Are Good Men Really Hard to Find?

And now, the question of the ‘80s:

Why aren’t there any good men left out there?

Underline it, boldface it, put it on a billboard, hire skywriters. There may be not one single woman alive in America today who has not, at one time or another, out of frustration or loneliness or wonder or despair, pondered those nine words.

But are they true? No, says author Warren Farrell. Emphatically no. And many women may not like to hear the reason.

“There are 21.5 million single men� in America, says Farrell, “and the number of them I see at my workshops and speaking engagements every week, hundreds and hundreds of them, are sensitive, caring, good-looking, have good listening qualities and are intelligent, often with master’s degrees. The only flaw these men have is that oftentimes they are able to support themselves financially but they are sometimes not successful enough to support someone other than themselves.

“A man might have a Ph.D. in art history, but he’s driving a cab, or he’s a male nurse. And while the woman won’t reject the male nurse out of hand, if he’s attractive enough, she may have access to a male doctor. And she’d rather marry the doctor and complain about his personality and lack of intimacy than have intimacy with the male nurse.

“The bottom-line problem is that women today still want to marry up, and they want to marry up for economics, not intimacy.�

These can be astonishing words for many women, says Farrell, and he should know. Farrell is the author of the best-selling “Why Men Are the Way They Are,� a book released last year that explores men’s behavior and, often, women’s inability or unwillingness to understand it. He also teaches a class by the same name at the medical school of UC San Diego. In the book, Farrell challenges what has become almost conventional wisdom, espoused by several authors, that men are inherently insensitive, fear intimacy and commitment, and can be childlike in their relations with women.

He not only challenges such modern assertions, he attempts to explode them by persuading women to turn their gaze inward, rather than project their frustration at men. He examines not only why men are the way they are, but why women react to men the way they do.

For instance, back to the not-good-enough male nurse:

The woman, says Farrell, may feel, as a result of his lowly financial status, that she can’t bring him home to her parents. “This is pretty universal. Top female executives do one of two things: They either marry up or they don’t marry at all. So their vision of the world is that there’s a great American male shortage.

“But the fact is that a woman who earns more than enough to support herself very rarely considers doing what the man does who earns more than enough to support himself, which is finding a partner who is not heavily into earning but into nurturing qualities. He’s willing to marry down. This man sees millions more women available than the woman sees (men), dozens of secretaries in his office, for instance. But a man who is a secretary is not even considered a man, and therefore is invisible to a woman.�

Hard truths, but they fall squarely under the headings of male and female “primary fantasies,� as set forth in Farrell’s book. The female primary fantasy, he writes, hinges on the idea of “better homes and gardens�--a major element of which is financial security. The man’s primary fantasy involves sex with beautiful women.

Does that mean, as is frequently claimed by single women, that men are afraid of commitment?

“The fear,� says Farrell, “isn’t a fear of commitment, and it’s not, as some women think in their next breath, a fear of intimacy either. Women will tell me, ‘Wait a minute, Warren. The first night he met me he was talking about commitment. If he’s so interested, why was he talking about it the first night and not six months later?’ �

The answer, says Farrell, is that on the first night “he didn’t see the flaws in the relationship. He was sharing his fantasy feelings: ‘Based on what I see so far (which is very little), you tap into my fantasy. You seem so understanding, you’re not putting me down. I fantasize seeing a life with you.’ But there’s a much more complex tapestry that develops.

“His dilemma is that he’s seeing a few things simultaneously: the things he finds he doesn’t like about her, he doesn’t feel as understood as he’d hoped for. He feels free to say nice things to her, but when he expresses negative feelings, he feels her pull away. He may have heard her talk about how important it was for her to be independent, but when the check comes, she may disappear into the restroom and he got a different message. He thinks that she wants him to pick up the economic burden of the relationship. He’s thinking that the relationship will cost him economically, and he wonders if he’s getting enough intimacy to balance the expectation of his having to pay.�

Still, Farrell says women tell him, men don’t understand women.

“First of all,� he says, “neither sex understands the other sex. But men often do understand women in one very crucial way: They know they won’t get women’s love unless they’re successful. But when they strive for success, it takes time away from their understanding women in other ways. So men end up reading business books, trying to succeed, because they know if they don’t read those books, there will be no relationships. Business books, rather than self-improvement books, become men’s relationship books.�

So what’s a single guy to do? Take out a subscription to Cosmopolitan?

“The first thing� men should do, says Farrell, “is to start relieving themselves of the pressure that comes from the idea that they aren’t worthy of a woman unless they pay for her. Once they do that, they will begin to free themselves for more time to study women or read what women want and hear what women want. They’ll begin to know which women want them for their money and which women want them for themselves.�

The answer to what Farrell says is the nonexistent great American male shortage is, he asserts in his book, a genuine attempt on the part of both men and women to understand the other’s point of view, and to value true intimacy rather than fantasy.

The woman looking for a truly intimate relationship, says Farrell, must truly seek what she says she wants.

“What we need to do is redefine marrying up--marrying up for intimacy and not economics.�

Next Friday: Dr. Toni Grant explains the “uniquely feminine attitude� that she says can transform the lives of the single woman of the ‘80s.

The Flip-Side of Liberation

The women’s movement stressed accomplishment, self-actualization, self-sufficiency, realizing one’s potential--having it all. But the price, said radio psychologist Dr. Toni Grant, has been alienation between the sexes and a loss to women of the true power of their femininity. Next week, Toni Grant explains the “uniquely feminine attitude� that she says can transform the lives of the single woman of the 1980s.

Get Me to the Church

Several of our correspondents have suggested that--in the world of interesting single people--the bars, the clubs, the dating services, the singles’ associations and other traditional meeting grounds are all vast wastelands. If you want to meet Mr. or Ms. Right, they say, head for the altar--specifically, to church singles organizations. Have you exchanged margaritas and chips at fern bars for bread and wine at your local church? And have the results turned out to be heaven or purgatory or worse?

And So to Bed--Maybe

How has the era of AIDS affected your dating relationships? How can you be sure you’re ready to take the step into sex--and how much of a risk, both emotional and physical, is involved? If you’ve chosen an extreme course--either celibacy or promiscuity--we’d like to hear from you, too.

Send your responses to Single Life, Orange County Life, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa Calif. 92626. Please include a phone number so that a reporter may contact you. To protect your privacy, Single Life does not publish correspondents’ last names.