I understand what you’re saying. Do you understand that when you say something like this
(sic)
it can come off as demanding and perhaps overly invested?
In my case, not really. It’s what most of my peers are doing, and with six years of solid experience, an advanced degree from the top school in the field, and a few extremely marketable competencies, there is a chance I won’t be able to hack it, but it’d be a freak chance.
Can you see how disrespectful and obnoxious it is to tell someone you don’t believe what they have clearly stated in words and actions multiple times?
We stumble into a lot of our major life decisions. How many people actually really planned and worked for their specific job? Probably relative few. Most people take whatever job they can get when they are unemployed, and end up on a career path they never imagined.
For me, family is in the “would be nice, but not a priority” category. I imagine you probably feel the same way about, say, visiting Africa. You might go if a free and easy trip fell into your hands, but you aren’t going to go out of your way to make it happen, and certainly wouldn’t feel like a failure if it didn’t. But for me, if I didn’t make it to Africa again, I’d feel like I had fucked up in life and would be deeply disappointed. What is gravely important to me is a sidenote to you, and vice versa.
You give up on relationships when the honeymoon phase is over. If you want to actually be in a serious relationship, you don’t give it up because of temporary boredom when there is nothing fundamentally else wrong with it. You don’t find someone else to overcome it, you find it in yourself. It sounds like you’re just not a serious relationship type of girl.
As I think I said early on, peers are marrying peers a lot more now, in large part because women finally have the opportunity to become peers. Nothing wrong with that. But men think it is okay to marry below their level, and what I’m hearing here is that women don’t. Which is fine, but as things equalize it means there is going to be a shortage of peer candidates, and the shortage will get worse the higher you rise.
Like I said, my wife’s best friend did exactly this in favor of fit well to do guys with limos and boats - who promptly dumped her when she got too interested.
No one here is talking about golddiggers. They are women who marry for money and who couldn’t make it on their own. No one in this thread at least resembles this kind of person in the slightest. I think we are more talking status here than money. I don’t know for sure, but I’m betting that a fit professor type who doesn’t make a ton of money would qualify as a suitable partner.
Ah, but did they marry women who work out every day and who have powerful careers?
I’m more Rick Moranis than George Clooney (not matter how much I bend the damn mirror) and I’m married. If a guy who considers himself hot stuff things going out with anyone less hot than Paris Hilton, say, is settling is considered a putz. The ones who succeed and trade “up” for trophy wives are putzes also.
I calls it as I sees it.
People who have shitty jobs probably didn’t plan or put much effort into finding a career.
People who have careers that they like almost certainly put effort and planning in at some point. No doctor is a doctor because they went through life saying if it happens, it happens. They are doctors because they decided they wanted to be a doctor, put forth the effort, and succeeded in being a doctor.
Even if they ended up on a career path they didn’t expect, they likely didn’t do so passively. They almost certainly saw an opportunity, put forth effort to be qualified, and worked toward a goal.
“Planning” to bring your mom overseas to help out with child care is not a plan, especially without a concrete timeline. You don’t know what her health is going to be like or whether she’s going to want to be where you are. Plus, “my mommy will help me” is not a “plan” for anyone, because most people don’t “plan” to use their parents in that fashion without a concrete agreement from them. Also, even with marketable skills, your assumption of moving to a country where live-in child care is cheap and adequate, at the right time, with the right circumstances for a child, is not a “plan.” It’s an assumption of a future you have not yet achieved. I agree with** Justin_Bailey**.
Also, if you don’t mind my asking, why are you even including a child in your plan? If it’s not a priority for you, it seems like an awfully large investment for something you don’t particularly care about.
No…
This is IMHO. It’s where we offer advice and opinions about major life changing events with little information.
And this is where some of us smack the desk and shout “BULLSHIT!”
I’m unsure on the details of your degree (International Relations or some such), but I’m sure it’s not a jobs degree. And even if it was, you sound like you’re going to be entitled to an awesome job (overseas, where live-in nannies are common) and it doesn’t really work that way. How many of those jobs even exist and do they often go to western women who have little connection to the place they’re located in beforehand?
But OK, let’s see everything falls into place. Shit can still happen. Such as when I graduated college in 2003. I had my shiny IT degree from a top school, marketable skills, and experience. I was particularly adept at “Technology Transfer,” which is more or less showing the users how to use their new computer system/program/phone/printer/etc. The problem is that in 2003 the dotcom bubble was a puddle on the floor and no one wanted to hire “Technology Transfer” experts. Point of fact, they were often the first ones laid off.
And because your plan is so pie-in-the-sky (including the parts that involve your mother, a separate person with her own opinions), there’s a very real chance it won’t fall into place exactly as you think.
You sound really emotionally invested in the idea that even sven ideas are wildly outlandish, maybe even crazy. From what I know of people who are in the arena of international development, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, and the foreign/diplomatic service, her plans are well within reality for a person of her skills and experience.
And nannies/housekeepers are indeed the norm, for a pittance, in many places in the undeveloped/semideveloped world. She’s not talking about moving to Paris to live in a penthouse suite overlooking the Seine, and hiring some aristocratic young English Governess to look after the young’uns.
Emotionally invested? Please.
I’m merely pointing out that sven’s requires a series of very precise events for it to work out the way she wants. I’ve met a few people who’ve studied international development as well, and the flakiness of that industry’s job market is what made all of them abandon it. My point is that her plan sounds more like a wishlist right now.
This wishlight might or might not conflict with her current “I’m single and fabulous” phase, but all I’m saying is that there’s a very real possibility that it will.
I’m attempting to imagine my mother’s reaction to the suggestion she should move to a third world country to take care of my kids. :eek:
Yeah, you know, it was super unrealistic for my friend to work for Americorps, go to a midgrade law school, work for a not-for-profit and then get a fellowship to work for Congress on legislative policy, but I assure you that’s precisely what happened. Some people can really make shit happen, and they aren’t always the ones who were all driven and focused throughout their younger lives. If you met my friend, you would totally think she’s a goofball, which she is, and maybe a flake, which she isn’t. She’s a goofball who can really make shit happen when she wants to.
And why do you care about even sven life plan and whether or not its realistic enough to have children (which she maybe doesn’t even want) at some point in the indefinite future? Because whether she’s right or wrong about her plans, it’s really just her life to lead. The point is, children and relationships are not a huge priority for her right now. At some points in the recent history, women didn’t have the option to make children and relationships take a back burner, like a man does.
You have a really low bar for determining when people care.
Yes, it’s arguing with people over their life choices when they haven’t asked your advice.
Crazy, I know.
Great, we’re in to the “why do you care portion” of the discussion. That means I’ll probably be leaving just as soon as I entered.
But if we must, this is a discussion board, so people discuss things. I read this thread from the beginning and posted something that I believed would add to the discussion (you’ll also notice that sven responded specifically to something I said and did not have a shit fit). I’m sorry that you seem to be taking what I wrote personally, but I wasn’t attacking you or your friend.
And I never said sven’s plan was impossible, just that it sounded very difficult and less like a plan and more like a wish.
We argue because we like to argue, not because we care what even sven does.
Oh LOL. Just forget it.
Men might be okay with marrying “below” their level, but the traits that men are attracted to have less to do with educational/intellectual/socioeconomic parity and more to do with physical attraction and other non-monetary qualities (nurturing, homemaking, child-rearing abilities). So it’s not as though the women aren’t adding value to the relationship. They certainly are if they are attracting men.
But even this is an overgeneralization. I think most men nowadays are looking for a peer. Someone they can relate to and hold their own financially. I know few professional men my age who aren’t paired up with someone of equal status.
This is one person out of millions of women, right? I’ve seen no evidence that there are hordes of non-Adonis men without PhDs or 6-figure salaries that are being turned down by overly picky women.
So you think personality, mutual respect, shared interests, similar backgrounds, and physical attraction are irrelevant? Because that’s what I hear single women complaining about not having. FWIW, I’ve turned down “high status” guys because I’m not overly charmed by status when its paired up with jerkish traits. The difference between me and a woman in the past is that a “high status” guy, irrespective of his jerkishness, would be considered a good catch to her. I don’t consider jerks good catches, and I’m perfectly fine being alone rather than put up with one.
Sounds like someone’s jealous. I have an interview next week for a six-figure position (which I probably won’t take- a lot of that is hazard pay). It’s a booming industry, and I’m extremely well positioned right now.
Having my mother around is a bit more iffy- she’s more interested in moving to Central America or Southeast Asia. But if we could make it work, I’m pretty sure she’d be thrilled to hang out with her grandkids in tropical paradise.
I think a lot of people have this attitude that the “single and fabulous” people should have to pay their dues at some point. That’s it not fair for someone like me to have been able to travel, live a young person’s life in the city, and generally have a great time without it adding up to some kind of shitty consequence for my lack of “years in a shitty cubicle doing a shitty job.” The truth is if my life got completely lame tomorrow, I’ve still had more adventures than I have any right to. But I think this kind of life means taking risks, and with big risks come big rewards. But then you get a lot of sour grapes from the peanut gallery who never made those risks, never dreamed those dreams, and live perfectly good lives of their own creation and should be happy about- but for whatever reason can’t help themselves from trying to tear someone down.