Where will she be this time next year?

“Another year, another dream, another hope…and another disappointment.”

After the bells rang out and thousands (400,000 in the case of Dubai) of fireworks erupted on last night’s midnight hour, I would expect many men and women alike were pondering on their love life from the last 12 months, and foreseeing how different it may be this time next year. 

There’s nothing quite like a new year’s eve to bring about differing emotions in women.  Men aren’t anywhere near as entertaining to observe in this respect, as a single man will simply huddle with his mates in the aftermath of abundant alcohol consumption, and he’ll think that there is some woman nearby who will be vulnerable to his advances in the next few seconds. Women, being far more relationship driven and in need of boyfriend validation, can view a new year as excitement or despair.  Those who are in a happy relationship will genuinely or falsely act accordingly, comprehensive to just how happy or unhappy they are with their emotional life.  Because in fairness, this is life in a nutshell.  People don’t live in excitement or frustration because of their family, friendship, career or lifestyle situation, they act in the way that suits due to how their love life sits at that particular moment.  When you see a woman miserable at work, there’s more than a fair chance it has nothing to do with her profession and everything to do with her current love life.  Similarly, when a man is all stressed out with the world’s problems apparently sitting on his shoulders, place a bet on it being money troubles to provide for the family he works hard for.

Go on a social network site and you will see numerous statements from the female side with reference to finding Mr. Right in the forthcoming year and him making her happy.  It’s all about her, and being deserving of a suitable man.  Some even go a step further and publically state the plan of action: find him, settle down and have a bun in the oven before a leaf has dropped off the tree in autumn.  Even many women with current male partners will secretly be thinking, and hoping, they will meet someone “better”.  For those who don’t choose to air their dirty washing to the world, it can be guaranteed there have been a million girly conversations prior to the clock striking 12 about why they are single, how there are no suitable men out there, and that all they ask is for a nice, honest guy to take care of them.  When they find this guy, it is no surprise that she jettisons first from the bond.

Nevertheless, one thing most noticeable with women is that if they are half than or more than worth having, they are rarely single the following new year’s party.  The same goes for those who have a crazy summer.  Seldom will they be in the same venues the succeeding warm season.  For those ladies who join a gym in January with objectives to stick it out, expect a high percentage to be cancelling their membership no later than September.  Women will claim this sudden change-up is because they are always on the lookout for exhilarating new adventures, experiences and memories, but I don’t see many who have the fortitude to travel alone to some of the great cities of the world.  A fortnight holiday in Ibiza doesn’t count.  This change of ways has to be down to something else, and if you open your eyes and dive not too deep it is all there to see.

So if the first day of the year has women with a long check-list of desirables for a suitable man, yet on the last day of the year she is with a man you perhaps wouldn’t have placed her with in objective terms, what went in between?  Well, clear and simply, she dropped her demands.  As referred to above, the average woman is far more relationship orientated and in need of external importance validation than the average man.  Most men fear loneliness too, especially as their friendship network diminishes quicker than they would like, but locating a girlfriend is hardly ever born out of a motivation that time is running out or wondering what people will think of them if they are single for a sustained spell.  Women worry how others view them, especially between the ages of 23 to 28.  Prior to this age range, the itching feeling is somewhat mitigated by the knowledge more of her friends are single too.  Beyond this age, many have given up hope of finding the perfect man and have even conceded defeat to the “what will be, will be” syndrome. 

Did I mention time running out?  A woman has a shorter time frame at her most appealing to the opposite sex than the inverse, and deep down she is conscious of this nagging comprehension.  Her friends, also relationship minded by definition, will be settling down like dominoes falling from a pack, and before she knows it there are fewer perceived opportunities to expose her worth to the higher quality men.  As each day ticks by, the frustration builds that little more.  As frustration increases, she may just so happen to eradicate the odd requirement on that once long tick-list.  Maybe she once had male good looks as a priority, but now he could be just decent looking in the next year.  Perhaps there was a certain level of job status he needed to hold down, but as long as he’s hard working that will do.  If bundles of personality and charisma were a must last year, well as long as he can hold a conversation then that’s fine for now.  Oh, and those women who were privately attracted to jerks, nice guys suddenly don’t seem so boring.     

The pattern emerges from the traits of being a woman, and this is all good news for men in 2014 who have never acknowledged trends of this kind before.  There are many women out there who have to drop their demands because of the reasons as explained, and there are vast numbers of women who eventually have to settle for someone who wasn’t the vision in her mind.  You only need to listen to what a woman says she desires in a man in respect to the man she ends up with not long later.  The two men will often be worlds apart. 

Of course timing needs to be on a man’s side too.  It’s no good approaching a 22 year old woman who is notorious for holding up high bars unless you have the credentials and offerings that will appeal to her.  But if you saw that same girl a year later, I’d throw in a cheeky tenner that you could say and offer the exact same things and she’d be more engaging and accommodating.  With exceptions, women become friendlier as they get older for the reasoning of sexual evolution alone.  It’s not a coincidence.

I would estimate 98% of women go through the process of lower acceptance, because these amounts of women, at the very least, hold ambitions to be with a man over any other necessity in life.  They become less picky as the hunger to walk hand in hand on Saturday strolls grows.  However, this isn’t to say that 98% of women all find men and are in relationships.  You have to bear in mind that some of them will not because of circumstances, emotional baggage or the unfortunate reality of no man willing to take.  But the vast majority will, such is the fact that most men are eventually, if possibly subsequently, equally desperate to not be alone.

A lucky 1% (at the very most) of women do not need to “de-scale”, because they will find a man who does genuinely come as close as possible to the one formed in their idealistic minds.  At the risk of sounding discriminating, expect most of these women to belong to the right side of hotness.

This leaves a maximum 1% of women not yet documented.  They are “girl’s girls” – those who place more emphasis on female friendship and other life activities than the comparative women who require a male partner above any other need.  These women just so happen to be close to my heart, because nearly all of my girlfriends have belonged to this compartment.  A friend of mine says this is not coincidental, as I must subconsciously seek out less needy and more independent women who replicate my own lifestyle.  Women in this category crave for a man just as much as validating needs women, but they are not prepared to drop their standards, even if it means running past the line of when they are most valuable to men.  This is a risky strategy they play, but someone like me can only admire women of this nature who will not just take any man for the sake of saying they have one.  In a country like the UK - where women take lower calibre men than they could acquire, and consequently divorce early - these rare women are applauded by guys like me.

A big positive I see in “girl’s girls” is that although, in contrast to men, they face the same sexual evolution timescales and challenges as any other woman, the sheer fact of their mentality manifests to form females who look better in later years.  In other words, there is a strong likelihood a woman in her late 20s or 30s who hasn’t settled down will look more endearing in a physical sense than those who have already popped out 2 or 3 kids.

But with every positive comes a negative.  They have much higher opinions of their existence than their boyfriend/husband requiring, but less confident, female counterparts.  This can be draining for naïve and option stricken men.  When things go south, she’s never far from slagging you off to her mother or best friend.  With their reinforcement in convincing her you’re not worthy, the window of leeway with these women is very small.   Again, whilst I commend them for a none-settling attitude, they possibly fail to realize they are past their physical best in concurrence to maintaining the high demands that were always there.  The risk, for them, is that the men they are still searching for are with younger, therefore likely hotter, women.