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.
- Posts that are probably related:
- 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…