Why Are Educated Women More Likely To Be Single?

There has been much discussion online with regard to the educated woman and her relative lack of romantic success. Much of this dialogue has been intended to explain this state of affairs and clarify both the source and resolution of the educated woman’s sexual conundrum. In a recent piece at EliteDaily.com, Lauren “LMoney” Martin offers her own take on the subject and, in the process, brings us much closer to the clarification that prior discourse has sought.

But why is this? Why don’t men want women with whom they can converse and who challenge them? When did the aversion to strong and intelligent women become a code orange? When did everyone just want to go to the Bahamas and lie around?

This quote from LMoney puts a spotlight on one of the primary sources of the romantic malaise plaguing so many highly educated women: arrogance.

Women like LMoney are often very quick to point to male arrogance as an explanation for romantic disconnects, but they too often neglect to acknowledge their equal failing in that regard. In describing the alleged male aversion to female intelligence in the quote above, LMoney asks why “men don’t want women with whom they can converse and who challenge them.” The fundamental implication here is as follows: only educated women like LMoney are capable of conversing with men. Only educated women like LMoney are capable of challenging men. Women who didn’t attend prestigous universities and lack high GPAs are not capable of conversing with men.

The reality, of course, is quite contrary to this. Not every woman who went to a great school and graduated with a high GPA is particularly skilled in conversation with the opposite sex. Just as a significant number of extremely intelligent men find their interpersonal communication skills wanting (especially when applied to the opposite sex), so do intelligent women sometimes struggle to connect with men they find interesting. Many of the women most skilled at conversing with the opposite sex do not have the greatest academic credentials.

To presume the conversational inferiority of another individual simply because they don’t have your degree is, at worst, extraordinarily arrogant and, at best, simply misinformed. Your ability to converse with the opposite sex is not determined by your GPA or the quality of your school. You don’t need a PhD to communicate with or “challenge” a man.

This is a fundamental issue. LMoney and many women like her are quite confident in their possession of an advantage that they do not actually have over other people, and go as far as to use this confidence to justify looking down on others who they falsely believe unable to do what they do. If you make a habit of running around with an unearned air of superiority such as this, it may be the case that you find your opportunities for interpersonal romantic fulfillment lacking.

In an article by “The Wire,” financial reporter, John Carney, gives one explanation for this phenomenon, deducing, “successful men date less successful women not because they want ‘women to be dumb’ but rather because they want ‘someone who prioritizes their life in a way that’s compatible with how you prioritize yours.’”
Basically, they want someone who isn’t ever going to let her career come before making dinner and pleasing them first.

They want a woman who is dumb enough to make them a priority and, unfortunately, for all those sane, rational and intelligent women out there, there’s a hefty number of these women out there.

Here we find more of the fundamental arrogance described above. The implications above are as follows:

1. Women who make their men (and families) a priority are dumb.

2. Women like LMoney who prioritize their careers and do not make men and families a priority are the only women who are “sane, rational and intelligent.”

In short, LMoney is making the following argument: “Those who do not hold the same perspective on the intersection of romantic and professional life that I hold are insane, unreasonable, and unintelligent.” This argument is continued here:

Those women who teach you, show you and help you grow are being picked over, combed through and dumped for girls with shirts that show a little too much skin and platform heels.

The assumptions in this sentence are as follows:

1. That girls who wear platform heels and relatively revealing tops cannot teach a man or help him grow

2. That women who can teach a man and help him grow never wear revealing tops and platform heels

Again, these are ignorant statements at best. At worst, they display a startling level of arrogance that would be difficult to find attractive in any human being.

The true extent of the arrogance displayed above is only magnified by passages such as these:

A study conducted with 121 British participants reported findings that females with high intelligence in male/female relationships were seen as problematic.

LMoney claims to speak for “intelligent” women, and yet consistently publishes decidedly unintelligent statements online. The sentence above, for example, is perhaps best worded as follows:

A British study involving 121 participants found that females with high intelligence were considered problematic in heterosexual relationships.

Granted, everyone makes mistakes—nobody is perfect, in writing or otherwise. If you intend to go on and on about your own intellectual superiority, however, it may be prudent to ensure that the quality of your writing is up to a high standard, lest you be mistaken for one of the “dumb” individuals whose perspectives you seem so intent on shaming and dismissing.

Again, I find this to be the fundamental problem with too many women like LMoney: they think they bring far more to the table than they actually do, and are so confident in this belief that they base a tremendous portion of their self-worth and identity on it. Since this belief implies that they are already in possession of everything a member of the opposite sex could want, they don’t spend much time actually examining what the opposite sex wants and correcting any potential deficiencies they may have. As they age and begin to perceive a disconnect between their belief in their own superiority and the reality they live in, they end up in a difficult position. Because they’ve been so convinced of their superiority for so long, they’re entirely unprepared to deal with a reality in which they are not ideal and may actually have to make some personal improvements in order to get what they want or (GASP) settle for something else.

They also spend so much energy embodying the ideal of the independent woman (loudly, proudly, and consistently proclaiming that they do not prioritize men and don’t really need them for anything) that they compromise their ability to find the romantic gratification they subconsciously crave. Good relationships involve a degree of mutual dependence, with each partner recognizing the value of the other and treating them accordingly. In a good relationship, it is typical for both partners to develop an actual need for one another — their presence becomes crucial to the wellbeing of the other. They become a priority to one another because of how much they matter to one another.

One can imagine it being substantially more difficult to begin and maintain such a relationship when you have spent so much energy investing in the idea that individuals of the opposite sex are totally unnecessary and fundamentally unworthy of the serious effort needed to bring and keep them in your life. How difficult must it be to maintain a serious relationship when you’ve spent the bulk of your life marking the individual you seek to enter a relationship with as a disposable and unessential accessory (at best) and an unnecessary nuisance (at worst)?

Perhaps LMoney and others like her should consider such questions in their bid to discover the source of their romantic malaise. They may find the answers quite illuminating.

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