Wednesday, March 20, 2002

"Stuck-Up"/Conceitedness In Romantic Relationships, i.e., Marriage

This elitist attitude can also carry over into romantic/marriage relationships.  Which I think is probably a good thing.  I see several dating advice articles in mags that admonish people for wanting romantic relationships with successful, career-driven people.  The articles say that these people are being stuck up, shallow, superficial, conceited, materialistic.

But hang on a second.  No, it is not "materialistic" or "shallow" to value achievements.  They worked hard to achieve it!  That is not "shallow."  That is the antithesis of shallow.

I myself value accomplishment very much for myself in my own personal life.  I respect myself enough to set clear goals for myself and establish my career.  So I think, or at least I hope, that I can have a guy who respects himself enough to be goal-driven as well.  That’s not being shallow; that's being realistic.  I prefer someone who is an equal to myself, whom I have things in common with, who comes from a similar background to my own, with whom I can actually have a conversation.

Now, there are a couple of instances in which this attitude would be shallow.  If a guy is an assistant manager at Best Buy, but he expects to get a girl that is a genetic engineer with a doctorate degree.  Or a guy has an MBA and is starting his own tech consulting business, and the girl who thinks herself deserving had barely graduated with a sociology degree. Or one of them comes from a monied background and had culture and travel and breeding, and the other is from a poverty-stricken no-class background.

Romance and relationships are about emotional connection.  And how do you attain an emotional bond?  You have to get to know this person first.  That means it must be a genuine friendship.  So believe it or not, you have to actually be very practical with this.  In so-called matters of love, it is best to keep your head on straight.  I have just made a case for morals, emotions, and romance being interconnected with practicality.

If you value education, then a person that does not value education is not going to be a good match for you.  You hear people all the time claiming that if someone aims for an education and a successful career, this somehow makes them shallow.

They say crap such as, 'oh you cannn'ttt help whom you fall in love with.'  Bullcrap.  You most certainly can help whom you fall in love with.

Let us begin at the beginning.  Well, how does one fall in love with another?  Like so.  You have to get to know the person first.  Understand them on an emotional level.   Get to know them as a human being.

You have to find common ground, find something to talk about.  It is best to find someone who has similar values and outlook on life.  Also someone that has similar goals in life.  Someone that is very accomplishment-driven is not going to be a great match for someone that likes to sit around and like the hippies 'just be.'

You have to find someone you actually have things in common with.  Find some common ground.  So that you have something to actually talk about with each other.  People are best in a relationship together if they come from similar backgrounds, and had similar experiences growing up.  That way they can relate to each other and can understand where the other is coming from.  You have to be practical and reasonable about your love life.

I saw a TV show once where a guy who was a college professor wanted to ask his hot neighbor out on a date.  But then he found out she was a customer service associate (i.e., cashier) in a store, so he decided she wasn't up to his standards.  Then the hot neighbor was all mad and livid and offended that the guy turned her down for that reason.  She was insulted that the guy turned her down on the grounds of the kind of work she does.

Am I the only person who thinks that what the guy did was okay and justified?  The two of them have nothing in common.  They live on the same paved road -- that's about it.  Other than that, they would not have anything to talk about with each other.  They do not see life from similar viewpoints.  She was mad because the guy apparently thought he was better than her.

Well, I'm sorry, but yeah it's true.  He is better than you are.  You are a grown-up adult woman in your thirties and you still work in a store?  What in the world makes you think you are on the same level as that guy?  So basically you are saying that the guy planned ahead for his future throughout the course of his life.  He went to college and hopefully majored in something useful.  He managed to secure a very prestigious job as a college professor.  The TV show had this guy character as having been married previously and having a kid.  Oh well, divorces happen.  At least he and ex-wife were married when they conceived the kid.

.....And the lady has the same job that any pimply pubescent (hehe, Sabrina the Teenage Witch) high school kid has.  This demonstrates that she has very poor planning skills, very poor decision making capabilities.  She was not responsible enough to plan practical-wise for her future.  She did not bother to make sure she would be least a little higher up the social stratification by now than some adolescent's first foray into the job market that his mom probably had to help him get.  ....I don't remember if the lady character was married or not, or had a kid out of wedlock or not.

So she wasn't good enough for him.  Fine with me.  Look, you do not have any sort of 'right' to date anybody.  Noone is obligated to date you, especially not out of some weird misguided notion of forced 'equality' among the populace.  And by the way, if the guy is so stuck-up and horrible, why do you want to date him at all?  Go find a nice customer service associate such as yourself, for yourself.

On a similar note, I am not understanding why so many women are saying they do <not> want a man that is successful and good at his job.  I feel like I see this everywhere.  On TV shows;  in women's magazines, tons of them, there are articles galore that preach to women that they should not go for a guy who has clear goals in life, who had clear and substantial plans for his job goals, what he wants to pursue in his educational and career goals.

Here is the way I see it.  I respect myself enough to establish clear goals in life.  Hopes and dreams, endeavors that are clearly delineated in my choice of my educational and career path.  And I think, or at least I hope, that I deserve a guy who is on equal footing with me.

Education and a good job are not superficial things.  These things do distinguish people.  If one is an accomplished person, then he/she has a reasonable expectation that they may pursue another who is also accomplished.  That is not shallow; that is desiring an equal.  You on the other hand are an overweight, bad hygiene, pot-smoking, underemployed slacker who can barely afford his rent every month.  As much as nutjob liberals would like to have people convinced that education and employability are unimportant, it's time you faced reality.

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