Dating-pool upper hand no longer belong to AM

Normally I'd like to offer some good news for all the single Guys out there who are clinging to the belief that no matter how old,gray,bald,fat and poor they become,there will still be an abundance of younger women begging to marry them. But I Can't..Not becuz I don't want to but becuz it's just not true anymore. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal(motto: Providing bad news to men for more than 100 years), we no longer have the upper hand when it comes to the dating pool. Apparently for people between the ages of 30 and 44, the number of single men and women is statistically even. As if that's not enough, it's going to get even worse in the next decade, especially for those men whose tastes run to younger women. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2010, men in their late 30's and early 40's will outnumber women five to 10 years younger than them by 2-to-1. And you thought it was hard getting a date now. Wait until you have to fill out an application just to buy a girl a drink at a Bar. Looking at these numbers illustrates how easy our fathers had it. They could date half the town and not run into a girl who had dated a friend or colleague. But now, things are differnet. By my calculations, today's single guys are pretty much all dating the same three girls. Of course we can't complain too much; we single men have brought this upon ourselves. The survey cites our inability to settle for a woman who's not a perfect 10 as one of the reasons for this disturbing trend. "With more women than men on the dating scene, men played the field and postponed marriage..sometimes until their 40's," reports the Wall Street Journal, noting that the percentage of 35-to 44-year old bachelors almost tripled from 1980-2000. So as men became more selective, they narrowed the dating field. But the good news is that, since men were the ones to narrow the field, perhaps a little loosening of our standards would give us some breathing room in the dating game. At least for a while. But if this trend pesists, we are going to have to move to foreign countries and start dating their Native Women. Or we could rely on the steady increase in the divorce rate to free up otherwise unavailable women. Either way, one of society's long-held beliefs that older men were better off in the dating field than older women may be turning into a myth. It won't be too long before pop culture catches up to this trend. You can expect to stop seeing TV shows in which 45-year old men walk around draped with buxom 22-year-olds, or 55-year-old divorced guys rebound into the arms of women 20 years their junior. In the future it will be the older women who are being chased after by younger men. Perhaps in time we'll get so used to it that dating older women will be the standard. So while this is sad news for men, women have something to cheer about. Now that men may e discovering their own biological clocks, women no longer need to feel alone in the great race toward commitment. With any luck, this horrible trend will shock some chivalry back into men. After all, if it is the ladies who get to do the choosing, then we men are all going to have to shape up. By Eric Edwards..Orlando Sentinel