Women Don’t Date Boys (Or How Your Pride And Immaturity Will Drive Away The One)

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She is the closest thing to perfect that you’ve ever encountered. She is spontaneous and adventurous. Like you she believes in the experiential life, that we are not destined to become one thing over another, and that experiences mold us. She believes that you can create yourself over through drive and self-will alone; indeed she’s done it before. She’s been shaped by a past she isn’t always proud of into someone that she can be. She’s smarter than you about most everything, hysterical, approachable and understanding. She is gorgeous in that classy way you tell yourself can only exist in fiction. She gives everyone a shot even when they probably don’t deserve one. I mean she talked to you didn’t she? In every respect she is your perfect woman. She is boisterous when excited and introspective when not. She’s great with money and determined to succeed. She enjoys her life with you in it. She sees the greatness in you that you don’t see in yourself.

So why will you lose her? It isn’t because you’re superficially unworthy. You’ve worked hard to get where you are, and you’ve worked harder to build an impressive resume. You’re educated and moderately refined. You volunteer in your community and you’re active in your chosen Faith. You’re well travelled and adventurous, yet you’re a pragmatic and realistic guy as well. You have every right to be proud of yourself. And therein lies your downfall. Pride, or better yet hubris, will lead you to lose the one thing that you can’t bear to be without. You’ve been so busy thinking about how great you are, and how great you are together that like an immature child you have ignored the issue present to both of your eyes; an issue that she picked up on early on but loved you anyway. The issue that she tried to bring to your attention without hurting your feelings, because she loved you, but you were too dense to realize what she was trying to tell you.

Your inability to recognize the defects in yourself is what is going to make you lose her. Like most males of your generation, you’ve clung to this idea that you are better than everyone else. That you’re special. That you could not possibly have any visible fault, as that would wholly negate the perfect self-image that you’ve created for yourself. You’re immature and your pride is perhaps the greatest indicator of that. You’ve had a serious drinking problem for some time, but that didn’t define you in a negative way. You were the typical BRO, able to crush a case of beer on a Friday and wake up at 6:00 to get back into the office Saturday morning to make sure the job gets done. You were functional, and people with drinking problems aren’t. You told yourself that that is what being unmarried in your late twenties was all about. Enjoy the fun, because post thirty life gets real. And reality is the antithesis of fun. You were living in a cloud of self-delusion. Your friends drank like fish, and they’ve found “success.” “Live hard, play harder” right! But play is for children, and she is not a child. She doesn’t want a boy, she wants a man; someone she can count on. Someone who is strong for her when she needs them to be. That definitely isn’t you. Your pride and selfishness are evidence of your weakness, a weakness that you have diligently worked to cultivate out of your life. But an inability to recognize weakness and address it is a delusion, not a solution.

Let go of your pride. Admit your weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Don’t do it for others, but do it for yourself. In doing for yourself you’ll inevitably be doing it for her. Make a positive change. Be a man. Bury the boy and resurrect the man. If not you’re going to lose her. Not today, or tomorrow, or in a year from now, but eventually she will tire of boys. Because the great women know what they want, and it’s not a boy, it’s a man.

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