Gender bias is an absolute reality in our human world. And perhaps the hardest thing about it, is this bias is subconscious. It exists even in the minds of people who are the most open minded, forward thinking and liberal. And it exists even in the minds of those who protest against it and profess sentiments to the opposite. A great many gender biases exist. But today, we are going to look directly at one of the most extreme examples of it by looking at the relationship conundrum of the successful woman in todays’ world.
This issue begins with how personality is perceived. When we use the word success in this discussion, what we mean is a person who has achieved worldly success. This is a person who has set out to achieve something, usually in the context of a career. And doing this requires a whole host of qualities, such as competence, discipline, passion, courage, leadership, commitment, assertiveness, persistence, intelligence, drive, ambition, willpower, strength, confidence and often times competition.
The problem is, again and again in experiments and studies, these qualities in a man, cause people to perceive him as more likeable. And these qualities in a woman cause people to perceive her as more unlikable. In fact, this perception of women being unlikable due to these qualities increases in direct proportion to the degree of the quality. So, for example, the more competent a woman is, the less likable both men and women find her to be.
This issue only deepens when we venture into the relationship lives of successful men vs. successful women. So that you can understand it first hand, I’m going to introduce you to a couple of people.
The first person I am going to introduce you to is Harriet. Harriet started out as a real estate agent. Then she opened a brokerage. Now, she owns a mortgage loan corporation and several brokerages. Her entire life is organized around her very large, very taxing career. The first question I want to ask you is, what kind of relationship would be the best for Harriet? What kind of partner does she need?
Harriet wants to be in a relationship where she can live a together life with a man badly. But what Harriet needs in a relationship is support. She needs a man who can really own her wellbeing as his main focus. A man who is available. A man who can prioritize her and contribute, caretake and lend his energy towards her wellbeing on a daily basis. She needs a man who isn’t out there in the world focusing on his own success and doing his own thing. But who will lend his energy to what is needed in the life she has built. And without losing his masculinity. Afterall, she needs those masculine qualities in her life. Things like containment and protection and encouragement etc. Pay attention to your first reaction to this… How do you feel and what do you think when you hear this?
If you are like the vast majority of people, you will immediately feel resistance to this. You will feel like there is no equality in the relationship because Harriet will be on top and he will be “less than”. Perhaps you will feel like this is too much to ask of a man. No man would want to do this. Like he would be giving away his life to be there for her and that is really unhealthy. Like it sounds like a real one-way relationship because he would be giving so much of himself for her, but not getting much in return. Like no man who is genuinely in his masculine energy would ever say yes to this. Like a man needs to create something for himself and create a success of himself. Like any man in this situation would be emasculated and would be putting himself in a super vulnerable position.
Now I want to introduce you to Arthur. Arthur is an entrepreneur who started a company that manufactures semiconductors for the electronics industry. He has his eye on winning over the global market. Arthur’s life is organized around his dedication to his career goals. The first question I want to ask you is, what kind of relationship would be the best for Arthur? What kind of partner does he need?
What Arthur needs in a relationship is support. He needs a woman who can really make his success her main focus. A woman who is available. A woman who can prioritize him and lend her energy towards his wellbeing on a daily basis. A woman who enjoys contribution. He needs a woman who isn’t out there in the world focusing on her own success and doing her own thing. Instead, he needs a woman who will join his very large life and lend her energy to what is needed in the life he has built. Now, I want you to really pay attention to your first reaction to this… How do you feel and what do you think when you hear this?
If you are like the vast majority of people, you will feel like this makes perfect sense. Like this is an incredible opportunity that the right woman would be lucky to have. Like Arthur has so much to offer the right woman. Things like being provided for and being kept safe and being a part of something big and having an important purpose and role. Like there are so many women out there who would love to do this. Like it’s a good energy exchange. Like it is the perfect recipe for greater and greater success.
What I want you to see is that both these people are in the same position and the same situation, and therefore offer similar things and have the same needs. However, in most people’s minds, those needs make perfect sense and are right and good for one, but don’t make sense and are bad and wrong for the other. One is perceived as a taker. The other, a giver. One is perceived as an upstanding guy with a lot to offer. The other, a narcissistic bitch.
Arthur did find a woman who was very happy to slide into this role in his life. They have been married for several years now. Harriet on the other hand, is caught in a tormenting conundrum. Why? A successful woman is looking for a unicorn, specifically because of this world of gender bias and other gender related beliefs. Are you ready for the conundrum?
Because nearly every man has this gender bias, and are made to feel pathetic by society if they were to step into a role in a relationship like what a successful woman needs, she will really, really struggle to find what she needs in a relationship. Because of this, her partnerships will seem to be a never-ending revolving door.
The men who sign up to join her life because of what she has to offer and are available, continue to eventually turn out to be responsibility averse and passive. They are looking for a woman who will take all the pressure and all the responsibility. A woman who, like a mother, will take care of them and lead and carry them through life. A woman who is competent and can fend for herself and them. The exact opposite of what she needs. Essentially, she ends up with little boys masquerading as men.
On the other hand, when a successful woman dates men who are engaged in their own successful careers, essentially a power couple dynamic, the relationship goes south even faster. First, because their respective careers call them in different directions. They don’t have a common goal. They are not really living a together life. Rather, they are like two passing ships in the night. Neither can prioritize the other. And each carries a lot of pressure. Pressure which implies the need for support, which is being given to them by other people rather than each other. So, they naturally drift apart and grow closer to the people who are actually there with them in the respective experiences they are having and who they are being supported by.
They have the same needs, needs which neither of them can offer each other. And they offer the same things in a relationship, so neither of them really values getting those things. There is no energy exchange. Power couples only work for couples when increasing power is what each is after as a priority, and therefore each increases each other’s power in some way, even if they spend their life apart. Which is not what most people who already have a lot of success and power need.
When a successful woman dates a man who is either retired or so wealthy that they don’t need to work anymore, they tend to not be interested in joining her life and supporting her. They don’t want to support and they are done with the hustle. They want to focus on fun and on their passions. They want a woman to join them in all of their adventures, which a successful woman cannot do, because this takes her away from what her focus needs to be on.
To make matters worse, when a successful woman complains or cries to the people in her life about this horrible place she is caught in, the most common responses that she will get is these two things: “Why don’t you just pay someone for the support you are needing from a man?” and “Can’t you just learn to be ok with being alone?”
Think of saying this to Arthur, from our previous example… That because of the life he chose, he doesn’t really have much to offer a woman. That he has to be ok with a woman not really supporting him in his success, because she has her own life and goals to think of. That he should be ok living a separate life from the woman in his life. That he can just pay someone to meet the needs he has for a female partner. Or that he really just needs to learn to be ok alone.
As a successful woman, it will very quickly begin to feel like no one likes you, no one wants you to exist and like you are expected to get your success with no resources of support available to you, rather that you must be supportive to others while trying to succeed alone.
This conundrum will only change when we change a great many things. First and foremost, we need to face our gender bias. We all have it, whether we want to admit it or not. Second, we need to see that the gender biases that we have, do not work anymore. Third, we need to genuinely change our attitude towards women who exhibit the currently disliked character traits that are synonymous with success. Fourth, we need to change our cultural attitude towards men being in different roles. Right now, the only role that offers a man status and respect and that is valued, is one role. The role of a man oriented towards his own success, building his own kingdom and who is a provider. This is to try to fit all men into a tiny box and to tell all men that this is the only true expression of masculinity. When this is not true at all. Nor has it been true throughout history. If you look back over time, there were many roles within any kingdom or society that offered a man esteem. And many of these were support roles. Today, all that has changed and it isn’t valid for any man to be anything else and it isn’t valid for a man to want any other thing for himself. This is tragic on so many levels, for both men and women and for society at large. There are so many different expressions of masculinity. Not every man is born for his masculine expression to look like our current model or to be in this role we expect him to be in. And it is going to be much harder for men to break this current limited paradigm if the rest of us, and the whole of society, is maintaining it and not affording him esteem or seeing him as a man for anything else.
