I am a 42 divorced female nerd (my ex went all EatPrayLove on me: am I the only woman that has experienced that? Mid-life crisis is poison). Not only I am a eminent scientist who’s been to the top universities in the world (Cambridge, MIT, Harvard) but I am above average attractive. I never dated until I went to college, in school nerdy boys would not approach me thinking they couldn’t get me, alpha men were intimidated by my intelligence, to top it all I was very shy, so I was in a catch-22 situation. Until I met my husband at 20. He was (is) of a complimentary intelligence to mine: arty, emotional, very talented painter… He knocked my socks off, we married, had two children and I was happy. Never looked anywhere else, until 2 years ago when he did the ‘I am not happy, love but not in love’ thing and went off with a hairdresser leaving me heart broken with two very young little girls to look after.The amusing thing about this, to the extent that divorce can be amusing, is that her husband ran off with a hairdresser and yet she still hasn't figured out that her intellect and her education are not attractive to men. It would appear that female solipsism trumps female intelligence, at least in this particular case.
It has taken me this long to get up and start ‘looking’. I have found that it is like going back to school again. Men my generation are still intimidated by me (!). My male friends tell me to act dumb but even if I do, they look me up in LinkedIn, Google or PubMed and they stop calling. As I said I am quite attractive and this results in many orbiters but nothing sets.
Of course, it's also possible that it's just someone trolling HUS, given the grammatical errors and improperly used words.
52 comments:
But wait. I thought gender roles were reversing?
"my ex went all EatPrayLove on me"
Can someone explain what this means?
Ohhhhh. Now it makes sense. It wasnt a deluded guy hamstering like a woman. It was the regular hamster.
To clarify, are you saying that actually having her academic credentials makes her less attractive, or simply that her treating said credentials as her major point of attraction is futile/unattractive?
Academic credentials have neutral value in terms of attractiveness. The demeanor / attitudes / entitlement that usually go along with the credentials have negative value.
In simpler words we dont give a shit about her credentials, and her attitude makes her unattractive.
EatPrayLove is a Julia Roberts movie.
Need I say more?
I say the credentials are negative in themselves. Shows she is too career oriented and will likely always put her own self-centered wants above anything in the relationship. She is a poor/risky choice for LTR.
Solipsism can be powerful.
The sex changed version of it simply didn't sit right. A guy with all that supposedly going on 1) wouldn't be likely to brag about it if it were true; 2) wouldn't end up screwed over if it were true. Since he bragged about it and got screwed, it must not have been true.
But of course it sounds exactly like something a woman overinvested in intelligence and achievement (and probably overestimating both in herself) would say. And yes she's obviously a VERY smart girl, for she had married a man of "complimentary" intelligence... Is that where he thought she was smart and didn't mind saying so?
It's a wonderful thing she has so many orbiters, she can simply turn on the gravitational pull of her attractiveness and get one of those little satellites to land, right?
Either that or she could become a 23 year old hairdresser.
Both are equally likely.
I still think it is possible that Vox's version was written by John Updike, but I was wrong on the title: Rabbit is Retarded.
..."to the extent that divorce can be amusing..."
Heh heh.
It is amusing how we enjoy watching idiots suffer from their own actions.
And then we think oh jeez there were probably innocents involved who were abused or harmed. Kids, in-laws, maybe a decent man. Oh well.
Of all the women I've known well (mother, aunts, grandmas, girlfriends, wife, sister, etc) I do not know ONE who has not caused themselves, their husband, and their children a LOT OF AGONY.
It is just the way the world works. Oh why oh why was Game not available for me as a boy?
The funny thing is that even if you try to expose a younger guy to Game, he looks at you as if you just sprouted a second head.
Keep up the good work.
There is an element of academic credentials are unattractive in that most normal men assume that a woman with academic credentials would be the sort to crow about her PhD in psych or whatever.
In other words, keep your mouth shut about your credentials. No one cares. If you do that, having them won't harm your prospects (aside from the fact that if you have them and are looking for a mate, you are by definition, in your late 20s, so the hypergamy ceiling has already begun to lower, relative to ones younger, non-credentialed competitors.)
Also, most men recognize that having credentials is simply a signal that expensive coursework was purchased through debt over a course of several years. High credentials indicate two unattractive qualities: dwindling fertility (aging) and financial burden.
So keep them to yourself for the purposes of attracting the attention of men.
Also, she is old and in debt, two hurdles to a relationship that can be overcome, but why on earth would you broadcast that?
Its like a guy posting a lonely hearts ad that says:
Fat and poor, arty, handsome and talented "nice guy" looking for love and romance. Get to know me and I'll knock your socks off. Vasectomy reversible if necessary.
Clueless.
The credentials are OK...but trying to lead with them is definitely off-putting. Most of the real heavy hitters in any field have the dignity to mix in a dose of humility. Even if they have to fake it.
"he went all epl on me. . ."
More likely he got fed up with her incessant shit testing, and "look at me, aren't i good" attention seeking.
Dated a hairdresser for a while. Can so empathise with the attraction.
To clarify, are you saying that actually having her academic credentials makes her less attractive, or simply that her treating said credentials as her major point of attraction is futile/unattractive?
The credentials themselves are neutral. But her possession of them is a red flag, her need to boast of them is unattractive, and her reliance upon them as an attractor is futile.
I never realized just how incredibly unattractive a bragging woman is until I recently had to interact with a late30s woman who's gone back to school to "enhance her value". She brags like hell and tries to constantly use jargon to sound incredibly intelligent. Uncomfortably for her, her skills in logic are horrible, no one cares if she wrote a ten-page paper the week before, and being a broad reader, I've read many of the same esoteric books she tries to bring in jargon from. I call her out almost daily. I'm all for a woman educating herself if she is interested in intellectual matters, but to reiterate what others here have said: no one cares how smart you find yourself to be.
The existence is a red flag. I have yet to meet a single specimen of womanhood who has academic "credentials" who isn't seriously flawed in one or more areas.
Attitude: I'm BETTER than you and most men because I have a higher academic achievement
Lousy priorities: Thought that spending their prime attractive years learning mostly useless stuff was more important than doing real things and meeting real people and building real relationships.
Slut factor: Most college women, especially grad students, have had multiple partner counts.
Debt factor: racking up debt for something of limited usefulness means they will be wedded to their career for a long time to "justify" their investment and pay it off
Entitlement: similar to attitude, they believe they are entitled to a good job and deference by the plebes
Politics factor: most are left leaning socialist feminists by the time they finish, if they weren't already when they started.
women who lead with their credentials and academic accomplishments are the female equivalent of male douchebags who lead with their cars and material possessions.
Except that men's cars and material possessions are status indicators that will attract a good percentage of women, while the opposite cannot be said for the women's credentials and academic accomplishments. Yes, guys who lead with those are still douchebags, but it is still a semi-effective mating strategy.
Casa De Mi Padre. I have the guilty pleasure of loving Will Ferrell movies. If it is still out I want to see it on the big screen. The Wife will roll her eyes and come along. Hope we start up the beast soon enough.
A wise woman realizes she can't control her man. Just try to save him from his worse impulsives. Don't worry, a wife that does's her best will probably be given a benefit of the doubt.
in other news...
before
Teen breaks up with 41 year old lover who was her teacher!
today
They are back together!
Alpha teacher wins again!
Sorry for rambling. If a good wife knows you have been through hell at work. Pretty much everybody all folks wanting to kick each others ass's . She will make sure you have a great dinner when you get off. Brings you a couple of drinks and puts you to bed.
FWIW, if a woman has a PhD in a hard science or engineering, she may not have debt. Grad students in the hard sciences / engineering usually get tuition waivers and monthly stipends for teaching or research. It ain't much, but if you're careful you can graduate with zero debt.
Tricky. Very tricky. It almost feels like Vox just banged my girlfriend.
I hope they stay together, even if it's just to piss the world off.
Vox. Is there a way to to subscribe to your blog through email or receive blog updates through twitter?
how romantic! him and her against the world!
Plus the internships in earlier levels of education probably pay, helping out a bit.
Exactly. Which is yet another reason to not broadcast your educational status when trolling for men. The stigma of debt is still attached to debt-free educations.
Its like telling the man you want to marry that you have been moonlighting as a stripper for extra cash to pay for the wedding - when the job was as a prep person for a house painting company!
Don't broadcast seemingly crappy information - especially when the information isn't really crappy.
@ Wendy: Many internships pay well. I did two summer internships during my undergrad years, and they covered my living expenses for both summers.
@ Daniel: The majority of women I encounter with hard science PhDs are not only married, but married to men with PhDs in the same field or to lawyers (who have their own mountains of debt), so it's kind of a moot point.
The type of PhD woman who has to troll for men in her 30s or 40s likely has an expensive degree in a useless or annoying field, and she's pretty much hosed.
Interesting comment, Stickwick. As a lawyer, I find down-to-earth women w/t advanced hard science degrees interesting. They tend to have pretty rigorous intellects which makes them fun to talk to. But then I find reading caselaw interesting too. The hard part isn't finding a woman with an advanced hard science degree, there are plenty; but finding one with a down-to-earth attitude. Many people with advanced degrees, male or female, are just batshit nut. A girl with a good attitude plus big brains will tend to be energetic and challenging, in a good way. A good kind of "handful". Your mileage may vary though.
Indebted men are going to be even less attracted to a woman broadcasting her debt. Obviously, if they meet in grad school or before, the attraction and relationship are built naturally (without even the most clueless woman feeling the need to broadcast one of her relational assets as being "working on a degree"), but any woman nutty enough to describe her debt-saddled degree as some sort of relationship asset obviously doesn't know what the hell she is doing.
To put a fine point on it - there is a measurable subset of women who aspire to find a cute doctor. I've never met one man who had his heart set on finding a cute physicist, astronomer or surgeon.
Are you making two different points, Daniel? I'm not seeing the connection between the first and second paragraphs.
With regard to your second point: a) Roissy might disagree; and b) I've never met one woman who had her heart set on finding a cute physicist or astronomer, either. Women quite rightly regard male scientists as having too many personality and behavioral "issues" without the compensating factors.
Women have to be told that men don't really care for their "acomplishments".
Oh wait. They have. They just don't believe it.
No, they haven't. The first time I ever heard that my accomplishments meant squat in terms of my attractiveness was when I started reading Vox. Very few women encounter men who are willing to be that frank.
My wife still gets hit on. She takes it as a compliment and politely declines.
That's pretty much it.
I am a mid 30's, very attractive, highly intelligent and successful woman. I have never in my life had problems finding wonderful men. This woman has a personality problem, guaranteed. A woman does not have to try to act less intelligent - there are tons of brilliant, interesting men around. Men are not so intimidated by attractiveness and success that they disappear - men are much more likely to overshoot and pursue out of their "league". Lots of men love bragging about their gf/wife's accomplishments or job, and those who don't appreciate being with someone very attractive. This woman should be set for every relationship happiness and success, if her personality was decent.
They don't care if you're shy either; that should hold no woman back. Just be sweet, and the men will handle everything else.
Agreed. All I ever heard was how beauty doesn't last forever but your brain does. And this is true. Which is why you should catch your Husband when you are young and beautiful and then have the brains to do your best to keep him later.
The thing is, in a nutshell, we were told we could not count on men to take care of us and therefore we had to learn how to provide for ourselves. Many women decided to provide for themselves in the best way possible, which they assumed would be through advanced degrees. They did not understand the trade off would be a decreased sexual market value because they watched a lot of movies like Working Girl growing up.
You were told you could have it all that that the more you could earn like a man the more attractive you would be to the type of man you wanted.
It was a lie, but we didn't know it.
It was a con. It worked.
This has nothing to do with hookups, we are talking marriage. Are you also married to a highly intelligent and successful man? If not, your comment has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
This is so funny. I was checking out at the supermarket and the cashier lost it on a man who was taking forever to put his stuff on the belt and use the credit card machine. She finally yelled at him "Are you an Engineer?". He gave her an evil look and said, "Yes, I am!" And she said, "I knew it, my freakin ex is one too and you guys can't find you blank with you hand but you can figure out how to make a bridge span the grand canyon!" She then told me for the entire time she checked me out that she can pick out engineers from a crowd and runs in the other direction. I don't know what one did to her, but it would seem that there is a massive imbalance in the cost benefits analysis LOL.
In other words, hot chicks who eventually reveal they are smart are a bonus. Sometimes.
Ugly chicks bring out the credentials right away because they are trying to get or keep interest.
Just like ugly guys walk around splashing money because it is the only way they are going to get attention.
It is so simple. Why were we all so easily deceived. DUH!
Something to consider on the reverse side. Men now see that women are not really reliable when it comes to taking care of them so they take care of themselves. Men pick up stuff that women "traditionally" had to do (when you live a bachelors life, you would have to go through logistics of laundry, dishes, house cleaned, ect... if you dont have the money to hire someone and value a somewhat clean, ordered environment, the man will do these things, maybe not as frequent)
End result, men become more self sufficient and it chips away at a womens value because she literally has nothing to offer him but her body. Keeps being like a man, you will be useless to us in the capacity you want to be useful for.
No, really good point. We had that happen early on in marriage. Now I tell him, "Go do the man stuff, I get to be the girl!" And I do it so well he doesn't bother anymore. He also now tells me to leave his tools the hell alone, and I do, because he is really good at that now.
It is almost like there are different gender roles or something....
i dont know about this. maybe men of past generations but not so much now. men of the past were socialized to take control and would have thought feminism to be something that is cute to consider. This would allow them to discount it and act “naturally” (or without as much feminist ideology in them). With feminism shoved down mens throats for so long, men now consider it more “serious” because its harder to see it for a lie or the lie is more heavily pushed off as truth, base faulty laws of these false truths, in turn would have men to take it more seriously, and the fact they cant discount it (which it should because its BS) they wouldn’t act in a way that you would expect, for men to take the lead.
Feminism is bs because it allows women to have their cake and eat it too. “Look man, you are man and you take the lead” and then at the same time “As a woman, I should be able to take away the “lead” any time I choose.”
Don’t expect men to lead. It may be cleverly rationalized as “well, if he didn’t take the lead, he failed to see that this was just an elaborate shit test”. Fine, rationalize it that way and you are sort of right, but stay alone as well. Women think that they can just do the bare minimum and men will just pick up the slack. I don’t think so.
if you want men to take the lead EFFECTIVELY, you have to KNOW that this means sacrifices on the women’s side. Currently, women need to put more work into the relationship than the other way around. The pendulum swung way too much to the women’s side, which is to point out some more suckage, the onus is currently on women.
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a memoir about a woman who dumps her husband & child to find herself by traveling around the world. It's heralded by feminist...
My mate's intellect was attractive to me. The fact that she could do trig pretty well was a big improvement over most of the ladies I went out with. BTW I knew "game" back in the 60s when you had to figure it out for yourself (well unless you read Feynman - which I did).
I'm told that a good match has the female within about 20 IQ points of the male. We have been together for 37 years. Four Children.
The boys
1. An artist
2. UChicago graduate (with honors) lives in Russia
3. EE - has a job
The girl
1. ChemE major with an EE major boyfriend
OH. Yeah. The girl has major good looks.
BTW our first Child came when I was 38 and the mate was 34. The last when I was 46 and the mate was 42. The same age my mom was with her last child.
Not the norm by any means.
Me? Aerospace Engineer and Naval Nuclear Power qualified. Among other things.
I probably should add that I'm in my late 60s and the young ladies (very late teens to early 20s) still come on to me. My mate is amused when that happens (almost every time we go out). She says it makes her hot for me. (Game still works the way it works and the best attractant is to already have a girl). BTW my financial situation is currently impecunious and my looks are nothing special. It is ALL attitude.
And another thing - I made sure my boys knew game.
So far it has been a VERY interesting life.
When I was playing the field I found that getting a woman to sleep naked with me was the best way to get hot sex from them. My promise was "sleep naked with me - no sex - I like the contact." I would keep my promise. No sex. Even if she became hot for it. About 3/4 would come back gaging for it. And the rest? I got to sleep naked with them.
The First Mate explained it to me many years later. Her thoughts ran: "Is he gay?" and the deal maker "Is there something wrong with me?" She had to find out. By pulling out all the stops. And re: game - it showed the girl I wasn't needy. And I could be trusted to keep my word. More bits of attraction.
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