workforce and noticing other men who are homeowners, have cars, and are taking care of families, and his financial clock is going to start revving up. It ticks as loudly as a woman’s biological clock does; we hear the calling to start proving we’ve got the who we are, what we do, and how much we make in order to prove that we are truly men. This isn’t nearly as important in the college years because money isn’t really all that relevant; everybody there is broke and making their mark by becoming members of social organizations, playing sports, joining fraternities, and being a part of the fabric of campus life. But when he hits age twenty-seven or twenty-eight and he starts seeing his boys drive up to the bar in the fancy car and step out in the fancy suit and whip out a business card featuring both his name and an impressive title in raised lettering, a man in his late twenties is going to want a piece of that action-a fancy car, title, and money of his own. This is critical to him, and nowhere in the playbook is marriage a part of the moves he feels he needs to make to get to where he’s trying to go financially and careerwise.
In fact, he may discover on his journey toward figuring out just who he is that he’s not responsible enough, yet, for a committed relationship. Or he may have practically every man around him-from his father and brothers to coworkers and friends-telling him that he needs to play the field and put off for as long as possible settling down with one woman. We simply don’t preach to our sons the virtues of fatherhood and family-don’t tell them that there is a cutoff date for the foolishness and that creating a lasting relationship with one woman is necessary to complete him as a man. He is being driven solely by his financial clock at the same time your biological clock is most likely driving you, and trust me when I tell you, the alarm on his clock isn’t set to remind him that it’s time to make babies.
Sure, there are examples of men who can get their careers together, make an adequate amount of money, and be happy enough with their station in life to settle down at this age, but it’s more likely that a man at this stage is not going to take any relationships with the opposite sex all that seriously. You can determine whether he has potential, though. The key here is remembering that the word
You also have every right to study what kind of man he’s shaping up to be-whether he is respectful, courteous, treats you the way you want to be treated, and is a law-abiding citizen. You deserve to know, too, whether he has hopes and dreams and a sound relationship with God. If he has children, you should be investigating for yourself what kind of man he is to his children and the relationship he has with his kids’ mother. You should also be clear that he wants to be in a monogamous relationship and be able to trust that he’s acting like he’s in one when he’s around you. All of these things are an indication of what kind of husband he’ll end up being when he is ready to settle down. It’s like my coach used to tell me: you’re going to play the game the way you practice it. If he’s not monogamous while dating you, and his heart isn’t morally into doing right by women, what’s going to be different when you get married? The only thing that changes after the ceremony is the third finger on your left hand. Everything else? Stays the same. So it will be up to you to be clear about what you require to feel mentally and emotionally satisfied that the man you’re with can fulfill those requirements.
Let me be very clear: you have every right to sit this man down and explain what you want as you round the corner and head toward age thirty, telling him that what you accepted in college at age twenty-one is wholly different from what you’ll tolerate as a twenty-seven-year-old woman whose body has a limited time span in which to produce babies. It was fine to date, go to parties together, and hold hands out in the quad when you were in college, but he has to respect the fact that your biological clock is ticking and that he should either sign on to the commitment or move on so that you can focus your energy on a man who can give you what you’re looking for. Don’t be scared: sit him down and say, “Look, I’m twenty-eight and I am looking for a mate right now because I would love to start having children when I’m about thirty-two. I don’t want to be thirty-eight having or trying to have my first child, so I’m focused on finding the guy that’s right for me.” Ask him how old he wants to be when his child, maybe a son, is old enough to toss a football around with him, and remind him that he doesn’t want to be that father who’s too old to take his teenage son to the hole or chase after his fly ball. I guarantee you that it’ll be something he won’t have thought about before, because young men don’t sit around thinking about such things. Women think about this constantly, and it’s okay to let him know that he needs to pick up the pace. The man who truly wants you will accelerate for you; he will pick up the pace and walk in lockstep with you. You can’t change him-by his late twenties, he will have solidified who he is as a man. But you can bring out his better qualities. He will be what you want him to be if he knows what will make you happy.
A MAN IN HIS THIRTIES…
Is beginning to solidify himself in his career, is starting to make the kind of money he’s wanted to make, and is achieving at least some of the goals he laid out in his master life plan. And once he starts measuring his life and the things he wants to accomplish in it, he starts thinking about settling down. This march toward commitment is boosted by the idealized visions he’ll start having about fatherhood: every man will start kicking around the image of himself having a son who dotes on him, wants to be like him, and is a great athlete. He’ll dream about teaching his son all the sports he grew up playing, and he’ll want to be able to play those sports with his son as he gets better at them, so he’ll start realizing that the longer he waits, the less likely his idealized vision of fatherhood will be realized. The question we all ask ourselves in our thirties is, “How old am I going to be when my boy is sixteen?” We still want to be a formidable physical presence in our teenage son’s mind, and to compete with him in sports. The last thing we want to be is an old, feeble dad. And so we’ll start recognizing that the days are numbered for us to make that ideal scenario a reality-that as we get into our midthirties and beyond, we have less of a chance to play with our boys. Consequently, we’ll start thinking seriously about making some babies.
Men in their thirties also start accepting the inevitable-that all of the running around and the chasing we did in our twenties feels like “been there, done that” in our thirties. We become more okay with the idea that our dating days could end one day soon because we feel like we’ve sampled much of what’s out there and the thrill of the hunt isn’t all that exciting anymore. The games get old. That’s not to say that a man is not excited by a beautiful woman like he was in his twenties or that he’s not aroused by hot and sexy women. But after he’s gone through a number of relationships and he starts seeing the patterns, he gets real clear on the fact that being with a woman is not going to be all hot and fabulous all the time. So he’ll become more open to the idea that if he meets the right
