Wife Test: Intelligent Women Pick Winners. "Smart Women" Mutiny or Abandon Ship

Dr. Helen takes a bit of issue with the popular meme that "men don't like smart women" by pointing out that there are guys who do, in fact, like smart women.  I'm one of them.

In fact, I'll go further and state that intelligence was one of my top 3 selection criteria for my personal wife search.  I overlooked a lot of potential issues in Mrs. Ironwood's vetting due to her magnificently huge brain.  Intelligence is one of those traits that can be conserved or squandered, genetically speaking, and ensuring that the future mother of my children was super-smart AND capable of sustaining an academically nurturing environment for our young was of paramount importance.

That's a key point: there are plenty of smart women out there.  There are even plenty of attractive, smart women out there.  But when a woman has focused her energies exclusively on her career achievements, she has begun to select herself out of the reproductive process with any reasonably intelligent man. It's not a matter of being "intimidated by smart women", it's a simple cost/benefit analysis.  Perhaps one you ladies are not considering. .

From a man's perspective - particularly a man who is consciously searching for a hetero life partner ("wife") - when sizing up a potential bride he should (and often does) balance her intelligence against her achievement in making the crucial "potential/no potential" for commitment decision.

(You see ladies, while you can decide whether or not you would sleep with any given man in the first 30 seconds you meet him, we're looking at every woman out there when we're single with the "could I live with her forever?" decision.  And yeah, mostly y'all fail.)

When a man is evaluating a woman for mating potential, if she has demonstrated more devotion to her career goals than her personal goals, she is a poor matrimonial risk regardless of her intelligence.  If she has a proven predilection for adding a man into her life as an afterthought or corporate fashion accessory, then yeah, don't marry her.  Screw her, sure.  But after six weeks you'll quickly realize that no matter how bountiful the sex is, she's never, ever going to put you on the same level as her career.

A lot of dudes make the mistake of thinking that will change, once she's in a relationship - and to be fair, sometimes it does.  Mrs. I didn't look like a great candidate for Mom in some ways, but I was confident that she would and I was vindicated.  When the feces hit the fan she quit her job and focused on her family, not the other way around.  She took a lot of heat from that from her feminist-oriented friends, but she's stood resolute in the face of her criticism.

Most recently she had to defend me to her BFF and her sister when they both tried to crab-basket her (both women adore me, but when a woman is in trouble the VERY FIRST thing that her Grooming Circle will attack is her man, regardless of the situation) by demanding to know why, in the face of our challenges, she hadn't essentially assumed control of the relationship and saved everything?  If the family was in trouble, then clearly I wasn't doing my job.  She was too smart to let such disaster happen to her -- she deserved better. Therefore she should consider either a mutiny or abandoning ship.

Because that's what "smart women" do.  They get divorced when they aren't happy.  While they weren't going as far as saying that she should reconsider her marriage, they were following the natural Matrix pattern of Blaming The Male and Encouraging Her To Seize Control.  It didn't matter that I just essentially pulled Christmas out of my ass and kept us out of serious debt by writing my ass off while being a spectacular husband and father, what mattered was that their sister in their Grooming Circle was troubled, and they were trying to "help".  And when women in the Matrix try to "help", there is almost always at least one hidden agenda.

But they were genuinely concerned, I have no doubt.  Mrs. I has left a stable career path and has essentially made herself utterly financially dependent upon me for the near future, and the fact that she was thus dependent but didn't have absolute control over the entire situation disturbed them at a molecular level.  "Smart women" always have absolute control.  That's how you know they're smart. A woman not in absolute control of the relationship is clearly not doing the "smart" thing.  Usually, that's where doubt will creep into an insecure wife's heart.  Instead . . .

Mrs. Ironwood let them have it.

She told them that in a true partnership and a functional (Red Pill) marriage (which neither had experience with - one of them was divorced three times, the other has yet to marry) a good wife didn't try to grab the wheel out of her husband's hands while he was trying to steer through a reef, in so many words.  I had proven my value and worth by Getting Shit Done when it mattered.  I'd passed my test with flying colors, and as I made virtually all of the money now, yes, she was more than willing to "let me" decide how it got spent.  She said it far more nicely than that, and after topping it with an impassioned review of the ways in which I had Got Shit Done in the last year, she told them that she was smart enough to know when she'd picked a winner.

Of course they took issue with that.  "Smart women" don't let themselves fall to the mercy of their husbands.  They're always ready to cut and run and find greener pastures.  Her unwillingness to even consider that perhaps the problem might be me was an affront to the Matrix.  Even though they were properly castigated by Mrs. I, they still felt that she was, somehow, betraying herself and her family by not grabbing the wheel out of my hand. They were even willing to help her "convince" me that I should really let her make policy and control the situation.

Mrs. Ironwood stood firm, unlike the majority of women out there who are all-too-happy to hear from their Grooming Circles why they should ditch their men and find a better deal.  She wasn't about to let her two closest friends "convince" her that she should really take over for the good of the family.  She demonstrated true intelligence - the kind I married her for - by resisting the urge to listen to her personal Matrix when they told her something that was clearly against her best interest.  She was intelligent enough to pick a winner.  Most women aren't.

But then again, she's exceptional.  That's why I married her.

If you single ladies want to be considered exceptional too, then stop leading with your resume.  A woman proud of her position and achievement over her ability to create a positive family life has "future ex-wife" written all over her.  Sure, your job gives you security and shows that you aren't afraid of work or are looking for a sugar daddy, but we're not going to be impressed by it, in general.  It's not a matter of intimidation, it's a matter of knowing that the woman you're seeing just isn't going to have time enough for you and a relationship, much less a family.

And if you're married and want your husband to keep a firm hand on the wheel, stop trying to rip it out from his fingers.  Yes, he may hit a reef.  Reefs happen.  If he does, a "smart woman" often heads for the lifeboats prematurely, only to discover a decade later (when he's remarried and doing breathtakingly, spectacularly well with his new, younger wife) that they ditched a perfectly good -- perhaps even exceptional -- boat in mid-voyage.  But a truly intelligent woman will understand that she picked a winner and stick with him, and help him fix the damn boat.

And they don't give diplomas for that.