person who comes with the least amount of drama and can add support, loyalty, and fun to his life, then he’ll accept moving toward commitment. In other words, he’ll recognize that he can’t play forever, that a grown man has to stop showing up at the club at some point. (This becomes all the more clear the night he goes to the club and he’s surrounded by girls who were still in elementary school when he graduated from college. That’s a cold reality check.)
Of course, a lot of this is dependent on the age in which a man becomes, in his mind, successful. If he becomes successful in his late twenties, he may be more likely to move toward commitment when he hits his early thirties. By then, he’ll feel like he’s in good enough financial standing that he doesn’t have to kill himself anymore in the workplace with the crazy hours, the networking, and the climbing the ladder. But if it takes him a little longer to become successful, he’ll be resistant to the idea of settling down. He’ll still be looking at what everyone else has and measuring himself against them-his friends from college who are more successful and making more money than he is, and the ones who aren’t doing as well as he. If, on the other hand, he’s got it together, or feels like he’s close enough to where he wants to be, he’ll start warming up to the idea of long-term commitment.
You should note that because a lot of his focus is on making sure he’s successful, a man in his thirties will be less concerned about a woman’s accomplishments. He won’t really care how many degrees you have, and won’t be impressed by them, especially if the way you present them, your salary, and your career feels like you’re trying to compete with him or suggest that you don’t need him to be happy. That’s not to say he won’t be attracted to an intelligent, successful woman; he just likely won’t care about finding his financial match.
The most important thing you should know about men in their thirties is that you should expect commitment from him, in whatever form you need it. If you’re not living together but you’re dating exclusively, or you’re sharing an apartment and bills, you have every right to expect that he is working toward a long-term relationship with you.
To gauge his level of commitment, start by asking him about family. It’s the best way to get a man to think out loud about the future. Ease into the conversation by asking about the numbers: “What do you think your family will look like?” you can ask. “Do you want one kid? Three? Seven?” You might ask, too, about his home life-“Did you get along with your dad? How about your mom? What parenting traits do you think you’d bring with you to fatherhood? Which ones would you do without?” Each of these answers, when you delve deeper into them (I show you how to do this in Chapter 6, “Let’s Stop the Games: Asking Men the
You’re going to need to pay very close attention, too, to where he is in his career. If he seems unsatisfied and still hustling to put his plan into place, then it’s more likely that he’s not going to want to commit. You’ll be able to tell where a man stands by watching how much time he spends outside of work on hobbies, with friends, playing ball-enjoying more leisure. This tells you that he has time-that he’s not all about the job twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and can find contentment in other things.
Keep in mind that we’re talking about ambitious guys here, not the guy who’s never been on his grind and avoids hard work or sits around waiting for things to happen for him, or the guy who is still on the grind. Those guys may not wholeheartedly embrace commitment because they’re still searching for who they are, what they do, and how much they make, which means they will be too busy accomplishing their career goals to the exclusion of everything else.
Still, the ability to get the commitment from the man who’s ready, willing, and able to give you what you want lies with you. You have to be willing to walk away if the commitment you expect isn’t forthcoming. There are countless women who’ve dated a man, fallen for him, given him the cookie, and expected him to return her love and devotion with commitment, only for him to reveal after years of hanging on that he has no interest in marriage. You have to stop waiting to find out if he’s willing to commit and ask up front: “Do you ever want to be married?” He might say he’s not ready, but you have to push for more information. Ask him when he sees himself getting married-if it’ll happen in a year, two, or three. If he comes back with “I’m not the marrying type” or claims he’s not looking to get married “anytime soon,” don’t walk, run away. Let him know that you have every intention of being married in a certain time frame and if he doesn’t want to be a part of it, you have to move on. This will be hard for you, I understand; all too many of you fear he will walk away and you will have a hell of a time finding someone else to sign on for a committed relationship. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the man you’re leaving is not the last man standing. Move on. You made a mistake with that guy, but it’s okay. Cut your losses and go find the man you deserve and who wants you back.
A MAN IN HIS FORTIES…
Is feeling good about his station in life and is entering his prime, especially if he’s a husband and a father. He loves his accomplishments and he’s making money, but at the end of the day, if he has a home to go to, that’s major. It completes his journey to manhood. No matter how famous he is, no matter how well he’s done for himself, nothing beats coming home to the arms of the people he loves most; his kids are glad to see him, he’s the hero all the time. He reveres the title “Daddy.” And he’s happy that there is a woman who loves him and supports him and makes him feel like he’s valued. That’s a proud moment for a man, especially when he’s old enough to understand the importance of it. By forty, a man wants to feel like he’s a stand-up guy who does what he says he’s going to do, is respected, has himself together, and can be counted on by his family to be a man. Some struggle with this, but it all comes into focus when he becomes a husband and father. It’s a settling moment, and it brings out the best in a man because it pulls out all the love he has to muster: he’s going to work hard to make sure his family is provided for; he’s going to be proud to announce his wife as his lady and tell everybody about his kids; and he’s going to protect his family with the might of the angels.
If he’s single, he’s single for a reason. He may be unlucky in love. Or he may have signed up for life-altering jobs that made it hard for him to settle down-like working abroad or joining the military. Or he might just be that odd guy who’s resistant to the idea of marriage and kids, even after all these years-a bona fide commitment-phobe. Whatever the cause, unless he’s a divorce, he’s resigned himself to the fact that the traditional family-a wife and kids-may not happen for him (or he’s decided he doesn’t want to be bothered with it at all), and so he becomes comfortable with the idea of a life alone. If he has nieces and nephews or close friends with children, he’s perfectly happy doting on them, and he doesn’t feel as if his life is missing anything; he’s just as satisfied with this arrangement as all the women out there who don’t think their lives are horrible failures if they don’t have kids and a ring. Life is about comfort for them; they are financially comfortable, have established comfortable routines, and have comfortable lifestyles. And they’re not necessarily lonely because they put themselves in situations where the female company they keep isn’t disruptive to their day-to-day lives. This is a nice way of saying it’s going to take a lot for someone to come along and jar the overall sense of ease to which the single, fortysomething man has grown accustomed. In his mind, he’s thinking that commitment will disrupt his perfectly stable, doable, enjoyable arrangement-one in which he does what he wants, when he wants to, without having to be accountable for anything or anyone but himself.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the fortysomething man is not susceptible to meeting a woman who rocks his world-who makes him think he can’t live without her. It’s just that he’s mastered the art of companionship and isn’t necessarily as driven to hunt for women and meaningless sex as he was in his twenties and thirties. As a man gets older, he doesn’t need sex as much, and he’s already had relationships with a wide and diverse group of women, so the hunting he did in his younger days slows down. He’s not trying to be in the clubs or at the sports bars looking for the young, hot thing. He’s going to be more attracted to somebody he can talk to, whom he can have a nice meal with and go out to events, concerts, and other recreational events with; who fulfills his sexual needs; and who, like him, doesn’t feel any pressure to make the relationship any more than what it is. This is comfortable for him; it’s what all men want-comfort, peace, and companionship-and the forty-year-old single guy is going to have this in abundance. He’s arranged it this way.
Of course, if he’s a fortysomething divorce, he’s likely alone because he’s wary, but more prone to the hunt because he’s back out on the dating scene and reacquainting himself with all the women he had to walk by with blinders on while he was married for the last decade. Now that he can actually sample without repercussions, he’s
