For years we’ve been seeing stories that essentially repeat the
same mantra: smart guys prefer dumb women.
Smart women, naturally, are offended and angered by these
stories (as they are, indeed, by a lot of things). That only proves
how stupid smart men are, they say.
But most of the stories I’ve seen have it wrong on all
counts. If I may speak on behalf of smart guys (hold your
laughter), it is wrong to assume intelligent men are only looking
for bimbos with ginormous breast implants. That comes later. When a
guy turns 48.
The smart guy has no interest in marrying a “dumb” blonde.
Nor is he intimidated by brainy women. Nor does he want a docile
Stepford wife. More likely, what he wants is a girl like dear old
mom (assuming dear old mom isn’t Barbara Boxer): a traditional,
old-fashioned homemaker.
Intelligent men do not consider this “marrying down.”
Smart men (heck, even dumb men) know that a woman who is a
financial advisor at Smith Barney is unlikely to give up her career
to bake pies for the Mother’s Club. Her time is too
“valuable.”
Conversely, most ambitious gals won’t give a guy without
an MBA and a BMW the time of day. They are loath to give up a
rewarding and fulfilling career as a tax attorney for the drudgery
of making a home and raising a family. They want to date
“interesting” men. CNBC’s Nicole Lapin recently confessed that she
knew a romance was over when her date failed to get her reference
to a line (“I know it when I see it”) from a 1964 opinion by U.S.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart. THBBFT!
Looooser!
Understandably, a woman wants to respect her guy, and it’s
hard to respect someone who is less smart or successful or educated
or cannot recognize references from famous SCOTUS concurring
opinions.
SMART CAREER WOMEN could learn a thing from smart career
guys. As one hedge fund guy told the Gloss, alpha females
should find themselves a nice, mellow beta male, perhaps a hipstery
type who works in a used bookstore or a coffee shop. A guy who is
smart, but not particularly ambitious, and who would have a hot,
pretentious meal waiting when she gets home at 10:30 p.m. Instead,
smart gals insist on going after the “interesting” alpha males, to
the exclusion of the rest of us.
Speaking for myself, I rather enjoy having a spouse who is
smarter than I am. I am thankful that, in a pinch, she could come
up with the square root of 28 in radical form. Since I got married
I do fewer dumb things because she won’t let me, so I sleep better
at night having fewer regrets.
Also, I am not one of those competitive guys who has to
earn more than his wife. Sure, it would be nice to earn more than
her. (Hell, it would be nice to earn more than my teenage son.)
Fortunately, I don’t suffer self-esteem issues. (I’m a journalist,
after all.) Nor is my wife one of those ambitious career women who
is hated by all of the other women in the office. She is quite
willing to give up her job, career, whatever, and stay home and
raise children. Just as soon as we figure a way to do that on my
salary — after which we intend to tackle the U.S. debt
crisis.
Maybe it’s pointless to try to plumb the depths of the
human heart. The novelist Ernest Hemingway married four smart,
educated women and couldn’t stay married to three-fourths of them.
James Joyce, on the other hand, married a chambermaid named Nora
Barnacle, and even though he was neurotic and a drunkard, Miss
Barnacle “stuck with him.”
I guess what works for you is whatever works for
you.
You don’t need to be a smart guy to know that.
