I watched the news a lot during the pandemic. One day I read that a random man had blown up his truck, himself, and a whole block of buildings in Nashville for no reason anyone could discern. This set me thinking, but not about why people do this, or the socio-political implications of these episodes. What struck me most was one detail that emerged a little later: the year before, this man’s girlfriend had reported to the police that he’d been making a bomb in his RV. He was always talking about bombs, she told them. Try to imagine that.

Nothing had come of her warning, so you’d think I’d ruminate about the missed opportunity to catch him early, and how law enforcement can better prevent this sort of activity. Not me. My mind went straight to this: Wait, this guy had a GIRLFRIEND? He was 63, a disgruntled loner, not a looker. I doubt he had Ted Bundy’s charm. So what the hell? Why do these men always seem to have a girlfriend in the wings? I want to know where and how they acquire them. The whole thing fascinates me. I tried to imagine what his Match.com profile might be:

SINGLE MAN WITH INTERESTING HOBBIES, HAS RV, READY TO RIDE. LIKES TO PUTTER AROUND WITH WIRES AND CHEMICALS. LOOKING FOR A WARM, ATTRACTIVE WOMAN WHO WILL SUPPORT MY GOALS. YOU’LL NEVER BE BORED!

Did she consider him a hot prospect? There wasn’t a word in the articles I read about how they met, what their relationship was like, or if they’d gone to couple’s therapy after she’d turned him in. In any case, at some point they had connected, and it was good enough that she was still hanging in there while he was muttering about bombs and carrying out his experiments in bomb-building practically in front of her nose.

Tell me, do you ever hear about women who shoot random people having boyfriends a little disturbed by their recent behavior? Actually, you don’t hear about too many women who are serial killers or mass shooters or bombers in the first place. There were women in the Weathermen in the Sixties who famously helped build bombs in a basement, and a few women in Isis were suicide bombers, but both had to do with belonging to a particular (male-dominated) group. In fact, when I Googled “female bombers” in my five minutes of meticulous research, what came up was short leather jackets for women, not newspaper headlines.

My point here is not to denounce male aggression and celebrate female non-violence. It’s what this says about women’s relationships that interests me, or rather women’s relationship to having a romantic relationship in general, probably because (as you might be aware) I have had issues myself. I’ve wondered for a long time whether heterosexual women will pay a heavier price to have a man validate them as part of a couple. Or to put it more informally, I wonder if many women are still willing to put up with a lot of shit to get and keep a guy. I’m not proposing women’s greater desire to be coupled up is a biological difference, but if it’s cultural, you’d think it would be long over in the days when women can largely be self-supporting and do almost anything independently. So, if I’m right, where does it come from?

I’m oversimplifying, it’s true. After all, American women initiate 70% of divorces, and for college-educated women, it’s 90%! This seems to be because men are more likely to think everything is fine when it’s not. Yet men remarry sooner and at a higher rate than women after divorce, which means more (and often younger) women are marrying the leftovers from other women’s relationships, to put it bluntly (and I’m all about putting things bluntly).

Studies of online dating sites show that women have the upper hand in terms of being pursued when they’re young or relatively young; then it switches around at the onset of middle age, and women begin to outnumber men online. This is not just bias against older women based on looks; the greater number of straight women trying to find a date could imply they want a relationship more than men do. Here you go, quoted from Pew Research, The Atlantic, and the New York Times:

Finding a good match [online] can be particularly hard for straight older women, who outnumber their male counterparts.

Not only do older women outnumber men, but older men also are more likely to be married.

A massive new study of online dating finds that a woman’s desirability peaks 32 years before a man’s does.

As to the latter, I’ve never bought the theory of evolutionary psychology that women inherently don’t value good looks as much as men do, or notice what a man looks like:

Women who have used a dating site are more likely than men to say they have found it very or somewhat difficult to find people they were physically attracted to (36% vs. 21%).

Now I must say, though this is entirely subjective, that when I look around at hetero couples I know, I see many mismatched in terms of their physical desirability or vivacity, and the older the women are, the more this seems true to me. That is, it feels like I know a ton of attractive, spirited, talented and interesting women with men who are…well, not those things, at least not so much as their wives or girlfriends. Some of the males in these couples have money and provide the women with nice homes and lives, but I don’t want to reduce it to that. It’s probably not as simple and crass as women marrying dull or unattractive men for money, or even lifestyle. But I do wonder if these women strike a subliminal bargain with themselves that they will settle for less than their equal in sexual appeal and personality because they need to…meaning, they feel they need to.

It goes without saying that none of this applies to you, dear Reader!

If you’ve read my book, Loveland, you know that after a period of short-lived experimentation in middle age with “settling,” meaning dating a guy here and there who bored or annoyed me or had no sense of humor, I knew I wasn’t going to be one of those women. I’ve always been the kind of person who prefers a little of something extremely good to a lot of something (or someone) just okay. Or not too bad if I squint. This wasn’t an entirely rational decision: I’ve tried, but my tolerance for extensive intimacy with a man I don’t find very stimulating has waned over the years. For better or worse, “It’s okay” isn’t acceptable any longer, not in chocolate, not in movies, and not in men.

And you can bet that if Mr. Just Okay, or even my ideal man, started making bombs, I’d be outta there in a second. After which I’d call the police, and make damn sure they followed up.