A Northwestern guy gave me this line a few months ago: “You’ll have to call me if you want to hang out. Every time I see you I’m drunk, so I can’t remember to call the next day.”
I used to accept this sort of advance as normal college-age male behavior. Just like I accepted the sloppy, drunken hookups; the failure to return phone calls; the persona of Romeo one day, Godzilla the next; and the awkward, AIM-delivered apologies for these misgivings.
It’s okay; it’s fun. They’re young. They’re guys, after all. What more should respectable undergraduate women expect?
A lot, as it turns out. All it takes is an experience with an older guy – a man, rather – to realize that there’s a whole ‘nother world out there, otherwise known as the Realm of Mature Dating.
Tapping it is like discovering, after years of eating hamburgers, that there’s a delicacy called filet mignon. Once you try it, you can’t go back.
NU guys, don’t get huffy. This, for once, is not an attack against you specifically. It’s a sociological observation about male-female relationships.
Eli Finkel, an NU psychology professor who studies dating and attraction, says cross-cultural evidence has shown that women tend to marry older men, but he stops short of giving dating tips based on these findings.
Perhaps this tendency stems from the oft-quoted idea that women mature faster than guys.
That doesn’t mean we’re ready to get hitched, but perhaps we need relationships deeper than unremembered, 2 a.m. conversations in the back room of the Mark II Lounge. Most guys share that ambition by the time they’re, say, 28. Okay, maybe 25, if they’re lucky.
To say that success with undergraduate men is nonexistent would be to ignore my handful of friends who have found happy, stable relationships with guys their own age. Still, limiting the searchlight to the campus field certainly dims the prospects of finding Mr. Right.
It’s not that there’s anything magical about older men. They were college guys, too, after all, and probably just as goofy as their counterparts a generation behind.
But somewhere in the mix of graduation, work and independence, guys figure out how to call frequently without being a stalker; how to treat a girl like she’s special without being overbearing; and how to make the first move without being aggressive. Maturity works wonders on the male notion of what a woman wants – and what men themselves want. Call it life experience, or more frequent sobriety.
I realize not everyone is looking for Mr. Right right now. There’s a certain rush that comes with tolerating semi-stalkers, game-players, two-timers (or 10-timers) and split personalities.
But then there comes a point when tolerance goes out the window, and you start to look for better. And that means looking up: five, 10, 15 years.
