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But see, here's the thing. The guys here are not marrying young highschool women in order to have her be a stay-at-home mom of six kids. They too want freedom, a career, and as much fun as possible before they settle down. So sauce, gander, goose.
In all seriousness, I think this is where you are going wrong. A lot of young men, especially here which skews conservative, were totally ready to start settling down young (or at least a year or two after university when they had an income) and raising a family. There’s a reason several people were yeschadding your post about young men being over educated, and I say this having done a PhD.
Painting with a broad brush, the problem from my perspective is that we were prepared to be lovers and providers, and the other side never turned up. Indeed, they seemed to flock in droves to the young men who openly disdained responsibility and family while those men were busy getting as broke and high and sexed as humanly possible.
I am ready to believe that this is a mutual illusion arising from young women disproportionately meeting the fuck-around men and not seeing the quiet ones who worked hard, and likewise young men nmeeting the girls who came to parties and not the quiet ones. I don’t say that it’s true, but it’s possible.
But this is how things looked on the other side of the screen.
Really? 25 year old men wanting to take on a wife and kid? Not impossible, but funnily enough in the context, I was reading a ghost story from the 1930s or so and in it the narrator describes how he doesn't want an early marriage - this is a man in his late 30s established in his career and with enough money to support a stay-at-home wife (no other sort for the middle-to-upper classes back then) and children.
So the attitude of putting off marriage was indeed prevalent among the educated classes back then, but it wasn't solely over-educated women spurning men of their own class.
Sure, that’s always been there too. There have always been lots of bachelors and playboys, especially amongst the upper classes. The working-class boys at the university were much more of the ‘get as much clunge as possible’ mindset which ironically probably put them in a better position to date and marry later on.
So many who wanted to play around. But also a good number who didn’t. For myself in my ideal life plan I wanted to meet a nice girl at university, move in together a year later, spend a couple of years getting to n ie each other and then marry and have children around say 26 years old.
Of course, if I had been popular with the ladies perhaps I would have got a big head and started fucking around. No way to say.
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You couldn't be more wrong. I am struggling through post-graduate education to become qualified to be a provider for my future wife because I am aware I am repulsive to women without higher status and more money than them. My dating life has been an unbroken succession of disappointments because none of the women I've dated were comfortable with waiting for marriage to have sex - they wanted to fool around, and I did not. (Every relationship was one I went into intending to marry the girl if she was willing, BTW)
Feminism has liberated all the women around me of all expectations upon themselves, but men like me still struggle with all the pre-feminist expectations for men to be manly male providers, but taken away anything we might get in return. So what's good for the goose is only being given to the goose. This gander would love some, but isn't getting it.
Honest question: have you considered giving in on this point? If you'd potentially want to start a family with any woman you're dating, you must be reconciled to the idea of having sex with her at some point even if you genuinely lack the drive/desire. If it's a religious objection then, well, I'd have to know your religion, and you'd do better to talk to a priest; but AFAIK consummating a future marriage early doesn't tend to be looked on very harshly by mainstream Christian denominations even if it's not the ideal.
Of course, if you suspect that the women wouldn't have stuck around all the way to the altar either way, that's a different question. But taking your words at faith value, if your reluctance to have sex with potential fiancées is all that's keeping them away, I think you might be self-sabotaging your marital prospects here.
(And by the way, I'd also question your self-perception as "repulsive to women" if you can't be "a provider". Surely all the women you've dated wanting to have casual sex with you, and getting turned off when you confess you'd rather tie the knot first, clashes with the idea that no women find you physically attractive and your only hope of attracting a mate would be one who's after your bank account?)
Took me until I was 28, and my wife was a virgin as well, but waiting until marriage for sex is absolutely achievable. Based on his other comments in this thread I assume @Garfielf is Catholic, and I think his efforts to stay chaste (and to expect the same of his partners) is a laudable goal that shouldn't be abandoned just because it's easier.
Also it's definitely not a lack of desire for most ;)
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