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*Warning: adult language ahead!
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A woman wrote a post recently, completely bewildered by modern dating.
Attractive. Intelligent. Independent. Fit. Emotionally mature. Cooked. Kept a beautiful home. Had her own money. Looked younger than her age. High libido.
By the end of it I thought, fuck me, if this isn’t enough, what are we waiting for…a woman who can suck cock, make risotto, and rebuild a fucking carburettor?
But her question was real.
What the fuck do men actually want?
Fair question.
Turns out, by the time I’d finished thinking about it, I’m not entirely sure any of us know.
Because apparently being attractive, sharp, sexually enthusiastic, and able to cook is no longer sufficient.
Which does make you wonder what the missing qualification is.
Forklift licence? Advanced Excel? Ability to reverse a caravan? Own teeth? What else?
Cook like an Italian grandmother, fuck like the rent’s due, earn her own money, carry no baggage, and somehow reach middle age without a single previous bastard having left fingerprints on her soul.
She’d encountered the usual baffling male requirements.
He loves that she’s independent right up until she doesn’t need rescuing.
He wants an intelligent woman, just preferably not one who knows he’s talking complete bollocks before he’s finished the sentence.
Her success is sexy until she earns more, knows more, or walks into a room where people are more interested in talking to her.
He wants sexual confidence too.
A woman who loves sex, knows her body, and isn’t afraid to ask for what she wants.
There’s just one small administrative problem.
He’d also quite like to believe nobody else has ever been there before him.
Apparently she’s supposed to arrive in bed enthusiastic, adventurous, and mysteriously factory-sealed.
And beauty? Absolutely.
Be gorgeous. Just don’t be too aware of it, because confidence is incredibly attractive until it means she knows she has options.
Have standards…certainly. Provided he passes them without having to change anything.
Tell him what you need…just try not to need too fucking much.
Because for some men, the fantasy isn’t actually a strong, intelligent, independent woman. It’s a strong, intelligent, independent woman who somehow never makes him feel unnecessary.
And there’s the contradiction.
He wants the whole woman, provided none of her wholeness inconveniences him.
Piece of piss.
Women, naturally, have constructed their own impossible little Build-A-Man workshop. Strong but vulnerable. Successful but available. Confident but humble. Protective but never controlling. Emotionally intelligent. Financially secure. Good with children. Funny. Fit. Faithful. Excellent in bed and able to discuss attachment theory without ever requiring therapy himself…preferably with hair…and taller than a fucking refrigerator.
No pressure then, chaps.
Apparently somewhere out there is a six-foot-three emotionally available plumber with excellent credit, secure attachment, forearms like a Greek statue, and a burning desire to hear about your day.
He’s probably already married… or gay…or living happily alone with a Labradoodle because he’s seen what’s out there too.
But it’s not really about height, tits, money, hair, waistlines, or whether somebody owns a fucking Cockerdoodle.
We’ve just stopped meeting people.
We’re conducting risk assessments with a swipe function.
A photograph appears and before the poor bastard has even metaphorically bought us a drink, we’ve checked his teeth, hairline, waistline, shoes, probable income, likely attachment disorder, what his mother probably did to him, and whether the Porsche behind him is his or belongs to the bloke whose driveway he’s standing in.
Then comes the biography.
Whether they like dogs. Whether their children still live at home. Whether they use the word “journey” more than twice before the entrées arrive. Whether “loves travel” means Tuscany twice a year or getting shitfaced in Kuta wearing a Bintang singlet.
Nobody writes, “Love staying home, watching Netflix and slowly becoming irritated by the sound of another person chewing.”
“Looking for my partner in crime.” At my age, love, I’d settle for someone who remembers where we parked the fucking car.
“Living my best life.” Usually accompanied by a photograph taken 17 best lives ago.
“Fluent in sarcasm.” Which generally means, “I’m occasionally quite rude and would prefer you to find it charming.”
And then, of course, there’s: “No drama.”
There’s always fucking drama.
Anyone over 50 claiming to have no drama either has no pulse or hasn’t introduced you to their children yet.
Human beings have become Amazon listings with genitals and a returns policy.
“Lovely man. Good communication. Slightly shorter than advertised. Ex-wife still inexplicably furious. Three stars.”
And underneath all this apparent pickiness is something considerably sadder. Most of us aren’t really screening for compatibility. We’re screening for danger.
We want evidence. Proof in advance that this person won’t humiliate us. Won’t betray us. Won’t disappear. Won’t fuck someone else. Won’t wake up after six years and announce over a glass of Sauvignon Blanc that they “love us but aren’t in love with us,” as though they’ve just received the pathology results.
Because by a certain age, most people aren’t arriving at love empty-handed. We’re all dragging fucking luggage.
The marriage that died. The divorce that nearly bankrupted us. The affair. The alcoholic. The narcissist. The lovely one we weren’t ready for. The terrible one we stayed with far too long.
The one who taught us that chemistry and anxiety can feel remarkably similar at three in the morning. The emotionally unavailable one we spent four years trying to emotionally fucking locate.
And, of course, the man who was “separated” but whose wife appeared astonishingly unaware of this exciting new development.
After enough of that, you learn. Or at least you tell yourself you have.
You become discerning. You establish boundaries. You know your worth. All good things.
After enough bad love, fear gets clever. It stops saying, “I’m fucking terrified of being hurt again.”
It puts on a nice shirt and calls itself standards. Or boundaries. Or “knowing what I want.” And sometimes that’s exactly what it is.
But sometimes the boundary has a drawbridge, armed guards, and a fucking crocodile-filled moat.
Sometimes “I know what I want” really means, “I’ve made the list so impossibly specific that no actual human being will ever get through the door.”
Which is convenient. Nobody gets in. Nobody disappoints you. Nobody breaks your heart.
Nobody loves you either.
That’s not high standards. That’s fear with excellent fucking paperwork.
The woman in the post asked: Should I lower my standards?
Fuck no. But I would examine the shit out of them.
Keep the things that tell you something about a person’s character. Keep the standards that protect your dignity. Kindness. Honesty. Consistency. Respect. Emotional availability. Shared values. Attraction. Someone who actually wants a relationship rather than “seeing where it goes” until one of you requires assisted living.
Keep those.
But the rest? Have a good fucking look at it.
Because here’s the annoying thing about people. The one who actually gets under your skin may bear almost no resemblance to the person you spent three years insisting you were looking for.
He’s two inches too short. She’s 15 kilos heavier than the woman in your head. He earns less than you.
She has wrinkles, opinions, an ex who still occasionally rings and 11 fucking cushions on the bed that apparently have to migrate to a chair every night and return before breakfast.
He snores like someone trying to start a chainsaw underwater. Her laugh is too loud. His haircut appears to have been done as part of a police investigation.
And then, inconveniently, you fall for the bastard.
Because attraction has always been a bit of a cunt like that. It doesn’t read your fucking shopping list.
Because the person who looks perfect on paper can leave you cold. And the one who gets absolutely none of the paperwork right can make you feel more at home than anyone you’ve ever met.
Love, inconveniently, has never given much of a fuck about the search criteria.
And you will discover habits in each other that would never have survived the first-date questionnaire.
And if you stay together long enough, gravity will eventually join the relationship.
The hair goes grey. The arse changes address. The tits head south. The erections become less punctual. Bits hurt for no apparent reason. You make noises getting out of chairs. At some point one of you will walk naked across a brightly lit bathroom and the other will think…there goes my person.
Not because they still look 35. Thank fuck.
Because after enough years, attraction becomes stranger and deeper than that. You know the body. You know what happened to it. You know what it survived. You were there for some of the scars.
That isn’t settling. That’s ageing. And if you’re lucky, someone will still desire to fuck you afterward.
I’m 70. If I built a dating profile now it would read like a used-car listing. Vintage. High mileage. A few dents. Questionable service history. Some previous accidents I was entirely responsible for. Suspension occasionally unreliable. Still starts most mornings, usually on the second attempt. So hardly in a position to demand showroom condition.
I can’t speak for four billion men. Most days I can barely speak for myself. But I suspect decent men and decent women eventually want roughly the same, surprisingly ordinary thing.
And maybe that’s something age is finally supposed to teach us.
We spend the first half of our lives asking: What can I get?
Am I attractive enough? Successful enough? Sexy enough? Interesting enough?
Then, if life has kicked you around sufficiently and you’ve been paying attention, the question changes: What can I actually live with?
Who can I laugh with after the impressive shit wears off? Who can I be boring with? Who can see me ill, frightened, broke, jealous, unreasonable, ageing, and occasionally behaving like a complete fucking arsehole without deciding that one ugly afternoon is the entire truth about me? Someone who doesn’t make sex feel like another fucking quarterly appraisal. Someone who’s fucked up enough themselves not to require you to pretend you haven’t.
And the question we conveniently forget: Can I offer them the same?
And perhaps that’s the great contradiction in modern dating.
We desperately want someone who will accept us as we are…while shopping for them as though they shouldn’t have a single fucking defect.
We want our baggage understood but theirs neatly stored somewhere out of sight.
Our history is complicated. Theirs is a red flag.
Our insecurities need compassion. Theirs are exhausting.
Our body has simply aged naturally. Theirs somehow needs to have defeated fucking gravity and has apparently breached the terms and conditions.
We want to be seen beyond the photograph while rejecting people because of theirs. We want grace while carrying a clipboard.
And I’ve done versions of this shit myself. Most of us have.
We say we want intimacy, then quietly construct the conditions under which we’re willing to risk it. No baggage. No complications. No inconvenient ex. No difficult children. No financial mess. No sexual history that makes us uncomfortable. No emotional needs that arrive at the wrong time.
Essentially: Please be a fully formed human being. Just don’t have had a fucking life before meeting me.
Because what we really want isn’t perfection. We want insurance.
We want some combination of height, beauty, money, emotional intelligence, sexual compatibility, and psychological terminology that guarantees: this person will not break my heart.
Good luck with that.
Anyone you genuinely love acquires the ability to hurt you.
There’s no premium package that removes that feature. You can choose carefully. You should choose carefully.
Watch how they treat people. Watch what happens when they’re angry. Listen to how they talk about former partners. Notice whether their words and behaviour have ever actually met.
But eventually the investigation ends.
Eventually there’s just another flawed human being standing in front of you.
And you. Also flawed. Also frightened. Also carrying several bags you conveniently left out of the profile photographs.
Maybe that’s what men actually want. Maybe it’s what women want too. Not perfection. Fuck knows we couldn’t live with it. Imagine having breakfast every morning with somebody who had their shit completely together. You’d want to stab them with the butter knife by Thursday.
We want somebody who has seen us without the flattering light. Tired. Broke. Scared. Jealous. Petty. Ill. Horny. Not horny. Occasionally magnificent. Occasionally a complete cunt.
Someone who knows the difference between our worst day and our actual character.
Someone who doesn’t mistake familiarity for boredom, ageing for failure, or a difficult year for evidence they chose the wrong person.
Someone real enough to disappoint us occasionally. Decent enough not to destroy us. And fucked up enough themselves to understand why we occasionally need forgiveness too.
Because eventually nobody gives a flying fuck what your dating profile said.
What matters is who’s sitting across the table when the restaurant is nearly empty, the beautiful people have gone somewhere louder, your knees hurt, neither of you can read the fucking menu without glasses, and there’s nothing left to sell each other.
No profile. No specifications. No audition.
Just two ageing human beings who know exactly what they ordered: including the bits that weren’t on the menu.
And somehow still want dinner together.
Maybe that’s all we ever wanted.
We just had to get old enough to stop ordering from the photograph.
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