This is amusing. Women are now being blamed for the failure of their own love lives. What is to blame? Well, that you are too smart. If you are intelligent and advanced at work or your career (or your interests that are also smart outside of just reading Cosmo and He's just not that into you) than you have a low emotional intelligence. Because this is a common misnomer around women, you see. That women are emotionally UN-intelligent. Really now.
Anne, a very sad, disappointed and single 40 year old tells us clearly what we need to hear:
I never envisaged that at my 40th, not only would I not have a partner, but I wouldn't even have a date. When I waltzed out of Oxford University nearly 20 years ago, throbbing with a sense of my potential, this wasn't what I had in mind at all.But now, taking stock, I can see that while my career as a writer has flourished, I have floundered massively in the relationship stakes. My romantic CV makes shockingly depressing reading - I was married at 32, divorced by 34, became pregnant by a new partner at 36 and was left by him as a single mother at 38.
Let's start with the obvious. It is not your fault that you focus your energy on your work instead of your relationship and that a man cannot appreciate that in your life. If a man leaves you with a child, that is not your fault. Yeah there are two sides to every story, but it is hardly just your own fault.
So what does all this mean? Well, I believe that at the root of all this is the fact that many women with a high IQ have a perilously low EQ (that's their emotional intelligence quotient). Put more prosaically, this would explain why bright girls are often fools in love.Last year, American writer Michael Noer created outrage when he wrote a piece in Forbes Magazine warning men off marrying career girls. He claimed that recent studies had found that clever, professional women were more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children.
I know it is hard to take an article seriously that attempts to use last year's atrocious Forbes article as legitimate information. But, all things considered, I can truly relate to this as someone with a thousand things to do-all-the-time, it definitely puts a strain on all my relationships. But why are women to blame for that? Is it our fault that men are taught that they should have a woman's undivided attention and care? That perhaps when you are successful or more invested in your career than a relationship, that perhaps this is threatening?
As it is, women have to be needy and provide love, while men get to be invested in their careers (and not all men and women are like this at all, this is just what stories like this make me realize that dominant relationship myths tell us). If you don't fit that framework, than I suppose you end up alone! And what, OMG, what could be worse than that?
OK, let me stop before I start talking about my own life. The reality is men are changing with women and there are men out there that are supportive of women that are in their careers and that could be anything, like for me my social justice work or writing, or whatever it is you love to do and feels you and motivates you.
What we don't need is doom and gloom fear talk about how we are emotionally unintelligent and how we will end up alone if we are successful in our careers or our personal interests. Furthermore, WHO has the money to not work? And if I have to work, than I better be invested and interested since I have to spend a lot of time doing this work.
Perhaps there is a relationship between women having robust and flourishing careers and lack of male companionship, but is that such a bad thing? If the person you are with doesn't take interest or support you in the things that you want to do, then they are not loving you for who you are, and that is not the situation you want to be in. That is not your fault. The blame game needs to stop. You didn't do anything wrong. Divorce is not always such a bad thing, it shows that people know how to do what is right for themselves.
Showing interest in things other than a relationship shows a high level of emotional intelligence. You know what you want and aren't afraid to get it. Does this change that some people just don't want to be alone, outside of just the media motivated fear of it? Probably not, but it makes it easier to think about.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Smart at work, a fool in love..
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/5772
Am I the only woman on the planet who looks forward to being 40 and single?
Seriously, relationships with men aren't all they are cracked up to be. When I was growing up, I thought having a boyfriend/husband meant lots of great sex, great dinners, romance, gifts and emotional support. So far I have been very disappointed by my real life relationships. I admire the older women I know who have been divorced and now live on their own, free of men (except for the occasional fling or one night stand) and now have time to live their own lives. Being with a man is HARD WORK, with few joys and rewards. It only makes sense to me that more women then ever are single. It has nothing to do with smart women being undesirable, but everything to do with men being selfish and stupid.
Before anyone rushes to call me a typical man-hating feminist, I will say what we have been trained as women to think of as a perfect relationship between a man and a woman is seriously flawed on both sides.
Oh I have to go OFF on this article. So full of bullshit, I don't even have time to quote and refute the whole thing... Let me try:
"Career girls are adept at appearing confident and are often hideously controlling..."
Are we still doing that whole "career girls" thing? Please. I'm adept at 'appearing confident' because I am fucking confident. And 'hideously controlling'? I haven't heard a broad generalization that pissed me off more in a long time.
"Don't be too dominant or competitive because that leads to short-term safety and long-term boredom. Finally, develop your EQ. Learn to have emotional strength which is about yielding, surrender, openness and a willingness to be vulnerable."
Huh. Sounds like the "Surrendered Wife" to me. I didn't realize that emotional STRENGTH was about yielding and surrendering. My bad.
"For the first time, I've been trying to engage my emotional side by being honest about what I'm feeling and showing vulnerability. Let's face it, none of us clever girls are very happy, are we?"
Sorry Sarah, this clever "girl" is quite happy, both at work, and in relationships. The whole tone of this article is so fucking patronizing I can't even believe it. So am I to take it that women with low IQ's have fantastic relationships? And what about men? Should the "clever boys" learn to "surrender" a bit more so that they are no longer "victims"? Yeah, I didn't think so.
I'm not ready to say all men are selfish and stupid, but other than that I have to agree with dhsredhead. My relationships with men (and since the age of fourteen I've only been single for a year and half total, and that was years ago) have been about 75% drudgery: emotionally, logistically, even to some extent sexually. Right now I'm in a strained long-distance attachment. I still have some hope that I might find a better relationship, one of mutual affection, respect and fun, but in the meantime I'm glad to be learning to live without a man around. It's getting easier all the time.
A friend of mine can't wait for his girlfriend to finish her degree and become a high-paid engineer, because it'll mean he gets to stay home and be a house husband. :)
Certainly this one woman might be able to blame her focus on her career for her failure with her love life. (I use the word failure because that is how she views it).
I don't think she can then project those things on other "career girls" though.
I mean, there is some truth to the assertion that if you put your career first you are putting other things second.
But given that, to me it seems really obvious that you therefore have to decide what is most important to you. And if having a man is really that important, perhaps you do need to take stock of how much time and work it will take to have a successful relationship with one.
To try and say that career women are single because they're failing at love just because you did is just stupid though. And the entire IQ vs EQ thing is absolutely absurd.
I am unsurprised to see that this article has originated from the UK. Saddened, but unsurprised. Look at how they react to rape cases etc., and you'll see they're culturally somewhere on the misogyny continuum between the US and Italy.
I just now noticed it was from the UK. That does explain a lot.
Geez, the backlash against female empowerment sure is strong.
"Let's face it, none of us clever girls are very happy, are we?"
Um, yes. Last time my mom visisted she said, "It seems like you're very happy these days..." (I've struggled with depression in the past and I have a chronic illness) I agreed. Because I am pretty happy. I've always been clever; I like being clever. It's part of who I am. I make the people I love laugh.
And if we "girls" don't have careers, what exactly are we supposed to be doing with ourselves? I have a serious boyfriend but I'm not married. Should I be living with my parents, working minimum wage just to pass the time until they marry me off? Even if I were married, I wouldn't necessarily have kids! Am I supposed to hang out at home and clean all day?
There's so much that pissed me off in the article but the part that made me want to comment is quoted above--the stupid thing about intelligence.
If anyone is looking for a reading challenge I recommend Stephen Jay Gould's _The Mismeasure of Man_ (sexism in title for ironic purposes). It's a revisionist scientific history of the different ways in which scientists in the 19th and 20th centuries have tried to measure 'intelligence' as a single unified factor by which all persons/ethnic groups can be linearly ranked--first by measuring brain/skull size, then by developing IQ tests to produce a single score.
Not only did these scientists' methods and conclusions fall prey to their racism, classism and sexism, despite their intended objectivity, but most of them succumbed to the philosophical error of reification: assuming that because an idea (like 'intelligence') can be named and even defined, it actually *exists*.
The brain performs innumerable different activities and has all sorts of different, fluctuating capacities. These are affected in a complex way by genetics, social background, education, what you ate for breakfast, etc. There is no central 'intelligence' function that governs the operations of the brain. Applying a single number to a collection of mental processes is almost completely meaningless.
While, as Gould points out, IQ tests are helpful in their original function as diagnostic tests of modes of thinking in which an intellectually-impaired individual has difficulty, their use in ranking and comparing large masses of people is mathematically unsound, even meaningless. Yet IQ tests have been used for decades: forms of them (the SAT in America and the 11+ exam in Britain, for example) have been used to decide the fate of students; at one point they were proposed as a means to prevent undesirable (and, coincidentally, low-IQ'd) Southern European immigrants from entering the US; as recently as 1994 a large book called _The Bell Curve_ perpetuated the concept in order to affirm the hereditary intellectual superiority of affluent white persons. (The new edition of _The Mismeasure of Man_ includes another chapter that debunks _The Bell Curve_: not hard since it simply reiterates old mathematical fallacies).
I realize that this article wasn't using IQ in any technical sense. But the fact that the term can be tossed around casually, and perverted further into some even vaguer and more ridiculous notion of 'EQ', and that these utterly unanalyzed ideas can then be used to judge and condemn some women who aren't satisfied with their love lives, is incredible to me.
Or at least it would be incredible if I weren't already aware that our society trains us to respect the authority of science while being incapable of assessing scientific claims and jargon critically. Especially when dangerous ideas like feminism might otherwise surface.
College-educated women who have their own jobs have the highest marriage rates and highest levels of being satisfactory as wives. She may have to face that it's a personal problem.
Plus, if you're a man, how do you know your wife or girlfriend is with you for YOU and not your paycheck unless she's independent and self-sufficient?
Of course, working women can be shallow, but they have less incentive to stay with a man they're unhappy with.
I think it is funny that the relationship doctor's advice runs counter to what the author is advocating. She says that women knew all along that something was wrong because of age, lack of intellect, etc. He says, be willing to think outside the box and don't pick men based on some inflexible list.
I don't think it is "intelligent" or "intellectual" to overlook warning bells. I think it is self-doubting and, dare I say it, unintelligent.
The guy I'm dating likes the fact that I will listen to him about his career aspirations and ask intelligent questions. And he is interested in mine as well, even though we are in entirely different fields. Because we are both competitive (in the sense we like to do well) and laid back (in the sense that we like to play a lot as well) we've been getting along really well.
"Well" is clearly my word of the day.
Thanks so much for covering this article. It seems to me that any man who is threatened by a woman's success is deeply insecure and isn't worth the trouble. I'm also inclined to believe that any woman who would feel regret for pursuing her own success before a man's happiness is in just as bad of shape.
This article uses stereotypes about gender roles that, in my experience, are not nearly as widespread as the author would have us believe. I don't know any men who would leave a woman as a single mom simply because she was too intelligent or career driven. I can't even imagine one of them classifying a woman in such a way. But maybe I just know how to pick my friends / dates.
Thanks, as always, for your excellent commentary. Keep up the great work.
Look, being married is like being in a rock-n-roll band. It's voluntary, if it's no fun anymore you should quit it---and nobody in their right mind makes it their sole source of income.
Let's re-cast our friend's article as though instead of being about "women" and "marriage" it was about "people" and "being in a band."
==========
So what does all this mean? Well, I believe that at the root of all this is the fact that many people with a high IQ have a perilously low MQ (that's their musical intelligence quotient). Put more prosaically, this would explain why working people are often bloody useless as band members.
Last year, American writer Michael Michael Motorcycle created outrage when he wrote a piece in Musicians Magazine warning bands off working people. He claimed that recent studies had found that people with day jobs were more likely to get leave the band, more likely to moonlight and less likely to write songs."
=============
So, BFD. I love playing music with my mates, but I'm not going to quit my day job, either.
Articles like these just want to look for women-specific patterns where there are none. I'm sure there are plenty of successful high-IQ "career men" out there who are "unlucky" in love, as well as a large segment of the population in general who would also say they are "unlucky" in love, whatever that really means. Being a working woman has nothing to do with it, and it annoys me to no end that this article tries to suggest otherwise.
The stupidity of these articles just makes me laugh.
I mean, really. If women are single and not getting married, guess what? Men are also not marrying. There male/female split is very, very close to 50/50. It's not like women are single and men are marrying; no polyandry in America.
More women than men are graduating from college. Men, if they want to get married (and most of them do!) will have to come to the sad realisation that the only women worth having will not pretend to be second-class citizens.
GRRRR.
Amanda,
Can you provide a citation to that statistic? I've heard quite the opposite: that high-achieving women are the ones who are least likely to marry and to have successful marriages. Now, if you go to college and become an interiour designer, yeah, you can find a husband. Go to college and become an engineer, doctor, or lawyer, and you'll be single for a long, long time.
Amanda is right, I've seen this stat also, and will try to find the source.
Another interesting twist on the marriage situations of highly successful individuals is the gender split. In my own research on gender in academia, we found (and studies confirmed) that the high achieving women in our sample were more likely to be married to high achieving men, whereas the high achieving men (and there were certainly more of them given the biases in hiring and retention it was a 4:1 ratio men to women in our sample) were more likely to have wives who worked part-time or not at all (though often they were highly educated).
Have I smothered my point with facts? (I do this.) Essentially, our high profile female scientists were married to occupational peers, whereas the men were married to stay-at-home moms or part-time workers (piano teacher, for ex).
What does this mean for the point of this insipid article, aside from the fact that it panders to gender stereotypes that are rapidly fading?
1st) Highly intelligent women who manage to translate that into career success often find and keep partners. In Noer's article, to who was he comparing these women?
2) Successful, professional women may find men who appreciate their intelligence and ambition, but this too often still does not translate into an equitable division of labor in the house, or, of course, equitable societal support for high achieving women.
Disproportionate domestic responsibilities; steeper, more treacherous career ladders for women; and delaying childbirth could THEORETICALLY lead to outcomes such as childless marriages or divorce or infidelity, but because women are squeezed unfairly by the emotional and logistical demands of marriage and career and society's gendered expectations of how we should respond to these demands.
But of course, I'm preaching to the choir on this one.
This is a great site!
Isn't that the complaint women have about some career men?
Intensely focused on their careers and successful in the workplace, but clueless on how to be emotionally supportive and available?
"Let's face it, none of us clever girls are very happy, are we?"
I can't believe this woman is British. Didn't she just read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Hermione (the cleverest girl in Hogwarts) ended up very happy - married to the love of her life, mother to 2 children and a rewarding, demanding career in Magical Law Enforcement with the Ministry for Magic! Sheesh.!*
*I know Hermione is fictional, but so is most of the sh!t in this article so...
"Let's face it, none of us clever girls are very happy, are we?"
I can't believe this woman is British. Didn't she just read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Hermione (the cleverest girl in Hogwarts) ended up very happy - married to the love of her life, mother to 2 children and a rewarding, demanding career in Magical Law Enforcement with the Ministry for Magic! Sheesh.!*
*I know Hermione is fictional, but so is most of the sh!t in this article so...
"If anyone is looking for a reading challenge I recommend Stephen Jay Gould's _The Mismeasure of Man_ (sexism in title for ironic purposes)."
Also read Carol Tavris's _The Mismeasure of Woman_. :)
Hey, Sappho & Ismone:
Good call on questioning the comments of the "relationship expert."
The article states,
Dr Robert Holden, author of Success Intelligence, is at the cutting edge of psychological relationship research.
This is an extremely dubois claim. There are exactly 4 scientific articles by him or someone who shares his name. None of them is even remotely related to either interpersonal relationships or intelligence. The most recent one is 20 years old.
A person at the cutting edge of relationship research would have at least one scholarly research publication. Either this guy is being misrepresented as a charlatan, or he actually is one.
What knowledge I have of actual research on the article's topics would not support its premise.
The sexism in this article is obvious, but I suspect that some of the attitude it's reflecting is anti-intellectualism. That attitude seems to be more pervasive in America -- I've noticed that a lot of Hollywood movies put forth the notion that brainy people are cold, impersonal, and unwilling to trust their instincts -- but perhaps it's spreading overseas.
O dear. It seems that this woman has simply made a previous logical error. Simply put, she confused "me/I" with "everyone (who fits my category)". -I- am a successful, intelligent woman who has emotional difficulties that are reflected in my relationship problems, therefore EVERYONE who is a successful, intelligent woman has emotional difficulties that reflected in their relationship problem. This is the same problem that results in ethnocentrism, many arguments and generally is that standpoint of most 3 year olds. (I'm not sure of that, but there is a developmental stage where the child has essentially that attitude.)
Whats so frustrating about that standpoint is that it is extremely difficult to disprove to that person. Not only do they have -evidence-, but they are emotionally invested, because it is their own personal experience.
Whats more frustrating about is that everyone does it. You can try very hard to avoid doing it, but you can't be entirely free of it.
I think it probably has something to do with the way people categorize things for understanding. *shrug*
*If* this is actually a problem for some women, which I'm thinking from many of the other comments is contested if not discredited, it's got a really simple, non-gendered explanation: People (not just women) who are career focused are not spending significant portions of their time creating and maintaining romantic relationships.
Of course since society sees relationship maintenance as the female partner's duty, women who aren't interested in it may have trouble finding a male partner who is willing and able to share the emotional workload, much less shoulder the bulk of it.
One additional/alternative explanation of the "problem" is that the breadwinner/homemaker partnership model on which many jobs structure their demands on workers (not that it's ever been the norm outside the upper-middle class) doesn't really allow women to be both career and relationship superstars. Lord knows if I hadn't found my husband in college I wouldn't have time to look for one now. As it is, I struggle for time to talk to him during the week.
It always impresses me immeasurably when an article like this actually manages to make this into a problem with women. One would have to be wearing some serious blinders not to give it a headline like Despite Women's Progress, Many Men Still Want Doormats. Even if one were to elect to make this about women rather than the fact that a lot of men have a lot of evolving to do, it's still a rather impressive act of self-delusion to make this about a need for the women in question to change rather than being about how to maximise one's chances of finding a man who doesn't have hangups about strong, intelligent, independent women.
I think the give away to what this woman has internalized comes in the phrase "women with an over-developed intellect". We're talking about a centuries old idea here: that allowing women to learn and think will fundamentally alter the rest of their personality so as to make them unmarriageable.
I also find it odd that she blames ignoring a gut feeling against not getting involved with a man on intellect. Somehow, I expect that has a lot more to do with social pressure and the wish not to be alone (things that a well-developed intellect might help one see through).
Finally, the idea that being independent emasculates any potential partner is absurd. The best relationships I've been in (including currently) have been with men who openly stated that they admired my independence and, yes, my intellect.
Well, as an educated, intelligent engineer, let's review my career/relationship track:
(1) Living with boyfriend, me unemployed, him in grad school with no income
(2) Living with boyfriend, me full-time employed, him doing postdoc research and making 2/3 my salary
(3) Married, me unemployed, him doing postdoc research and making all our income
(4) Married, 1 child, me full-time employed, him making 1/2 my salary (and 1/3 after I got a few raises)
(5) Married, 2 children, me part-time employed, him finally full-time employed and making more than me (about time -- now I can go back to grad school)
The only reason it's been the same guy all along is because we get along well. Doesn't matter who's working more and who's doing the majority of cooking/cleaning/childcare. I consider myself lucky; if he wasn't the type to be comfortable with my career choices and ambitions then I wouldn't still be with him. He's not threatened by a woman who made more than he did for seven years, and I'm grateful for that.
Or, maybe my spouse and children are doomed to misery because of my unloving, unemotional, uninvolved lifestyle. DOOMED! DOOOOOOOOOMED!
I really wish people would stop trying to scare working women.
OK, this might have already been said...but I'm gonna say what I'm thinking.
Aside from the many reasons why people would spew BS like this...a big one is that women are more & more being expected to be able to be both nurturing/emotional/domestic as well as career-oriented & independent. granted, we have a long way to go, but it's happening more now than before (obviously). on the other hand, i dont feel like men are being encouraged to be nurturing & emotional. so, as we're progressing (as we should)...women are expected to know how to do both things, but men arent. therefore, men are still under the mindset that they should invest themselves in their careers, and that they should expect undivided attention/emotional support from women (but not to reciprocate).
and i agree with the last person to post (who, btw, i give kudos to for living what seems to be a great/balanced life). this all boils down to trying to scare women into not working. next article we see is going to be: "Why Having a Career Causes Cancer in Women"
Thanks :-) I wouldn't say either my life or relationship is perfect (whose is?), but the main reason I am satisfied with my choices is that I don't listen to "experts" about how I'm destroying my family. I know from experience that we can cope with a variety of situations, it just requires flexibility and personal investment. If a woman doesn't get that from her partner, it's his problem; but unfortunately it then becomes her problem.
Here's what bugs me about this.
Okay, here's one tiny part of what bugs me about this.
Why is marriage seen as a de facto success, and divorce as a de facto failure? I personally rank my divorce as one of the great successes and best decisions of my life.
And even if it were true that "clever, professional women were more likely to get divorced"... couldn't that be because they're financially independent and thus better able to get out of bad marriages?
I also agree with legallyblondeez. "People (not just women) who are career focused are not spending significant portions of their time creating and maintaining romantic relationships." But that's acceptable for men. Women are expected to bear the "emotional workload." Well put, lb.
You know, I celebrated my 40th birthday both single and successful in my writing career, and it felt great. I figured I was just one of those women who wouldn't marry, and decided that was fine by me; it wasn't a statement about my lack of "emotional intelligence" or other form of "unworthiness," just the way the chips fell in my life's twists and turns. Really, NOT a tragedy. Sure, I've made mistakes and poor choices -- so have most men. I don't see THEM beating themselves up over that, or pointing fingers at 50% of the human race.
Then life surprised me: I met the man of my dreams -- who is 100% supportive of my career, and he is not the only such man out there, as many other commenters could attest -- and am getting married for the first time at 43. It's STILL not a statement on my worthiness, or lack thereof, or of any supposed increase in EQ. It is, in short, UTTERLY IRRELEVANT. I was just as happy as a single career woman as I am part of a soon-to-be-married couple. The happiness comes from within.
These kinds of arguments are straw men erected to make women feel bad about themselves, feel powerless, so that they will be induced to cede their strength in hopes of gaining something -- except how happy can you be if you lose yourself? I'm just sorry to see a woman publicly falling for it...
"Showing interest in things other than a relationship shows a high level of emotional intelligence."
I agree with Samhita entirely on this point. And I don't agree that women who are invested in their work are necessarily emotionally dense or sabotaging their love lives - you could just as easily argue the same of women who are obsessed with "catching a man" and little else. Although perhaps that's the point: no matter what you do, it won't be the "right" thing to do.
Personally, as an active and ambitious woman, I've never found these traits to be deleterious to my relationships (except, perhaps, that they make me less likely to embark on them as I have alternative sources of fulfillment). Perhaps because I've always been in relationships with men who have their own driving passions, I've never been asked to tone mine down.
If she really had "emotional intelligence" she'd stop and think why she actually gives a damn whether she's in a relationship or not. (I'll take "brainwashed tool of the patriarchy" for $200, Alex.")
Funny how that works in my case at least -- I don't care whether I'm in a relationship or not because I'm a happy "clever girl" with or without a relationship, and I practically have to beat people off with sticks. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere, too...
Smart women = fool in love? What a bunch of bullshit! I simply don't buy that career women are worse at love than non-career driven women. I've known plenty of stories of women who are not so career-minded but get screwed over anyway. Many of them have kids and end up living below the poverty level. But the media never talks about them. Poor single moms are either "welfare queens" or simply invisble to them. You just can't win with these bastards. you're either too smart. Or too dumb. Not to mention that their "research" is so full of holes that you can drive a boat right through. Well, fuck them. Since when is our personal lives their business?
I'm a junior in college and some of my friends unfortunately aspire to be "trophy wives", and one has actually listed MRS. on facebook as her main concentration. They joke (or maybe they're serious?!) about spending time hanging around the medical building to pick up boys in med school, rather than spend th