Is 'getting dates' the ultimate end-goal? I'd imagine there are a lot of physically unappealing heft women who never get dates. Maybe if they have outgoing personalities they can.
I'm married and in my 50's. My wife is a few years behind me in her late 40's.
I see women who are 40 who look old, wrinkled, and worn out. My wife is still pretty and young-looking. It's not just because she's Asian. Several years ago, I went to her high school reunion in Jakarta. She went over and talked while I parked. I came up to a group of women, a bunch of chunky dumpy middle-aged women and my wife. One of them, when introduced to me, didn't say her name. She said in Indonesian, "I used to be pretty." I saw only one other pretty woman, also still thin, there in the whole group.
I am losing my looks faster than my wife, too.
If I were still single and had never married or if something happened to my wife and I decided to remarry, I don't think I could go for an old-looking woman, and not a chunky one either. She'd have to be appealing to me looks wise. The best looking woman out of thousands, thin with a reasonably flat stomach, probably a cut-off at 40 unless she just happened to look young, but older than my kids so she wouldn't be a peer, so early 20's on the low side. And she'd have to be a serious Christian with a similar-enough background or life philosophy-- a virgin or a widow who had only slept with her husband (or widowed husbands though too many dead husbands is a red flag.
) She'd have to believe in submitting to her husband and not be an angry, scolding type woman, a woman who realizes when she gets married, she owes some access rights of her body to her husband (though if she makes use of her own rights that's okay), values taking care of home and family, accept my family as hers, and has good overall character. I'd rather have the needle in the haystack than just find a woman that would have me. It would be better to live celibate without than to compromise, at least on most of these things. Prettiest out of a thousand might go to top five out of a hundred.
If I didn't have looks that were on par with a woman's looks, I wouldn't care. I'd want the kind of girl I want, and I'd have to find the one who found something about me attractive, maybe one who wasn't into looks. I've been told I was good-looking when I was young. I couldn't tell. I suspect that won't hold up as I age. I've got a faithful woman now, and we are committed until one of us dies. If I'm too old then, I'll stay single. If I outlive her, if she chooses to remarry, I'm sure she'll have high standards. I want someone good for the kids an grandkids, even if they are adults at the time. I knew someone who remarried someone who couldn't stand to be around grandkids for too long, and that makes life difficult. If something happened to me, my wife has told me she didn't know if she could ever find a man like me either, and she's also said she didn't think she could find an American man like me again.
As far as looks go, I used to see middle aged and older couples kissing and see some middle aged guy kissing a pudgy woman whose face and features had widened out, who's body had taken on a pear or apple shape, who was trying to cover all that up with makeup and strong old lady perfume. They seemed happy. I guess the guy usually looked about the same, but I don't care much what men look like.
But I think it's like the frog in boiling water. Try to throw a frog in boiling water and it will jump around to avoid it. Get a frog settled in a pot of water and slowly boil it, and it will stay there until the heat kills it, or so they say.
Gradually, your partner ages, puts on a little weight, starts to sag, the sharp jawbone and nose features kind of spread out and get less sharp. Wrinkles form. You care about the person and get really connected, and touching the old wrinkly flesh doesn't seem gross since it came on gradually, and it's a person you love. My wife isn't wrinkly yet, but I can understand that better now.
If my wife ever gets old and wrinkly, if I'm able and have the drive and ability, I'll still give it to her good, or as good as I can.
I'll turn the lights off if I have to.
I'll probably get used to the wrinkles and not care.
I haven't had the experience with an old, ugly-looking wrinkly woman. But what I don't get is men, even old men, wanting to marry and be with a woman whose fat, unattractive old and/or wrinkly. If I were old, fat and wrinkly, I wouldn't want to be with an old, fat and wrinkly woman like me. That's gross.
At least I'd want one who hadn't quite hit the wall, to enjoy some of those pre-wall looks before for a while. But I guess a lot of men aren't like me. I remember guys dating round plain girls with fat arms and bellies and short hair in high school, and thinking..... why? But some guys like girls like that. To each his own when it comes to taste. They may like those looks. And some men may not be as much into looks. Good for them, and good for the men who get to find one of the better-looking women they didn't end up with.
I hear men tend to go for women like their mothers. In my developing years, my mom was thin and had model good-looks. Maybe that has something to do with me wanting to settle down with a really pretty woman. I didn't insist on the woman as having to be as top-heavy as my mom, though. Some men's mothers are fat and plain, and that may be their ideal of a woman, the kind they think they should end up with.
I do wonder if it is a bit shallow of me, or was, when I was looking only to be attracted to a relatively small subset of women enough to consider them marriage material. I considered few women to be marriageably good-looking, even if they were really strong on other characteristics. I had to have both.
On the other hand, there might be some guy who thought a girl I found attractive didn't appeal to him for looks, who find looks I don't care for to be attractive. I didn't think Cindy Crawford was especially good-looking in the face, and plenty of guys did. Bella Haddad is supposed to be the prettiest woman in the world. But I wouldn't have considered her to be marriageably good-looking for me.
Looking for, not just looks, but the rare character, faith, etc. characteristics I was looking for could be disheartening for some men. How do you find the needle in the haystack? How do you know if there is a needle in there, or if you have to search through thousands of other haystacks?
One thing that I find helpful to not give up hope is faith in God, and praying. I prayed for a number of things in a wife that I got in my wife. I met my wife after intensifying prayer to find a wife, and my wife was surprised when I told her some things that I'd prayed for my future wife that had happened leading up to us meeting each other.
I read about how Abraham spoke of the LORD sending an angel before his servant to find a wife for Isaac. I prayed for the LORD to do that for Me also in finding a wife.
