Don’t Marry a Smart Woman?
The editor of Forbes is trying desperately to put his magazine out of business. This rubbish belongs in Maxim, not Forbes.
Statistics show that couples are more likely to stay married if each person feels that the other doesn’t have many better options. This is the most important factor in success of a long-term relationship, and if you’ve paid attention in your life, you can probably cite several confirming examples from your own experience.
Armed with this knowledge, you have two ways to approach a relationship. One is to look for someone who is going to be financially and socially enslaved by your relationship and tightly control her opportunities in life. As long as she can rationalize that, “no other woman would put up with his crap”, she’ll feel like YOU are lucky to have HER, too, and the relationship will work. This isn’t even cro-magnon; it’s neanderthal. The problem with this system is that it’s a race to the bottom bounded only by the collective personal insecurities of the participants.
The other approach is to make sure both participants have high self-esteem. If you hook up with an insecure partner, you’re going to have to work 10x as hard to pretend to be a loser so that she feels you are lucky to have her. You really don’t want that. Marry a smart woman with high self-confidence instead.
So, what is it that keeps a smart woman feeling like she is lucky to have you? Just don’t act like a jealous and insecure idiot like the Forbes editor. Most intelligent women have crossed paths with enough men like that, that they’re going to feel lucky to be with a guy who’s not. And if you do act like the Forbes editor, she’ll have plenty of smart guys at the office letting her know that she has better options — you’re better off marrying the nanny and racing to the bottom.