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#1 IN BACHELOR FARMERS

May 28, 2008 | No Comments

Post to the Host:
Our new Amish neighbors recently asked a question we couldn't answer. Why are there so many bachelors in Northern Minnesota? We speculated that perhaps shyness was the issue but for a definitive answer, I thought immediately of you! Please let us know how to explain this phenomena. (A couple years ago you entered the gate area on the F concourse at MSP and sat down across from me. Being Minnesotan, I did not disturb you.)

Susan K
McIntosh, MN

I've heard various theories, and shyness is one, and another says that some boys were so cosseted and adored by their mamas that no woman could ever look good to them. I've also heard (this is from a couple of bachelors) that bachelors are romantics and simply don't see anyone available who comes close to their romantic vision. Of course, singleness is a choice, and it isn't only men in northern Minnesota who go that route: I have a friend in Minneapolis who, at age 40, decided she is tired of trying to "weed out" men and finds the world of dating exhausting and unrewarding. My own theory is that courtship and seduction are social skills that involve taking big risks of rejection and humiliation and at a certain point in life, most people are loathe to step across that line. If no woman has fallen in love with you by the time you're thirty, maybe you figure you are not cut out for romance. And in a rural area, there are not so many opportunities. And if you don't attend church and you don't work in town, there are even fewer. And then bachelorhood can lead to misogyny, and then you have the Norwegian bachelor farmer denned up in his shack, living a life of pure freedom, and this man is impervious to romance of any sort.