D.B. Sayers, Author Unredacted

Male Reluctance & The Pursuit Dilemma

Dirk — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 17:45:38 +0000

Why aren't they approaching?

If men have really stopped approaching, why?

In her February 13, 2026 post on Medium, Ms. Edith Tali grappled with the question of why men have stopped pursuing women. It’s an interesting question and I applaud her willingness to tackle it. Whether you agree men aren’t approaching anymore or not is open to debate.

Briefly, her thesis was that men aren’t approaching anymore and it’s because men went “all in” with their first love and got burned. Or that women are too demanding, too materialistic. Women, she opined, keep back-up options and dating, never mind marriage is exhausting. I submit none of the foregoing is new. Now do some of these factors enter into men’s reluctance to pursue, today? Probably.

So, I’m sure some of the reasons Ms. Tali advances in her post are accurate. A few commenters on her post validate her points. So what follows is less a critique of her post and more of an expansion on it. There are, in my opinion, a couple additional factors worth considering.

Everything Happens in a Context…

Setting aside whether it’s healthy, most of us spend a significant portion of our lives online these days. It’s not hard to figure out why. With gas $5.00 a gallon in some places and Vanilla Lattes at chain coffee shops running north of $6.00, even coffee dates and/or just “hanging out” gets pricy. And with craft beer at microbreweries as much as $10.00, collectively men don’t prowl as much as we used to. For that and other reasons we’ll discuss shortly, concerted efforts to meet “in the wild” is can prove expensive.

Additionally, the low stress, high contact social environments where men and women used to connect “back when,” are less common (or less popular) than when I grew up. Explaining the popularity of “online dating apps,” despite the daunting and profoundly frustrating odds.

Pursuit in Cyberspace

So. Let’s talk about men’s experience online. You don’t have to read too many posts by women here on Medium or any forum frequented by women, to know that a lot of them aren’t happy with men in general. Some have even expressed they’d rather men didn’t even approach, never mind pursue.

Is that a majority opinion? Maybe not. But the online recommendation algorithms don’t care about majorities or nuance. Click on one provocatively titled article or post and you will get more. The algorithms are interested in “clicks” and views, not truth or balance.

So…who clicks on articles written by women about men’s flaws? (1) Women who feel they’ve been wronged; (2) men interested in understanding women’s struggles today; and (3) misogynists reading to have their worst attitudes about women confirmed…and often to comment.

Now, about those comments…

So…let’s reflect on who’s most likely to read and respond to articles whose theme is men’s flaws. Would it be women who agree and are inclined to add their own experiences? That’s one group. And next most likely are the men inclined to argue with them for the hell of it. That’s another likely group. And finally, there are those men reading to understand. Some, triggered by what they read, want to introduce what seems like balance to them.

So, the comment stream looks like this. The women commenting are usually adding “me too” examples of their own. The men reading to argue, do just that—thereby reinforcing women’s worst opinions of men. The men reading to understand may offer counter points in the name of intellectual balance as they see it. Often, they get shut down with words that go something like: “…don’t give me that ‘not all men line.” Some men are unphased, but others conclude women really do hate men and stop trying.

How many men—perhaps even some of the ones women most want to meet—have stopped pursuing because of what they read online? How many more have stopped trying because they don’t want to be “that guy?” I don’t know, but it’s not zero.

Loving Out Loud in the Age of Uncertainty

None of the foregoing argues convincingly against men approaching women…respectfully. And as someone who has dated during all but the first wave of feminism, I assure you men still approach and succeed. But there are differences today that (I suspect) are inhibiting men’s approach behavior.

In the second wave of feminism, women were fighting for the “right” to own their sexuality. In fighting for that right, they were less subtle about it and were (on balance) more receptive to being approached. Which doesn’t mean men didn’t get rejected. But it felt softer, then. “Me too” hadn’t happened, yet.

It’s different today. Have approach signals gotten more subtle than they used to be? I don’t know. Maybe they always were. Maybe some women send conflicting vibes that keep men from trying. As a result, there’s now a cottage industry on YouTube purporting to help men decipher women’s approach signals. Maybe that will help.

Nobody asked me, but…

But I have another idea. For women still interested in being approached, you can invite approach (selectively if you wish) by being less subtle. You don’t have to throw yourself at them. Dress to be noticed, make eye contact and hold it a couple extra beats. Maybe smile? It worked “back then…”

In the third decade of the 21^st Century, isn’t it time we could all live/love out loud, rather than defensively? Now for those of you who really don’t want men approaching, by all means, keep writing about all men’s shortcomings online—and if you must venture out, keep those ear buds in and eyes on your smart phones.

The Trouble with All of It

Dirk — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 23:55:23 +0000

Stay at Home Girlfriends...A Thing?

Recently, an article by Career Ms. (of whose work I’m a borderline obsessive reader) posted an article on Medium, entitled Stay-at-Home Girlfriends. Subtitle—So apparently, I’m late to this particular party.

This post lands as most of her articles do—that is to say, with evocative insights wrapped in delicious wry humor. If you’re not familiar (and you’re a subscriber), you can follow the link above and see what I mean. Okay. Enough of the whole fan-boy thing.

Her post triggered me, I confess. One of the natural side effects of breathing in and out as long as I have is an eclectic (dysfunctional?) concoction of perspectives. Perspectives delivered at random intervals by significant events, real or imagined.

This article tickled one of the nodes in my over-stimulated brain housing group. Readers of some of my other posts know what’s coming. But before I continue, this isn’t a rebuttal. It’s more of a “yes and…”

Nobody asked me, but…

I’d never heard this arrangement referred to as “Stay-at-home girlfriend.” But after a little reading, it was hard to miss the similarity to the 18^th Century “kept woman” phenomenon. This realization led me to wonder if we really evolve, or if instead, we just re-name the plays in the playbook.

Career Ms. (using a friend who was critiquing the trend) outlines all the obvious pitfalls for stay-at-home girlfriends. Her friend (whom she called “Petra”) was taking the whole notion to task.

“It’s hard enough for women to be taken seriously,” Petra said, loud for the bartender to look concerned. “On top of tradwife bullshit, we now have stay-at-home girlfriends. We should call it what it is, sex for comfort. ‘I can lie on my back with my legs wide open so I don’t have to work.’”

In the interests of balance, Career Ms. countered with:

“I get why it’s appealing. I get why it feels like a middle finger to the system that failed us. But here’s the uncomfortable truth, it’s not a middle finger to the system. It’s just choosing a different master.”

Is it? I argue that choosing to be a “stay-at-home girlfriend” is less a matter of choosing a different master, than (as I suggested earlier) simply renaming the old one. But that’s not my point.

Social Sedimentation

Like sedimentary rock, society as we experience it is the result of accretion. Institutions, customs and—perhaps most importantly—our ways of thinking are layered one upon the other. They become “tribal knowledge—” something everybody just knows. The upside is stability, or the illusion thereof.

That same predictability was a comforting illusion to many, in pre-industrial, agricultural society. But as anyone with a nodding acquaintance with history knows, the Industrial Revolution put an end to the mirage.

The sweeping—and painful—changes ushered in by the Industrial Revolution transformed the economic landscape but did not stop there. Those economic and technological shifts fundamentally altered the social realities of the time.

The transition we’re experiencing today—from an industrial to a post-industrial world—is arguably at least as transformational and far more abrupt. In the third decade of the 21^st Century, we are confronted with multiple concurrent paradigm shifts. Shifts that, besides being concurrent, appear to be amplifying each other’s effects—even as experimentation and reaction continue to fight for acceptance.

The Song Remains the Same...

In the face of mind-bending change, do we not often take refuge in the familiar? Even when we call the same old thing something else, old patterns re-emerge, camouflaged by slightly different circumstances. Inevitably, we repeat the same old mistakes and wonder why nothing gets better.

Occasionally, someone comes along with an innovation that sets us free from part of the ossifying effects learned from our parents. The “stay-at-home” girlfriend model is not one of them. It is an unsustainable model for most—not unlike the “kept woman” of the 18^th Century. And for all the reasons Career Ms. identifies in her article. But there’s more to the story.

The Canary in the Coalmine?

It’s the same (or similar) pressures that drove 18^th Century “kept women” to that arrangement that drive 21^st Century women to the “stay-at-home” girlfriend lifestyle. In the 18^th Century, coverture and poverty were drivers. For today’s “stay-at-home” girlfriends, it’s the shrinking opportunities of end-stage capitalism, continued patriarchal thinking, and burn-out.

As a male, I suspect many of the pressures driving the short-term popularity of the “stay-at-home” girlfriend model are also behind the 21^st Century crisis of male identity. Have not end-stage capitalism and the worst effects of patriarchy disempowered both men and women?

The effects may manifest differently for men and women, but they track back to the same sources. Gender and ethnicity aside, we’re confronting the same beast. And the dysfunctional effects of both capitalism and patriarchy are rendered even more powerful by the paid-stream media and the advent of LLMs/AI.

Since the second wave of feminism, thoughtful advocates have argued that equal rights for women would be beneficial for men, as well. And not that they need my validation, but they were right then and they’re right now.

There’s no single simplistic solution, IMO. But a successful, multi-faceted solution begins with recognizing the real enemy. And it’s not women or men. It’s the sedimentary quagmire of a system that in its current form, has outlived its usefulness. It’s time for change. And looking to the traditional institutions or the advocates for them is an exercise in futility. The men and women around us—not the men and women in the capitol who are the solution.

At the risk of shameless self-promotion, I’m going to suggest readers on this platform go back to my “Dirk’s Books” page, read the book descriptions for the first two volumes of my science fiction series. Specifically, Tier Zero & Eryinath-5, The Dancer Nebula. (You don’t even have to leave the website).

There is an alternative to the unbridled capitalistic, profit maximization at the expense of all else model. The Knolans know better. They nearly destroyed their own world, following capitalism down the rabbit hole of unrestrained, unlimited growth in perpetuity.

Our Ambivalent Relationship Dance

Dirk — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 18:39:54 +0000

Understanding Self and Avoiding Self-Sabotage

The Dirty Little Secret

It’s really not a secret, if we’re being honest. We all go into intimate relationships expecting something from him/her/them. Compulsive list-makers aside, we just camouflage what we’re doing in more palatable language. We call it compatibility, fit or fulfillment, but beneath those anodyne terms we want—expect—something(s) in return.

And irrespective of how convoluted or circumscribed the shorthand of “romantic” relationships get, their essential nature, whether marriage or relationships less formal has a transactional component to it. We just don’t want it to feel transactional.

Let me hasten to add, “love” is still “a thing.” But when we lose sight of the value proposition from our intended’s perspective, we set ourselves up for disappointment. No matter how long we’re together, there’s still transactional element to relationships. Put another way, irrespective of our attachment style, our attachment is always accompanied by motive.

Restless Hearts

About those motives, and the expectations accompanying them. Do we not get those motivations from somewhere? Yeah, I know. Trick question. Our relationship motives are a (sometimes) illogical miscellany of cultural expectations acquired more by osmosis than choice, parental examples, (good and bad), further colored by our own later romantic experiences. These all come together in the choices we make.

And whether we want to confront these truths or not, our “choices” are shaped if not wholly determined by experiences we remember imperfectly. They are colored by examples (good and bad) we process with our imperfect intellects and incomplete education.

Often—perhaps even usually—what we want and don’t want arrives woven together in someone to whom we’re intensely attracted. So much so that despite our awareness of the pitfalls, we charge ahead, only to find ourselves in an ambivalent attraction-avoidance loop. Even when we’re aware of the trade-offs we’re making, we may still be unable to resolve the inherent conflict constructively.

Further complicating matters is that what we want and why we want it may not align with our best interests. What could be more embarrassing than knowing our desires as revealed by our actions are out of whack with what we know (or realize only later) is best for us?

I’m reminded of Ziva David’s line in one of the NCIS episodes, in which she observes: “The heart wants what it wants.” I don’t know if the NCIS writers knew the origins of the statement when they wrote it into the episode. But the point remains, independent of its origin. Our romantic decision-making software is operating under a different set of value propositions…one even the wisest understand only imperfectly.

This conflict has always been part of the dating/mating picture since time immemorial. It’s literally as old as the caves. But beginning in the latter half of the 20^th Century, runaway change and the multiple, interrelated concurrent paradigm shifts have complicated both how we connect and our ability to stay connected.

The List and the Heart

The foregoing doesn’t mean we don’t try to bring some kind of order to our thought process. Consciously or unconsciously, most of us have a list—or at least a notion of what we hope a prospective he/she will add to our lives. There are usually one of two problems with the list.

Either the list is so comprehensive as to be unachievable, given what we ourselves bring to a potential relationship, or;
It’s so poorly defined as to be useless as a filter. So, when attraction enters the equation, we are often blind to the red flags, assuming we’re even searching for them in the mirage of possibility.

We can usually tell how our list affects our romantic choices. If the former is our problem, we find ourselves pursuing men or women who are out of our league. We wind up continually frustrated by rejection or abandonment. If the latter is our problem, we find ourselves in an endless spiral, getting into and out of unfulfilling relationships, because our filters aren’t fine enough to actually filter.

The Shifting Balance of Power

What do we do, when we’re out of balance?

For most of our history, leadership in romance has been the province of men. Whether you take the position that leadership in romance is an atavism of patriarchal society or whether you conclude it’s a natural biological imperative that modern day feminism ignores is immaterial. Modern day feminism has given women options. They can opt for a (more or less) traditional relationship nominally led by a man, or a female-led relationship—or none at all.

Men, on the other hand, really don’t have that same flexibility. However much hyper-competent professional women might like to believe philosophically in having a competent, sensitive house-husband, that’s rarely how women choose mates. If you’d like to test this theory, (and you’re a guy), just try pursuing a woman “passively,” and, let me know how that works out…

While women aren’t attracted to passive or compliant men, few want the self-styled “Alpha male,” either. They want someone who can “share” leadership. As someone who spent 22 years in uniform, I can tell you “shared leadership” is theoretically possible but in practice? Then there are the women who say the way of the future is a “female led” relationship. I’m sure there are some who can make that work, but I suspect it’s going to be a while before it becomes a model that gains much traction.

By the same token, no man alive today (and paying attention) labors the mistaken notion that he’s “in charge” all the time. I mentioned earlier that “shared leadership” is hard. It is. But both men and women need to learn to share power, responsibility, accountability and resolution. And why is that so hard? Good question. Work with me, here.

The "Why..."

The path from where we were as a society when I was growing up to where we are now is convoluted by any metric we want to use. It’s easy to trace the path, thanks to 20-20 hindsight, but in a way, Alvin and Heidi Toffler saw the cultural displacements coming. In Toffler’s 1970 Future Shock, the underpinning premise of his book was that the rate of change was accelerating—and would soon outstrip our collective ability to process it constructively. He called this phenomenon “future shock.”

And while most of Future Shock was oriented toward the practical, everyday affects technology was having on how we lived and processed information back then, they were not insensitive to the sociological implications—as the quote below demonstrates.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but rather those who cannot learn, unlearn and re-learn.”

The Tofflers recognized that everything happens in a context. It was not lost on them how technology was influencing thought even then. They foresaw that change would create winners and losers. And while they didn’t specifically predict how these paradigm shifts might affect gender relations, I suspect neither of them would be surprised by how things have played out.

So, Where From Here?

Not that you asked, but I think the answer to the foregoing question is implicit in the last phrase in the Tofflers’ quote, above. We all need to learn, unlearn and relearn. A lot of us are going to need a lot of practice, but I think it’s worth the effort.

Men and women may not technically need each other, anymore, as I’ve heard expressed from time to time by both genders. But the frustrations I’ve also read and heard expressed by both genders suggests most of us still want each other. Maybe we could start with that recognition?

But beyond all of us acknowledging our complicated—and sometimes conflicting—goals, just meeting each other where we are and listening to each other speaking our respective truths without judgment or preconceived notions feels like (at least) a partial answer. In a time when the paradigms are shifting, maybe we can craft rewarding new paths without dishonoring our past or resisting evolution. What do you think?

D.B. Sayers is a retired Marine officer and former corporate trainer turned full-time author and artist. He currently has six titles in print and two more in draft. When not writing, he can often be found in his makeshift studio in the garage, painting. For a free sample of Dirk’s writing, get a free pdf copy of his anthology of short stories, here.

When Love Isn’t Enough: Exploring Women’s Regrets in Relationships

Dirk — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 00:49:56 +0000

It’s never easy, but somehow, it feels harder than ever, today.

Recently a post appeared in my Medium feed, written by Thinks of Nadir. In her post entitled: I’ve Asked 6 Women What They Regret Most After Losing Him — Here’s What Almost All of Them Said, she takes on an issue that I rarely see tackled here (or anywhere, for that matter). So, many congrats for taking it on.

It may just be my imagination because I haven’t been keeping score. But it feels to me like way more articles here and elsewhere focus on men’s relationship shortcomings than those of women. So, I think her post is well worth your time, irrespective of your views. Here’s the link. If you’re reading this on my website & aren’t a Medium subscriber, you’ll get the gist of her post from my response.

There are two sides to every story and as I read the post, I felt the resonance of familiarity. Readers of some of my other posts know what’s coming. “Nobody asked me but…” I’m going to share my take on each.

From the Other Side of the Dinner Table

In her post, Thinks of Nadir listed the following six regrets women expressed after their relationship ended. My take on each follows.

Regret #1. “I took his presence for granted.”

This one plucked my conscience. In it, I recognized my own guilt in taking her presence for granted. In retrospect, did my thoughtlessness contribute to hers? Just wondering out loud. Most relationships don’t simply self-destruct, and it’s rarely (if ever) the sole fault of one or the other.

In my experience, we both took each other for granted over the course of the relationship. My pilot friends who flew close air support missions have a term for it. They called it “target familiarity,” which can lead to complacence and/or carelessness. For fighter-attack pilots, that kind of complacence can be fatal. In relationships, it’s often fatal to the relationship. But it’s rarely just his—or her—fault.

Regret #2. “I didn’t respect his efforts enough.”

As someone who is currently on the business end of this phenomenon, I can relate. An objective observer of “us” would recognize the division of labor is really lopsided. There are physical/health reasons for this and I rarely resent it.

The problem isn’t that I’m doing most of the work, including cooking and cleaning, in addition to the traditional “masculine” tasks. I did that for years while single. It’s the absence of a counterbalancing something—like shared interests or sexual congruence.

We’ve compensated by allowing each other to do what we want—alone, for the most part, to include the freedom to seek sensual fulfillment elsewhere, with someone more in tune with our needs. In the final analysis, though, what holds the marriage together is her practical need for someone to care for her when the health challenges she’s dealing with flare up.

Regret #3. “I compared him too much.”

I haven’t experienced this one, myself. But for men still working, in most cases he’s obliged to compete daily on a playing field that’s morphing in unpredictable ways. Let me hasten to add, the field needed to change. But the resultant disorientation is something even the self-aware and observant struggle with.

And yes, if it applies, it’s on “him” to deal constructively with it. But if he comes home to find it’s necessary to compete with “his” woman’s romanticized version of “the one that got away,” the corrosive effect may drive him to leave. Especially if nothing else encourages him to stay.

Regret #4. “I didn’t appreciate how much men don’t just want to be wanted — they want to feel needed. Not in a dependent way, but in a way that says, “Your role in my life matters.”

I was initially inclined to disagree. I don’t need to feel needed in the sense it was once thought men needed to be needed…as provider/protector. Thoughtful men recognize that women today don’t really need men for the same reasons they did fifty years ago. But the author added, “Your role in my life matters.” And I found myself nodding in agreement.

Technically, men don’t need women, either, unless they have a huge hankering to procreate. But the soul-satisfying connection that comes with someone whose intertwining life contributes to ours and vice versa? I think that this is a need most of us have, and it seems unlikely to atrophy, however much relationships evolve in our collective future.

Regret #5. “I underestimated his emotional side.”

I have heard enough women comment on how emotionally stunted men are, to almost accept women’s characterization of men as de facto emotional children. Having known men I considered to be arrested adolescents myself, I get where women may be coming from. But as I’ve grown older, I’m convinced it’s more nuanced than that.

Society’s expectations of men have not kept pace with women’s evolving capabilities and desires, both at work and at home. Men who’ve been paying attention are adjusting, some even embracing it. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ve found one of them. At the same time, collective evolution to environmental change is often slower than we would like.

Especially when there is a strong counterweight to that evolution. Thousands of years of socialization has taught men to bury their emotions deep and to not—under any circumstances—display weakness or vulnerability. Collectively, men are caught between the conflicting expectations of normative society—and the evolving desires/standards of women.

Men and women are bucking the same social headwinds, but with differing effects. Men find themselves caught between old and new paradigms. Navigating the demands of two still present but divergent paradigms require nuance. And as Scientific American has pointed out, nuance tends to be more common among women. Can and should men catch up? Sure. Just don’t expect all men to cohere neatly with women’s timetable. Some will, some won’t. As in all things, choose carefully.

The foregoing isn’t to suggest men lack emotion or that they wouldn’t enjoy the freedom to express it openly. It’s just that many of us have had emotion beaten out of us—sometimes literally. I think thoughtful feminists know this. But stepping outside dying paradigms is something many of us (men and women) are still learning. Emotional evolution, (if there is such a thing) seems unlikely to cohere with logical thought.

Regret #6. “I thought love alone would be enough.”

In my experience, love is enough…until it isn’t. But relationships that feel out of balance will struggle to weather the inevitable stress life puts on close relationships.

A seldom-acknowledged truth in relationships of any sort is that they develop because they answer some need or want. Most of us go into long-term bonded relationships—marriage or relationships less formal—expecting they will contribute to our sense of fulfillment, happiness, or at least contentment.

I think most mature humans recognize relationships are not happiness vending machines. We know we won’t always get what we sought in our relationships. But if what we sought in that relationship dies, generally so will the relationship, eventually.

The Wrap

Men and women are still learning—some faster than others—how to navigate our new reality. Readers of my previous posts on Medium or my website know that I believe we’re in the midst of multiple, interdependent paradigm shifts. How that will affect men, women and how we relate to each other remains to be seen.

When we are better able to understand each other and to give each other a safe place to be our authentic selves, love will likely prove more durable not to mention more fulfilling for both men and women. Patriarchal society encourages if not an adversarial relationship, at least one that biases toward the familiar. In the third decade of the 21^st Century, that feels increasingly less favorable to durable love, to me.

What do you think?

Transactional Relationships—Aren’t they All?

Dirk — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 18:25:40 +0000

Recently, an article landed in my inbox, driven as usual by the Medium algorithm. Given ,y standing interest in relationships, it was bound to land there. Especially since I have subscribed to The Career Ms. thread because I admire her thoughtful writing. So, it is a choice I made, and a choice I made willingly. She’s a great writer, so if you aren’t part of Medium, or you are but haven’t subscribed to her list, please consider doing so. She’s worth your attention.

So, her recent post, Understanding Transactional Relationships, Are You Playing, or Being Played? Showed up in my inbox, this morning, time stamped 23 hours ago. If you haven’t read it, it’s a thoughtful post I have linked to it so you can read it, if you’re a subscriber. If not, I’ll make reference to some of her points in my post here, for context. As much as I enjoyed this post, I confess it did trigger me just a bit. Let me explain.

Why Relationships at all?

Falling squarely under the heading of “nobody asked me, but…” I think most relationships are transactional—or at least have a transactional element to them. A “transaction” is: “an exchange of one thing of value for another.” “Transactional” (the adjective) involves (in Merriam Webster’s words): “an exchange or transfer of goods, services or funds.” So, a transactional relationship involves an exchange of something for something else.

In her own example, Career Ms. shared her experience: “Let me tell you about Pete. Pete was hot. The sex? Fire. Chemistry? Off the charts. I thought I had it all. But slowly, the scales tipped.”

In her own words, Career Ms. makes it clear she had expectations of what her relationship with Pete would be. And those expectations had a transactional element to them. I think that’s true of most of us. We enter into a relationship expecting it to contribute in some way to our own happiness, fulfillment, or wellbeing. Career Ms.’ own experience as she expressed it above suggests that’s precisely how her own lopsided experience started.

Said Career Ms.: “Here’s the deal, a transactional relationship is one where one person gives more, emotionally, sexually, financially, domestically, while the other simply takes.”

Her statement above assumes facts not in evidence. The power dynamic Career Ms. outlines above has morphed into something none of us should want or allow, other than by mutual consent. As such, it’s a cautionary tale we should all bear in mind. That said, there’s a thriving BDSM and D/S community in which power imbalance is the whole point. But even in these relationships, they endure only as long as both are fulfilled in them.

My Point?

Relationships are complex, nuanced and rarely will two relationships look the same. For that matter, even the same relationship will probably not remain unchanged indefinitely. They will evolve or they will die, when the “balance” tips too far, as viewed by one or more of the partners of that relationship. Most marriages—as well as relationships less formal—will often have a transactional element to them. But as Career Ms. correctly points out, they can go sideways when they get out of balance.

Most of us, I suspect, would prefer to avoid that. But how? I can only speak for myself. Pay attention to your needs/wants, even as you’re seeing to your partner’s. Do not lose yourself in his/her needs unconsciously. Be present in your relationship and in the conscious evolution of it. Anyone who thinks a relationship will never change is clearly not paying attention.

Change is the Leit Motif of life. And change, not unlike giving and taking—the transaction, if you will—isn’t the problem. It’s when we aren’t present and paying attention that it generally goes sideways. If you’re sleepwalking through your relationship, you’re not doing either of you a favor. Wake up and shape it together or expect it to wither through your inattention.

Why are Divorced Women So Angry? (Or are they?)

Dirk — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:04:17 +0000

Twisted Love

Recently, I ran across a post on Medium, an online magazine I subscribed to, entitled Why Are So Many Divorced Women So Angry? It was posted in one of the publications there, to wit: “Life is twisted Like That.” It was an interesting post, so if you haven’t read it, I recommend it. And since I haven’t posted much this year, I thought I’d use the article as a springboard for a post of my own.

What follows falls squarely under the heading of “nobody asked me, but…” Asked or not, I have a thought or three. I’d like to start with a truth most of us recognize but perhaps conveniently forget.

Our Age of Anger…

The signs are everywhere, but paying consistent attention to them only makes matters worse. But most of us recognize that perpetual anger is unhealthy, so why can’t we seem to help ourselves? Is it possibly because we live in a society that feeds outrage?

Wherever we look, there’s no missing the intricate web of regulatory “Catch-22s,” and systems apparently designed not to work. Fold in weaponized news, intellectually insulting advertising, third wave feminists, & Incels/MGTOW advocates, is it that much of a surprise that most of us are spring-loaded to the pissed-off position? So, is it really just divorced women? Is it perhaps more like everyone paying attention?

I’m old enough to remember when “anger management” became a thing. It made sense then and still does for each of us to get a grip on our individual tempers, but might we have been wiser to spend at least as much time working on the components of our society contributing to chronic frustration? I think we might have. But maybe the self-appointed thought leaders don’t want us to change. Because weaponized, directed anger is profitable. Now back to the “angry divorced woman” thing.

Capitalism and the Monetization of Marriage

We’ll probably never know who figured out that married couples (especially married couples with children) are a reliably consumptive family unit. But we shouldn’t be surprised they did. Leveraging the most basic of instincts with practicality seems like a pretty obvious step.

Monetizing marriage is the root problem, for most of us. Most of us raised in a capitalistic society are numb to that. Much more problematic are the expectations society has layered onto marriage. Sometime during the late 18^th or early 19^th century, we took an institution focused on procreation and passing on wealth and grafted expectations of enduring love and even lasting romance to it. Happily ever after, in other words.

Romance—Setting Ourselves Up for Disappointment?

Since then, “romance” has rendered Valentine’s Day, jewelry stores, wedding planning, Romcoms, and dating/meeting apps profitable. Let me hasten to add, I’m not opposed to romance or any of the other above-mentioned artifacts of life today.

But as we’re living longer (and in an increasingly complex world), these expectations have gotten harder to realize. And in the wake of the second and third waves of feminism, “traditional marriage”—and for increasing numbers, marriage at all—hasn’t aged well. In light of the foregoing, would it make sense to entertain a couple questions?

Can romance play an enduring role in marriage? We seem to think it should, and marriage counselors, a plethora of podcasters and authors writing books & articles on how to keep romance alive are “wedded” to the notion. (pun intended). Whether it’s realistic or necessary is another matter.
Does how you personally think about romance, marriage, and relationships in general dovetail with your lived reality, or does it feel out of sync with the 21^st Century?

These are deeply personal questions each of us must answer for ourselves. My own take is that much of our thinking about time-honored social structures has not kept pace with the multiple, interdependent paradigm shifts we’ve experienced, post WWII.

How did we get here, anyway?

Technological advances, coupled with the second and third waves of feminism have radically altered how we meet, date, court & marry. It has also altered relationships in general in ways that seem to be making neither women nor men happy. It shares that in common with so much of our lived reality today.

Some of it has to do with the frustrations of women fed up with those mechanisms and the apparent obtuseness of men who either don’t (or won’t) see the light. At times, it feels vituperative, and however warranted, it doesn’t invite either agreement or cooperation. It’s getting increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that both women and men and how they see themselves are in the throes of a paradigm shift.

Collectively, women have achieved and continue to achieve new and impressive milestones, even as men seem (collectively) to be shrinking. Some have adapted while many have been unable to keep up and are either acting out—or dropping out. It’s almost as though the deterioration of solution-oriented political discourse has taken root in gender relations. Perhaps for the same reasons?

So, what now?

I began this post stating my observations fall squarely under the heading of “nobody asked me, but…” I’m expecting they will piss off both men and women.

I’ll start with men. If women find you unattractive, irrespective of reason, you have two options. Figure it out and fix it or drop out and shut up about it. None of us, (men or women) guaranteed a playmate. It’s something we earn…or not. Figure it out and get help if you need it.

For the women. I often hear how the good men are taken and all that are left are the feckless or self-satisfied asshats. As I once advised my daughter, as she recounted her dating woes…if you’re not catching what you want, use different bait or fish in different waters.

What is not helpful is public airing of our personal grievances. Whether you’re a man or a woman if you want to help the other gender, ditch the rancor and focus on what might work with you, as best you can articulate it. For same reason we expect (even if increasingly, we don’t get it) reasonable balance in journalism, the same should apply to personal essays, irrespective of where you post them.

An absence of nuance is generally a sign of either of a hidden agenda owing little to the truth, or an incomplete education. No, nuance may not get as many click throughs, but it also won’t poison the waters unnecessarily. If you recognize yourself in the foregoing, I will leave it to you to decide which applies. Irrespective of gender, we’re all capable of better. Now would be a suitable time to start.

Do We Really Suck This Bad?

Dirk — Thu, 29 May 2025 18:02:24 +0000

On the Way Home From Good Will…

Sometimes, unpleasant truth is unavoidable. Wanted or not, it can smack us squarely in the chops when we least expect it. Driving back from Good Will after dropping off donations yesterday afternoon, I saw a car parked along the side of the road. It was a twenty-year-old Toyota Camry that had clearly seen its better days. Its oxidized paint and cracked windshield spoke volumes. But most eloquent was the weathered duct tape holding the hood down.

My first inane thought was to wonder how the owner dealt with oil changes, battery maintenance and coolant replacement. I was on the verge of laughing at the unknown owner’s complete absence of foresight. Duct-taping his hood down? But as I got closer, I realized there were multiple layers of duct tape. Literally duct tape on top of duct tape. That’s when it occurred to me that the owner was performing maintenance of sorts on his car.

Before I could even make it home, I went from amusement at the owner’s expense to what that duct-taped hood symbolized. What does it say about us, I thought, that here in California, in order to live you have to have a car, whether you can afford it or not? Against the odds, this unknown owner was somehow making it work. Cutting through the duct tape holding down his hood to perform the maintenance he couldn’t afford…but couldn’t afford not to do…then layering duct tape on top of duct tape to “keep on keepin’ on.”

By the time I got home, my mood had sagged, to a point lower than it has been since November. How many more are there like that? Hard-working but under-resourced good people who feel life closing in on them, often through no fault of their own.

The Hubris of Success

The Hubris of Success

Living in a neighborhood that tends to facilitate self-satisfied pride, I’m guilty of a measure of success hubris, modest though my own success may be. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a seductive narrative. To some extent, I’ve done it and been inspired by others who have. But I didn’t do it alone and I did it in a time when it was probably easier than it is today. And If I’m honest with myself, there was an element of luck involved. Others who did everything right, as near as I can tell, still haven’t been as fortunate. What do we, who have been more fortunate, owe the less fortunate?

I thought of my own journey from the wrong side of the tracks to where I am now and wondered: “what if I had been less interested in school? What if my family had been unwilling or unable to afford the little bit at a time enabling me to compete successfully as a swimmer? It was that and student loans at a time when the interest rates and terms were favorable, that earned me a scholarship as a competitive swimmer…until I could qualify for an academic scholarship.

Character matters, of course. All the talent and opportunity in the world won’t guarantee success for one unwilling to seize it. But in our time, context matters even more. Within twenty miles of my neighborhood, many are mired in painful contextual realities. Realities orders of magnitude tougher than any I dealt with growing up. Are they even surmountable for the average human today?

How many actually have not an ice cube’s chance in the hot place of escaping from another generation of grinding poverty without help? As I was writing this post, I flashed on Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and thought—not for the first time—we really haven’t evolved much. For me, that car became an effigy of hope hanging on by its fingernails. Our society once honored that along with our way of life. How can we reclaim our faith with each other as brothers and sisters, irrespective of ethnicity or origin?

Nobody asked me, but…

We have met the enemy, looking back at us, in the mirror. As someone whose undergraduate degree was in history, I see the nearly inevitable pattern of empire in the country I served in the Corps for 22+ years and still love warts and all. Please note I said nearly inevitable. We can be so much better. The land of the free and the home of the brave has become the land of the enslaved and the home of the fearful. Which is exactly what far too many of the self-anointed “leaders,” known and unknown, want.

What are we afraid of? People of color? Immigrants who don’t look exactly like us? Along with our own children, these are our best hope for a vibrant future. They come as our forefathers did, with hope and innovative ideas fueling success yet undreamed of. Or maybe it’s our fear of the uncertain and the unknown. But the unknown is our inescapable reality. We can face it or run from it but tomorrow will always be in front of us.

Or maybe it’s the truth we’re afraid of. Have some of us abdicated responsibility for what we have become, preferring to offload the “fix” to someone else? Have we allowed others to lose hope completely and opt out in despair?

Readers of some of my other posts already know what’s coming. We—you and I—are the answer to all of this. In my previous incarnation as a Lieutenant of Marines, there was an admonition we got almost daily. It’s still burned in my memory. “Do something, Lieutenant. Even if it’s wrong.”

I now pass that admonition along. All of us can and must do something! Not simply for ourselves, but our children or someone else’s… Somehow, we can all find the time to help take back the dream.

Update on Vol. III of the Knolan Cycle

Dirk — Mon, 05 May 2025 18:03:38 +0000

As readers of Tier Zero and Eryinath-5 The Dancer Nebula, know, the Knolan Concordant has successfully resisted Valdrōsian attempts to raid their corner of the galaxy for thousands of years. But now, the Valdrōsians have found a formidable new ally in the Zymorans. This unexpected alliance has profoundly shaped the Knolans’ strategic calculus.

In The Zymoran Factor, Volume III of the Knolan Cycle, the Knolans’ realize almost too late that the stakes in their long-standing war with the Valdrōsians have escalated dramatically. Not simply for the 23 systems that are part of the Knolan Concordant, but for Earth, a potential ally who will face the same threat, though Earth (or Kurrithäal, as the Knolans call it) is unaware of its peril. Leveraging technology the Zymorans have given them and the increased confidence of having an ally, the Valdrōsians have established a presence in our Kuiper Belt. The Knolans have countered by positioning a response force in stealth mode near Io, one of the moons of Jupiter.

But imaging of the Valdrōsians massing in the Kuiper Belt has revealed unexpected developments. The Valdrōsians are building a slave world for their hybriding program. This suggests their plans are further along than previously understood. It also hints at the possibility that the Valdrōsians may no longer fear Knolan superiority. With multiple indications that hostilities may be eminent, the Guardian of Knola has sent Hāthar-Tahk to Earth, along with a contingent of Shock Force troops. Tasked with making contact with authorities on Earth and establish an alliance, Hāthar realizes he’s facing an uphill climb. Knolan activity on Earth has been clandestine up to now.

Starting from zero familiarity, it may be tough establishing the necessary rapport to enlist Earth’s resources and cooperation in its own defense. And as tensions rise and the web of conflict becomes increasingly convoluted, Complicating matters are surrogates the Valdrōsians have recruited on Earth. Hāthar and the other Knolans here on Earth grapple not only direct, external threats from the Valdrōsians, but the growing and urgent necessity of enlisting the help of the humans here on Earth in their own defense and for mutual benefit.

The Zymoran Factor, Vol III of the Knolan Cycle continues to track the growth of Hāthar-Tahk, formerly Marty Tellus and his prominent role not only in Knola’s security but the defense of Earth and the attempt to ease it into the Knolan Concordant for the benefit of both.

I can’t end this post without thanking The Brü Crew, (my author’s critique group), who have been of immeasurable value in refining Volume III. We’re currently on Chapter 46 of the story. I hope to have it complete in draft and into editing before the end of the year.

Tier Zero, Volume I of the Knolan Cycle introduces the Reader to Marty Tellus a half-human, half-Knolan Seed whom the Knolans want to recruit, in order to help ease Earth (or Kurrithaal as the Knolans call our planet) into the Knolan Concordant.

As ethical as the Knolans are, they don’t tell Marty everything, right away. Among the things Marty learns later is that the Knolans are at war with the Valdrosians, who themselves have an unhealthy interest in Earth.

To protect him from the Valdrosians who covet his unusual genetics, Marty is taken to the Tower of Varineya on Knola and distinguishes himself in more ways than one.

If you haven’t read it yet, you can get it here, from Amazon.

Eryinath-5, The Dancer Nebula picks up 6 months after the end of Tier Zero and continues to follow the rise of Marty Tellus, now known as Hathar, among the Knolans.

Now embroiled in the war with the Valdrosians, Hathar is an officer in the Knolan Shock Forces and has been assigned a very dangerous mission. A mission that gets him captured and enslaved.

This volume continues to follow activities on Earth and the age old conflict between Knola and the Valdrosians. As the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that Knola’s war with the Valdrosians is likely to spill over and affect Earth.

If you haven’t read Eryinath-5, you’re in for a roller coaster ride across this spiral arm of our common galaxy. You can get your copy of Eryinath-5, here.

D.B. Sayers is a decorated, retired Marine officer former corporate trainer and training manager turned full-time author with six titles in print and two more in draft. He’s also an artist, a gym rat and an unrepentant adrenaline junkie. Dirk lives in Laguna Niguel with his wife, his wife’s psychotic cat and a 15 year old Ball Python named Corona.

Dating & Mating Today

Dirk — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 17:48:04 +0000

Chasing Butterflies While the Elephants Get Away

Whatever would we do without the commentary on virtually all the online forums and chat rooms focused on relations between men and women? It’s so refreshing to read all the complaints I’ve heard since I was old enough to know that men and women were different, “down there.”

I might have been eight or nine, when my mother and her second husband were engaged in what became the first gender/sex-related “debate” I had witnessed. At some point in argument, my mother broke into song:

“Rueben, Rueben, I’ve been thinking what a grand world it would be,

if all the men were transported far beyond the northern sea.”

To which Hank, (her husband at the time) refrained:

“Rachel, Rachel, I’ve been thinking what a grand world it would be,

If all the girls were transported far beyond the northern sea.”

It would be years before I would learn there was an 1871 song from which their lines were excerpted. Or that both had misremembered how the song went or what the underpinning philosophy was. But the larger truth wasn’t lost on me. There was a “tension” between the sexes—one which at the time, didn’t matter to me. At the age of nine, I had other things on my mind. What “girls” thought of me was not in the top ten worry list.

Fast-Forward to Today...

Now, sixty-plus years later, we still have men and women complaining about each other’s shortcomings (real and imagined) everywhere the topic is likely to come up. And doing so like they’d just discovered the time-immemorial problem of gender differences.

“Men know they are undatable,” one author on a platform I frequent tells us, “So why should women settle?” “Women aren’t too picky,” another author writes, “men are just mediocre.”

Guys, we don’t get off scot-free, either. “Women are gold-diggers,” one (male) author tells us. “Or women have unrealistic standards,” another writes. True. some are or do. Is that really a headline? “Women have it easier dating today,” others opine. Really? As someone privy to the dating adventures of my daughter, I’m going to have to disagree. Or at least observe that it’s a bit more nuanced than that. And that leads me to my pivotal point. What’s missing in all the foregoing statements is men or women trying to make each other wrong for their differences—and doing so in ways that are devoid of nuance or empathy.

Nobody asked me, but…

How much better off would we be if we stopped venting and took a more empathetic and patient spin on each other? I remember dating in “the way back when,” and learning a lot of lessons the hard way.

Was I undatable, back then? Almost, I confess. In my defense, I was young and unsupervised. Eventually, I learned and after repeated tours overseas and coming back, I had to re-learn. So, if you’re a woman looking for a datable man, (or vice versa) maybe you’re fishing in the wrong waters…or using the wrong bait?

Likewise, if you’re a man and the women you’re dating are either blowing you off, maybe it’s you and not them? Maybe you need to work a little more on you. Or if the women you’re dating are treating you as a subsidy for their food and entertainment budget, maybe you’d do well to take the advice I gave women, above. If you’re coming across as so creepy or weird that women won’t give you the time of day, maybe work on that. If you’re being treated like a human ATM, what message are you sending? Please tell me you aren’t one of those $35K millionaires who leases a BMW, contorting yourself trying to impress her with what you have, rather than who you are.

Instead of generalizing from our own experiences and assuming the whole dating pool is toxic, maybe consider we should reflect our standards and what they say about us…and whether we’ve unconsciously bought into “norms” that are out of sync with our values. And if after reflection, you find you’ve validated your tastes but are still not achieving the desired results, maybe it’s time to consider fishing somewhere else, or using a different bait.

We could debate whether vituperating against half the entire Earth’s population is either fair or intellectually balanced and probably wind up having to agree to disagree. But far more problematic, in my opinion, is how the exercise of dwelling on the negative effects on our own spirits. There’s nothing wrong with “taking a break” from dating if you need to.

Or for that matter, with you deciding you want to render that “break” permanent. You may decide that for you, the reward is not worth the price. In every generation, there are men and women who arrive at that conclusion. Sometimes it’s reflection on their limited options. Other times it’s a reflection on them. Which isn’t to say either is wrong.

Perhaps they were in the wrong place, the wrong time—or maybe they just gave up too soon. Perhaps there’s more work some of us still need to do on ourselves. Or maybe, we’re just happier solo. What I would encourage all to do, however, is to ty empathizing with each other and to resist the temptation to trade uncertain possibilities for the opium of comfortable certainty.

Gender Wars, 2025-Scorched Earth?

Dirk — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 17:44:40 +0000

It's Not Our Imagination...the Paradigm Has Moved

I grew up in a household in which the only competent adult was my mother—a fact painfully obvious to anyone familiar with our family. Living in a college town in the early stages of the second wave of feminism, I was exposed the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Freidan and Mary Jane Sherfey, among others. But even before that, watching the contribution balance between my mother and her husbands, I often wondered why my mother bothered with the men she chose.

As I got older, that question was partially answered. A product of her time, marriage—to her—was the inevitable default status of “normal” adults. And the seductive example of her parents’ successful marriage tended to validate social norms. Social norms that attributed marriage failures to character flaws, irrespective of the variables that might also be at play.

For better or worse, much of the unexamined thinking that persuaded my mother to keep trying persists today—explaining, I think, the increasing acrimony of the disappointed. Even now, we are driven by a cluster of social expectations so deeply embedded in society, that few of us ever really examine them as critically as we should.

Based on our divorce statistics, many of us examine those expectations only after it’s too late. Not quite half of all first marriages don’t endure, while second and subsequent marriages end in divorce at the rate of between 60-70%, depending on who you ask. Like any collection of statistics, the foregoing information is subject to fluctuation and doesn’t tell the whole story. But on balance, the picture current relationship attrition paints isn’t optimistic.

Where Love Has Gone

The foregoing statistics notwithstanding, most of us cling to the default social model of wedded bliss without giving much thought to potential alternatives. And it’s not that the alternatives aren’t out there. It’s just that both heterosexual and many same-gender romances still tend to cling to some version of monogamous marriage. Or to put it another way, remain mesmerized by exclusive reliance on one someone else to deliver everything we want that we can’t or won’t do for ourselves.

If you’ve been following the running dialog (&diatribes) from both sides of the “gender debate,” you could be forgiven if you have concluded the ground is shifting beneath our feet. And who’s “at fault” for the shift(s) seems to depend largely on whether you’re a man or a woman…and secondarily, whether you identify as a “liberal” or “conservative.” With a nod to the fact that nobody asked me, here’s one broken-down, baggy-eyed old guy’s take.

Men, Women and Shifting Paradigms

No, ladies, we both know it’s not your imagination. In the third decade of the 21^st Century, a stubbornly resistant default to patriarchy in most societies remains. Like it or not, collectively, we evolve (if at all) slowly. And yes, gentlemen—women are impatient for change and their frustration at us is often reflected in their writings. If our situations were reversed, I suspect we would be equally impatient.

But the sad fact alluded to above remains. While to some degree, we are all agents of change, most of us tend to evolve to the changes happening around us slowly. We need only consult the results of recent elections, both here in the U.S. and abroad to validate that notion. This is never more true, than in uncertain times. We allow fear or frustration to color our thinking (and behavior) often folding in on ourselves. At the same time, we often attribute negative outcomes to the wrong culprits. How often do we see cause-effect relationships where they don’t exist…or miss the ones that are there? A recent post here on Medium illustrates what I mean.

The Usual Suspects

In a recent post on Medium, it was suggested that “dating apps” have killed romance. I was a beat away from rebutting the author’s post, but close reading of her post made it clear that what she really thought was killing romance was how dating apps artificially commoditized humans and gave users a false sense of unlimited options. And she’s not wrong, IMO.

Her valid points acknowledged, I felt her observations stopped short of something at least as pivotal. “Online dating” is the natural result of an increasingly impersonal and distracted society. It is a virtual environment in which you can meet a larger number of men or women than you otherwise would. But however “target-rich’ the environment proves to be, the personalized nature of our wants and needs are still determinative.

And yes, the overarching social environment in which men and women interact clearly contributes to our frustration with each other—and not simply in matters of romance. But it is up to each of us as individuals to decide how much of our power to give away to our situation. Will we let the challenges of our environment dictate our attitudes about it, or will we manage our emotions in a way that facilitates understanding and success?

My Take on It

As someone with a lot of runway behind him, I can’t remember when dating, connecting, and achieving anything like a meaningful, fulfilling connection with the opposite sex was easy. Even as we age, while meeting and understanding gets easier, it never gets easy.

Whether you’re seeking a wife/husband, or a FWB, expecting it to be easy or devoid of frustration and conflict strikes me as unrealistic. Whether you’re meeting online or trying to connect organically for whatever objective, it’s complicated. Which isn’t to say that no one ever connects in a way that looks effortless from the outside looking in. There are those men and women for whom things just seem to come easily. But for most of us mere mortals, it’s work. And sometimes, work sucks. Whether it’s worth it or not is up to you to decide. If you decide it’s worth it, embrace the suck.

Over the course of my life, I’ve had periods where success seemed to come easily, punctuated by longer periods when it felt like I couldn’t win for losing. Perspective matters and the longer we kick around in this world, the more aware we become attuned to seasons…including those occasional sabbaticals from active pursuit of a partner in favor of just being.

There’s no wrong choice. But irrespective of the choices we make, attitude is everything and polluting the waters for each other is in no one’s best interest. In 2025, maybe we can all make a concerted effort to shelve our frustrations in general and take each individual as we find them. Who knows when the benefit of doubt might be all either of us need to connect in a way that does credit to all?

What do you think? Let me know in your comments.

D.B. Sayers is the author of West of Tomorrow, a last-chance romance woven into a tale of corporate intrigue and of the Nyra Westensee series. The first two books, Best-Case Scenario, Act I of Nyra’s Journey and The Year of Maybe, Act II of Nyra’s Journey all three of which are currently available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle.