PERSONAL/DATING/LOVE: RAREST QUALITIES TO FIND IN A WOMAN IS KINDNESS

As a smart decent-looking man with an outward confidence and the ability to hold an intelligent conversation, online dating is much less a necessity than it is a tool. Meeting people in “real life” is easy, but quality meetings can be sparse and those in bars more than a little disingenuous, so the wide-net-fine-filter approach of an online dating profile seemed a perfect complement to my newfound hectic New York lifestyle.

What started as an experiment has done for my dating life what the assembly line did for the Model T, but at an unfortunate and unexpected detriment to my “boyfriend material.” Being  a person who has his head on his shoulder (I think this is 90% of it), educated, and dashingly handsome—not to mention incredibly modest—with a well-thought-out, original profile makes me stand out in a sea of middle-aged creeps, jobless hipsters and “lawnguyland” in backwards caps standing shirtless in front of a car that they probably don’t own. This gets me—for a man—a substantial volume of messages from attractive, interesting, and confident women (something of which New York thankfully has an abnormally high percentage).

This revelation led to an embarrassingly vulnerable, loneliness-induced update of my profile in which I bluntly—and frankly, a little cheesily—laid out exactly what I was looking for in my perfect relationship. From the new messages that came pouring in, I was apparently looking for exactly the same thing as quite a bit of  female population,  I’m not alone on my Sisyphean fool’s errand of trying to find love.

I told one person who responded to me that one of the rarest qualities to find in a woman today—at least towards eligible men—was kindness. So many men are simply starving for kindness from a woman but so often find sarcasm and cynicism instead.  It is easy for a man to feel that some women are actually looking to find fault, ready to pounce on him at the slightest ill-chosen word or misspoken comment. Men complain that they often feel around women that they cannot win, or say or do anything right. Such women drive men away.

Perhaps women today may have good reasons for these attitudes, but they are very wounding to a man, especially to an interested man who is serious, sincere, and sensitive.

Such a man will not ask such a woman out.

He simply doesn't want to be around it. I understand that in today's world it can be imprudent and even downright dangerous for a woman to be too kind too soon to a man she doesn't know well, and even then there still is chance of betrayal. The Sexual Revolution has ruined it for everyone as far as trust goes, but sarcasm and cynicism towards men have become epidemic in our society, and it has become so ingrained, so second-nature, that most women are not even conscious that they're being that way—but the men are. And they go the other way.

In terms of the risk factor,  traditionally it has always been up to the woman to control how far things went and how fast, and, if she liked him, still keep the man captivated. I said that in the confusion of the day that that was perhaps one more thing that was lost, or at least severely damaged. What has been lost, was an ancient womanly wisdom that women in previous ages had always intuitively known, on how to "handle" (not manipulate) a man—that is, how to anticipate him and keep him happy.

A modern woman might interpret this sort of thing as "game playing" but it is not. It is a deadly serious business that holds civilization together. Quails and pelicans have their mating rituals and dances and so do humans.

The wife can and ought to claim the primacy of love in the home, as the husband claims primacy of authority. The heart must balance the head and vice versa. So, far from playing games, the maintenance of this delicate and glorious dance between the sexes is all important, and often calls for special wisdom, the shrewdness of love, from the woman.