(yes, we can be that shallow in that we prefer partners who look like us)

This is interesting to me — I’ve always just figured that I was doing something particular to me in that I like men who look like me or my family. Narrow, dark men with sharp faces have always been a bit of a draw for me; I didn’t realize it was a typical thing and always felt like a bit of an oddball for not liking the huge, pushy Vikings that I was always told I was supposed to like.

I’m not a sports fan, so I guess I’m not fond of men who are domineering in any context.

Growing up I was taught by my ultra-liberal/feminist/60’s-reactionary mother and some elements of popular culture/”PC” culture, perhaps also other chance experiences, to defer to women and give them perhaps even a bit *too* much respect in terms of assuming they know what they want and that I am unlikely to convince them to do anything they don’t clearly already say in no uncertain terms that they want to do.

However, as I got older, even across the experiences that I had over decades with my now-wife who I’ve known since we were barely 13 to say nothing of anyone else…..I learned that it’s a far more complex issue than that in almost every case.

Oftentimes, there is a reason for many of the “outdated stereotypes” and “stone-age patriarchal ideas”…..at least a kernel of truth behind them, even if it has no justification in it for the countless awful things that people can bring up as examples of those phenomena gone too far.

For example, my own wife and I went through a sort of “final crisis” of personal and relationship evolution which only resolved when I took it upon myself to be far less passive, and far more of a “classically aggressive male” than I had ever been before. We both learned a lot about just how damaging my own desire to be perhaps a bit *too* “nice,” and defer a bit too much, to her when it came to a whole range of things.

I’m still a sensitive person; but I had to learn that if I can’t be a man in a balanced way…..I can’t expect a woman to be balanced, either. As with anything, there is give and take but too much giving is almost as bad as too much taking. Anything is toxic in excess, even the best of surface intentions.

“Men who keep the aggressiveness in check when dating will likely come off more attractive to more women.”

I’ve never met ONE woman like that in 35 years. All the good women go after jerks…jerks to them and jerks to others too. Polite men with manners are completely ignored and brushed off. I’m not an ugly guy, I make over 300,00 a year and have a beautiful home and a master’s degree, I don’t drink or smoke and take care of myself. My wife of 15 years left me for this apeman from the woods who can’t read or spell, didn’t finish the 8th grade, doesn’t have a job because of five felony convictions, and is tatooed all over his body. He can’t complete a sentence without a foul word thrown in. She moved in with him in his shack in the woods (after he told her he was worth millions). Her friends couldn’t believe she did this, and they said to me…”You’re too nice…she wants a real man to TELL her what to do”. So it’s my fault according to her and her friends because I have manners and treated her like a queen. I’m not the only guy this happens to either. I don’t know who your study grooup is, but they’re not from my state.