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I Feel Sorry For Men Who Are Dating Again After A Divorce
Women are doing to men what men have done to us
I never thought I’d feel sorry for men who were dating again in midlife.
In the U.S., there are 105 boys born for every 100 girls, and if that ratio held, both groups would have a pretty decent shot at finding a partner at any stage of life.
But the ratio doesn’t hold. In late middle age, women begin to outnumber men dramatically, and by the time both reach the age of 90, there are two women for every man. How can you feel sorry for a group that has odds like that in its favor on dating apps?
Or so I thought until I read Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble, a novel about a 41-year-old newly single man that’s scheduled to hit screens next month as a Hulu miniseries.
Toby Fleishman is a New York doctor and father of two whose wife has vanished and whose 15-year marriage has left him unprepared for the insults of dating apps. Or, more specifically, for a digital realm where before you’ve met for an Iced Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks, women send you texts with G-strings and demi-bras and black netted panties.
If art is imitating life — and my online dating in the pre-app era suggests it often is — women are doing to men what they’ve…
