THOUGHTS/DATING: ROUNDER AND THE DATING HAND

I saw the movie "Rounder" recently again on cable. It's a film about  about the underground world of high-stakes poker. Starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton...i love it. Anyway. I can see how poker and dating can be part of the same world.

The difference for men and women in dating is that if there is a certain type of men women want to approach them, women can at least go to an establishment where those types of men are more likely to reside and place herself in the “line of fire.” Let’s assume the man we’re discussing is decent at approaching women, has money, is educated, and hasn’t been to jail..someone like myself.

Can we have an honest moment here, ladies? Help me help you! Is no man really willing to marry you or is the exact type of man you want not willing? Can we agree that those are two very distinct issues? One thing men learn early on is that every preference we have not only reduces the pool we have to choose from – which is fine – but it also increases our potential mate’s desirability among others.Women often criticize the types of men (or lack thereof) that approach them; yet, they don’t consider the number of men they turn down as a result of this criticism. Women seem to assume that every man they turn down doesn’t care, moves on instantly, and does so by going off to meet another replacement women. This is just not true. Women are not the only ones that don’t enjoy getting turned down and I can assure you there are more than a few men who are still recovering from getting turned down this weekend/month/year reading this very sentence.

While men might have better odds of meeting women simply because they approach more women, women have the added benefit of choosing a man with the best (initial) winning qualities upfront. In other words, although women may have to turn down more men to find the illusive “good man” they want, the man you choose is more likely to be the type of man you want – assuming you know what you want in a man, another post entirely.

In theory, there’s no limit to the number of women a man can choose from. In reality, a man has to approach a woman he can see himself with, hope she reciprocates his desire, and HE HAS TO HOPE HE GUESSED RIGHT. Men can only choose their wife from the pool of women willing to entertain his advances. Clearly not all women will want him and even those women that do may not be the same women he wants to be with forever. Many men shoot for the stars (approach/date a lot of women) and hope they hit the moon along the way (one of these women is wife-able). If men only approached the women they wanted to marry, they’d be in for a world of hurt and disappointment.

Frankly, dating for men and women is a lot like drawing a blind hand of poker. You don’t know if you have the best hand unless you fold and get more cards, but at some point you have to assume the hand you have is better than any other hand you could possibly be dealt. Since no one is all-knowing, this is a dating reality that men and women face together and neither one of us is better or worse off. 

As life happens, kids are born, jobs change, and age increases, we panic and assume that something is better than nothing and what do we do? We (sometimes) settle and opine in vain for a “dating hand” we long since gave away or never possessed. Therefore, I don’t think the average man is winning any more than the average woman is losing. The real reason we complain, men and women, is because both sexes are guilty of entertaining people we know in our hearts don’t belong in our lives. Some will continue blindly going back hoping the next draw from the dating pool will somehow be better than what they already have. A few will be right, but many will be wrong. So, is it easier for men to find their soul mate? No, because if we play the hand we’re dealt wrong, we have the same odds of losing. We’ve all seen the cautionary tale of someone a few decades our senior still playing the game, so I’ll ask you a simple question: are they really winning?