Women's expiry date

                                                

Do women have an expiry date? This is a very sensitive topic for most women so believe me when I say that I’m not trying to stir but this is a subject that tends to hover around like a fly yet we are never willing to discuss it.

My mum and I had a ‘talk’ (you are probably very familiar with the mother/daughter talk about relationships) a few days ago and she said something along the lines of making the most of what I have now because when a woman reaches a certain age they don’t have as many male suitors anymore. What she was really trying to say was that I am at a ‘ripe’ age for marriage (that’s how we refer to it in Nigeria) and I should start giving it serious consideration if I haven’t already. She started telling me about one of her friend’s daughter who had a number of guys interested in her but she turned them all down because she was only keen on one particular guy. She waited a long time for him to ask her to marry him. Thing is, he never quite got round to asking and of course time passed by. A few years down the line she realized that they were not going to be heading down the aisle but by now she was well into her thirties and all her suitors were married. So the moral of the story is to grab the bull by the horn and never set your heart on one guy if he has not proposed to you yet.

My mum told me that men generally begin to lose interest in women when they get into their mid to late thirties because at that stage the women become desperate to settle down and have kids but some of the guys are not ready for the hassle so they look for younger women who do not have the time clock ticking against them. What she was basically trying to say is that women have an expiration date. I absolutely loathed where this ‘talk’ was going but I had to ask myself if she had a point. Truth be told, this was not the first time I have heard this. In fact I remember having a discussion of a similar nature with one of my girlfriends and at the end we both concluded that men had it easier when it came to dating especially at an older age because all they really needed was money. Think about it, some women don’t care in the slightest what a man looks like as long as his pockets are deep enough, they’ll be happy to call him their husband. Men on the other hand tend to use the age and looks of a woman as the main determining factors for dating them and even marriage. They are a lot more visual than women.

I did a bit of due diligence AKA digging around and actually found that the reason women have an expiration date is scientific. No, I’m not making this up – some people actually did a research on this topic. There are a lot of studies which suggests that women have a biological clock which starts ticking when they get to their 40s. It really depends on individuals because some women’s clock start as early as their thirties but 40s is a general consensus. On www.sciencedaily.com their study into this subject revealed that they may now be able to accurately tell a woman’s biological age by the levels of their AMH (anti-Mullerian hormone). This is the hormone related to the onset of menopause. Not to bore you with all the scientific mambo jumbo what this means is that unlike men who are able to have healthy sperm counts at practically any age, once a woman’s biological clock reaches its peek they can become sterile and reproduction becomes extremely difficult. In lay man’s terms, it is harder to give birth at an older age.

Coming back to the conclusion my friend and I made when we had this discussion, It seems that all a man really needs is financial security and irrespective of their age or what they look like the women would come flocking in heaps. One of the prime examples of this is the late Anna Nicole Smith and her then husband. I mean the man could barely piece together a coherent speech but yet he had this beautiful young woman more than 3 decades younger than him on his arm. She claimed that she wasn’t married to him for his money but I beg to differ. Prove me wrong if you think otherwise…
As much as I’d hate to agree with my mum’s theory, it’s difficult to disregard the findings of the frankly ‘devastating’ research carried out by the bored scientists who looked into this topic. Women do have an expiry date but ladies don’t hang up your dating hats just yet. I strongly believe and always have that there is someone for everyone no matter who it is; doesn't matter what age, shape or height you are. Having said that you have to help yourself by socializing in the right places, giving your object of affection the right signals, working on yourself (mentally & physically)etc.
So do you agree or disagree that women have an expiry date? Maybe you’ve even had an experience to prove or disprove this. I would love to hear your take on this.