Rebecca Holman's waiting game

Rebecca Holman

Rebecca Holman is one of those women who did not permit herself to marry before reaching the magical age of 30:

Even at the tender age of 18...I was full of adolescent disdain for anyone who wanted to marry young. I imagined I’d spend my 20s having a string of dramatic, ill-advised love affairs and generally gallivanting, before settling down about three days after my 30th birthday. And living Happily Ever After.

Being oriented to "dramatic, ill-advised love affairs" changed the kind of men she selected. She ruled out decent men on trivial grounds:

The men I rejected when I was 26 because they were ‘too nice,’ ‘wore underpants rather than boxers’ or ‘had a really prominent Adam’s apple’

But on reaching 30 she encountered a problem. She now wanted a decent kind of guy to settle down with. But the top tier of these men were either already taken or were determined to date women under the age of 30. It is Rebecca Holman's experience that the top tier men were,

getting married to women much more proactive than me...These are the women who...had their eye on the prize. And fair play to them – they clearly possess the sort of vision, foresight and mad organizational skills that I’m incapable of.

Anyway – these women, who are arguably better at life than I am, are now marrying the top tier of men. I don’t mean the richest, or the most handsome. I mean the funny, nice, clever ones, with no family history of substance abuse and the ability to love another human being without expecting their soul in return.

I've written about this before. It's not sensible for women to opt out until they reach 30 and expect to have the same number of family oriented men waiting for them. The more proactive women will get first go.

So what is Rebecca Holman now to do? She could, of course, accept a second tier man. But this she refuses to do. So she claims to have a solution (how serious she is about this I'm not sure) which is to wait for some of the first tier men to divorce.

I doubt if this strategy will appeal to too many women. Better to learn from Rebecca Holman's mistakes and to give priority to something that is so important for our happiness, namely a good marriage and the opportunity to have a family.