Habits that keep eligible men away

•Single women often complain that there are no more good men left – but how accurate is this? Could they be the reason they are single?

“There are just no eligible men left – the good ones are either married or in committed relationships; the available ones are just players who are out to use and dump you,” declared Anna, an old friend.

Anna turns 31 next year and has all but given up hope of finding a good man to spend the rest of her life with. She is working on plan ‘B’ right now – finding a ‘suitable’ (read good-looking and intelligent) man to have a child or two with before she moves on with her life.

At least this way, she reasons, she will have something to occupy her time when she gets to her forties and fifties and hopefully by the time she turns 60, her yet-to-be-born children will have had a couple of grandchildren to keep her company during the holidays.

Now, Anna has everything going for her – at least at a glance. She is attractive and in her circle of friends, she turns the most heads when it comes to men. She is also effortlessly stylish, has a wicked sense of humour and is financially well-cushioned.

She works for a top-notch advertising agency, a job all her friends think is glamorous considering all the glitzy functions she attends almost daily and all the interesting people she gets to meet. With all these, you would expect that she would have bagged Mr Right ages ago.

Her remark about there being no marriage material men was bound to raise heated debate especially because this remark was made during a monthly girls’ night out at a popular pub in the city centre.

Out of the group of nine, three are married with at least a child each, two are planning to walk down the aisle sometime next year while the remaining four, Anna included, are yet to meet a man “interesting” or “suitable” enough to settle down with.

When girls get together, they pull no punches, and tend to say it as it is and once the stage was set, everyone decided that it was time to thrash out this matter and settle it once and for all.

The fact was that out of the group, five had found what they believed was genuine love, testimony that Anna’s assertion was not entirely true. There was bound to be at least one good man left out there for her. After some heated discussion on the topic, the girls decided to dissect Anna to try and find out exactly where the problem lay. Were there truly no good men left out there or was Anna, herself, part of the problem if not the problem?

“Anna, you drink like a man; maybe that’s what puts the men off?” suggested Liz, who can be painfully blunt at times.

After this preliminary brave diagnosis, there was no holding back and by the time the group parted ways some four hours later, Anna had what everyone believed was a fool-proof manual on how to get herself a lifetime partner before the end of the coming year.

The group had also gone further and tried to pinpoint exactly where women go wrong in their search for real love.

Are you marriage material?

Most of the time, women are too busy judging men and trying to pinpoint their shortcomings, they fail to recognise their own glaring shortcomings. Anna, for instance, wanted a man who did not drink himself to a stupor every weekend.

“I want a man who I can have an intelligent conversation with, a man who is comfortable enough to stay indoors on a Sunday afternoon watching a movie and doing little else,” she said.

Talk of the pot calling the kettle black – the problem was that Anna could drink any man under the table, and was in fact on her fourth glass of brandy, never mind that we had been at the venue for little over an hour.

Verdict: You should mirror the qualities you are looking for in a potential partner, as they say, like poles attract. If one of the qualities you’re looking for in a man is one who is financially stable and has a grounded money sense, you too should be responsible when it comes to money because the last woman such a man will want to be stuck with is one who will milk him dry because shopping gives her an irrational high.

In the same breath, if you want a God-fearing man, you will not find him at a booze-fuelled Mugithii night in a club in Ngara or Florida 2000 – in short, be a reflection of all or most of the standards you want in the kind of man you’re looking for.

When a man is searching for a woman to marry, rarely will he go for the one who will drink him out of the bar. Just as a woman will not want a drunkard for a husband, a serious man will also want a sober woman to look after his children and home.

Change your attitude

“If you believe that all the good men are taken, that will be your reality,” Susan, who has read just about every major relationships book ever written, told Anna. Susan is one of the two who plans to get married mid-next year to a “good man”, therefore all the other girls urge Anna to take her advice seriously.

Many women are guilty of perpetuating the notion that most men are just no good. They grew up hearing about it from their mothers, who heard it from their own mothers and when these women get children of their own, they are likely to drum into them the same misleading message.

If you believe that all men are dogs, a common phrase among women who have had ‘bad luck’ with a few men, your path will always be littered with these types. Think about the law of attraction, which argues that your thoughts, conscious or unconscious, can affect or determine what happens in real life.

Verdict: You have the power to attract or repel love. If you want to find love, change your thought process – believe that it is out there and it will find you.

Expand your horizon

If you have been looking in the same place year after year yet keep turning up empty-handed, maybe this is a sign to start looking further afield. Look beyond your church choir and start accepting invitations to weddings, birthday parties, and graduation ceremonies.

Join a social network since this offers you a chance to meet new people. Also start doing things you enjoy, such as swimming, hiking, singing, dancing – who knows, you and the man you’re looking for might just share a pastime.

Ask friends, relatives and colleagues to hook you up with their single friends, at least this way, you’re assured that you will not end up with a married man masquerading as an eligible bachelor.

Ensure that your friends really know this person, after all, you don’t want to end up like Triza, thankfully married with one child and another on the way, who, a few years ago, found out that the man she had hoped to get married to already had a wife and child.

Triza had been dating this man for eight months before the shocking revelation. How is this possible, you may ask? Well, according to Triza, he had not given her the slightest reason to suspect otherwise – she had full, unrestricted access to his flat in South B, (He handed her an extra key after they had been dating for just two months), would leave her his car when he went out of town “on business” which was frequently and introduced her to his bosom buddies.

With such a convincing set-up, even you would have been hood-winked. Triza only stumbled on the truth when she decided to give ‘their’ bedroom, (she had practically moved in by then) a thorough clean-up one weekend – tucked in the furthest corner of a drawer heaped with papers, envelopes and files, was a framed coloured photograph of a familiar happy-looking groom clasping hands with an unfamiliar ecstatic bride.

She did not need anyone to tell her that she was looking at her boyfriend. When she confronted him that evening with the incriminating evidence, he admitted that he was indeed married, had been for three years and had a baby boy and another on the way. His family lived up-country, hence the frequent ‘business’ trips out of town.

Triza’s experience aside, do not be afraid to let several people know that you are single and looking. The problem with Anna, the girls figured, was that she did not act as if she wanted someone special in her life. She gave the impression of a carefree party girl, and since she was constantly surrounded by people and always had plans for the weekend, none of the girls, until that evening, knew that behind that façade, she was lonely and wanted to settle down and raise a family.

Verdict: Speak your mind; make it clear to those close to you that you’re available, without behaving desperate about it, and start looking beyond your usual haunts for that elusive man.

Wall-flowers end up alone

Our Anna is certainly no wall-flower so maybe this does not apply to her, but on another note, she does pass off as being too forceful and opinionated. But let’s first say a thing or two about wall-flowers.

The girls concluded that love passes by many women because they are too timid and reserved, which relationship experts say could be an indicator of low-self esteem. They keep to themselves during social gatherings and talk to no one else but the people they know.

These are the people who only get up from their seat to visit the washroom yet when they get home, they cannot understand why no one approached them.

Such behaviour is not only off-putting, it will certainly not help you meet new people. This does not mean that you should throw yourself at every Tom, Dick and Harry in the room and recite your life history while at it. Mingle, smile and make eye-contact. The opposite of the wall-flower is the know-it-all individual.

This one is the loud-mouth who blubbers everything about themselves and has an opinion about everything under the sun and rarely allows others to put in a word. The girls thought that Anna had committed this social sin on too many occasions and concluded that it was one of the characteristics that put men off.

Verdict: No man wants to claim a wall flower and neither does one want to spend the rest of his life with a woman who has a machine gun for a mouth.

Are you a female predator?

There is a huge difference between knowing what you want and going for it and literally hunting it. There is a danger of putting a man off if you’re too forward about your interest, the girls, some of whom had made this mistake in the past, concluded.

By all means flirt, but avoid being too sexually provocative because it sends the wrong message about you. The man might conclude that you’re too easy and though he might show some interest, you can be sure that the interest will only be temporary and directed in one direction. By the time the girls stumbled on this point, Anna was on her sixth glass and was brave enough to admit that she had a one-night stand with a man she had met at a friend’s party a couple of months ago.

“When he didn’t call the next day like he had promised, I wondered why because I thought we had really clicked, and it was obvious that he was really attracted to me,” Anna lamented.

“You sleep with a man you have just met and you wonder why he doesn’t call the next day? – pleeese,” snorted Liz, who helpfully added that a serious man goes for a decent woman, not one with questionable morals.

Verdict: Baring your claws, showing acres of flesh or shedding your clothes in an instant will only get you used and unceremoniously dumped, not a lifetime partner.

What defines your ideal man?

Women have often been accused of judging a man by ,where he lives, the car he drives or what job he holds. Most so-called modern women would not give a man a second glance if he does not drive.

“The irony is that some of these women do not even own a car, yet they expect the man dating them to drive one – women can be so fickle,” stated Job, an exasperated man who is convinced that most women are gold-diggers.

Anna drives a metallic grey Toyota Rav4 and when the girls pinned her down and asked her to honestly say whether she would consider dating a man who drove a Nissan Sunny, she eventually said “No” after hedging for a while.

The fact is that a man who drives an impressive car and earns tons of money is not necessarily the best match – if anything, he might turn out to be the stingy type that gets physically ill whenever he has to part with a penny.

Verdict: Don’t overlook a potential partner just because he doesn’t own a car or because he drives an outdated model or doesn’t hold a big job. As long as he doesn’t plan to live off you and shows potential for excelling, give him a chance – he might surprise you and turn out to be the most responsible man you ever meet.

cnjunge@nation.co.ke

Source: Daily Nation