Completely agree as a successful top tier educated (Berkeley) guy. I want a peer — educated, intelligent, a woman who can be a partner.
What I find is that it’s women who don’t want to date “down”, not men who don’t want to date up. Especially some women I’ve dated who didn’t come from upper class backgrounds end up at a place like Harvard and see what privileges come with the territory, and don’t want to settle for anything less.
I really love your three takeaways at the end. Re: "I then tried giving each one at least a peck and found my fortunes totally reversed", I suspect you're onto something.
I love Esther Perel's take on that tension between love and desire:
“Part of building romantic relationships and love is establishing trust, routines, and a shared sense of “we,” but part of building romantic & sexual desire is creating a dynamic tension between the “me” and the “we,” keeping things fresh, playful, spontaneous, delightfully surprising, leaving us wanting a little more.”
That sensual, sexual, romantic tension can feel sublime, and it goes a long way toward keeping the spark alive. Whether a peck, an extended hug, deep eye contact, a flirtatious smile, or a gentle graze, we have plenty of options at our disposal for building up that anticipation and desire.
Interestingly, several years ago I went on a date with a woman who insisted that any time she had sex with someone on the first date, they would not initiate a subsequent hangout that wasn't strictly a booty call. It's like they'd been conditioned to only see her as easy sex, and looked no further, as though there were no spark to cultivate.
I think there's a lot to unpack around building up anticipation, desire, and relationship-oriented habits after the first date. One of the most common questions that came up during my dating seminar series last year was what to do during the later dates, e.g. after date 4 or 5, when you're trying to decide how/whether to embark upon a formal relationship.
NYC's Matchmaker Maria advocates for 12 dates prior to any sex at all, which I consider a bit arbitrary and potentially even wasteful, as it would really suck to invest that much time and energy in a person only to find out later that you're not sexually compatible at all. That said, I suspect she allows for other non-coital activities that serve to bolster the sensual tension.
Personally, I'm a fan of long hugs. They're less escalation-oriented than horizontal hugs, but still allow for a deep, sensual, connective moment where your breathing can sync up and you can experience a moment of peace and physiological respite in one another's presence.
I love that you write about this! And your experience matches mine so much. I always assumed all these advisers knew what they were talking about but they were so wrong! To find out men engage in intrasexual competition has been a revelation!
Thanks for another interesting article. Its like the twilight zone. My family is Irish, grandparents also literally peasants and all wonderful humble people. I have never, ever heard anyone speak they way you or the men you quoted do. The quotes from real men section was unbelievable. It must be an American thing? Just..... the bluntness, the superficiality, the shamelssness...the robotic oddness. The discussion of looks, and status and kinks etc....not the Irish way lol. God bless ya, you guys sound like real life soap opera
Yeah, I'm a Brit and American dating discourse comes off as absolutely wild to me as well. Even saying "high-value man" unironically feels incredibly uncomfortable.
Imagine meeting your mate at the pub, they've got a new fella and the first thing they say about him is "oh he's a 6’2” MD at Famous Investment Bank, MBA from Ivy League School". Right? But do you get on with him? Is he a laugh, is he nice to you, etc. etc. It's not like people don't care about jobs and status and whatnot but you're meant to keep a lid on the worst excesses and focus on the more important stuff. And it would be cringy to chase it so openly.
Ha, you should see Chinese / Asian dating discourse. It's even more nakedly materialistic.
FWIW, these stats are mentioned here because they give specificity of traits that people widely acknowledge as desirable to back up my point that these types of men do care.
I do remember watching a Singaporean dating show while waiting for a flight in Hong Kong and as you say it was right off the bat - "Car? Condo? Job" 😅
I know they were context for the quotes in this case, but it does seem (based off the internet) that that's exactly how people talk about people they're dating in real life as well?
The direct quotes are interesting! Helps me crystallize some "devil's advocate" thoughts I've been mulling over.
1 - a specific point about your piece: Your quotes are mostly from super traditionally successful men. It's possible that it's not that "high value" men aren't intimidated, but rather "highEST value men (as defined by credentials and $$) who have similar success to you will not be intimidated", but normal-level successful men (college grad, state school, random middle mgmt job) might still be intimidated. This is an important distinction, if true. By definition, there's many fewer men of the highest levels of success, and therefore that creates scarcity. Maybe that didn't create scarcity for you, but maybe you have certain qualities that such men look for that other highly successful women don't (e.g. being "chill"). I don't know for sure, just a possibility.
2 - A general point. You imply that since you've dated for a long time your experience, your experience is more generalizeable. But of course, this issue is selection bias.
Because of this selection bias, it could be that there are other variables that are leading you to find the subset of men who aren't intimated. You already say to "focus on being pretty and kind", so let's take those variables off the table. But there could be correlators to finding men who aren't intimitated by you that have nothing to do with those things. For instance, something about NYC being a more liberal city or having a higher density of credentialed women. Or maybe you make just under a threshold income that makes your Harvard degree more acceptable - I have no idea what you make or if this even a thing, just coming up with plausible possibilities!
The main point I want to reiterate though is just that because of all these potential confounding factors, even if one has a large sample size, extrapoloating dating behaviors and trends is incredibly hard. It's kind of an obvious point, but I think it's often minimized. And this is also what leads dating discourse to have such divergent arguments at the same time - two people can have wildly different experiences and attribute that to the completely wrong variable!
While I don’t doubt men self select out at a level I cannot perceive (swiping on apps, not asking me out if we match), I’ve literally never found it to be an issue if we meet first in person and we talk before they find out where I went to school. I think people might write weird hatefic in their head about abstract people, but if they are confronted with a flesh and blood human who is nice to them, it falls away. For gods sake, my UPS man was very obviously in love with me for the year he was doing deliveries for my business and tried to hit on me after I left that office space. If a woman seems kind and nonjudgmental and the man is confident,
I can’t see any logical reason he would self select out.
Ya I guess my whole point is in the first thing you said about you not doubting that men are self selecting out. That you haven’t run into this even once DOES suggest you’re onto something real.
I’m just saying that youre kinda definitive wording “men aren’t intimidated by Harvard women” doesn’t account for the very real possibility that the types of men you’re connecting with are different than who other women are.
FWIW, as a guy I know a bunch of guys who would have a hard time if their partner made more money than them. So I could totally see a world where a Harvard girl working at a top tier nonprofit gets lots of attention BUT a Harvard MBA girl who is at a PE firm gets less.
To extend the hypothetical a bit further. I could even imagine the PE firm girl getting attention from OTHER finance bros who may be her financial peers, but since most high value men aren’t finance bros, her overall demand is still less.
A lot of people from elite colleges are insufferable to people they view as beneath them, which is most people. Shockingly, men don’t like being treated that way. A lot of women bragging about how successful they are also happen to be completely insufferable to have a conversation with, let alone date. You being smart and capable are definitely good things, but not good enough to put up with you if you suck to talk to. Some people have been burned by getting to know a person only to have that person’s social circle look down on them and the person in question decide to reject them rather than go against their social circle, so that could explain people at Boston college, for instance.
Some people are definitely just insecure and coping with their own feelings of inadequacy since they were never really in the running for dating an “elite” woman to begin with. But the women saying men are intimidated are largely delusional. Some are pre-rejecting so they can tell themselves they didn’t want that girl anyway, but a lot of people are really insufferable. Men tend to care about the insufferable women, for obvious reasons.
People can be insufferable about all sorts of things. One guy made fun of me because I didn’t follow politics that much. It’s why it’s best to find someone whose values matches yours. Some of my friends are insufferable about certain things but we aren’t dating so it’s ok.
When I was in LA I had a girlfriend I really really loved. Everything checked out in terms of looks, emotional connection, warmth, sex and general fun. The reason we’re not together anymore is because she didn’t have either a degree or her s**t together in terms of a stable job. The latter thing was a stressor but perhaps I could have overlooked. But I needed somebody I could also TRUST with their reasoning and judgment. And I didn’t feel that way with her. Also her not having a degree meant that conversation couldn’t be at a decently high level, so in some sense I felt a bit lonely or not completely understood.
"Also her not having a degree meant that conversation couldn't be at a decently high level, …"
I think it's worth knowing that, in spite of what seems to be presumed by many (and most especially those with advanced degrees), a college degree doesn't mean one is capable or willing to have conversation at a high level.
Correct. I think there’s a correlation though. Maybe weak but I think it’s there. Passing university exams also indicates some logical reasoning capability and some discipline to plan for the future and execute the plan, while delaying gratification and making some sacrifices for the longer term when necessary.
The idea of education and careers being intimidating to men always sounded wrong to me. After thinking through my real life experience, I figured it works more like this:
The 'median' man (outliers will have more unusual tastes) dates or sleeps with career oriented women. He notices that these particular women tend to be more judgmental, more obsessed with perfect cleanliness, more pushy and more willing to explode if they don't get their way - because these traits tend to be associated with women who push their way up the corporate ladder.
The median 'career woman' goes on her dating life. She notices the men she wants tend to ghost her more than she would like. When she notices men going on more dates with women who aren't like her, she makes the assumption that this is due to her career and lifestyle choices. Even though her attitude would be about the same if she was a pure housemaker with no career.
So a woman with a career and education who also knows how to be pleasant to the men in her personal life will be considered even more of a catch, while the women with careers and education who aren't that pleasant to be around will be frustrated that they find themselves competing with a litany of younger or more docile women without so as much education and careers.
I think the good news is that it is very fixable for women. TBH I am surprised men don’t fixate on their appearance as much if they fixate on female appearance so much because that seems to the the gender empathy gap from the female side.
The men who complain about not being able to match up, appearance wise, blame this on women preferring factors that are not easy to change, be that height or jawlines. In reality, the man's appearance doesn't matter all that much, but they would rather believe that it does because it gives them an excuse not to do anything.
I think they have that in common with the women who would complain about men being intimidated by their education or career. Admitting their personality is the problem and trying to change that would get in the way of their pride.
Some of them def do. But like… some very successful people didn’t finish college. Past a certain point, people usually get judged on what they accomplished more recently than 20 years ago.
dunno why this is issue is so hard for people to grasp but yea you nailed it on the head
actual desirable or high-status men will want that reflected back to them, and that involves a holistic evaluation of looks, charm and ability (and thats putting more ineluctable compatibility things aside)
I feel you. +4-5 SD and social is a tough combo. I had a narc politician stepfather who delivered enough beatings and abuse to give me social graces. The pretty girls weren't interesting more or less. There were tons of them hanging around the house - my sisters always had the house full of their hot friends. They made boxes of rocks look like Cicero. I never wanted a second date.
The problem is that women in my range tend to have significant personality disorders. Which made them even more exciting, when I was younger. I'd tolerate the chaos to get the gratification of having people understand what I was saying and offer intelligent replies. But no longer.
I just thought of this woman named Rebecca who was a goth research librarian. So pretty and arousing and smart. But also so unreliable and ready to go off the deep end at any moment. She'd made things incredibly complicated and then suddenly just told me to pick her up at the airport one day. So I did. She spent like five heavenly days with me. I have this memory of her looking over her shoulder and smiling at me with one of those smiles that you never forget. We kissed - and this is 20 years ago and I feel like I can still taste it - before she went back to Chicago and I spoke to her a couple times afterward but her life got all complicated again and I never saw her again. Her life is pretty much the disaster you'd imagine it to be. But still smart and still just as engaging as always, just chaotic. After a failed marriage to a paleontologist, she's back in WI at her parents' house again. At about 50.
Alternatively, I want to perform a lobotomy on myself or drink cough syrup. Being an idiot would be grand.
They’re not modern internet “porn” because they don’t target teen boys with the goal of destroying their self-worth and turning them against women with primal hetero male rage-bait.
Completely agree as a successful top tier educated (Berkeley) guy. I want a peer — educated, intelligent, a woman who can be a partner.
What I find is that it’s women who don’t want to date “down”, not men who don’t want to date up. Especially some women I’ve dated who didn’t come from upper class backgrounds end up at a place like Harvard and see what privileges come with the territory, and don’t want to settle for anything less.
I really love your three takeaways at the end. Re: "I then tried giving each one at least a peck and found my fortunes totally reversed", I suspect you're onto something.
I love Esther Perel's take on that tension between love and desire:
“Part of building romantic relationships and love is establishing trust, routines, and a shared sense of “we,” but part of building romantic & sexual desire is creating a dynamic tension between the “me” and the “we,” keeping things fresh, playful, spontaneous, delightfully surprising, leaving us wanting a little more.”
That sensual, sexual, romantic tension can feel sublime, and it goes a long way toward keeping the spark alive. Whether a peck, an extended hug, deep eye contact, a flirtatious smile, or a gentle graze, we have plenty of options at our disposal for building up that anticipation and desire.
Interestingly, several years ago I went on a date with a woman who insisted that any time she had sex with someone on the first date, they would not initiate a subsequent hangout that wasn't strictly a booty call. It's like they'd been conditioned to only see her as easy sex, and looked no further, as though there were no spark to cultivate.
I think there's a lot to unpack around building up anticipation, desire, and relationship-oriented habits after the first date. One of the most common questions that came up during my dating seminar series last year was what to do during the later dates, e.g. after date 4 or 5, when you're trying to decide how/whether to embark upon a formal relationship.
NYC's Matchmaker Maria advocates for 12 dates prior to any sex at all, which I consider a bit arbitrary and potentially even wasteful, as it would really suck to invest that much time and energy in a person only to find out later that you're not sexually compatible at all. That said, I suspect she allows for other non-coital activities that serve to bolster the sensual tension.
Personally, I'm a fan of long hugs. They're less escalation-oriented than horizontal hugs, but still allow for a deep, sensual, connective moment where your breathing can sync up and you can experience a moment of peace and physiological respite in one another's presence.
I love that you write about this! And your experience matches mine so much. I always assumed all these advisers knew what they were talking about but they were so wrong! To find out men engage in intrasexual competition has been a revelation!
Thanks for another interesting article. Its like the twilight zone. My family is Irish, grandparents also literally peasants and all wonderful humble people. I have never, ever heard anyone speak they way you or the men you quoted do. The quotes from real men section was unbelievable. It must be an American thing? Just..... the bluntness, the superficiality, the shamelssness...the robotic oddness. The discussion of looks, and status and kinks etc....not the Irish way lol. God bless ya, you guys sound like real life soap opera
Yeah, I'm a Brit and American dating discourse comes off as absolutely wild to me as well. Even saying "high-value man" unironically feels incredibly uncomfortable.
Imagine meeting your mate at the pub, they've got a new fella and the first thing they say about him is "oh he's a 6’2” MD at Famous Investment Bank, MBA from Ivy League School". Right? But do you get on with him? Is he a laugh, is he nice to you, etc. etc. It's not like people don't care about jobs and status and whatnot but you're meant to keep a lid on the worst excesses and focus on the more important stuff. And it would be cringy to chase it so openly.
Ha, you should see Chinese / Asian dating discourse. It's even more nakedly materialistic.
FWIW, these stats are mentioned here because they give specificity of traits that people widely acknowledge as desirable to back up my point that these types of men do care.
I do remember watching a Singaporean dating show while waiting for a flight in Hong Kong and as you say it was right off the bat - "Car? Condo? Job" 😅
I know they were context for the quotes in this case, but it does seem (based off the internet) that that's exactly how people talk about people they're dating in real life as well?
Yes. In china, it's literally the first question people ask you: what's your monthly salary? Everyone volunteers it and asks it. It's wild.
The direct quotes are interesting! Helps me crystallize some "devil's advocate" thoughts I've been mulling over.
1 - a specific point about your piece: Your quotes are mostly from super traditionally successful men. It's possible that it's not that "high value" men aren't intimidated, but rather "highEST value men (as defined by credentials and $$) who have similar success to you will not be intimidated", but normal-level successful men (college grad, state school, random middle mgmt job) might still be intimidated. This is an important distinction, if true. By definition, there's many fewer men of the highest levels of success, and therefore that creates scarcity. Maybe that didn't create scarcity for you, but maybe you have certain qualities that such men look for that other highly successful women don't (e.g. being "chill"). I don't know for sure, just a possibility.
2 - A general point. You imply that since you've dated for a long time your experience, your experience is more generalizeable. But of course, this issue is selection bias.
Because of this selection bias, it could be that there are other variables that are leading you to find the subset of men who aren't intimated. You already say to "focus on being pretty and kind", so let's take those variables off the table. But there could be correlators to finding men who aren't intimitated by you that have nothing to do with those things. For instance, something about NYC being a more liberal city or having a higher density of credentialed women. Or maybe you make just under a threshold income that makes your Harvard degree more acceptable - I have no idea what you make or if this even a thing, just coming up with plausible possibilities!
The main point I want to reiterate though is just that because of all these potential confounding factors, even if one has a large sample size, extrapoloating dating behaviors and trends is incredibly hard. It's kind of an obvious point, but I think it's often minimized. And this is also what leads dating discourse to have such divergent arguments at the same time - two people can have wildly different experiences and attribute that to the completely wrong variable!
While I don’t doubt men self select out at a level I cannot perceive (swiping on apps, not asking me out if we match), I’ve literally never found it to be an issue if we meet first in person and we talk before they find out where I went to school. I think people might write weird hatefic in their head about abstract people, but if they are confronted with a flesh and blood human who is nice to them, it falls away. For gods sake, my UPS man was very obviously in love with me for the year he was doing deliveries for my business and tried to hit on me after I left that office space. If a woman seems kind and nonjudgmental and the man is confident,
I can’t see any logical reason he would self select out.
Ya I guess my whole point is in the first thing you said about you not doubting that men are self selecting out. That you haven’t run into this even once DOES suggest you’re onto something real.
I’m just saying that youre kinda definitive wording “men aren’t intimidated by Harvard women” doesn’t account for the very real possibility that the types of men you’re connecting with are different than who other women are.
FWIW, as a guy I know a bunch of guys who would have a hard time if their partner made more money than them. So I could totally see a world where a Harvard girl working at a top tier nonprofit gets lots of attention BUT a Harvard MBA girl who is at a PE firm gets less.
To extend the hypothetical a bit further. I could even imagine the PE firm girl getting attention from OTHER finance bros who may be her financial peers, but since most high value men aren’t finance bros, her overall demand is still less.
I said men (who matter) are not intimidated, which I have found to be true, I would not say all men in general.
A lot of people from elite colleges are insufferable to people they view as beneath them, which is most people. Shockingly, men don’t like being treated that way. A lot of women bragging about how successful they are also happen to be completely insufferable to have a conversation with, let alone date. You being smart and capable are definitely good things, but not good enough to put up with you if you suck to talk to. Some people have been burned by getting to know a person only to have that person’s social circle look down on them and the person in question decide to reject them rather than go against their social circle, so that could explain people at Boston college, for instance.
Some people are definitely just insecure and coping with their own feelings of inadequacy since they were never really in the running for dating an “elite” woman to begin with. But the women saying men are intimidated are largely delusional. Some are pre-rejecting so they can tell themselves they didn’t want that girl anyway, but a lot of people are really insufferable. Men tend to care about the insufferable women, for obvious reasons.
People can be insufferable about all sorts of things. One guy made fun of me because I didn’t follow politics that much. It’s why it’s best to find someone whose values matches yours. Some of my friends are insufferable about certain things but we aren’t dating so it’s ok.
Some people have a funny idea of what constitutes flirting.
I said “insufferable” too many times. Can you tell I don’t like being treated as beneath someone because of where they went to school?
When I was in LA I had a girlfriend I really really loved. Everything checked out in terms of looks, emotional connection, warmth, sex and general fun. The reason we’re not together anymore is because she didn’t have either a degree or her s**t together in terms of a stable job. The latter thing was a stressor but perhaps I could have overlooked. But I needed somebody I could also TRUST with their reasoning and judgment. And I didn’t feel that way with her. Also her not having a degree meant that conversation couldn’t be at a decently high level, so in some sense I felt a bit lonely or not completely understood.
Yes, I’ve heard several men say similar things about exes. Makes sense.
"Also her not having a degree meant that conversation couldn't be at a decently high level, …"
I think it's worth knowing that, in spite of what seems to be presumed by many (and most especially those with advanced degrees), a college degree doesn't mean one is capable or willing to have conversation at a high level.
Correct. I think there’s a correlation though. Maybe weak but I think it’s there. Passing university exams also indicates some logical reasoning capability and some discipline to plan for the future and execute the plan, while delaying gratification and making some sacrifices for the longer term when necessary.
The idea of education and careers being intimidating to men always sounded wrong to me. After thinking through my real life experience, I figured it works more like this:
The 'median' man (outliers will have more unusual tastes) dates or sleeps with career oriented women. He notices that these particular women tend to be more judgmental, more obsessed with perfect cleanliness, more pushy and more willing to explode if they don't get their way - because these traits tend to be associated with women who push their way up the corporate ladder.
The median 'career woman' goes on her dating life. She notices the men she wants tend to ghost her more than she would like. When she notices men going on more dates with women who aren't like her, she makes the assumption that this is due to her career and lifestyle choices. Even though her attitude would be about the same if she was a pure housemaker with no career.
So a woman with a career and education who also knows how to be pleasant to the men in her personal life will be considered even more of a catch, while the women with careers and education who aren't that pleasant to be around will be frustrated that they find themselves competing with a litany of younger or more docile women without so as much education and careers.
I think the good news is that it is very fixable for women. TBH I am surprised men don’t fixate on their appearance as much if they fixate on female appearance so much because that seems to the the gender empathy gap from the female side.
The men who complain about not being able to match up, appearance wise, blame this on women preferring factors that are not easy to change, be that height or jawlines. In reality, the man's appearance doesn't matter all that much, but they would rather believe that it does because it gives them an excuse not to do anything.
I think they have that in common with the women who would complain about men being intimidated by their education or career. Admitting their personality is the problem and trying to change that would get in the way of their pride.
Yes a man here that would be 100% my worry. I love intelligence but not ambition, or obsessive desire for success
I definitely would be, especially considering I didn't finish college. I've been around Ivy League people. I know what they think about such things.
Some of them def do. But like… some very successful people didn’t finish college. Past a certain point, people usually get judged on what they accomplished more recently than 20 years ago.
Can't speak for anyone else, but in my experience it's not "some". It's "most".
dunno why this is issue is so hard for people to grasp but yea you nailed it on the head
actual desirable or high-status men will want that reflected back to them, and that involves a holistic evaluation of looks, charm and ability (and thats putting more ineluctable compatibility things aside)
No.
I would expect that if you actually weren't eye-rollingly smarter than the guys, it wouldn't be a problem.
Well, this tends to be a problem for me, not for them.
I feel you. +4-5 SD and social is a tough combo. I had a narc politician stepfather who delivered enough beatings and abuse to give me social graces. The pretty girls weren't interesting more or less. There were tons of them hanging around the house - my sisters always had the house full of their hot friends. They made boxes of rocks look like Cicero. I never wanted a second date.
The problem is that women in my range tend to have significant personality disorders. Which made them even more exciting, when I was younger. I'd tolerate the chaos to get the gratification of having people understand what I was saying and offer intelligent replies. But no longer.
I just thought of this woman named Rebecca who was a goth research librarian. So pretty and arousing and smart. But also so unreliable and ready to go off the deep end at any moment. She'd made things incredibly complicated and then suddenly just told me to pick her up at the airport one day. So I did. She spent like five heavenly days with me. I have this memory of her looking over her shoulder and smiling at me with one of those smiles that you never forget. We kissed - and this is 20 years ago and I feel like I can still taste it - before she went back to Chicago and I spoke to her a couple times afterward but her life got all complicated again and I never saw her again. Her life is pretty much the disaster you'd imagine it to be. But still smart and still just as engaging as always, just chaotic. After a failed marriage to a paleontologist, she's back in WI at her parents' house again. At about 50.
Alternatively, I want to perform a lobotomy on myself or drink cough syrup. Being an idiot would be grand.
They’re not modern internet “porn” because they don’t target teen boys with the goal of destroying their self-worth and turning them against women with primal hetero male rage-bait.