"He'll Never Get a Girlfriend If..."

I thought it would amuse my female readership if I reported that I had overheard a man saying of another man "He'll never get a girlfriend if..." Or was it "How will he ever get a girlfriend if..."? At any rate, I thought it would cheer you to know that guys say that about other guys, and it can be just as dumb as when girls say "How will she ever get a boyfriend if...?" about other girls because actually, as someone listening pointed out, the guy in question has no trouble getting girlfriends. So there.

But this leads me to wonder what qualities keep other men from getting girlfriends. I mean, serial killers in jail get marriage proposals. So this morning I will throw out some suggestions as I puzzle through the possibilities.

1. They never meet any girls. Many men are in male-dominated careers, and by dominated I mean there are only two women in the office/on site, if that. Or they are in high-pressure academic programs where the only way to survive is to keep their heads down and study. Although I have many reservations, in the case of men who are in male-dominated careers, I suggest internet dating. But I mean dating, not emailing.

2. They never talk to girls. Some men actually lose the ability to speak when introduced to new girls. It is amusing to witness, but not so amusing for the poor men. This is why it is a kindness to march up to guys known as "quiet" or "shy" and ask them easy-to-answer questions and, if they give short, strangled answers, chat gaily and non-stop for three minutes before buzzing away. Repeat the next time you see them. This will help them get used to you, and hopefully by extension to talking to women in general.

Three. They are dead boring. Some men--not the quiet ones--are dead boring, I have to admit. They talk about the same things all the time, and/or they talk in a monotone. They talk about things that interest them, and never wonder for the slightest second if these are of any interest to the women they are speaking to. I was once interrupted while talking about my novel to a recent reader of my novel to be told that Mass was available at some place where I am never going to go. This was of great interest to the man in question, but not to me. Incidentally, people, never EVER interrupt an author talking about her book with a reader. It is cruel.

I am not sure what can be done for men who are dead boring. The most obvious solution is to tell them that they are dead boring and they must ask people about their interests, not just launch into a discussion of their own. Also one could suggest they stop talking in a monotone. However, this seems very blunt, even for a North American. The idea of doing any such thing would make the average Brit faint. Maybe some kindly self-sacrificing man could do it, especially when drunk.

4. They never ask girls out. Before he went into the seminary, I had a fond idea that eventually some nice girl named Prunella or Penelope or something like that would propose to Seminarian Pretend Son in a rowboat in a big pond or river (or whatever) in her family's country place, and that would be that. Some men are so humble that they assume wrongly that they are just no woman's cup of tea and so are absolutely staggered to discover that they are. I imagine England is full of such excellent yet unassuming chaps; indeed, it always has been. Thus, in England, especially among the expensively educated, it is the lot of woman to prod man into marriage. I say England, not Scotland, because the Scots are markedly different. I think. Naturally there exceptions to my egregious stereotyping.

5. They ask too many girls out. I once had a neighbour who was indignant because although he gave his phone number to two waitresses at his favourite bar, neither of them called him. I pointed out that they would have certainly known he had given his number to BOTH of them. "So what?" he asked. Dear, dear, dear. Bless his little heart.

Closer to home, I know a nice young man, excellent company, who wears his heart on his sleeve and discusses his latest crush with all the women he knows. He has a new one every month, and it is very hard to keep track. Unfortunately, he tends to get crushes on girls he has told about the other girls, and naturally they do not take his ardour very seriously.

In such a case, I would counsel prudence and caution. Although in close-knit communities everyone will eventually know that one of their men has asked out one of their women, the fact that he tried to be discreet about it will stand him in good stead.

6. They pick badly. Newsflash. Beautiful young women prefer beautiful young men their own age. Some beautiful young women who have only their looks going for them may angle for less beautiful, less young men if these men are rich (and I mean rich), but men who read Catholic blogs are unlikely to meet them. So never mind them. Look for girls who look like you.

If you look at married couples, you might notice that, by and large, they have a lot in common. I am not beautiful but striking. B.A. is not beautiful but striking. He is short. I am shorter. He still hasn't finished his PhD. I still haven't finished my PhD. He loves women. I think men are the caffeine in the cappuccino of life. We are almost the same age. We share many virtues and we share many faults, which is very handy when it comes to forgiveness, the lifeblood of marriage. We are both mildly eccentric. The verdict of my dear friend Lily when she met B.A. was "I was so relieved. I thought he'd be too normal."

If you are a brainy potato dumpling of a man, it is a good idea to court brainy potato dumplings of women. It is a bad idea to think, "Although I am a balding, overweight 5'6" thirty-two year old accountant with a marked physical resemblance to Winston Churchill, I shall court only 20 year old model-types." That's just not how life works. Go to the mall and look at the couples. The major discrepancies have to do with height. Short women don't mind marrying tall men, and tall men don't mind marrying short women. Tall women prefer tall men, and short men seem to prefer shorter women, which I think a bit sad, but that's life.

On the other hand, it is short sighted to think that women are "out of your league" just because of some ridiculous social construct like "where she went to university." If she's around your age, shorter than you, has similar interests, and has the female version of your figure (i.e. slim to your thin, athletic to your muscle, curvy to your fat), it doesn't really matter a damn if she went to Harvard or Oxford whereas you went to state or a red brick. If a woman turns you down because of where you went to college, that really is her loss because Harvard and Oxford men don't give a pinch of snuff for where women went to uni, so long as they think we're cute and fun, whatever than means for them.

I just remembered. Sometimes younger men fall madly in love with older women, e.g. their professors. In such situations, the younger man is going to have to think very hard and put forward his case in an honest and blunt conversation, and be extra-prepared to be shot down. This is particularly true if the young man does not have personal capital equal to the woman's higher social status, e.g. good looks, ambition, undoubted charm.

7. They are smelly. It's sad that they need to be told, but some do--especially some undergrads away from home for the first time ever. If a man does not wash daily, does not wear clean clothes, does not brush his teeth, does not wash his hair, does not wear deodorant, does not put odour-eaters in his shoes, he is going to smell. And women do not like that. We really do not.

Feel free to add your own thoughts in the combox!

Turning Eavesdroppers into Readers

I forget how long it has been since I gently dissuaded men from reading this blog. In case you were wondering, it had much to do with the fact that some male readers startled other female readers by following them to other blogs and writing to them in an overly familiar way. There was also the "imaginary internet girlfriend" factor, which made me uncomfortable. It is a sad fact that many men are Single because they lack good social judgement and either frighten, alienate or bore women. Sometimes a blameless psychological condition lies behind this. Sometimes it is just youthful inability to understand women. Sometimes sin and cynicism have over time rotted their character and it shows.

I wish I could help the men who suffer from psychological conditions that make it difficult for them to pick up on social cues or interest women. I am just not qualified, and already having devoted my spare time to Single women, I don't have a lot to spend on men whose social problems I have never shared. Generally, I know what to say and when to shut up, but I don't know how to teach that to anyone. My advice to men with such conditions is to go to their doctors or counselors and say, "Where can I learn the skills to befriend women?"

However, this blog may be of help to men who suffer from a youthful inability to understand women, or who are striving to give their characters an overhaul so that they can be found acceptable by the kind of people who used to be called "nice girls." Also, it might be of a help to men whose life experiences have led them to doubt that there are "nice girls" out there. Many women of modest and discriminating habits read my blog; there are a wide variety of such women, and they blow apart cherished stereotypes. Many "nice girls" will, in fact, challenge a guy's ideas about what women "should be" like.

Finally, I know many of my female readers want to read men's opinions on Single life, dating, family life and women. Sometimes you are not made very happy by what men say, but that in itself is educational. Essential to having happy or merely respectful relationships with men is understanding that men are who they are and not necessarily who you want them to be. Of course you deserve to have your views as a woman listened to respectfully, but men deserve to have their views as men listened to respectfully, too.

All this is the lead up to my decision to welcome back men to the Seraphic Singles fold this St. Joseph's Day, i.e. next Wednesday. I will stop calling the Eavesdroppers the Eavesdroppers, and they will just be Readers, too. The blog is still for Single women, mind you, and my best advice to any Single man is always going to be "Talk to a good priest." Most priests ARE Single men, so whatever problem Single men have is a problem a Single priest is likely to have, too, or certainly have thought about. And this will including getting along with women, and coping with bullying women, and coping with crushes, bless them. Everyone gets crushes.

Auntie Seraphic & the Befuddled Eavesdropper

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I know I'm not supposed to be reading this blog, but having read it, I find that I can relate somewhat easier to NCGs. Your work is wonderful, and I pray it continues.

However, as a single-ish Catholic young man (I've been on a few dates with an NCG, but I get the feeling as if I'm Mr. Emotional Rebound after her rather nasty breakup with her ex-boyfriend, though they're now on speaking terms, so I have no idea where it's going), I notice a distinct lack of advice on the Internet in general for Single Catholic men. 

Truth be told, many NCBs are just as clueless about the issues you elucidate as the girls are (which led to the breakup I mentioned earlier, incidentally). Where would a guy in that situation go as to advice or resources? The want of such seems to be a factor driving them into the hands of the PUAs and all the horrors it entails.

Yours sincerely,
Somewhat Befuddled.

Dear Somewhat Befuddled,

Thank you for your email. You are absolutely right. One of your fellow eavesdroppers, the kind I have to see in person drinking a gin-and-tonic shortly after I write something extremely personal, keeps threatening to start a blog called "Beatific Bachelors." Unfortunately, he is just joking. 

I will post your letter soon. Meanwhile, you may continue sneakily reading my blog for insights in the the feminine psyche and I recommend a blog called "The Art of Manliness." "The Art of Manliness" is pro-family and subtly Christian and not-so-subtly American. However, I know at least one man, not American but from a macho culture, who thoroughly approves and recommends "The Art of Manliness." http://www.artofmanliness.com/

Grace and peace, 

Seraphic

Not a particularly adequate answer, I see now. What I should have added is something like, "Tell little Miss Emotional Rebound that you don't want to hear her talk about other men when she's with you." Life is much more exciting and clear when men just speak up about what they want and what they don't want and what they like and what they don't like. 

I'm not saying men should say, "I don't like you in that purple dress." I'm saying that they should feel free to say, "I don't want to hear you talk about other men when you're with me." Such forthright language tips off Emotional Rebound Girls that you're not just a sexless teddy bear she can cry into because Mr Macho was mean.  It suggests a chap is also a kind of Mr Macho, only better. In general, women like manly men who say manly things. Nagging, of course, is something we associate with our mothers and therefore femininity, so don't nag. Just say "I want to see that film. Do you?" and "I'd like to take you to dinner Friday. Okay?" and, especially, "I don't want to hear you talk about other men when you're with me. I want you to think about me."

Personally I think the Beatific Bachelor Blog idea best left to a man, although suddenly I am struck by the idea of starting a mock blog by the same name in which I pretend to be characters based on one or two of my Young Fogey friends, e.g.:

Question

Dear Beatific Bachelors,

My girlfriend makes me take her out to expensive waterfront cafes and then tells me to shut up while she watches the sailors. What should I do?

Reply

Continental Fogey: You should slap her.

English Fogey: No, no, no. You cannot slap women in this country, you barbarian.

Continental Fogey: What do you mean? I have a hand. I can slap.

English Fogey: I mean you may not slap women in this country.

Continental Fogey: If I do not slap them, how can I make them behave?

English Fogey: That's what this letter is asking, you troglodyte.

Continental Fogey scowls, looks up troglodyte in the bilingual dictionary on his phone.

Continental Fogey (twisting end of moustache): Humph! It is the same. And that is not very respectful! Chhhuh..... (Puts away phone.) Well, if he cannot slap, he can shout at her.

English Fogey: Maybe he should take the chair facing the sea so she has to take the chair facing the café. That way she couldn't see the sailors. 

Continental Fogey: Faugh! He might as well shoot himself in the head right now!

English Fogey: That's not very helpful. 

The only drawback to this amusing enterprise would be the ever-present threat of lawsuit--which reminds me that I should state for the record that this is an admittedly outrageous caricature and as far as I know not a single one of my friends would ever slap a woman.  These fictional scenes just develop in my head, and I have to write them down or die. 

Successful with Women

For over twenty years, I have been attracting the attention of intelligent men of my own intellectual and religious parties who enjoy arguing with me. Their eyes light up, and they roll up their rhetorical sleeves, and I can almost hear them thinking, "Oho! A foe worthy of my steel!" as if they were Batman witnessing Catwoman ravage a jewellery shop. TH2 at Heresy Hunter, once actually referred to me  (with affectionate glee) as his arch-enemy. All I did was ask him to stop being so mean to my friends. Oh, and to stop insinuating that Lonergan was a Kantian. He wasn't.

At some point, I may get tired of this friendly fire, and start saying to all the incarnations of Batman things like, "Honestly. No. There are much more intelligent women with whom to do battle. I can barely barely add fractions. I failed Grade 10 math. Really, I'm Just a Housewife. Shoo."

However, occasionally Batman says something purrrfectly catastrophic, and I sense there is some fun to be had at his expense. For example, yesterday an IMOMOIARP dropped the expression "successful with women." I think it was prefaced with "Everyone knows that men with money are the most."

"What do you mean, as a Catholic, by successful with women?" I demanded. "Do you mean, a man  who who has persuaded a woman to marry him and have his children and live with him year in and year out, a man who also has many daughters who love and respect him?

And, astonishing as this will sound to you, that's not what he meant. The definition of "successful with women" held by this loyal son of the Church was "attractive to women."  And yet I suspect that if I had thought of following this line of questioning, he would not have defined Saint Jerome as successful with women although Christian women flocked to Saint Jerome and listened to his teachings, fasted too much 'cause he said so, did his housework, etc. Meanwhile I doubt Saint Jerome had any money beyond that his rich patronesses gave him. And as he had a serious fasting habit himself and was rather contemptuous of the body, I doubt he was a looker. In fact, I vaguely recall reading a report that made clear he wasn't.

Whence the terrific popularity of Saint Jerome?

Could it be that Saint Jerome had something that these ladies wanted? Obviously it wasn't money, or a handsome face to look at, or the ability to give a great massage. It probably wasn't flattery either, since Saint Jerome was terribly inflammatory and is on record as having called St. Augustine nasty names.

I think it must have been his brains. Saint Jerome was a powerful and convincing thinker, and thus gave all those well-born Roman ladies something to think about. But if one had laid a tentative hand upon him, he would have slapped her silly, so I cannot imagine any of them trying that.

It could also have been his gigantic confidence in being Saint Jerome: "Hey, Saint Augustine! You're an idiot! I blow my nose at you!  I'm Saint Jerome!" That's kind of awesome especially as St Jerome did, after all, compile the Vulgate.

I'm starting to wonder if I would have been crazy about Saint Jerome.

It's too bad that even Catholic men think, when they think of men who are successful with women, of men other than good Christian husbands with wives, daughters and grand-daughters who love them, or of Christian thinkers around whom Christian women flock to hear the Good News, or even of popular professors or revered artists like frog-faced T. S. Eliot.

Noooooo, I suspect even they are thinking of footballers, film stars, rock stars and, heaven help us, basketball players and boxers. Wilt Chamberlain, reports wikipedia, had 20,000 sexual relationships, but never had a wife or child. Call me sentimental, but I don't call that successful with women.

Mike Tyson beat his first wife, cheated on his second, raped Miss Rhode Island, but may now be having a happy third marriage. All the same, I wouldn't consider him successful with women either.

And so on.

Auntie Seraphic & the Nice TOO Catholic Boy

Well, my dears, here is the first Auntie Seraphic letter of the Easter season, sent to me just before I closed the office for Holy Week. And hold onto your hats, for it is from a man, and a man who very sensibly asked me for first and second date advice, too.

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

X turned me down for a second date because I'm Catholic. By her lights, Catholicism is too different from whatever flavor of protestant she is to continue [seeing me]. I'm very disappointed. On the one hand, I can see how this would save us all the pain that would result from re-litigating the Reformation. On the other hand, it's not everyday that I meet a pretty girl who takes her version of the Christian faith seriously (and who has many other qualities I find deeply attractive).

She wants to be friends once I move down to DC, where I had a job interview on Monday. I don't know how I feel about this. I already have several friends in the Washington metro area, but not so many that I should blithely turn down an offer of friendship. At the same time, I'm dubious that unrequited romantic attraction is a firm basis for friendship. In all likelihood I would become more attracted to her as I got to know her better.

Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Nice TOO Catholic Boy

Dear N2CB,

I'm sorry that happened. In a way it's a mini-martyrdom, really, since this definitely counts as suffering for the faith.

I don't usually write to guys, so I'm of two minds about the whole friendship offer. On the one hand, it's good to know more people. On the other, you are right: you don't want to get hooked on a pretty girl who just wants to be friends.

Tell you what. Don't contact her for about a week, which is about as long as it will take her to feel regretful for having turned down a good guy. Then send her an email saying it would be great to see her again when you're in DC. If you're lucky, by the time you get down there, you will be over her, but she will think to include you in a party or some group activity, where you can meet someone else! 

Meanwhile, I'm sorry. Personally, I'm not a big believer in mixed-religion romances, so I can see her point, but it's still sad. Good for you for trying, though. 

Want me to print your letter? It may interest my readers to know that a good, available Catholic guy is DC-bound. 

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

***

N2CB said "Sure," so if my Catholic DC readers would like to go as a group (since we do not do matchmaking here on Seraphic Singles, and I have never met the man, though he is certainly a long-term reader) and take out their brother Catholic for coffee and cake to make up for the continuing side-effects of the Protestant Reformation, then do let me know in the combox!

***
Update: Thanks to ML for his March donation!

Who Pays Redux

In my book, there is a discussion of the thorny issue of who pays on a date.  Someone suggested to me recently that it is absolutely unfair and ridiculous for men to constantly buy dinners for women who have just as much, or more, expendable income than they.

"But it's symbolic," I argued. "It doesn't have to be a lot! Although I admit if  he takes her to an expensive restaurant, that could be impressive."

"Oho," said my esteemed colleague, as if I had just admitted to knowing how the murder was done.

"But it might not," I added and explained that many women are very uncomfortable with men who throw the cash around and suspect they might be trying to buy them. My mother only ever let me accept flowers, books, candy---and trinkets, I now recall.

I feel rather guilty now about the many dinners I ate at the expense of others, and now rather wish I hadn't, but had stayed in with a book or done more homework. My usual argument is that women spend a lot of money getting ready for a date with someone we really like, and if we were to spend all that AND pay for the dinner the guy asked us to, then we would end up paying more than him, for something that was his idea, and this would be crazy.

My revised thought is that "Whoever asks, pays" is a great rule, and doesn't really violate my earlier thoughts, since I don't think women should ask men out on dates. Women can, however, invite men to their parties, which of course the hostesses themselves have to finance.

That said, there is nothing wrong with saying, "Why don't I get this?" if a date should move from one venue to another. For example, if Mr Date has invited you out to dinner (which still happens occasionally, even in these decadent times) and you both decide to have coffee somewhere else, then you can proffer your little wallet at the cafe and squeak, "I'll get this."

This is how the conversation would go in Canada:

She: I'll get this.

He: Oh, no. Allow me.

She: No, no. You paid for dinner. Please let me get coffee.

He: Oh, but you don't have to. Really

She: But I'd like to. Honestly.

He: Well, thank you/No, I've got it.

N.B. If a guy rejects your third offer to pay for coffee, don't insist. Subside prettily and then go home and debate with your friends about whether or not Mr Date is an old-fashioned guy who loves to pay on dates or if he is a control freak and if you really like him and if actually not having to pay ever would be a massive relief or an erasure of your autonomy.

I should mention that this is how the conversation would go in Canada back when everybody seemed to have a lot more expendable income. It occurs to me that the explosion of "hanging out" and the rumoured death of dating may have to do with economics. I love to say "It's just coffee," but maybe it isn't "just coffee" when a cappuccino now costs £4 and everyone is poor.

Perhaps the message to get across is that dating is not about spending money but merely about symbolic courtship gestures. A single flower, for example, does not cost very much, but it is still an absolutely huge deal if a nice young man gives a nice young lady who likes him a single flower. To hold a Single woman's coat when she is struggling to get into it is now so rare as to constitute a gesture of personal interest. A valentine cut from red paper (very cheap at the dollar store) given at any time of the year would thrill anyone love-besotted.

I do not recommend homemade poetry, however, except for published poets. Men should stick to what they know when it comes to the homemade gift department, and very few men know how to write a poem. VERY FEW.

Meanwhile, since dates have to happen somewhere, I believe there are incredible deals to be had for students at dozens of houses of culture (e.g. the symphony) and I know that many museums (like in Edinburgh) are free. If I were an enterprising young man in Edinburgh, I would invite whichever pretty girl who caught my eye for coffee at the place on George IV Bridge that has half-price pastries after 3 PM and then suggest a visit to the nearby Royal Museum of Scotland, which is free.  The Royal Museum of Scotland has a dead Viking in the floor; surely every woman would love to see the Royal Museum of Scotland. Several times. But if she admits she was at the Museum yesterday, well, the deliciously creepy Black Greyfriars cemetery is even nearer.

Actually, a walk in Greyfriars is a rather good idea, especially if one enjoys being clutched by terrified women, e.g. at horror films. Whereas horror films are fake and expensive, Greyfriars is real and free.

Once upon a time, e.g. before the Second World War, dating was not called dating but "walking out." It took its name from what the date consisted of, which was going for a walk. The walk might end up at a tea shop, or it might not, but at any rate walking was free. The point then, as is the point now, was not the expense of the whole proceedings, but the symbolic gesture of asking a woman to go for a walk and the time shared together.

Monday after the Sunday before

You know, I do not think the New Evangelization envisioned a Continental Young Fogey pulling a knife on an English Young Fogey for insinuating that his wallet was machine-made. Although I am sure we all agree that they are uniformly charming, Agatha Christie novels should not be our guides to Catholic social deportment.

I would say a lot more on the subject had I not a deadline today.

***
Very well, I have written my article, so I can discourse further on the murderous and envious passions seething under the suit-jacketed bosoms of the Young Fogeys of Britain.

Actually, I don't think they were that murderous. The knife wasn't that big, and its owner waved it  about only vaguely, as if in jest. Only rarely does anyone get knifed in the handsome drawing-rooms of Morningside. That's why Morningside property values are so high. Personally, I could not tell if the Continental Young Fogey's handsome wallet was machine-made, nor could I determine if his tormentor's wallet was indeed made of crocodile.

Earlier there had been some discussion of the bad reputation Young Fogeys have among American readers of my blog. As 90% of local Young Fogeys strive to get along with women, it was suggested that American Young Fogeys don't have the hang of Young Fogeydom.  The essence of Young Fogeydom is not complaining that women won the vote, but demanding to know if another fellow's tweed jacket should be that long. Young Fogeys do not usually joust intellectually at parties; they prefer to show off their vintage accessories and mock the vintage accessories of others. Some will oblige the ladies by showing us their sock garters; other Young Fogeys think this is in terrible taste.

Young Fogey parties should feature either a piano or a gramophone. For example, when I arrived at this Morningside flat, a Youngish Fogey was already at the piano playing "There's a Danger in the Waltz" in great style.

Young Fogey parties should also feature, not to say "star", the correct alcoholic beverages. For example, I was offered a choice between a gin-and-tonic or a sherry within two minutes of my arrival.

There should be sofas, cats and, in winter, a roaring fire. As there is likely to be much consumption of tobacco, there ought to be a room to which ladies may retreat, if they prefer to breathe invisible, non-blue air. The food should be kept here, and yesterday it was. The 10% of local Young Fogeys who do not strive to get along with women remarked aloud when I had my third helping of chicken curry rice. (It was very delicious chicken curry rice.)

Young Fogey conversation can range from antique vestments found on Ebay to the psychological truth of the films of Roman Polański and yesterday did. In hindsight I would caution a married woman against explaining to a student the psychology of the adultery of a fictional married woman with a fictional student. Such philosophical discourses can sound bad, especially after a half a bottle of red wine when suddenly it is no longer clear if you are still talking about the film but about Life. Misunderstanding and shrieking may ensue.

Young Fogey 1: ...And it was a beautiful velvet....

Married Woman: ...Meanwhile she said he was just like her husband, so in a sense she was not being unfaithful to her husband but paying tribute to...

Young Fogey 2: Ho! Outrageous! How can you defend such behaviour?

Married Woman: I'm not saying it was good behaviour--!

Young Fogey 1: ...Really fine quality. Beautiful.

Hostess: Would anyone like another drink?

I seem to recall leaving this Young Fogey party at eleven, after being bitten by a bicycle pedal and personally I don't see why bicycle pedals need teeth. I left with a man in a kilt and an overly long tweed jacket, principally because I was married to him and he looked rather jolly. It was a cold windy night, but the clouds were thin and sailed across the sky at such speed that, once in the countryside, one could admire the stars.

Another Kraków Retreat

There will be an Anielskie Single retreat in Kraków between October 25 and 27, 2013.  I will tell you the details when I know them. The retreat will be in Polish--although my talks will be predominantly in English, with a simultaneous Polish translation provided--and open to both women and men.

Last May there was one non-Polish speaker besides me at my first Polish retreat, an American girl living in France who speaks fluent French. I thought she was one of the bravest American girls I ever met. To spend a weekend at a religious retreat in Poland surrounded by Poles when you don't speak any Polish is very brave. Fortunately, there was also a Canadian girl there, fluent in both English and Polish, so the American girl had someone to hang out with. Most Polish girls in Krakow speak at least some English, but they are sometimes shy about it. There was also a Polish woman who spoke French very well, so that worked out nicely, too.

Kraków (Cracow in English) is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen, so it is well worth a visit although I imagine, from October 25 and 27, we will all kept very busy in the retreat centre. If you do not live in Poland, it would make sense to make the retreat part of a week-long trip to Poland.  Early to mid-October is very beautiful, and November 1st, All Saints Day, is one of the most important holidays in the Polish calendar. Expats fly home to be with their families and decorate family graves. The cemeteries are beautiful, and you just might give up any lingering pagan attachment to Hallowe'en.  

It goes without saying that Poland is one of the nicest places in the world for a Roman Catholic to visit.   Poles tend not to understand this, but they are always happy when foreigners praise Poland. It is full of beautiful churches, and the churches in Kraków and Warsaw are packed on Sundays and Holy Days and First Fridays, although if you exclaim over this, the Poles will tell you that this is nothing and you should have seen them ten years ago, the congregations spilled into the streets, Catholicism in Poland is in decline, woe. They usually haven't a clue what it is like to be Catholic outside Poland.

Poland is also exciting to visit because it is in the EAST. Poles will tell you that it is not in the east but CENTRAL or even in the WEST because it is so westernized now, but once you get on a neglected highway east of Kraków, you will know you are in the EAST. (That said, Warsaw is a lot more EAST than Kraków is.)  

"Wait," I hear a voice cry. "Back up. You said something about the retreat being open to men."

Ah, yes. Ahem. Yes. Yes, it is. And this means poor Auntie has to adjust her thoughts to make them more specifically relevant for men, too, including any with SSA. It will not be like chatting to you girls with the men listening at the door. Presumably they will actually be sitting there and eating with the women and praying among us at Mass. The dynamic will be completely different from last May's retreat, but Father Paweł (whose idea this is) seems perfectly sanguine about it, so I guess it will be okay. I don't know why I am so nervous about it. Oh--just remembered.

Seraphic: And how is your mother?

Polish Man: Why do you want to know?

Seraphic: Um, because it's polite to ask?

Polish Man: British small talk is stupid.

As a matter of fact, a mixed retreat is more usual in Poland than a woman-only retreat, which was then an innovation for the retreat house. And I imagine there will be a good mix in age and circumstances--elderly widowed men, middle-aged divorced men, and youngsters who just don't want to or can't get married right now--so it will not be at all like an American Catholic Singles annual cruise ship party.

(Long pause as I try to imagine myself as a speaker at an American Catholic Singles annual cruise ship party. I bet they get paid hugely. Has anyone been on one? I am dying to know.)

Meanwhile, I plan to be in Poland for at least two weeks in October, so if any Polish readers would like me to come and speak to their group, just contact me. I can read Polish from a prepared text, but otherwise you would need someone to translate.

Men are not things.

It is morning now, but I am still haunted by the story I read last night. It's partly because it was well-written, partly because it was set in a place I know well, partly because I had just read this story, and partly because it is about a Single woman.

A Single woman on the outskirts of Boston, incidentally, quite near where I started my blog.

I knew Harvard Square very well, although the Harvard bookstore wasn't my favourite. There were other good bookstores near it; there was at least one great used bookstore and a foreign-language bookstore. (Gosh, all of a sudden I wish I had a transporter and could check the latter's Polish selection. Back then I was all about German.)

I loved Cambridge, MA. I really loved it. Actually, I loved almost everything about Boston-and-Cambridge except B.C. Volker, my last ex-boyfriend, loved Boston too, but he was doing work at another, more upmarket, institution. He was happy there.

The story of Volker and me, which you can read about in My Book, is nothing like the story I linked to yesterday, THANK GOD. I feel badly mentioning them in the same sentence.

But I suppose there are some parallels. First of all, there is the religious dimension. The author is at a Passover supper and "feels relieved" when a NJB walks in. And I would be delighted when I would go to Coffee Hour after Mass in Boston and see Single, unattached, well-educated Catholic men there.

And, um, that's it. Except that I also wrote about my relationship. But it didn't involve sex, pregnancy, doctors, blood, blame, or troubling white sweatshirts. It was about a NCB and a NCG in their thirties who liked each other very much and had a lot of values in common, but were ultimately not that into each other. I am very grateful now that Volker was not that into me, but on the other hand, I still think he is a marvelous person. The time I visited him in Germany he bought front row DFB (German football) tickets. That's the kind of man he is: generous, thoughtful and kind. He thought I'd like to see my football heroes, and so made it happen.

To repeat what I wrote after British midnight, I am seriously troubled by the narrator's attitude towards her boyfriend Josh. The I-knew-it-was-my-baby-and-I-did-the-loving-thing-by-killing-him/her meme is one with which I am depressingly familiar, thanks to membership in the third-wave-feminist, Baby Bust generation. But the author's attitude towards her lover really blew my mind.

On the one hand, he is a status symbol, a desirable object to the author because he is Jewish, Single, and has a nice Jewish family.

On the other hand, he is supremely disappointing because on their first date he is clumsy, awkward, nervous and tripping over his dress shoes. When they go into a book shop he doesn't leave her alone; he looks at the books she looks at. (I would assume this was because he was trying to learn something about her.) And then she is mad because he asks his sister to join them. She finds this unmanly. Hello?

When she sees him again, she decides he might be better than she thought because he has thicker facial hair and clothes she likes. This is an example of not being rooted in reality.

She supposes that she was lonely. She had been through an "emotional hell" and been abandoned by a man with whom she had been "blissfully in love with." (Supposes? Raise your hands all Single girls who are not abjectly lonely after a break-up with someone you really loved.) And she supposes she was hopeful, remembering her "relief" when a NJB walked into the---. Hold on a minute.

Why relief? Pleasure, okay. It's nice when you are at a dinner party with friends and family and a cute boy walks in. But relief?

At their next date, and she is careful to mention he didn't spring for the bill, he wears more clothes she doesn't like. "His clothes, his choice" is not the drum she's beating here.

His sweatshirt and shoes are not just clothes, though. No. They point to "a conventional, conservative, unrefined" way of seeing the world. Really? And, oh, by the way, he's of a LOWER SOCIAL CLASS, which she illustrates by the food he grew up eating. Ah, hello. Even in Britain, land of the class system, it takes a little more than tofu and brown rice to raise you above your fellow human beings to the heights of higherclassness.

Her therapist, apparently, tells her to give the man boy man a chance. It's the therapist's fault, obviously.

"So I gave up." Gave up what? I think she means that she settled. She invites him into her bedroom and they sit on her bed. To her surprise, he kisses her. (To her surprise? They're ON HER BED.) She keeps talking; he keeps kissing. Eventually she shuts up. ("I'll give it [IT, not him] five minutes and see what happens.") Sex happens.

There is no love in this story. Like the floor of her bedroom, I am struck by the coins that fall out of her lover's pockets. They remind me of her abject consumerism, the importance she puts on food, sex, clothing and "class." The story is one of lust and greed. A man is judged unworthy by his shy demeanour on a first date, his clothes, what the author thinks of as his social class. What redeems him is that he is really good in bed.

But then she gets naggy. In fact, from the words "my boy" she sounds more like his mother than his lover. He's always late. He leaves half-drunk glasses of milk around. He doesn't do laundry often or well enough. He was always late. He wasn't as ambitious as she thought he should be.

When she gets pregnant, he brings her a lot of carbs. He encourages her to eat. She thus puts on ten pounds. She says she loved being "unattractive." Uh huh. Tell me another one.

After several paragraphs of underscoring to us that this man is actually a child, the author tells us she asks him about his feelings like a child hearing a bedtime story.

She says she became "sharp and mean." I don't doubt that. But it is Josh who is made to say that he doesn't love her. His declaration is immediately followed by "the river of blood."

I am sick at heart because I keep thinking about Josh, and about all the men who are utterly messed up by women who treat them like semi-attractive, gift-bearing sub-humans--like genies, perhaps--using them and judging them and blaming them for being who they are instead of who the women want them to be.

Men are just as human as we are. Honestly. They have different problems, they have different weaknesses, they even have some different sins. But male friends deserve the same respect as female friends. We need to be gentle with them. We need to be careful of their feelings. The chattering classes have granted women the permission to use men for sex, to judge them constantly, to blame them constantly for non-sins. We should tell the chattering classes to go to hell.

Poor Josh. I hope the author has finished punishing him for being himself as he is and not who she wanted him to be.

Update: For the sake of completeness, I will also point out that she uses food to hint that Josh is not a "real" Jew. She associates him with milk, cereal, mac-and-cheese, baked potatoes and toast. She associates herself with matzos and good old Eastern European Jewish cooking. Boy, does she hate him.

The Money Thing

I never know what is going to touch off a blog post, let alone two. But this weekend it was definitely a five minute conversation in a grassy courtyard, between blossoming cherry trees, with two handsome men, one Polish, one Scottish, who didn't actually say that much. Our topic was this funny "How to Win Women" clip on Spotify, which I actually never saw, and I went smack into Auntie Seraphic mode. Dedicate an hour every day to something, and you become it. Believe ME. Let's just say they didn't have the chance to say much.

But one of them did say something, or maybe one or the other just thought it and I read his mind. I can't remember, and at any rate he didn't get very far, because although he said or thought it in the most general and polite way, the concept was "Money."

In a split second I thought about the hundreds of my readers, most working madly at school or at jobs or at careers, most paying their own bills, most longing for male company, for a man who would make them laugh and meet them at the airport at the end of a business trip.

"Women don't care about a man's money," I trumpeted. "We don't really care how much a man makes! We have our own money! We have our own jobs! We don't need men for money. We choose men for their looks. MEN ARE A LUXURY GOOD!"

That last sounded really great until I thought about how that might sound to someone like, you know, John Paul II.

"Don't tell anyone in Poland I said that," said I hastily to the Polish one.

Okay, so men are not a luxury good. They are our brothers, our spiritual spouses in "unity in two" (see Mulieris Dignitatem), our friends, our companions and co-creators of the future. And thus they are so much more to us than a source of income I do not even know where to begin.

"Of course women want men to work," I said. "Men need work for self-respect. But it is not about money."

Neither of them pointed out that my unusual and comfortable if simple lifestyle is not being supported by my meager Catholic writer's earnings but by my heritage sector husband, which was prudent of them. It's never a good idea to suggest to your hostess that she married for money although, actually, people constantly suggest that I married B.A. for the Historical House. I did not marry B.A. for the Historical House although I am awfully fond of the Historical House, which is a good thing, as the Historical House is the focus of my husband's career. It's like loving Christendom College when your husband is a professor there.

Career. Work. And, really, what adult Catholic Single woman really cares what work an attractive man does as long as he is doing it, he enjoys it, it isn't evil and it makes him independent? Yes, a young women who anticipates having a houseful of kids is going to ponder how she and a potential husband are going to best support those kids, but the majority of women are not thinking, "Oh wow. I just want a guy to pay for my Gucci handbags." I mean, hello?

Now, I admit there are probably some women out there who really do think of men as sources of Gucci handbags. My former housemate Jonathan swore up and down that women in the bars and clubs of Boston would crane their necks to have a look at his watch or go to some lengths to have a look at the label of his coat. He also claimed women sometimes ask complete strangers what kind of car they drive. It had never occurred to me in my life to do that, so eventually I asked a man what kind of car he drove, and he said "Whichever one is available", which I thought supremely clever.

I am trying to see life from the perspective of women who go to bars and try to figure out which men are earning a lot of money. For some reason, all I can think of is Margaret Thatcher supposedly saying that anyone who takes the bus after age 40 is a loser, or whatever she said that makes Scottish bus-takers and bicyclists so mad. I suppose these label-reading women might be trying to separate the men who have embraced what they think is adult life from the men who are content to coast through life as perpetual teenagers. And young men starting off in their careers tend to buy shiny toys like cars, watches and handsome overcoats. So I can well imagine a woman scanning a man trying to impress her in a bar and thinking "So where are your shiny toys, then?"

But, yes, I admit there are women who are looking for walking cash machines, although I don't think I know any personally. And I know a lot of single women. These are women who go to church. They have jobs. They don't usually go to bars, and if they do, they are surrounded by female friends. Most have put in a lot of time and work to get degrees or certification, and those who think they won't work after marriage think this will be because they have babies to tend. They have been told since they were old enough to grasp the concept that women SHOULD work outside the home, and that women SHOULD earn money, and it is actually very difficult for many contemporary educated women to grasp the concept that--as Saint Edith Stein wrote--women shouldn't HAVE to work outside the home. ("Family wage? Whaaaa-?") These are good women who are interested in men for themselves, not for their money.

In short, as long as a man has work, work he likes, or a job he doesn't like but he's willing to work at it until he can get work he likes better, then as far as money goes, he is marriage material. He is marriage material because getting and keeping a job, or working for himself, shows character,maturity and interest in life.

Conversely, a guy who sits around all day, not working, not studying, not doing something constructive (think the Hugh Grant character in About a Boy), is NOT marriage material, no matter how big his trust fund or personal wealth. But I suppose he will not go wanting for female companionship because he can always go and flash his watch at girls in bars, hopefully attracting only the ones he deserves.

As a favour to our brothers/spiritual spouses/co-creators of the future of the world, would you kindly write in the combox exactly WHAT it is you hope the right one will add to your life (if you do)? Anonymous comments will be, as usual, deleted.

Aktualizacja : To jest najnowszy wywiad ze mną: "Single nigdy nie są samotni".

What I Would Tell Men If They Asked

Women are busily signing up for the Majowka dla Kobiet (May retreat for women), as I boastfully informed a young Polish man yesterday. He seemed vaguely impressed, as I meant him to be.

“Are there going to be any men there?” he asked.

“Noooooooo,” I said. “Well, the priest.”

Then I went into a small lecture on how men and women are totally different and approach single life in different ways and have different responsibilities in courtship, and therefore not very much of my advice applies to men, exactly.

Then a Scotsman volunteered that he had found a very funny “How to” video on Spotify on how to win women, and he should look it up again.

One piece of amusing advice was to stare into a woman’s eyes while talking to her and never look anywhere else. This struck me as unwise, although in light of day, there is something to be said for showing paying strict attention to what a woman is saying. I, for one, am always flattered when I feel eyes, light or dark, boring into me when I am holding forth on some speech or other. Even if the stare is aggressive, which sadly it so often is, I feel flattered.

“But it’s so easy for men,” I wailed.

Both Pole and Scot looked as though they might disagree with this remark. However, lots of things are much, much easier for men than for women, like gaining muscle mass. The fact that more men aren’t in the gym busily building muscle mass used to drive me crazy in my sporty days when I was building muscle mass myself. It seemed like a waste of the gift of testosterone.

So having declared that courtship is so easy for men, I should elucidate. I will elucidate because there are lots of excellent guys going around thinking it is SO HARD to court women, when legions of women are complaining that there are no excellent guys left. Part of the problem, by the way, is that the excellent guys do not know that they are excellent guys. They had absolutely no luck with girls when they were 15, tiny and pimpled, and so they assume they will have no luck with girls even now when they are 30, tall (or taller) and as beautiful as the day.

What such men should do is talk to a happily married female pal and ask, “Do you think girls would like to go out with me?” She will either say, “A really special woman would appreciate your gifts”—which means you are a niche interest (and so many of us are)—or “Of course they would, you IDIOT!”—which is encouraging.

Okay, so having said that, I will tell you how I think men can court women. Keep in mind that this is advice for men, not for women, and this is a blog for women, so men probably won’t read it. However, I think it is worthwhile putting out on the blog so you girls can correct me where you think I am wrong, and we can take the assembled knowledge to our male friends when/if they humbly ask us what we think.

1. If you are male, Single and REALLY are tired of being Single and would prefer a noisier life of constantly having to get along with a woman, then you are going to have to go out and find your own woman. Don’t assume she will come up to you. That’s not her job.

2. To find your own woman, you have to go where women are. This is generally easy because women are just about everywhere these days, including the guesthouses of monasteries. By the way, if you are an acting-out priest or monk stop reading now. I’m not going to be complicit in your psychodramas.

3. Ask yourself the follow questions: “Who do I know is really pretty?”* “Who do I think is really nice?” If you can think of a girl whose name could appear under both headings, call her up on the phone and say, “Hey, [pretty and nice girl], I wonder if you would have tea with me at the [elegant] hotel on Saturday afternoon.”
Hotel teas are very classy and comfortable and generally free of the sexual associations of “a drink” and “dinner” and the job-interview quality of “coffee.”

4. Do not be completely alarmed if she blurts “Just as friends, right?” Despite what you have heard, many pretty, nice girls have a thick streak of awkward and are so shocked at the fact that they/we are being asked out on a Real Date that their/our brains seize up and they/we say the first thing that comes to mind. Also, our reptile brains hear “Tea with me?” and register “Marry me?” and so of course scream “Eeek! Viking rapist! Oh nooooooo! ”

So if the nice and pretty girl says, “Just as friends, right?” say, “Well, of course. But I will be paying all the same.” Fight for the right to pay. Point out it was your idea.

5. Have the lovely tea and then pay. Enjoy sitting in an elegant room with a nice and pretty girl for its own sake. It is one of the joys of bachelor living. Once you are married you no longer have a choice of girls; you can take only your wife to elegant teas or you will be in serious trouble.

6. Call the pretty, nice girl two days later and say, “I was wondering if you would come with me to X.” I don’t know what X is. X could be dinner at a specific restaurant. Or it could be to the opera. Or to a jazz bar. You’re paying, so you choose. If she really enjoyed the last date, she will say yes, and if she didn’t, she will probably say she is busy. Say you’re sorry about that, wait for two weeks, and if she doesn’t text you or call you or make an excuse to talk to you in her panic that she might have discouraged you, think of another nice, pretty girl to ask out for tea. Enjoy the fact that you can still go out to tea with a VARIETY of girls, because once you’re married…. Forget it.

7. If whichever pretty, nice girl starts telling you all kinds of personal stuff, this is a very good sign. If, however, it is about her ex-boyfriend, this is a bad sign, and it would be a good idea to tell her that you don’t want to hear about other men. This will help to keep you out of the Friendzone.

Girl (to friend on phone): And then he said, “I don’t want to hear about other men.”
Friend: Ooooooh. Respect.
Girl: Do you think so? I was kind of mad, actually.
Friend: No, it means he really likes you.
Girl: Really?
Friend: Yes.

By the way, be nice to any of her friends you meet, to the extent of buying their coffees when you are all out together, because she will be discussing you with her friends, and you will want them on your side.

8. Now, if you are lucky, one of the pretty, nice girls you’ve been taking to tea will start to show how much she likes you by emailing, texting, etc. Do not answer such messages right away. For some reason I have never been able to fathom, this makes women like men more. Maybe it is because we spend a lot of time wondering when you will text/email back and if we made asses of ourselves writing in the first place. I am sorry to say it, but it is true. And men who are too quick to answer emails and texts make women like them less, possibly because there is no suspense. This does not apply to married couples, however. Married men should get back to their wives ASAP or there will be trouble.

9. In general, don’t bring up the subject of commitment for three months. After three months or maybe two, you could delicately inquire as to whether she has been going to tea, opera, jazz, etc., with any other man and, if so, would she kindly stop so you can tell your friends you have a girlfriend. And if she agrees, you have to think hard for the next nine months if you want to marry this girl. Before the year is up, either propose or break up. Don’t waste her life, capisce?

10. If a woman asks you out and you don’t think she is either particularly pretty or nice, don’t go out with her just because you are lonely. She will complicate your life. So just say No, you’re busy/No, your heart belongs to another. Yes, she will be mad. Tough. Pre-empt such women by asking out girls on your Pretty & Nice list. And don’t forget what I said about waiting at least 2 weeks between asking out THIS pretty & nice girl (and her saying “no, I’m busy”) and THAT pretty & nice girl and, if you can, you might want to think about alternating between groups of friends.

Yes, you will probably be shot down in your dating career. Big fat deal. There are men your age and younger taking actual bullets in Afghanistan, so don’t come crying to me. If you think you are called to marriage (and most men are) it is your job to get a wife, so go and get one.

And that would be my advice to any man who asked me. They tend not to, however.

*By the way, ladies, "pretty" is in the eye of the beholder. No man should marry a woman he doesn't think is pretty. Thankfully, men are a lot more open-minded than women about what "pretty" is. They don't read our bloody awful fashion magazines. Unfortunately, a lot do look at porn, which totally messes up them and their own unique sense of "pretty", but that is not a problem I can solve.

Something for the Boys

I have not read very much of this magazine, THE (secret) journal of Young Fogeys, so I do not know if it 100% Catholic compliant. I doubt it, actually, but what I have seen so far I have enjoyed.

I find "The Chap Manifesto" particularly amusing, although I deplore the idea that men should smoke quite that much. My grandfather, himself a snappy dresser inspired by film noir, smoked like a chimney and died of a massive heart attack at 65. Thus my grandmother was a widow at 60 and very unhappy about it. Not that she stopped smoking herself for another 10 years or so, but I digress.

Any man who lives by "The Chap Manifesto" would dismiss my objections as feminine twittering and go selectively deaf, hearing snapping back on only when someone asked me what was for pudding or what it was X said about Y when Z was in the room.

The wonderful thing about the Single men I know in Britain is that they wear Singledom so well. They are very interested in philosophy, theology, politics, literature, art, clothing, conversation, dining out, cocktail parties and all of that, and if the topic of marriage comes up they nod thoughtfully as if marriage is something to which they ought to get around one of these days.

At no point do they sound off against feminism, which they usually pretend does not exist, unless they are teasing someone like me, and this happens but rarely, and usually under the influence of alcohol.I cannot stress enough that the Single men I know in the UK do not react to the whole subject of women and marriage with sudden diatribes against feminism.

No, the Single Young Fogey is calm, cool, and collected. He gives the impression that if he marries, it will be because he was at a country house/Highland cottage party where absolutely splendid girls abounded, and while rowing a pretty girl in linen and a picture hat in a nearby pond, he suddenly proposed and she accepted. Meanwhile, as he has no idea which country house/Highland cottage party this will be, he just gets on with the business of life, hunting down the prefect brogues and stocking the humidor.

I get the impression sometimes that some men think they are not really men unless they have a woman. But this has never been an issue for traditional university men in Britain. I don't know about the 1960s, Guardian-reading, red-brick men: perhaps they feel like the world would judge them harshly if they turned up at parties without trophy women on their arms. But this is not a thought that seems to torture the Young Fogey, I am happy to say.

Retire the Jumper

One day I will give up this blog secure in the knowledge that there are a lot of other dames writing about the Single life. Currently the Crescat is Single, and she had this to say about the Church as matchmaker. It is partly a response to the incomparable Simcha Fischer, mother of nine, who recently asked Single readers what it is that you want the Church to do for you.

But what really got my interest was the first comment on Kat's post, which was from a Single woman noting that more men seem to go to Traditional Latin Masses but that she did not want to wear a jumper. I'm assuming this woman is Canadian or American because in the UK a jumper is not a utilitarian frock but a sweater/pullover. And at the risk of being one of those Catholic bloggers who fixates on women's clothing, I'm going to fixate on women's clothing. (As a stunning innovation, I'll mention men's, too.)

Now, I have nothing against jumpers, per se. I had a very nice charcoal grey jumper (utilitarian frock) when I was four years old. There is a time and place for jumpers, like your elementary school photographs. For girls under twelve, I recommend the trusty old jumper, perhaps with a fetching ladybug pin.

I do not recommend the jumper for girls and women over twelve, and I am staggered that anyone would mention the TLM and jumper in the same breath. I suppose girls and women don these things as a sort of modesty uniform, a sartorial placard reading "I am a chaste and modest woman who would not have shoddy, unthinkable affairs with local tradesmen while you are at work." But I assure you that such modesty uniforms are completely unnecessary. Modesty is a good and noble thing, but it is all the sweeter when it is subtle. The virgin who reminds people constantly that she is a virgin is not as modest as the virgin who keep her mouth shut on such a personal subject.

And as a husband-attracting device, modesty is highly over-rated and always has been. Back in Jane Austen's day, elegantly dressed young ladies made their Empire-waist frocks stick to their bodies by spraying them with water. Desperate matchmaking mothers prompted their scandalized daughters to smile more, to flirt more, to give more encouragement, for heaven's sake, Laetitia. Modesty should of course be on the list of your womanly attributes, but it is down around #5. It is not #1, except in places like rural Afghanistan.

Now I go to a TLM myself, and being a reasonably observant woman, I note who else is there and what they are wearing, and who looks good, and who needs to have a little talk with me. And one thing I can tell you about my TLM community is that there are a lot of men in it. A goodish percentage of these men are bachelors under 40, and with the exception of the rebel in the rugby shirt, these young bachelors are sartorial romantics. They are dressed according to their personal, and yet shared, vision of what men dressed like in 1948.

They wear jackets, naturally. These jackets are usually tweed and very often bought secondhand, either from the internet or from a vintage shop. Occasionally a sharp piece of non-tweed tailoring--either made-to-measure or pret-a-porter--makes an appearance. Then there are the woolly pullovers (aka UK jumpers), for Britain is cold and there wasn't much by way of central heating in 1948. Less attention is paid to trousers, but they tend to be corduroy and sometimes bright red. (N.B. Bright red corduroy trousers are best left to broad-shouldered men, mes vieux.)

There are, of course, ties--including school ties, even if that school was a comprehensive, and university ties. Sometimes there are a bow-ties and a keen flutter of interest amongst the bow-tie fans when an new initiate takes the plunge. Then there are the socks and the shoes, the pocket squares and the handkerchiefs, and, I am told (for of course I never see these things), the braces, the sleeve bands and the sock garters.

And this all makes complete sense. If a man wants back all the beauty, romance and fittingness of the Mass before 1963, he might very well want back all the beauty, romance and fittingness of men's fashion before 1963. And if he is that interested in men's fashion before 1963, imagine how he thinks women should dress. The Well Dressed Woman of 1948 was not wearing what Americans call a jumper, people. You should not be thinking Laura Ingalls Wilder; you should be thinking Veronica Lake.

Now I know somebody is itching to write in and tell me that women don't dress for men, we dress for ourselves, and blah blah blah blah. This has to be complete garbage because I cannot think why any woman would wear a stupid "jumper" unless she were worried about her audience. I certainly dress for an audience, and it is for the sake of politeness as much as for anything else, like not wearing jeans to a Goth bar because it would ruin the ambiance for the Goths. And as too often I am the only woman at TLM soirees, I owe it to everybody to look as well as possible.

Besides, there is the singular thrill of giving men whiplash. You gorgeous young things are probably too, too used to this sort of thing, but it was a revelation for your belle-laide Auntie when she wore a dashing new hat and (she was told) every Young Fogey in the congregation craned his head to get a better look. Elderly widowers danced attendance; it was a very pleasant morning.

And that thought brings me back to the question of what the Church can do for Singles. As feminists say, when they are not calling the Church a "male monolith", WE are the Church--which is to say, helpful older married ladies like me. And I am telling you not to wear dumb, shapeless, what-Americans-call-jumpers to Mass, particularly not the TLM Mass. I am telling you to have a look at the best sartorial zeitgeist of your parish and then look wonderful.

You're welcome.

Leo the Late Bloomer

Bonus second post today because I feel inspired.

Imagine, if you can, some shrimp or beanpole of a young man who is so used to thinking that he is unattractive to women that around the age of 18 or 19 (or even earlier), he gives up. He assumes that because he is not attractive to women now, he never shall be. He gets on his life and admires women from afar or glowers at them from under his eyebrows.

Meanwhile he gets older and taller (and/or broader) and becomes an adult human being and therefore much more interesting than the small (or stretched) lump of dough he once was. He joins a religious order, or he marries the first girl who is nice to him, even though he doesn't really like her that much or they have nothing in common, or he just mooches around thinking he is unattractive whereas all around him women walk smack into telephone poles.

I know the opposite--very unattractive men who think they're God's gift--is more common to the average Single girl's experience, so I thought I would point out the existence of Leo the Late Bloomer. Sometimes Leo blooms at 30. Sometimes 40. Sometimes maybe even 50. I can just imagine it happening at 60.

I don't have any idea of what to do for Leo, or how to tell young men that just because women don't notice them now, it doesn't mean they won't notice them in 10 or 20 years. But I thought I'd acknowledge the existence of the Leos out there.

Now For the Good Stuff

Having contemplated all the things that make us go "Hmm!" perhaps we should contemplate what attributes of men we (or our friends) meet make us smile.

The absence of these attributes is not necessarily a "deal-breaker" but they are attributes that make women in my own community nod with approval.

1. He looks and dresses appropriately--even sharply--for whatever the occasion is.

2. He appears friendly and confident, with a good handshake.

3. He is a good conversationalist, neither dominating nor lagging behind in the conversation.

4. He has an interesting--or at least skilled--career or he is working towards an interesting or skilled career.

5. He comes from a good, friendly and clean-living family. (Some families really are deal-breakers, by the way. You might like the man very much, but then you think about what it would be like to be with his snarling, food-throwing, Jackass-watching family every second Thanksgiving for the rest of your life, and the bloom goes off the romance.)

6. He goes to Mass on Sunday. Extra points if he goes to daily Mass, although any girlfriend of his potential girlfriend would also say "Hmm! And has he already discerned that he isn't called to the priesthood or...?"

7. He has photos of his nephews and nieces or of still-little brothers and sisters in his wallet.

8. He owns a reasonable amount of real estate (e.g. one condo or one house, maybe a second house--like a cottage--if he is older). Owning real estate means that a man is serious about his economic well-being and has already put some work and saving into it. But owning too much real estate for his age and career position might make friends say "Hmm! He's not like that father in Long Day's Journey Into Night, is he?)

9. People--of different ages, men and women--keep spontaneously telling you what a great guy he is. (Be wary of written testimonials by his male friends that appear in the post, however. And I'm not sure I want to tell you that story...)

10. He has a habitually sunny disposition.

11. A car is nice. A car means you don't have to take the subway or the bus home from a date. It means you don't have to find a cab and pay a complete stranger who may or may not know your neighbourhood or language or how to speak politely to a woman* to take you home. Scrap this if you have a car!

*Hands up everyone who has found herself listening to a skeezy cab driver who thinks it is okay if he talks about sex with you.

Women's Checklists About Men

This is really the week of the car. It's incredibly ironic because my husband and I don't have a car, and I can't even drive. And when I told my husband my ideal man had an expensive-looking car, I got into trouble. Whoops. I then explained that my ideal man was B.A. himself with a Rolls and a chauffeur while he shouted into his mobile to his agent not to go above £50,000 at Christie's, and thus B.A. was somewhat mollified. He pointed out that £50,000 was not a lot of money to spend at Christie's, however.

Anyway, the whole car issue has made me think a lot about Men Without Cars Who Complain About How Shallow Women Are. Such men are one of my peeviest pet peeves. They are such a pet peeve that I forget to say "Bless their little hearts", which is of course the way to get out of an anti-man frame of mind. Being in an anti-man frame of mind scares away all good men but somehow attracts bad men, so you should try very hard not to man-bash either in public or in private.

Men sometimes worry about what makes them attractive to women, but not--I suspect--to the extent to which women worry about being attractive to men. Many of the less imaginative men think women are attracted to money, which suggests to me that they themselves are attracted to money and therefore if she wants to attract such dorks, a woman should look as rich as possible.

Because I kept saying that cars are less important in some areas (e.g. Paris, France) than in others (e.g. rural Ontario), it occurred to me that women's checklists about men must also change from area to area and from culture to culture. For example, in Italy no woman would be staggered and doubtful if she discovered that a 30 year old Single man still lived with his parents. However, in rural Indiana, this would cause a woman to wonder about his ability to fend for himself.

Thus, as a SERVICE TO MEN, and as amusement to the vast majority of readers who are Catholic women, I thought it would be nice if we women, by area, mentioned what circumstances of Single men we date make us (collectively) go "Hmm." (You don't have to say what town you are in. You can just say "urban east-coast USA" or "Australian outback".)

It occurs to me that if (IF) women really do prefer men with cars, this is good for men to know, for then they could get a car and thus improve their chances with women. There is no point to them sitting on the bus crying about how shallow women are, as this will certainly not improve their chances with women. Bless their little hearts.

Now I do not feel that I can speak for Catholic women in the UK, so I will write a checklist for Catholic women in general in Toronto. I will make the hypothetical man 27 years old and not in a PhD program. The questions are the question that first spring to the lips of friends. If there is no question, it is because the friends do not yet know what to say but will say it after the girl dating the guy leaves the room.

CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MAKE CATHOLIC WOMEN IN TORONTO GO HMM

1. He doesn't have a job. (Friends' Question: "Is he looking or...?")

2. He lives with his parents. (Question: "Is he Italian or...?")

3. He doesn't have a car. (Question: "Is he anti-car or...?")

4. He is divorced. (Question: "Did he get an annulment or...?)

5. He has a child (or children) out of wedlock and never married his (or their) mother. (Question: "Was he really young or...?")

6. He is in the seminary. (Question: "Are you CRAZY?")

7. He smokes grass. (Question: "Are you okay with that or...?")

8. He still drinks like a 19 year old frat boy.

9. He even just occasionally uses hard drugs.

10. He doesn't go to church. (Question: "Is he okay with, mm, you know, chastity and stuff?")

11. He is pressuring you for sex. (Question: "Why do you like him?")

12. It's been two months, and he hasn't tried to kiss you, and you don't know why. (Question: "Does he have a really strict confessor or could he be, you know, do you think, maybe, hmm...?)

Okay, mes petites filles. Reveal the things that make Catholic (or other Christian or Jewish or Muslim) girls in your area go "Hmm." If guys don't like it, then they should count to 10 and say "Bless their little hearts. They're only trying to help."

K/W Seminarian

I've just been going through my stats, and I found someone back in Ontario who found my blog by googling "ex-seminarian what is left to live for".

I have just prayed for whoever wrote that, and I hope other readers will, too. I'm hoping it was just a random google-search, but I'm worried it's not.

If you are an ex-seminarian who is feeling depressed, please telephone somebody now. Many, many men leave the seminary. Some leave sadly, some leave skipping. Leaving the seminary is not the end of anything except, perhaps, a painful few years. It marks a new start.

I walked away from a full fellowship to a PhD in one of the most famous Catholic theology programs in the USA, and here I am, happy and working away in the field--in a way much different than I ever imagined. Was walking away hard? You better believe it. Was I depressed? Talk to my doctor.

God has a plan for everybody. He has a plan for you. You might not have the slightest idea yet what it is, but He loves and knows you better than you know and love yourself.

If you want, email me. If not, and that was not just a random google search, please call somebody now.

So far my pieces about seminarians (and ex-seminarians) are for girls trying to cope with men who are still unsure if they want to be priests or married men. I am not at all an expert on the pressures of seminary life. There have been, of course, many, many men who married happily after leaving the seminary.

Auntie Seraphic & Just a Male Friend

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I think I have inadvertently given a Nice Catholic Girl the idea that I may be interested in her romantically. The fact is that I'm not; she's a nice girl who I enjoy talking to, but there just isn't that spark of attraction on my part.

I would be lying if I didn't say that this lack of attraction is mostly physical (though I'm a great believer in your axiom that men find attractive who they find attractive; most of the women I've been really into were not conventional beauties but were extremely beautiful to me all the same). Attraction is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for a relationship.

There's also the fact that she occasionally runs herself down in conversation, mentioning out of the blue that she wasn't popular and didn't have many friends in high school. Those things don't matter to me, but I'm very wary of girls with obvious self-esteem issues because it's hard to love someone when they don't believe they are lovable.

Anyway, I'd like your advice as to how to back off as gracefully as possible, with a minimum of hurt feelings.

My story goes like this: in the last couple months I've been frequenting a young adult Catholic group in my area. They meet weekly and I go [irregularly but often]. I knew a couple of the people who run the group from being in the wider [local] young adult Catholic social network, but I didn't know them particularly well. I consider myself to be a slightly extroverted person--I very much prefer to go out and be social than to sit at home alone--but I'm not a social butterfly and need time to warm up to a new group of people. When I do make friends, I tend to take a while to branch out.

I first remember meeting this NCG when about six of us went [somewhere] as a group-sponsored social gathering. We had a long wait in line, so I asked her about herself and we talked for quite a while. Later, at regular meetings of the group, I'd talk to her because I'd already gotten to know her better. She friended me on Facebook. A couple of weeks ago, at our diocese's Theology on Tap, she manned the hostess table. I must admit that I spent nearly all entire time talking to her (she, one of her friends, and I closed down the place).

Lately, I've been getting the vibe that she's into me. She encourages me to stay out later for the post-meeting social activities. She "likes" a large number of my Facebook status messages, even inane ones like "Happy Thanksgiving." She greatly encouraged me to show up to an event that the young adult group sponsored.

This may sound like thin gruel; perhaps I'm over compensating for past incidents when I failed to comprehend that a woman who asked for my phone and put her number in it at a party was interested in me romantically. I'm trying to trust my gut on this one.

I don't think I should just stop talking to her because, from what was discussed on your blog this weekend, that drives women crazy, apparently. I would like to continue the casual friendship that we have, but I think I need to act differently to avoid giving her the wrong impression.

Thank you so much for hearing me out. I eagerly await your advice.

Just a Male Friend

Dear Just a Male Friend,

How happy I am that you have written in, for we all love a guy's eye view and we all want to know what turns guys off. Wrong physical type. Check. Runs self down. Check.

I think your gut has got it right. Encouraging you to stay later and avidly following you on Facebook, complete with constant "likes" (including to "Happy Thanksgiving"), are indeed indications that a woman is into you. And as she friended YOU on Facebook, she obviously does not read Seraphic Singles because I hold that asking an eligible young man to be your "Friend" is just as bad as calling him up on the phone.

However, the girl may have got the impression that YOU were into HER because sometimes she seems to be the only person you speak to at events. I am shaking my finger at you. On the other hand, she ought to have introduced you to other people to speak to. If she did, though, I am shaking my finger at you again. Even though you knew she wasn't your type, neither she nor the people around her knew that. Without realizing it, you have may have been "making her conspicuous with your attentions", to use an ancient phrase.

Fortunately, your gut has told you what is up, so it is time to let the poor girl down as gently as possibly. Subtle is good. Women understand subtle. Therefore, I recommend that you change your status update to read "....is looking for a woman just like Rita Hayworth" or any other screen siren who very much takes your fancy and does not look at all like this girl.

The beauty of this is that you are stating who you DO want and not who you don't want. It is entirely honest yet positive. And this girl, who reads your status updates avidly, will not be able to prevent herself from comparing herself to Rita Hayworth or whomever you have chosen. (If the girl has red hair or is Hispanic, make sure you do NOT choose Rita Hayworth!) If she is a girl's girl, she will ask her female friends what they think, and the loving-but-unthinking ones will say you are shallow, and the loving-and-thinking ones will say, "Well, men love whom they love and not whom you wish."

Every once in a while repeat the Rita Hayworth theme, e.g. "....is still looking for a Rita Hayworth of his own " or "...saw a woman just like Rita Hayworth but wearing a wedding ring, alas" or "...wonders what the Aga Khan had that he doesn't have." That should do the trick.

Of course, it may not, and having derooted herself from reality and now floating amid the clouds of dreamland, this girl may ask you out. If she does, then you will be forced to say the dreaded, "Just as friends, right?" And, mortified, she will say, "Yah, of course!" And then you will say, "Great! Who else is going?" And it will be turned into a group event, and as she will not talk to you once anyway, feel free to cancel your own involvement.

P.S. to Female Readers: Five points:

1. You are somebody's type. Not everybody's, but somebody's. Imagine my excitement when I discovered that funny blogger Benedict Ambrose had had a lifelong crush on singer Dame Emma Kirby, who has fuzzy red hair and could have been my aunt. That was an awesome moment.

2. Never run yourself down in front of a man. Are you insane? High school is over, and unless you are now engaged to a man, mention only the good parts or not at all. Nobody wants to hear about how unpopular you were. Zzz.

3. If a man is interested in you, HE will befriend YOU on Facebook.

4. If you are single, and you inanely press "Like" to all his comments, he might start wondering if you are into him.

5. Never give a man more than half an hour or so of your time at a social event before he asks you on a date. Introduce him around. Excuse yourself to talk to other people. Be nice, be hospitable, but for heaven's sake don't be so darned available.

Auntie Seraphic & Potentially Clueless

Today a letter from a man.

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

Many thanks for your wonderful blog! Such a wealth of wisdom! To this end, I could use some advice.

In the not too distant future, I will be revealing my interest to a young lady, and I’m certain I could use some pointers on my approach. Over the last 2.5 months, we’ve had an infrequent but friendly correspondence via e-mail; I have been complimentary of her online work (a personal blog), and she has been assisting me with a writing project.

We have never met, however, given that we live some considerable distance apart. Nevertheless, she is very forthcoming on her blog, and I have become quite taken with her--like head over heels. This is something I very much wish to express.

I do not believe in being circumspect, and whatever I say will be clear and forthright. Yet with that said I do not want to be overbearing. This is something that is difficult for me. On the one hand, I am a very passionate person, and so I feel it would be disingenuous to exercise too much restraint; but on the other hand, I want to show due consideration to her sensibilities. What to do?

Would you do me the kindness of reading what I intend to send to her? Having a woman’s perspective on this would make me much less apprehensive as to whether I’m shooting myself in the foot. She is also a very romantic person. I am 3- and she is 2-. Let me know if you would like to help, and I'll send the letter along.

Kind Regards,

Potentially Clueless

Dear Potentially Clueless,

Before you commit yourself on paper/electronica, you must meet this young lady. I note that she is 2- years old, and that you are 3-. A ten year age gap, especially when the man is the elder, is negligible for those of us over 30, but not so much for a girl of 2-. I wish she were 25 and you were 35.

Frankly, the most romantic and sensible thing you can do is write to the young lady saying that you are going to be in her town and you would like to take her out to dinner. And I definitely caution you to use some restraint in your tone: do not forget that you do not actually know each other yet. An infrequent correspondence does not add up to intimacy, and if the young lady is a good writer, she is not putting her whole self on her blog, but just her blog "persona." This is not to say she is disingenuous; it is just that a writer has to choose one voice from the several that make up her character.

Your situation is very familiar to me as my now-husband was a great fan of my blog and invited me to stay with him when I announced my intention to visit Scotland. We read each other's blogs and left comments, and had an infrequent email correspondence. But both of us deliberately suppressed any hopes of romance until we had actually met. Each had seen unflattering photos of the other, and so we were pleasantly surprised, not disappointed, when we saw the reality.

I am, of course, deeply curious as to what you want to write, but honesty compels me to tell you that there is no point in writing a mash note to a woman (a very young woman) you don't really know. I can only counsel you to invite her out for dinner like an honest suitor. I don't know what a "considerable distance" means to you, but I am eternally grateful that I travelled over 3,500 miles to meet my now-husband.

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

P.S. to Readers: Potentially Clueless wrote back to thank me for saving him from rashness. His projected letter had included a poem. Had I known about the poem, my tone would have been even more firm. I think it was Jane Austen who observed that there were few budding romances so hardy that they could survive a poem.

P.S.2: Don't forget that email is only slightly more private than a billboard in Times Square. Before you send any email, imagine someone reading it at your funeral.

The Saint Joseph Problem

Dear Auntie Seraphic

Have you ever seen this:

http://artofmanliness.com/2008/01/16/stop-hanging-out-with-women-and-start-dating-them?

A recently married male friend posted this on his facebook page and so I copied it, knowing I was risking the wrath of my male friends. Well, the men didn't say anything, but the women sure did! They loved it.

I wanted to share it with you to see what you thought.

I don't know what you see-and maybe you had a post about this somewhere along the way and I missed it, but do you see what he is saying? That many young adults are not dating? I find that at most of the young adult gatherings I go to, there is very little sexual tension. And I think that is a huge problem. And I think this guy's answers are right on.

It has almost made me consider that even as friends, I have made myself too available to the men. I'm a NCG, so naturally I'm not doing anything wrong, but I wonder if even the presence of easy friendship with women men don't have to do much work. That really gets my blood running! Why are all these 30-something men still single? I have little sympathy for them, I really do.

I'm at [traditional Catholic college] so maybe it's that there are so many great girls that the men feel they have several options. THEN ASK THEM OUT! But they don't!! I don't think it is just here, because I hear the same happens in [Washington] DC, [Minneapolis-]St Paul and Denver--all hubs for great Catholics.

What is going on? Why aren't the men pursuing? Why are they not searching out a woman to spend the rest of their lives with them? I don't mean this as a sob at all. I mean, yes. I'm rather bothered that someone hasn't snatched up someone as lovely and wonderful as me! :) (I'm not normally this harsh, in real life). I'm just bothered that there are so many wonderful, gorgeous, holy, normal, balanced, exceptional Catholic women who men just walk right by. Good grief. Some of my friends I can't figure why men aren't following them around and drooling. Really.

So, wondered what you thought of his conclusions. I liked them. And I liked that he was getting on the guy's case!

Snatchable

Dear Snatchable,

I enjoyed the link and its shouts of "Man up!" I like to shout "Man up!" myself at times, although there are few people more unattractive to a 20-something Nice Catholic Boy than a 39+ year old married woman who is not even his mother shouting "Man up!"

Although I do wish, wish with all my auntly heart, that more young men would decide, at the age of 21 or so, that it was time to go out and slay some dragons and win some princesses to help them rule their eventual kingdoms of house, car, garden, children, dogs, barbeque and Little League/Book Club, I can see why they don't.

Adolescence was once considered a regrettable stage, covered in awkwardness and pimples, to be got through as quickly as possible. We experienced the powerlessness of childhood, we hastened through a brief adolescence and we seized the reins of adulthood.

For men adulthood meant making a living. For women it meant making a living until a "good marriage" provided us with a house, garden (or farm) and family to work at instead. If our husbands didn't make enough to provide for them all, or if we got permission to make a little pin-money, married women worked at various part-time jobs, like scrubbing floors for richer women or taking in laundry. Life for most married women up to the 1970s did not look, in fact, like a Ralph Lauren ad.

Meanwhile, adolescence is now considered THE most desirable stage of life, and the Baby Boom generation was the first generation in the history of mankind to decide en masse to stay there. Adult freedoms and adult money with as little adult responsibility as possible has gone from being counter-cultural to completely cultural in the English-speaking world. New immigrants, especially hard-working Asians, must think we are insane. And sometimes we agree, which is why we say "To hell with this. I'm going traddie."

And now we come to what I call the Saint Joseph Problem. I mean no disrespect to Saint Joseph,to whom I give partial credit for getting me remarried at last and who is, after all, a great model of masculinity. The problem is that he is, for young trad Catholics today, too much our model of masculinity.

Young traddie women with housewifely ambitions rightly want a younger, sexier St. Joseph to take care of them, have a real job, bring home the money, protect them from the hooded claw, keep the vampire from their door. When the chips are down, he'll be around with his undying, death-defying love for them. Et cetera. But this is quite a lot to ask of a boy at [conservative Catholic college] who is, on average, 20 years old.

St. Joseph may have been descended from King David, but he was essentially a blue-collar worker. I don't know what he was doing at 20, but it wasn't tequila shots or an all-nighter on his Poli Sci essay. My guess is that he was already a professional carpenter and, anyway, we think he was pretty old when he became betrothed to Our Lady. I'm guessing his business was well-established and flourishing. How many 20 year olds do you know who can support a wife?

In short, the Nice Catholic Boy is caught between the rock of a society that tells him to stay 19 forever and the hard place of being expected to provide for a Nice Catholic Girl and their children in an economic environment turned upside
down. When married women took on (or stayed in) middle-class jobs, the cost of living skyrocketed. One salary plus one salary no longer equalled two. And when banks began handing out mortgages like cheap cigars, the price of housing skyrocketed, too.

On top of this, the Nice Catholic Boy is constantly insulted, day in and day out, by appeals to his sex drive. He is intensely visual, and images of naked or nearly naked women (and, in some neighbourhoods, men) are shoved at him 24/7. Imagine if advertisers sent out gorgeous men with growly voices to give women back massages and compliments. The advertisers are doing the equivalent to the Nice Catholic Boy. Meanwhile, it used to be very hard for him to find porn, which is very addictive; now he can hardly avoid it. So being confronted with real women, real live women in cute outfits, in a sexually-charged situation like a date, is now incredibly problematic for our Nice Catholic Boy, who very often can't afford to marry.

I had a 20-something devoutly Catholic male friend, very cute, who was terrified of getting involved with a woman lest he go too far and she let him do it. His ideal woman was a woman who would slap him if he went too far. Unfortunately he couldn't think of a safe way to figure out which women would do that. Now he's a male religious. Sigh.

All this, and I haven't even got to feminism yet. Let's just say that young men, nice young men, nice young Catholic men, have many reasons to be deeply afraid of women. They open a door; they get screamed at. They don't open a door; they get screamed at. Eventually young women will stop screaming long enough to realize that the great majority of their colleagues are not The Oppressor and are, in fact, the most ripped-off generation of men in history. Meanwhile, they're scaring them.

Therefore, I encourage you and other NCGs to stop blaming Nice Catholic Boys under 25 for not pursuing you. I encourage you to be friendly to them without making them your Bestest Buddies and wait for them to mature as best they can in a world that tells them not to.

Making a man your Bestest Buddy strikes me as being a form of castration. There was an appalling trend in the USA of 20-something mixed sex pyjama parties where college-age boys and girls snuggled chastely under comforters, watching movies, eating popcorn, all being girls together. Have we gone insane?

A final tip: men do not seem to have a problem courting women a decade younger than themselves. And the older men get, the more likely they are to be advanced in their careers. So if it is very important to you to marry a university man and not, say, a successful tradesman (like St. Joseph), and yet stay at home with babies, you might want to ponder men in their 30s and 40s.

I hope this is helpful.

Seraphic