# Educated achieving women dating **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 24, 2024, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educated-achieving-women-dating/1002009 "2024-05-24T04:43:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2024, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educated-achieving-women-dating/1002009/121 "2024-06-01T22:47:39Z")
Oh he definitely is. I’m a big fan. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educated-achieving-women-dating/1002009/122 "2024-06-03T04:45:31Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > > [@DSeid](#): > > > > I realize our board is short on single women in that age group so please feel free to share what you’ve gathered from friends and adult children. > > I’m forty, not early thirties, but I’ve been a “professional dater” my entire adult life, so I think I can contribute to the discussion. LOL > > I don’t view dating as a mapped route to marriage like many traditional people do. I view them as two mutually exclusive relationship forms. The tone of your OP is dating with the view of a permanent relationship, so I will discuss that. > > I am intelligent with a post master’s education, and I can say that marriage material would have to be an intelligent man with a stable, well paying job. I’ve had older, married, and thus wiser girl friends who say, “Never marry for love alone.” I believe they are right. For a marriage to be healthy and long lasting, it needs way more than that. “Way more” means mutual interests, economic equality, and a mutual respect that is well deserved because each individual is a quality, achieving person. I’m used to living a very comfortable life style, and I want to continue to do so. I can’t be burdened with “dead weight” because, inevitably, the initial love will turn to unhappiness and then divorce. > > Now, having said that, I have to also say that there are blue collar men who make good money because construction, plumbing, electrical needs, etc, are things people will pay good money for. But, here’s where the “traditional values” thing comes in. Often included in “traditional values” is an antiquated and, inevitably, sexist view of women. As soon as I sense that, it’s adios! I find one of the challenges I’ve observed with being in a relationship with highly educated achieving women is that they tend to treat the relationship like one more objective they need to succeed at. So the man often feels almost like some sort of “employee” constantly being “project managed”. Often when the relationship fails, the woman is like “I don’t understand why he ended it! I worked so hard on him trying to make him into the perfect boyfriend!” I suppose women dating powerful men have felt the same way as well. But I think it can be a particular challenge if you have a partnership where there are two “alphas”. What happens when their careers come in conflict and the wife neither wants to potentially take a step down nor be in a relationship with someone who had to take a step down in their career. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educated-achieving-women-dating/1002009/123 "2024-06-03T12:11:13Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Often when the relationship fails, the woman is like “I don’t understand why he ended it! I worked so hard on him trying to make him into the perfect boyfriend!” That is not an uncommon scenario by any means, but I take the opposite view. My view is that what you see is who they want to be, and trying to change them to fit some kind of “mold” you have in your mind is a fatal mistake. Sure, they might try in the beginning because of the initial infatuation but, once that wears off, they become resentful and unhappy. Game over. > [@msmith537](#): > > . But I think it can be a particular challenge if you have a partnership where there are two “alphas”. What happens when their careers come in conflict and the wife neither wants to potentially take a step down nor be in a relationship with someone who had to take a step down in their career. One of the classic examples of this is the relationship between Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors. It was doomed. On the other hand, her relationship with tennis player John Lloyd was successful, for a decade anyway, because his personality was very different. She was the Alpha, but he was definitely not. His personality was totally different from Connors. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educated-achieving-women-dating/1002009/124 "2024-06-03T13:06:14Z")
A bit I’ve heard about recently is two career families more often moving specifically for the wife’s job. The reason though is interesting. The women tend to more frequently be in jobs that must be in person, healthcare including physicians, teaching, so on, while the men are more often in jobs that they can do from home, including the engineering and programming jobs … [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educated-achieving-women-dating/1002009.md?page=6)