AFBB

The boogyman AFBB dynamic only looks bad because it's no longer realistic for people to settle down with the first person they date.

As a man matures from teenagerhood into adulthood, his personality, priorities, sense of responsibility, and financial status changes drastically. Likewise, as a woman matures from teenager into adulthood her priorities and needs change drastically as well.

For couples who hook up young, such as my husband and I, and many others who I consulted with while organizing my ideas for this post, this phenomenon has played out extremely clearly in our personal lives.

When my husband and I were first dating (teens), he had a lot of characteristics that one would consider irresponsible, cool, and alpha. Things like drug use, skipping class, quitting jobs on a whim, lazing around playing vidya games, having long hair and being an "artist". My female friends who dated their husbands young all have similar stories, ranging from drug use and petty criminal behavior (graffiti, etc) to partying and not taking responsibilities seriously. Classic harmless vigor of male youth.

On my part, as a young woman, I had no reason to care about these things. He was fun and cute and we had nice low-stress times together, what's not to love. I was low-maintenance and easy-to-impress and didn't think about things like "husband material". For the record, in case it matters, we were both virgins when we got together.

Anyway, time marches on and people grow up, including my husband and myself. My husband is now a hard-working respectable man who built a stable career that he works hard at in order to provide for our future children, which over time became our new priority. He's still handsome and funny but he now has all the best features of a stable family-man provider, which I love and appreciate so much because having children and a pleasant home is now a priority to me. We both changed as we grew up. If he had stayed the same we would be incompatible, but fortunately he's a normal human being who did what normal human beings do, and matured.

Now imagine that for some reason I ended up single again. After all, most people don't marry their first boyfriend. Would TRP say I'm morally obligated to pursue a man who (at 30) resembles the immature guy my husband was at 20? Even though I am 100% compatible with my settled stable husband-material guy, TRP acts like it would be hypocritical or malicious for me to pursue his type if I became single, because that would be "beta buxxing" someone. How does that make sense? Both men and women mature throughout their youth, why are women obligated to pursue in perpetuity the type of guy they dated when they were 16? Do you think that would work out well for anyone?

The real truth is that the only people who take issue with any of this are the dudes who, for whatever reason, didn't go through their own period of irresponsible fun. While I'm sympathetic, I don't see how that is anyone's problem but their own. A woman who had a carefree youth and then matured into prioritizing husband material has three options to choose from:

• A man who also had a carefree youth with other women and matured independently of her

• A man who also had a carefree youth with her and they matured together

• A man who did not have a carefree youth and has been mature all along

From the woman's perspective, all 3 categories of men are entirely equivalent. She doesn't care what his history looks like, all that matters is that they're compatible now, which they are, both being mature. From the perspective of the first two men, there is also no issue. His wife and he had equivalent cultural coming-of-age experiences, either separately or together. Either way, no reason to stress.

So the problem comes in when the last man is considered, hence, TRP. From the perspective of the loser man, she is maliciously "beta buxxing" him. Like I said I understand the annoyance, but it really has nothing to do with him and it isn't her fault that he chose to be (or simply was) a weirdo in his youth. So that's pretty much his problem to sort through. Her only crime is, ironically, treating him the same way she would treat a dating prospect who had been more alpha all along.

Thoughts?