For real, y'all. A dude said that to me. No joke.
I wanted to be offended, but I hate to admit I think it has some merit.
More than once I've met men and women in relationships—girlfriend/boyfriend or married—and thought to myself, “Why is he with her? She doesn't seem like she challenges him intellectually.”
These are men who seem to be at the top of their game, and they have these dull but “nice” and pretty women who stand or sit beside them with nothing meaningful to add to any conversation. I'd hate to say these women are unintelligent, though. Maybe they're just intellectually lazy; not wanting to dip into their intelligence until they think have to.
I've seen shows where women get dumped by their husbands and have to start a new life for themselves, by themselves with or without children, and then they discover that they really could make it on their own all along, because they've always had in them what they needed to be self-sufficient, but they didn't know it because they were raised to think or they learned to think that they needed a man to define them, take care of them, breathe for them. [exhale]
Many apologies to the men who want trophy wives, but I'm not the one.
I've had many men in my lifetime tell me I'm beautiful, and I appreciate that and it truly makes me feel awesome, but I'm not dumbing myself down to get a man.
He'll just be disappointed when the real me comes out, anyway, so why throw up shade in the beginning only to have the veil fall in the end?
It's always interesting to me when I meet a man who says, “I don't understand why you're single. You seem to have so much going for yourself,” and we have an awesome conversation, bouncing ideas and perspectives back and forth, and then dude simply fades into the woodwork, even though he can't understand why I'm single. Haha.
The dude who told me that I'm single because I'm too intelligent said that men don't want women who are more intelligent than them because a more intelligent woman may make him feel inadequate in his own intelligence.
Boy, please! That has nothing to do with intelligence. That's insecurity.
So I tell you what…
If my choice is between an insecure man who wants me to dumb myself down so his self-esteem doesn't take a hit and being single, I'll take single for $1,000, Alex.
I don't believe every man suffers from this affliction, so I'll wait patiently for the guy to surface who sees my intelligence as an asset not a liability. He's out there. I know it.
