I’ve been reading about how successful women are outclassing their male counterparts and remaining single, and who’d have thunk it, I have something to say about that.
The article on MSN says that successful women remain single for two main reasons. Firstly that they intimidate men, who would rather take the alpha role in the relationship and find it hard (or impossible) to give that role to the woman. The second reason is that they’re time-poor, with their careers and interests swallowing up swathes of time and preventing them from meeting eligible guys.
Both of those reasons make sense, but there’s an elephant in the room.
A bloody great big elephant.
Where does success come from? It comes from making decisions that take you on a journey that matters, and demands that you engage with what’s happening and make the journey a priority.
Success is about finding your own path and making a deep decision to follow it.
That, coupled with today’s climate where performance and consistency are revered in completely skewed ways, means that a high degree of self-reliance is required to be successful. If you don’t make it happen, even through delegation, negotiation or inspiration, then it won’t happen.
Then throw in the continuing pressure to be financially responsible and self-reliant (particularly with the current conditions) and the American predilection for independence and optimism, an it’s no wonder that you learn to take responsibility for getting things done at an increasingly young age.
You become a tool for your own success, and it’s through your actions and decisions that you keep that tool sharpened.
This all forges a self-reliance that becomes embedded in your bones. And that’s a hard habit to break.
It’s this habit that makes it all the more difficult to give space in your life to a relationship which you’re (at best) just 50% in control of.
The elephant in the room is that the control, independence and self-reliance that have become tools for achieving success in today’s world, are the very things that need to be compromised in order to nurture a meaningful relationship with a future.
I work with a whole load of women who’re successful professionally, but who are less confident in their personal lives – and it stems from the same habit. I see this a lot, and the truth is that I’ve also learned to be ultra-independent and have a hard time making that compromise too. I work on managing it, and I’m confident that I can let it go for the right person.
Let me know how you deal with self-reliance and relationships.
- Other articles you might like:
- How confident women are seen by the Average Joe
- The BIG problem with climbing the career ladder
- Confidence & Success – Which Comes First?
June 11th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I think I have been fairly successful in my life: I have good qualifications, am creative and physically active, bought my own house aged 23 and have a close circle of family and friends; but being ’successful’ is now proving to be a hindrance.
My dad taught me to be independent from a very early age. At 33 I feel ready for a long-term committed relationship… but as a self-reliant woman I am discovering that it is difficult to find.
So I’ve decided to sell the home I have developed and ran for the last decade because I now feel it is holding me back… keeping me in a country and a career that no longer serve who I have become. I long for some freedom and fun instead of working hard to bring the money in and pay the bills… it is a lonely path when you have nobody to share that success with; not to mention financially restrictive in today’s current climate.
Like so many people of my generation, I am having a ‘life check’. I travelled the world on my own aged 29, came back and started a 5 year plan to emmigrate. Maybe it was unrealistic that I would find a partner to share this journey with. After all why should I expect someone to give up their life here to come along with me?
I am proud I don’t have to rely on another person for a lot of things but lving on my own for 10 years has made me selfish and I wonder whether the scarey thought of compromise sends signals out to the opposite sex!? But I would be willing to try – if they let me!
June 15th, 2008 at 9:15 am
I don’t mean to pigeon-hole Claire, but it’s a familiar story to me. You should be rightly proud of everything you’ve achieved and everything you’ve become. And I think it’s fantastic that you have the guts to do something about your situation.
It IS difficult to find someone when you’ve become so successful and self-reliant, but it IS possible.
That fear you mention can communicate itself to the opposite sex, so take some time to work this through and integrate it. I know what you’re talking about because I have the same feeling about compromise – and I suspect many other men do (although they won’t admit it).
The confident thing to do is to be honest with yourself and carry on with what matters to you.
Will you let me know how you get on?
October 20th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Yeah, single women “confident”. That’s why I know of a “single confident” woman in nyc who put career before everything. Now she is a 40 something Wealthy Loser, stuck in a dead-end life dating dead-end married guys and boozing, smoking and snorting her way into oblivion. Yup, she sure is confident and happy!
October 20th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Appreciate your input Jim, and you’ve just illustrated my point perfectly. It’s much easier to be confident in your career than it is your personal life, and women who focus on their careers learn habits of self-reliance that make it hard to let people in.
They learn to trust themselves in their career because they see results and can control what happens, but don’t have that trust in their personal lives.
Your friends situation is awful, but perhaps the most awful thing is how common it is. She needs to know she can have something better, and I hope she finds her way out…
December 14th, 2008 at 1:33 am
What I’ve noticed about my own personal development is that I’ve seemed to become more confident as my relationship has progressed.
I’ve been in the same relationship for 14+ years. For most of the relationship, I was passive-aggressive, and definitely not the slightest bit “alpha”.
But with encouragement from my husband to make my needs known,I’m much more self-reliant than I used to be.
I’m also a private person and spend lots of private time running, reading, etc.
This is my preferred situation–lots of space, privacy and independence in the context of a stable relationship.
But, my husband is an artist and he’s the same way vis a vis privacy and space. Also, we have a lot in common, so we enjoy spending time together. That helps, but it didn’t happen overnight. We work together too (have an art gallery, studio, school).
December 14th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
@Ruth: That’s brilliant Ruth, and it’s the sign of a healthy relationship that you can grow and learn together.
If you can find a partner who can let you grow and nurtue the best parts of you you’vee really got something special. For a lot of women it’s making those first few steps to begin a relationship and allowing themselves to be vulnerable that prevents that from happening.
Your work sounds very cool indeed!
February 11th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
After two serious relationships, I choose to stay single to devote my time to my five children. I’ve never met a good man, and I doubt I ever will.
Why should I choose to devote my time and efforts to a man who only grows dependent on them? Why reward mediocrity?
My time is better spent nurturing my children, so they won’t grow up to be losers like all the men I’ve come in contact with.
And I’m not the only one. There’re lots of divorced mothers who are choosing not to share their lives with a man again.
February 12th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
@North: I love that you’re dedicated to your children, but be careful of 3 things. 1. Don’t let your experience close you off to a new relationship. There are good men in the world – I guarantee you. 2. Being in a healthy relationship does not equal ‘rewarding mediocrity’, far from it. 3. Watch that you’re not projecting your ‘no good men’ belief onto your children – you don’t want to put them off before they’ve even started.
December 4th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Hi Steve,
I understand what you are saying. But I wonder, is it not better to want a partner than to need one? That is, I feel that self-reliance makes a woman more able to appreciate a man for who he is rather than what he can do for her. Sad to say – and I think this is not gendered – people who truly do ‘find their own path and make a deep decision to follow it’ (and this, as you will know, means so much more than what your career is) are rare, and often trouble those who are following a prescribed/proscribed path. I am confident in all aspects of my life but this has not made it easier to find a partner, far from it. Most men of my own age seem to wish to ‘tidy me up/put me in my place’ somehow. Younger men are very attracted to me but for obvious reasons are troubled by their own attraction and run away. It is not always true that confidence attracts people. What you don’t touch on is that, because true confidence is so rare, and perhaps especially in women (and generally requires much inner work to get there) it is often perceived as deeply troubling. I am holding out for a confident man who has followed his own path but, at 37, I am afraid I am losing faith. At this age it is certainly true that one starts to be ever more self-reliant, because one has to. But I think this is an outcome, not a cause. The fact is that, for many many people, conformity is actually vastly more attractive than individuality, because it is ostensibly safe. Because I am very much my own woman, this is perceived often as dangerous. But this is not to do with an inability to give and receive, it is rather a sad fact of contemporary life. I would be interested in what you have to say about the negative outcomes, in terms of relationship, of individuation.
Best regards,
Susie
December 7th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
@Susie: Thanks for such a considered comment! You’re absolutely right, it’s better to want a relationship than to feel you need one, and there’s another post about that right here on the blog. That said, if you realise that having someone in your life is a need because your values (and therefore your individuality sings when it’s there) then there’s nothing wrong with that – the key is to need it for the right reasons. You’re also right in that men (or should I say “insecure men”) have a hard time with confident, successful women because of the gender roles they’ve been brought up with and the expectations they’ve developed, so I’m not surprised to hear about your difficulty in finding someone.
It’s an interesting point you raise about people with true confidence being deeply troubling, and I’m not sure I grasp it fully. People are only deeply troubled by something that they either fear or crave – it either scares the crap out of you or you envy it, and there can be all kinds of reasons behind both of those. Your point about the safety of conformity speaks to this too – the insecure mind twists the need for safety into a filter of life, and that means missing out on a whole heap of the good stuff. I get that, but true confidence is quiet and graceful, it’s not ramming it down peoples throats. I don’t think this is your situation, but I also think there’s a big difference between being an individual and being fiercely individual.
Sometimes it’s the matter of fact attitude that confident people can exhibit – “Here I am, here’s my life, take it or leave because I’m okay” – that might put someone off, and I think I’ve suffered from this myself. The trick then, I think, is to find a balance between that confidence, openness and honesty and the passion, spontaneity and vulnerability that comes with the start of a relationship. A total veneer of confidence is off-putting because there’s no room and no role for someone else, but true confidence is as much about your flaws and quirks as it is your values and strengths. Sometimes it’s letting those through that connects people together.
Anyone with other thoughts?
January 4th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
[...] with the theory that is laid out in the following article of why so many women are choosing to be “Solo-lifers” however, I still view the act of consistently choosing losers a bad move. Call it a bad business [...]