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though, my deal-breakers have changed.”

      What would be their deal-breakers now? Someone with an addiction, someone who had a bad temper, someone who’s unkind, someone who doesn’t have a job, someone who’s not warm or doesn’t have a generous spirit, someone who’s inflexible, someone who’s irresponsible, someone who’s dishonest, someone who wouldn’t be a great father, someone who’s old enough to be their own father. The rest, these women feel, is negotiable, but it’s a realization that might have come too late: In their experience, the men who will date them now often come with these more serious deal-breakers, whereas the guys who would date them ten years ago didn’t.

      “In a way, I’m still looking for the same kind of guys I was when I was twenty-five, except that I also want them to be family-oriented and be good providers, which I wasn’t thinking about back then,” said Beth, a 37-year-old pharmaceutical rep. “Those are the guys I used to break up with.”

      Amy, a 43-year-old interior designer, agreed. She said that she always had boyfriends until she was 39, when, she explained, “I suddenly stopped getting asked out by anyone younger than fifty.”

      So, I asked, why can’t they go back to those guys they’d passed up, who now sound pretty appealing?

      In unison, they said, “They’re all married!”

       WHO CARES IF HE’S SEEN CASABLANCA?

      I had to wonder: Who were the women that married those guys? A week later, I met with some of them. On the surface, they seemed a lot like the women who’d dumped their husbands. They were around the same age, and similar in terms of looks and education. In fact, I could imagine these married women having become their single counterparts if it hadn’t been for one distinguishing quality: the ability to redefine romance. Nancy, who is married to the “predictable” guy, explained it like this:

      “I think the difference between women who get married and women who don’t is that women who don’t get married never give up the idea that they’re going to marry Brad Pitt, and it never occurs to them that they might not get married at all. They may say, ‘I’m never going to meet anyone,’ but that’s just like saying, ‘Oh, I’m fat’ when you don’t believe you are. It’s something women just say, in a self-deprecating way. When you’re young you’re always meeting guys, so deep down you believe that The One will suddenly show up. It doesn’t occur to you that maybe it’s okay if The One doesn’t look like Brad Pitt and earn a gazillion dollars and make your knees go weak every time you’re together. Well, it occurred to me, but not until I was thirty-five.”

      That’s when she met Mr. Predictable.

      “So many women say they’d rather be alone than settle, but then they’re alone and miserable—and still holding out for the same unrealistic standards,” Nancy said. “They assume their soul mate will appear and it will have been worth the wait. Then they’re blindsided and shocked when that doesn’t happen. And it’s too late.”

      Too late, she meant, for the life she has with the predictable guy.

      “It is predictable,” Nancy admitted. “But it’s a lot better than always wondering what was going on with the more exciting guys. That wasn’t love. What I have now is love. I have an amazing husband and two wonderful kids. I couldn’t ask for a better family. And my husband is exciting, just in less obvious ways.”

      Sara, who’s 42 and married to the ring-of-hair guy (who, at 43, is now completely bald, except he still has that tuft sticking out in front), told me that she feels lucky to have been at a place in her life at age 34 when she finally stopped getting hung up on things like how much hair a guy had.

      “A year or two earlier, I wouldn’t even have considered meeting a bald guy,” she told me.

      She’s glad she changed her mind, she said, because if she hadn’t, she would have missed out on falling in love with her husband—and probably ended up with no husband at all.

      “I don’t know one available guy out there who’s as desirable as my husband and would also date me at this age,” she said. “If I were single today, my own husband probably wouldn’t date me either. I wouldn’t be on his radar. Why would a forty-three-year-old guy who’s kind and successful and funny date a forty-two-year-old woman when he could easily attract an equally interesting thirty-five-year-old who’s prettier and young enough to have kids with instead?”

      I told Sara that a lot of women would be offended by that kind of thinking, but she just shrugged her shoulders.

      “Let me put it this way,” she said. “It’s a good thing I met my husband when I did. Because if I’d passed him by, he’d be married, and I’d still be sitting around wondering where the few good men were.”

       A FEW GOOD MEN

      That’s exactly what I was wondering: Where were a few good men? When I sent out a mass e-mail looking for single men, ages 25 to 40, to interview for this book, a typical reply went like this: “I don’t know any single men, but do you need any single women? I know a lot of those.”

      Two weeks later, I got a quorum—but only after I expanded my definition of “single” to include men who weren’t married but were in committed relationships. These guys, for their part, seemed as baffled as the women when I went back to the same bar and asked the familiar question: Why are women saying they can’t find a good guy?

      David, a funny 29-year-old professor, thinks the problem is that good guys are out there, but women don’t recognize them as the good guys.

      “A woman broke up with me because she didn’t like the clothes I wore,” he explained, “but she’s madly in love with a guy who dresses well but doesn’t call her.”

      His 32-year-old colleague Dan laughed—he’d been there before. “Women never want what’s available,” he said. “If they can’t find the perfect guy at thirty, they move on to find something better. But they don’t learn from this. Even if they’re still alone five years later, they get pickier. Then they’re almost forty and they haven’t found the perfect guy, so they start to regret having broken up with us, but now we’re not interested in them anymore.”

      Kurt, who’s 38 and engaged, said that’s exactly what happened with his exes. “And those perfect guys, if they do exist, want to date maybe the top one percent of thirty-year-old women. But every thirty-year-old woman I know thinks she’s in that top one percent. All women want a ten, but are they all tens?”

      His question reminded me of something my married friend Julie once said: “The culture tells us to approach dating like shopping—but in shopping, no one points out the shopper’s own flaws.”

      Steve, who’s 35 and dating a lawyer, feels the same way. “I think the reason some women have an inflated view of themselves is that in high school, they really did have the power, so they grow up thinking it will always be that way. And even in their twenties, they still do, to some extent, because they’re so in demand. A guy will spend all of his money courting her, investing in the relationship, and then one day she’ll suddenly say, ‘You know, you’re a great guy, but I’m just not feeling like this is what I want.’

      “In their thirties,” he continued, “it’s the opposite. The girl gives the guy free sex, thinking she’s investing in the relationship that will lead to marriage, but then the guy, who is now the one in demand, suddenly says, ‘You know, I think you’re great, but you’re not who I want to marry.’ And the women are shocked, because guys used to worship them, but the balance of power has changed. And I can’t say I don’t feel slightly vindicated that those same women who rejected me five years ago now complain that they can’t find anyone.”

       THE MARRIED MEN

      Eric, a 38-year-old married writer friend of mine, is still friendly with the three girlfriends who broke up with him before he met his wife. He said he’s going to write a book one day about the way

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