I hear (a lot) and read in OLD profiles about guys in the 20-40 year old range, in order:
1- Not having any $$. Not in a gold digging way. The guys don't have $ for a standard date or fun or travel even if woman is paying her own way.
2- Lack of goals and ambition, direction, motivation. Play too many video games, not active.
3- Not assertive enough. Woman wears the pants. Boring.
4- Unkempt. Sloppy, poor taste in clothes and style. No panache.
And based on what I see, as I'm over 40, I agree 110%. One of the reasons I pull so many 20 and 30 somethings 15-20 years younger than me.
I think Dash covers the biggest bases. After men start dating a woman I'd add two things:
1. Supplicating behavior (do NOT hump a woman's leg people - it is an attraction killer) otherwise known as putting the woman on a pedestal...major turn off
2. Disrespectful behavior
To expound on my two points the balance is in between these two things...with the see-saw more toward disrespect than supplication. I think it is easier for a man to calibrate down from disrespectful behavior than to dial up self respecting behavior to eliminate supplication.
In fact you'll see AFC guys go from chump to ass hole and over time learn to reel the ass holery back in a bit to get to right balance around here. The pendulum swings from hard left to hard right before reaching calibration in the middle if a man is striving to figure himself out and also figure out how he relates to others.
Somewhere recently Guru made a comment along the lines of there aren't enough ass holes on here who need to dial it back - as those guys generally aren't here and are doing fine out there - but there are any number of guys on here who need to learn to be more assertive and more in the mind set of putting themselves first. And I also see a core of men here who are well calibrated already, mature, and plenty masculine without being d i c k s. Those are the men who do best with women.
Frankly I tend to gravitate toward men with plenty of ass hole qualities, and so at times I deal with disrespectful behaviors to a degree. But I know what type of men I'm dealing with and I had a father and other male relatives of the same ilk, so it's something I know well, am accustomed to handling, and have the self-esteem and the tools to deal with through my own self-respect.
Women at some point have to decide what they are willing to tolerate, just as men do. There are no perfect people out there and we can't take one person's positive qualities and mix them with another person's and eliminate all negatives. If only, lol. I'd rather have a man who is assertive, leads, and is unapologetic about what he wants out of life than someone who has no direction and can't figure out what direction to go.