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From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: What women want
Message-ID: <1506@peora.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 08:32:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: peora.1506
Posted: Wed Aug 21 08:32:50 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 13:50:13 EDT
References: <3498@decwrl.UUCP> <509@h-sc1.UUCP> <784@lll-crg.ARPA> <254@gymble.UUCP>
Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl.
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> Neither do I.  I've noticed that quite a few women, who should no
> better, often fall for the foul-mouthed, socially obvious punk who has
> little more to offer than a spin on the motorcycle.

It's really hard to make a generalization on something like this, since you
can always come up with counterexamples.  However, I've observed this, too.

I've also observed (as Ms. Desjardins pointed out) that, as women get older,
they tend to be attracted less to the "socially obvious" properties of a
person, and more to something like their inner natures.  (Unfortunately,
by the time many women do this, they have often gotten married and divorced.)

I would offer one hypothesis on this, based on my observation of college
students, though it is by no means a fully general one.  I've observed that
many college students (male and female) tend to date people who make the
most impression on their friends.  Why they do this varies.  Those who
belong to fraternities/sororities get a lot of explicit pressure in that
respect.  Others who don't have a strong sense of their own values tend to
make judgements based on what their friends think.  But this tends to favor
people who have strong, obvious traits, even if they are not particularly
"good" ones; most of the inner attributes of a person that have bearing on
a relationship are not at all obvious to someone outside.

Obviously, this also works for the first-person, if one is making judgements
without really getting to know a person; but that's fairly obvious, I think.

I note, incidentally, that this is almost always almost entirely a function
of the age of the person involved, rather than other factors such as
experience with a diversity of people, etc.  Women who date "older" men,
for example, I have observed to also have this tendency, eventhough they
often consider themselves more "sophisticated" in some sense.  I am not sure
why it should be a function of age, though.  Unfortunately, most women marry
at a relatively early age, after which other factors influence their opinion.

[Note that I am speaking of "women" here out of firsthand experience; I
certainly have no knowledge of how men actually behave in their relation-
ships (other than, of course, what they SAY about them, which often is far
from the reality.) Thus I am not being "sexist" by referring to women; I
just have not made a similar observation of men, since it is not particularly
interesting (to me) to do so.  So, please, no flames about my examples
being one-sided!  You can add your own examples to balance it out.]
-- 
Shyy-Anzr:  J. Eric Roskos
UUCP:       ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer
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