Thursday, February 13, 2025

May 5, 2014

Manxiety – The Angst Felt By Single 30-Something Men

The truth of the matter is that it is no longer just woman who become gripped with icy fear the morning they wake up in their mid-thirties to discover that they are still single, childless and minus a tight, flat tummy and the smooth contours of a wrinkle-free face.

We’ve all grown-up with the image painted by the Bridget Jones’ Diary saga of woman who reach this age becoming overly obsessed with finding the perfect partner with which to marry and then procreate and add to the population of Planet Earth.

Here’s the reality: Men are as concerned about winding up alone as are women. Sometime between the 90’s and the 2000’s , something happened with in the collective consciousness of menfolk the world over and it became uncool once again to be that ‘stud’ ,  slaying it in the dating world and having bachelor-esque freedom until his 50’s.

Surprise, surprise, it turns out that that men want to be loved as much as women. And companionship comes out as top of the list of priorities for men in their thirties to acquire before middle-age sets in. This newly defined ‘phobia’ has been coined as ‘Manxiety’. And it’s hit the world by storm. Men are now faced with the societal pressures of being strong, successful and financially secure , but also have to worry about meeting the ‘one’ before they hit 40.

Yes, one of the latest and most articulated concerns amongst 30-something men at the moment is the worry that finding the perfect spouse too late in life could result in that phenomenon whereby you are too old and arthritic to play with your kids on the Jungle Gym . Too old to be a good dad because you were out painting the town until your were 42, only handed in your Platinum membership status at Mavericks when you were 45 and finally knuckled down and dated someone the old-fashioned way at 48. This way of playing out your life, if you are a man, is just not cool anymore.

Men are running on as much of a biological clock as woman it seems. We wonder what the male version of Bridget Jones would be like and if making a film out of it would be at all entertaining – somehow picturing a 30-something male on his living room floor wearing his pyjamas and eating out of a giant tub of ice-cream whilst watching ‘Gone With The Wind’  and crying his eyes out is a little less enticing than how Renee Zellweger portrayed it.

[SOURCE] The Daily Beast