Men Living Below Their Privilege

This comes about for two reasons.
1. Universal karmic balance. I've got a couple of friends who have recently blogged about the less favorable qualities/presence of men.
2. Someone, who I'll call a friend for the sake of convenience, has been ring shopping.

The short of it is it makes me want to pull out my hair when good guys settle for girls they don't deserve. I want to shake men in situations where, in the words of a friend, "He could do better, and she could do (pause) differently."

Case study, my friend mentioned in the second reason.
He's been dating this girl for a while and has, of his own accord and chivalry, given her flowers (maybe even roses) every month they've been together. For their one-year anniversary, he took her to one nice place for appetizers, one nice place for dinner and one nice place for dessert. In general, he's a sweet young man and treats her like a queen. He let her and her young toddler move in with him when their roommate suddenly moved out. And it isn't that I don't like her--I do, she's a very nice person. But if he's treating her like that, he should be receiving the same consideration in return. Which he isn't, although she can be very sweet at times.

The root problem I have with this kind of situation is that it shrinks the pool of guys who treat women like queens while not simultaneously shrinking the pool of available women who treat men like kings. I also have a problem with the frequency at which I've seen it happen. I can come up with 4 examples--no, wait, 5, in the time it's taken me to type this sentence. 6 if I keep thinking about it. A sure sign I should stop. Wait! There's a 7th.