Why You Can’t Get Married, Pt. 1
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to The Rawness RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
UPDATE: Please note that part 2 is now up.
I was inspired to write this piece by a female friend. This friend, who is in her mid-30s, recently asked me “I don’t get it. I have a graduate degree, I make great money, I own property, I’ve got a great car, I’m independent and I’m ambitious. Why can’t I get a good man to marry?” I told her the truth, and it seemed to sincerely shock her: “Most guys don’t care about any of that. They want the hottest, youngest girl they can find that pumps their egos and make them feel like a million bucks.” Of course she totally refused to believe it.
But this was hardly an isolated case. I’ve definitely noticed a rising epidemic among modern, “politically enlightened” big-city women. They’ve figured out everything, it seems, except how to get married. There are more women than ever in their 30s and 40s who seem to have figured out everything from career to real estate to retirement; everything, that is, except how to get a partner for life. I’m here to help, but I have to warn you that this will be unpleasant for many of you to hear, especially since it goes against what modern society has been telling women to do for the past two generations, which is to chase status and career accomplishments like men traditionally have. This is part 1 of a 2-part series, and it focuses on modern women who can’t find a steady man at all. Part 2 will focus on women who have a man or can find men but can’t seem to get them to commit to marriage.
The main problem many modern women have as far as finding satisfactory men is that they have let feminism tell them what men like rather than actually watching the actions of men. And a major problem of feminist ideology is that it often confuses being equal with men with being identical to men. Therefore many women start believing that the things that make a man’s stock rise will also help their stock rise in the exact same way, and that’s simply not the case. Most men don’t really care about your graduate degree or high powered job since they can’t have sex and reproduce with either. Doctors, politicians and lawyers are often very status-obsessed, at least when starting out professionally, so they may be impressed with such credentials at first, but once they arrive at the top even they don’t care anymore and often trade their starter wives in for a younger, hotter woman with less credentials.
That’s why the most imporant things a woman can do is capitalize on her youth and her looks. If you want to marry and have kids, you’re better off being hot but less educated and having less status than letting your looks and physique go while chasing a high-powered job. Status and riches don’t attract men the way they attract women. Women see a man with status and wealth and power and that man genuinely starts becoming more attractive to them. It’s not like they’re just pretending they’re attracted as they go for his money, he actually becomes attractive to them, especially if he’s got game to boot. To a man on the other hand, a woman looks the same to him whether she is powerful and wealthy or not. Oprah is a billionaire and is no where close to being a sex symbol to men. Even to a gigolo who uses powerful women for money, those women don’t actually become any more attractive to him as a result of the wealth and status.
Why is this the case? Because it’s simply how men and women evolved. I wrote in the past about the two drives of human beings, which are basically to surive and to reproduce. Just about every instinct and tendency we have helps us in one or both of these goals. Since women have always been the physically weaker of the species, it makes sense that they’ve evolved to place more value on mates that can help them fulfill the survival drive. As for the reproduction drive, most men are fertile well into their older years, so just about all man can satisfy that part of the equation. This is why age and looks traditionally matter less to women than they do to men, since age and looks don’t play as big a role in indicating male fertility as they do in indicating female fertility. Since fertility is abundant in men, women focus more on things that satisfy the survival drive than the reproduction drive, which in men are in no particular order physical power, bravery, wealth, social intelligence, power and class status.
Men on the other hand don’t traditionally rely on women to satisfy their survival drive. They have the survival part down and usually rely on themselves or other men in their tribes for physical protection. The only possible survival questions a man has when dealing with a woman is whether she has the type of attitude or mouth that will get him killed by getting him into fights with other men or whether she’ll shorten his lifespan through excessive stress and nagging. Otherwise, women usually can’t do much to help a man in satisfying his survival drive, so as a result men have been conditioned by evolution to judge women primarily on how they satisfy the reproductive drive. To illustrate the difference in male and women fertility windows, consider the following information from this website on sexual selection:
There is a great difference in the number of babies a man and a woman can potentially produce. Women can only become pregnant and bear young a maximum of once a year, more typically once every two years at most. This means that during a lifetime a woman can have a maximum of only about 12 children. Although there are some notable exceptions with women having over 20 children, this is mostly due to them producing sets of twins, triplets or more.
For men the picture is very different. If a man went from ovulating woman to ovulating woman, and mated with each, he could potentially sire thousands of young during his lifetime. Of course this would never really happen, but it does illustrate the fact that a single man can have many more children than a single woman.
A mans reproductive success is limited by his access to women willing to mate with him. A woman’s reproductive success is limited by her biological circumstances.
So to sum up where we are so far: humans care most about two things, survival and reproduction. When choosing mates, women are conditioned to focus on the survival part of the equation because they are the physically weaker sex, as well as the people most likely to be stuck raising a child. They don’t focus on reproductive health of a man because fertility is hardly a limited resource in men, since they’re usually capable of fathering up to thousands of children in a lifetime. Hence women focus more on things about a man related to helping the survival of her and her offspring: wealth, class status, social intelligence, power, and physical dominance in the form of height and physique. Men have the survival aspect down, so women can’t help them much there. But when it comes to reproduction, women have much more fertility limitations than men, so men have to focus on a woman’s fertility indicators much more than anything else.
When judging a woman for reproductive health and fertility indicators, two things matter more than anything else: age and looks.
AGE
Unlike men, women have a much shorter window for having children, which is why men are conditioned to value young women so much.
- Female fertility peaks between ages 19-24.
- A woman’s fertility starts to measurably decline by age 27.
- For women under 30, the chances of getting pregnant in a single cycle are between 20-30%. By 40, it’s down to 5%.
- Miscarriage rates are higher in older women. According to the March of Dimes, “about 9 percent of recognised pregnancies for women aged 20 to 24 ended in miscarriage. The risk rose to about 20 percent at age 35 to 39, and more than 50 percent by age 42″.
- According to the March of Dimes, “At age 25, a woman has about a 1-in-1,250 chance of having a baby with Down syndrome; at age 30, a 1-in-1,000 chance; at age 35, a 1-in-400 chance; at age 40, a 1-in-100 chance; and at 45, a 1-in-30 chance.”
- A woman’s menstrual cycle tends to become shorter and more irregular as she ages.
- The lining of a woman’s womb may decline or become thinner with age.
- A woman’s ovarian reserve, or the number of follicles capable of producing viable eggs a woman has left in her ovaries, declines with age.
And as far as looks go, it’s no coincidence that many of the things men are conditioned by evolution to find attractive also happen to be indicators of reproductive health:
LOOKS
- Not being too skinny or too fat, having clear, smooth skin and waist-to-hip ratio of less than 70% are all associated with good overall health and good fertility health in particular.
- A conventionally attractive female face advertises high levels of estrogen, which in turn advertise fertility. Full lips and larger eyes are linked to higher levels of estrogen (estrogen leads to larger eyes, fuller lips and bigger cheeks in women than men).
- In puberty, higher levels of estrogen causes the bones in the face to grow less, particularly in the nose and chin. Thus women with smaller chins and noses tend to convey reproductive health through their faces and are therefore considered more attractive.
- Estrogen leads to a curvier figure, causing more fat to be deposited on the hips and buttocks, which is why men are usually turned off by women who are anorexically thin. However being too fat also causes reproductive problems in women and indicates poor health, which is why overweight women are usually not considered attractive either.
- For more proof on how a woman’s fertility can be conveyed through facial features, consider this study:
The link between female attractiveness and fertility was demonstrated by St. Andrews researcher Marian Law Smith. She and her team took photographs of 59 women who were between the ages of 18 and 25. Each woman was asked to provide a urine sample at exactly the same point in their menstrual cycles, so that the researchers could ascertain their levels of sex hormones. A different group of volunteers was shown the photographs of the women and was asked to rank all 59 for attractiveness and health, based on the pictures of their faces. Both male and female volunteers rated the faces of the women with the highest levels of estrogen as most attractive.
- Even style apparently plays a part in conveying fertility according to new research:
There are lots of them – women who like an occasion to dress-to-impress. But how many truly know why they do it? New research suggests that beyond the innate desire so many have to simply look good, the answer might actually lie in hormones. According to a study completed by researchers at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, the more fertile a woman is, the more attention she will pay to the way she dresses. Not only do fertile women focus on their appearance more closely, but “they tend to put on skirts instead of pants, show more skin and generally dress more fashionably,” Martie Haselton, the study’s lead author and a UCLA associate professor of communication studies and psychology, said…Like female birds or other animals that change color or release strong scents when seeking a mate, human females apparently spruce themselves up similarly around the 15th day of their menstrual cycles, when most women ovulate.
So basically, for the evolutionary reasons outlined above, the best things you can do as a woman who wants to get married is to capitalize on your age and looks while you are still young. Sure it’s politically incorrect, but it’s reality. Some may try to call it shallow for men to focus on age and looks, but honestly it’s just optimal reproductive strategy and is a major reason for the success of our species. If men traditionally had the biological urge to choose women they way modern women wish, the species would have probably died out a long time ago.
At some point in human history there were probably plenty of men who physically preferred high-status, fat women over 40 that would be considered unattractive by today’s beauty standards, but since these women had poor fertility health these men ended up having little to no kids and their fat-loving, ugly-preferring, status-admiring genes ended up getting weeded out of existence. After thousands of years of natural selection, the genes of men who preferred reproductively inferior women were weeded out of the gene pool and today we’re left with men who have inherited their mate preferences from those with the best mating strategy: the men who primarily were concerned with looks and age in their female mates.
These are the cards women were dealt. There are two types of people in this world, those who complain about how the world should be and focus on changing the world rather than themselves and those who accept the world and reality as it is and work to conform to that reality and work within that framework. The former face a life of frustration, disappointment and angst and end up bitter. The latter usually are life’s great successes. Progressive feminists are among the former, and like Maureen Dowd they tend to write bitter articles like this railing against men for not going against their biology and choosing older, successful career women over younger, hotter, more fertile females. As a woman, you don’t want to be Maureen Dowd. You just don’t.
Does that mean there are no men out there who are more impressed by credentials, education and earning power than looks and youth? Sure there are. They tend to be ambitious lower-status guys however. As low-status guys with ambition, they are trying to build their power, wealth and status by any means necessary, including marrying up. Also, as lower-status guys, they have less options than high-status guys, so even though they may want younger and prettier women, they take what they can get because they feel the younger, prettier women are out of their grasp. High-status men on the other hand have more options to mate with younger and prettier women. This is why many ambitious men start off with an older, less attractive and smarter woman when they are low-status but trade her in for a younger, hotter, less intellectual model as they get older and wealthier. Their stock rises as their wealth, status, and social intelligence increase with age, enabling them to attract the younger and hotter women they couldn’t get before. So ironically, the more a woman works on her education, career and status while squandering her youth and squandering her peak prettiness years, the more likely she is to attract a low-status male. And even if that low-status male has high ambition, once he becomes high-status he is likely to trade her in thanks to his increased options.
So the first part of my advice to women who want to get married is to not subscribe to the feminist ideal of trying to be exactly the same as a man in terms of career and education goals. It’s fine to want the same political and property rights as a man, but don’t aim to be identical to a man. You will end up squandering the prime weapons in your arsenal needed to snare a high-status man, which are youth, beauty and the peak reproductive health, in favor of acievements that most men just don’t care about, like advanced degrees, high powered jobs, and wealth. Also, since women have a natural urge to look for men with higher status than themselves, the more successful and powerful a woman makes herself, the less and less successful men they have to choose from for marrying up. In addition, the successful men they need to get with in order to marry up are precisely the ones most likely to overlook them for a younger and hotter model thanks to having so many options. This leads to three options for many of these women: (1) keep holding out for that mate that will allow you to marry up in status, despite the fact that each passing year is likely to make you less and less attractive to the type of man you want, (2) settle for a lower-status male, keeping in mind the risk that if he’s ambitious he may end up trading you in or (3) if you are the type of women for whom marrying down is an unacceptable option, you can decide to forego marriage altogether, claiming things like “I’d rather be happy than married.” (And I never believe option #3 when I hear it, because I guarantee you that many of these “rather be happy than married” women, if given the chance to marry a high-status man of acceptable pedigree, would suddenly be all for marriage).
For women who want to be married, focus on doing it while you’re young and at your most beautiful. Go to school, get an undergraduate degree, be as financially independent as you can, but I’d recommend foregoing grad school, if you must go, until after you get married, and not to wait too long to start having kids either. And throughout it all, never let your looks, weight or fashion go down the tubes while you chase your goals. They carry more weight with men than your credentials do, and this is especially true the more successful the man is.
(19 votes, average: 4.16 out of 5)
Loading ...
It’s going to be tough putting the feminism genie back into the bottle. Chicks today are more interested in fun fucking and enjoying the attention that their beauty provides them when they’re at their most attractive than marrying young. That leads me to a theory. I think celebrity culture has mixed toxically with feminism creating women that value fame, partying, and attention whoring over marriage (unless its with a celebrity) so it isn’t just career ambitions that get in the way of settling down. It’s a sense of entitlement to party without consequences, foregoing the family with the delusion that it can be postponed indefinitely. In short, many women have become too vain and too self obsessed and why not? In their minds it’s all in their favor and its all about them. Men shower them with attention at every corner of the city while the pill keeps them free of pregnancy, the government a surrogate husband, all while fathers subsidize their daughter’s urban adventures after college as they build their careers. If they should get married by mistake divorce laws favor them too. It’s only when the biological clock begins asserting itself in their late twenties as fertility starts its serious decline that some women wake up from the spell and frantically look to settle down. What really astonishes me is the scant coverage of fertility drugs but is it any surprise given that most women today get their science from fashion and gossip magazines? Most women don’t have a clue of how frequently they are used, their astronomical cost, limitations, or the high likelihood of producing twins from treatment. The slew of celebrity pregnancies will only exacerbate matters because as you look at the high profile births, many of these women are well into their 30s. Halle Berry gave birth in her 40s, the father of the child being a male model 10 years her junior or how about Angelina Jolie giving birth most recently to twins. Is it a coincidence then that Jennifer Lopez also gave birth to fraternal twins at 38? I don’t think so but fertility drugs don’t get much coverage because it would dispel the myth so carefully crafted to young women today.
Reply to DFGreat post - the info about how girls dress is dependent on their estrogen levels. Good stuff.
zprs last blog post..Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job
Reply to zprI agree with most of what you say except the statement on men only wanting the hottest youngest girl they can have… that’s not necessarily true, for a shallow guy yeah at first… but even that has it’s limits. I like what John Eldredge says on the subject in both Wild at Heart (a book he wrote for men, but touches on the surface, and definitely appeals to what men want) and Captivating (Wild at Hearts equivalent for women, written with his wife Stasi Eldredge)
A lot of what you said parallels the same ideals, but there’s a lot more to our core beings that helps explain why we look for what we do.
Cody Sortores last blog post..What a night!
Reply to Cody SortoreI totally agree with most everything you say here. I would frame it more though, in the context of “what women should do if they want to get married” rather than “what women should do”.
I don’t think women should stop trying to “be all they can be” and gain status or whatever, but they should only be doing it for the right reasons. I wouldn’t guess that many of the feminist-types you portray here are trying to improve their education, earnings, equality, or whatever in order to attract men. They are doing it more often out of ambition, etc, as most “successful” men are as well. I hate the whole Sex and the City myth because it convinces women of unrealistic things, but I think it would be difficult to deny that there are certainly great things that powerful women have contributed to society, outside of just offspring. (your girl Margaret Thatcher?)
I do agree though - I just think what you are saying could be summed up more as the following: Just as a man cannot expect his attractiveness to rise if he “underachieves” in the traditional sense, so should a woman not be able to expect men to be more attracted to them if they focus on gaining status in the traditional sense.
Reply to RickMen do find intelligence attractive, at least in a long term mate, just like women find looks in men attractive. If you mate with a dumb woman you run the risk of having dumb sons, not a good trait to have, just like a woman who marries an ugly but high status male runs the risk of having ugly daughters, again not good. So, there are some mitigating factors. But the tendencies are there. For example, any credentials higher than a bachelor’s degree add little to a woman’s value. The hot 25 year old with a BA wins over the so so 32 year old with a JD everytime.
Thursdays last blog post..Publication
Reply to ThursdayThat sir was a magnum opus. I can’t wait for part II.
Reply to mr pilkingtonThis depressed the hell out of me. It makes perfect sense, but it’s depressing as hell.
I’m jacking it all in now! I am clearly doomed to a life of singledom - and I’m young and hot goddammit!
Reply to Bangs and a BunBunk. Offensive Bunk at that. Any man who reads this should be offended.
Men, like women, want to be with someone who makes them feel good about themselves. If you are shallow, sex-obsessed guy then you want a hot sex-toy partner. But, if you’re like the vast majority of men you probably want your life-partner to be someone who makes you their top priority. If a woman’s top priority is her career, then she’s going to have a helluva time finding a guy who will settle for being the #2 object in her life.
I’ve been married for nearly 20 years. Guess what makes it work? Commitment to the my wife. Not my job, not my money, not my toys.
Reply to CharlieWrong. Guys don’t wanna marry intelligent, successful–even beautiful–older women because they know as soon as things start going bad between them she will go to Divorce Court and get half of everything he has. Why should a guy work hard and put everything at risk when he knows she’ll benefit, he won’t.
Reply to newyorkdudeExcellent post. 2 questions:
1. I agree with your assessment about age/looks being a critical factor, but what about domestic skills - cooking, cleaning, etc. - and intangibles - non-materialistic values, interest compatibility, etc. - that many guys like myself view as prerequisites for wife status? Do these not factor in, or are they just assumed like “good sex”?
2. “There are two types of people in this world, those who complain about how the world should be and focus on changing the world rather than themselves and those who accept the world and reality as it is and work to conform to that reality and work within that framework. The former face a life of frustration, disappointment and angst and end up bitter. The latter usually are life’s great successes. ”
The rebuttal, of course, is what about figures like Gandhi who bucked the status quo to great success and became immortal in the process. Are these figures just exceptions to the rule, and if they are, then why should everyone not strive to be such an exception?
Your blog is one of the best substantively, I’m looking forward to your responses.
Reply to mike saysDF - great response. Touched on a lot of good points there.
zpr - I found the fashion/estrogen thing pretty fascinating too.
Cody - I don’t think weighing looks and age are necessarily shallow IF having multiple children is a major concern for the guy. I do think it’s dangerous to let looks and age be your only deciding factors though.
Rick - Keep in mind that Margaret Thacher didn’t postpone marriage into her mid-30s or later at the cost of her career. She was ambitious, but still married at 25 before embarking on her serious political career and had her twins two years later at 27. Plus, as successful and powerful as she eventually became, she married up to a wealthy businessman when she was still young and before achieving a lot of success. It was AFTER marriage that she went on to get her graduate education in law, which her husband paid for. So she actually follows my blueprint. I really think women who eventually want marriage and families should think long and hard about getting graduate degrees and pHD’s and high-powered office jobs before getting their family life in order. I think if you want to be a high-powered super successful woman yet have a family, it’s better to do it the way I suggest, the way Thactcher did it, and get your marriage and family started first.
Thursday - yes, men do value intelligence and personality as well. I generalize for simplicity so I know it may seem to some that I’m claiming looks and age are ALL that matters to men, which, as you correctly point out, is not the case. I do think however that looks and age matter to men to a point where a young, very hot woman of average intelligence, success and personality usually trumps an older, moderately attractive woman of scintillating personality and lots of credentials and career success. On the flip side, I think an average looking guy with lots of status, power, game and wealth will usually beat out a good-looking guy with average success and status and little game.
Pilkington - Pt. 2 comes next week.
Bangs and a Bun - You’re actually ahead of the game, so don’t worry. You know why I say that? Not only are you young and hot, but best of all you fucking hate flip-flops! You know how many men are dying for a chick that doesn’t think dressing for work in beach gear with dirty heels is acceptable? You’re a godsend!
NYdude - cynical as your assessment is, there is definitely a lot of truth in it.
Reply to TTo Charlie:
Yes, that’s true. But most guys, especially those who want families, if they had to choose between a woman who made him her top priority and was young and hot and had to choose between a woman who made him her top priority and was older and not as attractive, would choose the former. Yes shallow reasons would come into play, honestly. He’d love being able to show off the arm candy, etc. But also, it would just make better sense in terms of raising a family. Chances are she’d be in better reproductive health. And since she’d be more likely to produce better looking daughters, their futures would have better chances of being secure as well.
I’m pretty sure that’s what I said in the article, dude.
What it takes to maintain a marriage is much different than what it takes to attract a mate initially and get him to marry you in the first place. You are correct in what it takes to make a marriage last 20 years, but this post was about getting someone to marry you in the first place.
Reply to TMike -
You are right on the money, there are definite mitigating factors like you mention. I was planning to address precisely those things in pt. 2 to this post, so stay tuned.
I think the difference with people like Martin Luther King and Gandhi and other great leaders that chose to change the status quo rather than just conform to the existing system is that in their case the existing system was so intolerable to them that the grief, painful upward climb and possible death they faced were worth the risk because the alternative of the existing system was so much worse and they felt they had little to gain from staying in it. Same for situations that are so morally unjust that they make a person feel that they can’t face tolerate them and face themselves in the mirror as a human being at the same time. Hence people who would prefer to fight against tyranny rather than live in a society that condones it. It’s a painful, bitter uphill climb that you may not survive, but the alternative of tolerating it is not an option for whatever reason is not an option.
On the other hand, what is a lot more common are people who choose the bitter, frustrating and painful uphill climb of trying to change things they not only cannot change like human nature and society, when conforming themselves to the status quo instead would not only be easier but would actually make everyone happier and more personally satisfied too. I think it all comes down to this test: is the status quo or system I’m trying to change or escape from really impractical or morally reprehensible enough to justify the grief I’d undertake by trying to change the world rather than change myself? If the reality isn’t all that impractical or morally reprehensible, your better off changing yourself to embrace reality than trying to change reality to embrace your ideals.
Reply to TNever read you before now, good stuff chief.
Reply to SeaFighter HSVIt’s fine to want the same political and property rights as a man, but don’t aim to be identical to a man.
I’m not a feminist, but it’s the only way to secure those political and property rights. Nobody would give a shit about women’s influence if they didn’t have the financial tools to attract attention, and educational tools to make a proper decision on the use of their political rights.
You will end up squandering the prime weapons in your arsenal needed to snare a high-status man, which are youth, beauty and the peak reproductive health
And eventually, those weapons will begin to fail in their efficacy and usefulness.
if you are the type of women for whom marrying down is an unacceptable option, you can decide to forego marriage altogether, claiming things like “I’d rather be happy than married.”
I suspect that option has generally meant, “I’d rather be happy than married to somebody I won’t like or respect”. In other words, they would rather stay single than marry downward with a beta male that will ensure a depressing existing during the length of the marriage. Even as a male, I’d rather stay single than go marry some ugly girl who thinks I’m the best guy in the world, so I sympathize with those sentiments.
Go to school, get an undergraduate degree, be as financially independent as you can, but I’d recommend foregoing grad school
The problem is that the high paying jobs that secure the most financial independence require graduate school. Besides, a grad school degree in comination with a married woman is simply an unreliable employee in the eyes of an employer who has the choice of unmarried men and women who aren’t distracted by the responsibilites of family.
Hell, thanks to reforms, teaching now requires a masters degree, and some reforms may push RNs to get masters as well.
And throughout it all, never let your looks, weight or fashion go down the tubes while you chase your goals.
Easier said than done. Of course, the smart solution is simply not to marry in the first place if you’re male and continue to secure sex for women more attractive than the a prospective spouse.
the government a surrogate husband
Unless you’re in the lower classes, the government is not a surrogate husband.
I wouldn’t guess that many of the feminist-types you portray here are trying to improve their education, earnings, equality, or whatever in order to attract men
I would say that there is a certain aspect of these actions that is geared toward marriage. The theory is that going to school and emphasizing high income is designed to meet high ranking men. It’s an attempt to push themselves into high society. Unless you attend high ranking schools and enter into so-called prestiege positions, it’s difficult to meet the desirable high ranking males wanted for long-term marriage. If you’re attractive enough, a high class male may date you, but he certainly won’t marry you if you lack the social credentials to meet his family’s standards. T, as a fellow Haitian, I think you’re well aware of the weight of family members and their opinions of one’s potential partners.
In my current status without a college degree, I would be very leery of any woman who finds me attractive, and afraid of any woman that thinks I’m marriable despite any positive traits that I may have.
David Alexanders last blog post..The Little Railfan
Reply to David AlexanderHey T, I had to think about this for a while before posting a reply. You can’t argue with biology, but your post some questions, namely:
How DO educated women find educated men with status - men who want to marry/have kids with them? Do they downplay their achievements?
Women’s requirements have changed. Instead of leaving school, getting a job and finding a husband, we’re aiming for well-paid careers and further education. This is what feminism has enabled us to do. However, what can men do to not feel threatened by a well-educated, high-earning woman?
Also, some experience. I dated a man who stated he wanted to date an intelligent woman - fine. This guy had a good job (I was a temp), and was basically a degree-laden polymath (or know-it-all asshole. I think the latter). Me, I’m a twice-college dropout, but have been a member of Mensa since the age of 14, with an IQ of 172 (higher than Einstein’s, if only on paper!). So, you have roughly equal levels of intelligence, but he had the upper hand as far as status. He took every opportunity to belittle me and make me feel small. Why?
I have since concluded that men want a woman who seems intelligent, but not enough to be a threat. Ladies, if you can do more than walk and chew gum at the same time… you’re in trouble. And the sad thing is, if we could find, at out ‘ripest’, a man who wanted to commit, maybe this wouldn’t be such an endemic problem?
Which brings me to the question I posed before - if women aren’t suddenly going to stop advancing themselves, how can men get with the program? Or am I too optimistic to hope that will ever happen, since the reproductive advantage lies with the men?
Bitter, me? Nah. Young and hot? Yes, thank God. It’s telling that, when online dating, I posited myself as having a big IQ and a bustline to match. Without the latter, I’d never have sold on the former alone.
china blues last blog post..When A Woman’s Fed Up
Reply to china blueI have since concluded that men want a woman who seems intelligent, but not enough to be a threat.
This isn’t true of all men. A lot of men want the “holy grail,” but that is very rare to find, since nobody is perfect. Men will settle for a woman on the order like this: attractiveness, personality, skills/talents, intelligence and status last. You can be book smart but not have a lot of common sense. Trying to best a man at IQ matches will just make him feel competitive, like you’re another man he needs to beat. Don’t do that…
How DO educated women find educated men with status - men who want to marry/have kids with them? Do they downplay their achievements?
My advice? I think you should stop looking for a high-status man, and focus on finding a man you truly love, even if he is “lower status.” My husband never finished community college, whereas I graduated from a top 20 university. We love each other though. I don’t mean just casual love, but soul-rending, heart-wrenching kind of love that you know deep down, thoroughly and completely. The kind that you know will never end.
If I wanted to, sure I could probably find some “rich” older man to marry me, but I wouldn’t love him. You only have one life girl. Don’t focus so much on material possessions or status. Love alone might not be able to feed you, but we’re not starving here in America. In the end, love is so much more important. It makes both people happier and able to respect each other’s wants, compromise and stay committed.
what about domestic skills - cooking, cleaning, etc. - and intangibles - non-materialistic values, interest compatibility, etc. - that many guys like myself view as prerequisites for wife status?
A woman needs to cultivate those as well, but when a woman is “young and hot” she generally has minimal domestic skills. Personality is more important in my opinion, as cooking and cleaning can be learned or replaced by food delivery or maid service (of course, I’m biased here since I’m a good cook, but I suck at cleaning). But if a woman refuses to compromise, it’s not going to last long.
this post was about getting someone to marry you in the first place.
Nowadays, from observation, a man usually pops the question after at least a year or two of being in a long-term relationship with a girl, and often longer than that. It’s very important to establish a strong neurochemical bond of love. Without that, the relationship won’t last.
Almost all the marriages I know are between people in their 20s, who have known each other for at least 3 years! People very rarely rush into marriage nowadays. A woman has to be at the top of her feminine wiles (young, pretty, empathic, loving, good girlfriend, stable, etc.) before the man will take that plunge.
Usually the proposal comes as he matures and is ready to commit. There are some men who don’t want to ever commit, even to the love of his life. Women who are with these kinds of men that don’t want to settle down are bound for heartache. But women need to realize themselves that they need to change their own attitudes in order to find happiness. We don’t have forever to look for the “perfect man.” The truly perfect man is a man who dearly loves you, and whom you love. If you can accept each other’s negative traits, tolerate each other’s flaws, and be able to really forgive/em>, you can get through anything.
Reply to HopeDavid - all this time I never realized you had your own blog, I’m gonna have to check it out now.
China Blue - I need to know a LOT more about the guy to answer that, especially his relationship to his family and his political ideology. But keep this in mind, what does intelligence mean to him? For some people, especially people who are pedantic and relentlessly chase credentials themselves, being pedantic and credentialed is the same as being intelligent. It’s one of the reasons I’m wary of pedantic overeducated people; their thoughts are just as banal and simplistic as the average person, except they’re expressed more eloquently, pretentiously and with a larger vocabulary. They’d automatically give a eloquent nonsensical statement of another well-credentialed person more intellectual weight than a brilliant but simple statement expressed by a “nobody.”
Not to say that people with book smarts and credentials are automatically stupid, just that they aren’t automatically great thinkers either. It just tells me that they’re ambitious and great at rote memorization.
Tell me what you know about (1) the size and makeup of his social circle, (2) his relationship to his family and whether he has an overcritical bullying parent and (3) his political ideology (as in, is he a progressive liberal, a traditional conservative, an internationalist, a male feminist, whatever you can).
Hope - I fixed your comment for you.
Reply to Tohhh snap, T, you nailed it once again my freng.
I liked how you emphasized the difference between equality and sameness. one other thing that bears mentioning is that women, like most people, don’t really want to be equal. they want to be treated specially and acknowledged for things that make them different. women who achieve the same high status as their male contemporaries are no different, but what they find is that they’ve spent the last decade achieving a feminist’s version of “status” which, like you said, doesn’t jive with what men are interested in. it’s like practicing to be really good at football, playing rugby, and crying foul when shit doesn’t go your way.
feminists have it all wrong. “equality” can be qualitative. it’s not a formulaic zero sum game. just ask any “successful” woman who has been dumped for a younger, less educated woman.
Reply to paully“He took every opportunity to belittle me and make me feel small. Why?”
The following may be an indication of why:
- Me, I’m a twice-college dropout, but have been a member of Mensa since the age of 14, with an IQ of 172 (higher than Einstein’s, if only on paper!).
- Bitter, me? Nah. Young and hot? Yes, thank God. It’s telling that, when online dating, I posited myself as having a big IQ and a bustline to match.
- “thegirlwiththegoldenmind.blogspot.com”
…I’m sure it was his problem tho, right? You have a higher IQ than Einstein. He saw you as a “threat”. Are you sure that it’s not because you constantly sought approval and affirmation by showing him how smart and witty you were to mask your insecurities? Kinda like you do through your blog and on here? Or is it normal for girls to mention during the course of one comment that they’re smarter than Einstein (on paper lolz!), are hot, and have big titties?
Reply to paullyThe advice I got was to find my husband in grad school. Which was actually very helpful - in grad school, I had daily access to a huge, captive pool of men in an environment conducive to bonding who had already been screened for, among other things, intelligence, ambition, and being at the average US marrying age, while they were still young and before they have become established in their careers & landing them gets more competitive (& you’re pretty much swimming in great options if you pick a male-dominated field of study). Most of my male & female friends met their future spouses in their late 20s, which most often meant they married fellow students.
Perhaps it’s different for women from better-off families, who can find non-school or work-related ways to meet their male counterparts (i.e. men who share their bougie values re: marriage, kids, education, etc) but I come from a fairly humble background & doubt that I would have been able to meet these men if not through my educational/career pursuits, who outside of Hollywood movies, rarely marry outside their social milieu.
Reply to GwenLove your blog and especially this topic.
Reply to princessdominiqueMen go gaga over hot women, irrespective of the financial/career status. So much so that every female endeavor (tennis, business, films) inevitably has a “99 Hottest Women of” list.
Reply to SunnyThose interested in such theories might also be amused by my blog:
http://sardonic_sob.livejournal.com
I could use some hits.
S
Reply to Sardonic_SOBA point that seem to have slipped through. When women pursue high status and income, that “raises their standards”: the higher the status of the woman, the higher a “higher-status” man must be.
Incidentally, for those who dismiss this post as shallow mindlessness, the Rawness isn’t talking about what goes on in the conscious mind, but about the underlying processes and factors that shape the conscious mind.
Men don’t choose to regard smooth skin and big breasts as attractive - that’s wired into them before they ever take a breath. Women, likewise, are wired to respond to power/wealth/status.
Lorelei Lee said it perfectly in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”:
Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty?
Reply to Rich RostromBiological evolution has not caught up to differing, evolving attitudes(and I’m not saying it ever will). I see the current discrepancy as to how women SHOULD act, look and be as not just sour grapes over the women’s movement, but a struggle between the two biological imperatives: survival vs. reproduction. Nature, having instilled the biological imperative to reproduce in males as an inveterate hard-on (and in females as an insatiable desire to nurture) had no interest in anything else. Reproduction is survival. Natural hard-wiring was/is not concerned with any other pertinent facts beyond a fertilized egg. Apparently, neither does having a brain.
Reply to olgaOlga, you have a point, but keep in mind, attitudes probably never “evolved” and claiming that we should “evolve” away from our basic nature is probably a misuse of that word (a misuse that’s been put forth by the media a zillion times).
You can’t “evolve” away from basic biology. What happened was, legislators passed laws that forced men and women to behave a certain way and change their sex roles. Then the media promoted these things at every turn. A social atmoephere then came about that made it “proper” or “improper” to behave certain ways in certain social classes.
So what we have now is a type of cognitive dissonance. Men — and women — think they should be behaving one way, yet their genes are telling them to behave as if it were 1950 all over again.
Our current era, then, isn’t so different from the Victorian era. It’s just that instead of making sex itself improper, we’ve made wanting traditional sex roles to be improper. When every movie and TV show tells women it’s wrong to want to get married young and have kids, it’s hard to buck the trend.
Anyway, I don’t think attitudes will ever really evolve. They’ll just pass more politically correct law to not allow us to voice those attitudes.
Reply to Days of Broken ArrowsAs someone else noted, this article was pretty depressing.
Reply to nycgal75I’m 33, educated and attractive, and in good health. I’m constantly told that I look like I’m in my mid-20s — most recently at a party by some guys I had never met before.
That is all to say, I’d like to believe (or hope) that I’m still pretty “hot” and in good reproductive health.
But the thing is, I’m torn about marriage. Sometimes I want it and other times it scares the crap out of me. My parents had a horribly rocky, unhealthy marriage which, as a kid, turned me off to the whole idea of being married.
Today, I’d like to just find a partner; not necessarily a husband, but just a loving partner, if there is such a thing.
But based on your article, it seems that my odds of finding a decent man at my age are slim-to-none.
I also have an identical twin, who is also unmarried, and I feel like in some ways our relationship fulfills that need for a life partner. I know it sounds weird, but most identical twins can relate, I think. I feel like our relative co-dependence has maybe hindred my ability to find a mate, if not necessarily a husband.
I guess I should end with a question: In your opinion, what are my prospects for finding a long-term mate, be it a husband or just a partner? Am I really doomed to a life of singlehood if I haven’t found someone by now or should I just actively start my search and settle for whatever I can get?