Sheryl Sandberg here

"When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.”

And Tracy Clark-Flory here

You know that guy friend you weren’t romantically interested in because he was just too nice and available? Suddenly, you’re grown up enough to come to your senses. Marry the fuck out of him.

If anyone knows me from around the block, you know that I have spent half a goddamn lifetime trying to hold young men's hands about this kind of stuff - encourage them to ignore TRP views of how the dating scene works. And I'm reading two women (well-respected, professional women who young women will read and believe) saying, basically, TRP is right. Everyone screw around in your twenties, and then settle for the guy who you were never romantically interested in because he "was just too nice and available."

I am floored and confused, here. And if that's the advice we're giving to young women, I need to readjust what I say to young men. You can't just expect them to forget the fact that they were overlooked for a long time by these same women, but that seems to be what Tracy Clark-Flory is expecting. His role is to be nice and available for later.

Or like what that EMSK guy said yesterday:

It is a sad thing that nice guys (using your definition of actual guys who are nice) often "strike out" in the dating scene. However, if those guys stick to it, I find that they often end up with ladies who get sick of dating the "bad boys." And then their lady knows what they want in a man, and they appreciate what they've got! Just takes a little patience. Or, well, a lot of patience. But nothing worth doing is easy.

It's just really unreasonable to me that we want to tell those guys who are "striking out" to just be patient.

Like I said, talk me down, please.