2013 Great Male Survey from Ask Men
The old archetypes of masculinity don’t seem to apply anymore. Manhood has changed in the home, in the workplace, in relationships. Progress is a good thing, but it can also be scary. That’s why we decided to take stock and survey you, our readers, to find in concrete numbers what it really means to be a man today. Here are the key results. Some are surprising; others are not. But all shed serious light on how the modern man thinks and behaves professionally, romantically and in his downtime, in 2013.
- 29% of UK men consider a pre-nup important
- 26% of UK men would cheat if they could get away with it (meaning, of course, 74% wouldn’t)
- Only 7% of UK men say online dating is their preferred route to approaching a woman they want to sleep with, and 84% said their last courtship was played out in real life rather than online
- 81% use Facebook, Google and other social media to ‘pre-stalk’ prospective partners
- 43% of UK men are dissatisfied with their sex life
- 29% of men compare the size of their penis to others online, while 9% ask their partner how they compare to their previous partners
- 28% of UK men say they wouldn’t change a thing about their current partner
- 43% of UK men say the man should always pay on a date
- 42% of UK men have not had a relationship with a colleague but would if the opportunity arose
- 27% of UK men wouldn’t bother pursuing a woman who isn’t a potential wife
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I do love these surveys – however, as a man, I find some of the results surprising. A great many men are insecure about aspects of their love lives (I hear) this is nothing new. Lots of men are also expressly looking for a wife – again, I am not surprised, in some ways this is the overall goal, particularly, when it comes to online dating. There is something so much more prescriptive about that process.
The result that does surprise me is, “81% use Facebook, Google and other social media to ‘pre-stalk’ prospective partners” – in this media saturated age, ‘pre-stalking’ takes minutes. I am surprised that this percentage is not higher. Personally, I consider ‘pre-stalking’ an essential precursor to the online date. How else do you vet the loonies? Forget the sanitised dating profile, Facebook and Twitter is where the truth really lies. For instance, take the photos – what are sun-kissed park-portraits, compared to banal selfies and messy night club shots? Let’s be honest, dating profiles tell us nothing – whereas personal social media tells us everything. If there is a happy medium, I am yet to find it. Until then, I shall stick with ‘pre-stalking’ – somehow, it all makes sense.
The thing is men, well most men, are really simple, they say what they mean and act, how they feel. So for me, I’m very glad that these 2.8k men took their time to share this with all of us! The major thing that sticks out for me out of the whole survey (and I have shared this on awisegirl.com before) is that majority of guys do really want to pursue ladies so, if he’s not chasing then he’s really not interested but he also will not say no to a girl who is doing the chasing, it’s only that that experience (dating or relationship) may not go any where! The other thing is that we have to keep our eyes wide open at work, there may be a great gentleman walking through those corridors that we keep on missing.
Just as we all suspected, here’s the real truth about online dating and I can understand why they feel this way. Truth is that men work on visuals and they like to keep the ‘surprise’ element as minimum as possible. So I can appreciate why the real world way of meeting women is their preferred choice. Which makes me think that given that the proportion of women on line are greater than men, by far, I wonder if single ladies are doing enough to help ourselves, seeing that most men would want to meet their woman offline. Looking for that genuine 7% would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Frankly I haven’t got the time..
Mandy- follow me @therealwisegirl