New Yorkers are hilarious. Upper-middle-class types in Manhattan can't be all neurotic and weird, can they?

If there is a shortage of normal people in that income bracket, then their perceptions become skewed. I suggest you move to the Midwest where we have real problems that we deal with, instead of whine about. Wife shopping is far down the list.

Salon needs to expand its reach outside the coasts and come back to reality.

Come to Minnesota, if you want stable, emotionally secure, fun-loving, "normal" type people.

Good luck, New York!

-- Mike Gehrt

We poor guys, we can't win: When we don't want commitment, we're shallow and narcisstic, and apparently when we do want commitment we're neurotic, clingy and unsexy. One of the just goals of feminism was that women ought to be able to want what they want without being subject to criticism, whether that's a jet-setting, unfettered lifestyle or homey domesticity with a mate and kids. Somewhere we seem to have lost sight of the fact that this respect ought to be extended to both genders.

-- Raymond Prach

I wrote a letter earlier to Salon proclaiming that women over 30 had it tougher than men in terms of getting married. But with quality of life subservient to an ever-increasing treadmill of work, most men over 30 are probably just looking to settle down with someone nice, reliable and reasonable -- and there aren't that many people under 27 who can meet those standards. With working hours going up, many people seem to marry first, and ask questions later. The men in the article seem to understand that perhaps the questions should come first in a society with a 50 percent divorce rate. But the real question is this: What happened to the notion of true love, inspired by poetry and roses?

(You should do an article on women who give men an ultimatum to marry after many years of a good relationship. I see this happening a lot. It can't be good for the poets.)

-- Matthew Rafat

There is an ongoing tension in contemporary life between the need to think practically about one's choice of a mate, and the desire to be romantically swept away in a spontaneous, "natural" love affair. Where previous generations (and millions today in traditional societies) thought more openly about future social and financial implications of their choice of mate, we have often come to feel guilty for even harboring such thoughts. Instead, we are taught by society, you must fling yourself blindly into a relationship and trust the hormonal rush beyond your stuffy old rational mind. It hardly ever occurs to us that this is a recent development in human society.

Until we can come to a more realistic, less Hollywood-ed understanding of the balance between romantic love and the realities of practical survival, weird extremes of both "blind love" and "calculating spouse shopping" will continue to signal our uneasy and rapidly changing grasp of what a "relationship" really means.

-- John Anderson

The "maybe women don't want what they say they want" argument infuriates me. Yes, I know some women who don't appreciate a kind man who treats them well, but I am not one of them.

It couldn't possibly be that these ticking-clock men are obnoxious, could it? No, it must be that I don't know a good thing when I see it. I have dated more of these men than I can count in the past three years, and have turned every one of them away because they were overwhelming me and not listening when I asked them to knock it off.

I am sure these men believe they were giving me "what women want" -- emotional displays, availability, attention -- but in reality, they are acting needy and pushy. I want a commitment, but not immediately. I want to hear from you, but don't leave me three voice mails before I have a chance to get back to you. I want to get to know you, but please don't expose every raw emotional nerve on the first date.

The women I know have been told throughout their lives to not be too emotional or eager, but men haven't gotten this memo and that double standard frustrates me. If I acted this way, men would run away screaming! But more importantly, these are basic relationship skills (not limited to the romantic sphere) that apparently not everyone has been taught. You can't just blurt out anything you want anytime you want! You have to respect people's boundaries! It's not all about you! Feelings are often unequal in a new relationship, and if you're the one who's ahead you need to slow down a little and let the other one catch up.

The result is I am so busy fending off the full-court press that I don't have enough breathing room to get to know him or find out if I do like him. (Not to mention find out if he is genuinely interested in me, or just my pulse.) Eventually, when he doesn't give me the room I have asked for, I have to end it. I am positive none of them think they did anything wrong.

-- Erica Frye

This article is shallow, superficial and stupid. Well, that is the essence of current American culture. I can sort of tell that this author talks like a man, walks like a man and even eats like a man.

These days in our country men are like boys and women are like men. I wish that women's lib had never happened in the '60s, because it completely destroyed femininity.

-- "A real feminine lady"

I think that I can explain the phenomenon to your female readership. It works like this: At a certain age (I'm 43), you start to realize that not that many sub-30-year-old women find you attractive anymore. You may not have a biological clock, but the set of women who you realistically have to choose from do. Plus, at this age, the hormone-induced stupidity starts to wane and you can think about what is important in a woman more clearly.

-- Stephen Hirsch

Your enlightening article about wife shopping was great -- now I know I'm not alone! I wasted five years of my life in a marriage because, as he told me while we were filling out our divorce papers, that he only asked me to marry him because he felt he was too old to be living with his mother and wanted to settle down with the first nice woman that fit his ideas about what a good wife should be. He hid this well, making me feel secure enough to believe that he really loved me and supported my desires to further my education and travel. But what I got was a loveless marriage to a guy with no real soul. He was only doing, as he said to me, "what he thought was the right thing to do at the time."

Now I approach relationships with a healthy dose of skepticism, and lead a much happier life because of it. What disturbs me is the tendency of some people to dither about women who abandon relationships that are "perfect" in theory, dismissing them as coldhearted or confused, in favor of turning to the classic "bad boy" types. A quote in the article states, "A lot of women are afraid of being treated properly."

There are plenty of "nice guys" out there that are just as screwed up as the "bad boys." No one should be shamed for leaving a relationship that they are not comfortable in, especially if they are feeling pressured into a life they are not sure they are ready for or even want in the first place. Ultimately, I think that in addition to the race against the biological clock, many people fall into the marriage frenzy because they are sucked in by the marketing of the so-called perfect American life: Let's not cast aside the fact that the matchmaking and wedding industries make much more money than even the movie business. Wise is the woman (and, to be fair, man) who recognizes that when they are being treated as though they're in a job interview or simply a product on a shelf.

-- Christine Frost

While some of these guys may be OK, an early pressure to commit and a rush of romantic courting behavior are also well-known symptoms of potential abusers. These guys may not be overtly physically violent, but they may very well be emotionally abusive and controlling. These are precisely the kind of guys I would want to avoid. In the case of a divorce, how much do you want to bet that they'll be challenging you for custody? And how much do you want to bet they'll be shopping for a nice "real" woman who will be more domestic and a better mother to "their" children than you?

-- Jan Kurth

Rebecca Traister: Shut up, shut up, shut up. Stop reading books about dating, stop obsessing about perfect TV couples, stop obsessing about the marriages of the rich and famous, stop obsessing about perfect date behavior.

Want a relationship with a real guy? Get real yourself.

What is up with the constant nitpicking about every tiny aspect of life and dating and relationships? At some point in time you have to stop thinking, reading and talking about moving forward and just do it. The variations are endless. Just pick one.

-- Lisa Barr

When I was 39, I decided that normal people got married and maybe I should, too. The woman I was dating at that time apparently had the same thought, so after a reasonable amount of drama we followed through.

I can't say what this was like for her, but it was a disaster for me from the get-go. There's a reason why I had lived almost 40 years without marriage. It's like I outgrew a desire for that kind of relationship somewhere in my late 20s. Shrinks or sociologists may have something to say about my pathologies, but at this point I pretty much just accept them. I am quite capable of being a warm, caring, giving, and committed partner. I even really love children. I just don't want to be married.

But see, as the author found out, this is where it gets sticky. I rarely, if ever, meet age-appropriate women who aren't, in the backs of their minds, on husband patrol. The conversation turns to what was wrong with her past relationships, possible retirement venues, and whether I would consider adoption. It's not that any of those discussions are uncomfortable to me. It's just a much different topic for a first date than "What's your sign?" or "Have you ever had sex in a. ..?"

-- Morton Feldspaar

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