#99: A real man loves a woman with confidence, purpose and brains.
04 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
I think it begins in your early teens that you begin to try to fit yourself into some mould that men will accept and seek out. I remember being a teen and starting to wonder, “Are there any men who find intelligence attractive?”, since the only girls I saw getting dates were either incredibly dumb or trying hard to look as dumb as they could. If I disagreed, the look of disdain on a teenage boy’s face was palpable. But as the years progressed I, like many other women, learned the fine art of either not saying what was truly on my mind, or at the least, looking complacent and impressed with everything a man said. Every time I bit my tongue I felt a little less of a person, but consoled myself with the age old question, “Who wants to be alone?”.
As I got into my twenties, I did occasionally find a partner or two who revelled in my questions about life, who delighted in deep conversations that provoked even deeper thought. I got boyfriends who said I seemed ‘strong’ and did not shy away from this verbal diarrhea that was so intimidating to men in my teen years. I also started to see the vast difference between the men I had tried to pretend I was dumb around and the ones who liked me as is. Each time I had pretended I was less of a woman (this came in every form, from telling myself I was not smarter than them, to actually forgetting my own good sense in situations until I ended up hurt by their stupidity), the end result was that I was rewarded with a partner who was not a good man.
Once I dated an abusive man in my teens who was completely illiterate and became incredibly threatened when I was accepted into and left for university. This is a classic example of settling for less, and knowing it is less the second I opened my mouth to disagree the first time and he flew into a rage. Real men, the kind you want to share your life with, expect you to disagree and most certainly are not angry when you attempt to get an education or do anything that might benefit you.
And so in my twenties I realized that the high price of trying to find someone by not being my whole self was that I would end up with someone who was not wholly themself. Almost always, a man like this would be abusive, a cheater, or simply not the best partner. The most wonderful men were the ones who did respond to intelligent conversation, to challenges I posed and who revelled in my success.
So in short, being alone because you are smart is not a penance, as it may seem at first, it is a gift.
By the time I reached my late twenties and thirties, I realized I would not settle for anything less than a man who challenged me, was challenged by me and who expected me to be the most interesting, strong woman I could be to match up to his own similar qualities. The beauty of this was that when I did question a man’s integrity, or tell him what my honest opinions were, if he ran far and wide I was confident that I had successfully avoided a lesser man. Instead of feeling less myself (and wondering how I could dumb myself down or fit into a mould for him), I felt happy knowing I had weeded out another man who was not right for me.
If you are a teen and wondering why being the best baseball player, the smartest girl in the classroom or the winner of the Mathematics award is not attractive to men, fear not. Any man who fears a woman with power is not one worth pursuing. Any man who wants someone who agrees with their every word is a waste of your time. This seems unreal and a strange concept when you are standing at the dance alone. But as the years progress, you will see that the men who feared your great accomplishments are rewarded only by women who cannot accomplish anything except to agree with their every word.
There is nothing more satisfying than finding a man who sees you succeed and says, “I am proud of/amazed by/so attracted to you”. As you and men get older, you start to see that the men who seek out the smartest girl in the class will often have the happiest life, as they chose a woman with purpose, who will live their lives well. These women are often the best mothers, the best at their field of work, or even the happiest as they live their lives the way they want to.
There are women I know in their 40′s and 50′s who have still not understood this. Again and again these friends come to me distraught that the man whom they knew inside was not striving for their best interests goes astray. They cry and ask me why he would change like this? But the truth is, men who do not inspire you to become more, do more and think more were wrong to begin with and the relationship is destined to go sour as soon as you either assert your own power, or he gets tired of asserting his.
A real man does not ask you to be quiet when you disagree. A real man does not try to be more than you, or ask you to not succeed so he can remain in power. A real man loves a woman with confidence, purpose and brains.
So go ahead, ask that question he does not know the answer to….tell him your theory on feminism, or how you were the valedictorian of your high school, beat him at chess or explain the theory of relativity to him. If he is a true ‘catch’, his eyes will light up and he will be there in the morning, waiting for your next great move.
