Part III: [Absent] Alpha Males
A recent conversation:
“You’re wrong. There are a ton of single studs in San Francisco. Take my friend Trent.”
“Who’s Trent?”
“We played lacrosse together at Yale, then he was in Private Equity, now he’s starting a mobile payments company.”
“And he’s single?”
“Had a girlfriend but they broke up when he moved to SF.”
“Why’d they break up?”
“She wanted to get married. He wanted to focus on the new company.”
“And how’s it going?”
“He’s totally crushing it. Just raised another round.”
“Must take a lot of time.”
“Oh yeah. He works like a 120 hours a week.”
“Sounds like a great guy to date.”
“Well….okay, fair. He doesn’t have a lot of time. But it won’t be like this forever.”
“Right. In five years or so he’ll be excited to date again.”
“Exactly! And he’ll be super rich.”
“And he’ll have lots of 22 year olds drooling over him.”
“Sure, but that’s not who he wants to settle down with.”
[skeptically] “Who will he want to settle down with?”
“With someone like you.”
“You’re telling me that, when he’s thirty-eight, after five years of slaving away at his company, your buddy Trent is going to forego hot young 22-year-olds having the kind of care-free fun he’s currently missing in order to settle down with my laugh lines and rapidly ticking biological clock?”
[Pause] “I guess you’ve got a point.”
There are alpha males in San Francisco, they’re just all “married to their companies” and not at all interested in dating women any time in the foreseeable future. Not that one would particularly want to date them even if they were up for it. You see, ‘doing a start-up’ is alpha male code for ‘postponing serious decisions and prolonging my college humor existence in a socially-acceptable way.’ Kudos to Alex Williams, the New York Times reporter who recently penned an article about the most eligible bachelors in Silicon Valley. His profile of Bachelor Number One begins: “At 31, Mr. Rattray still drives a 1996 Toyota Camry and shares a cramped Noe Valley apartment in San Francisco with three college buddies.”[1] I’m sure this sounds really enchanting to Mr. Williams, a married New Yorker in his mid-forties, but is it really unreasonable to want, in my late-20s, to find a man who doesn’t have to hang a sock on the door?
[1] See “Bachelorville’s Big Fish,” Alex Williams. NY Times, June 6, 2012.
Oh god, you’re describing me to a T. I’m CEO of a startup, live with three housemates, and drive a shitty car. And the fact is, I’m embarrassed when I take dates home. But dating and finding love is important to me. If it worked out, I’m pretty clear it’d be more important than my company. But it’s been hard to justify all the time I’d spend on trying to upgrade my lifestyle to be better for her, before she even appears.
And don’t you leave a ‘tie’ on the door? Or does no one own one any more?
I think you make decent points in this blurb, but your fascination with alpha males makes me think we live not only in different cities but different worlds.
I’m confused… if LAX Yalie PE CEO dude isn’t an alpha male….who is? If Mad Men has taught me anything, it’s that alpha males don’t have time for the feminine hysterics (aka blogs masquerading as manifestos) of the people they date.
- a Homo in SF who also won’t be dating you
[...] attract whom you want. In Part III: [Absent] Alpha Males, X describes the qualities of a man she is looking through which can be summed as a guy who 1. [...]
So who is ‘Trent’ dating now? Nobody. For 5 years? Really? Or just not ‘Alpha Girls’ like you who deserve better than the kind of work schedule it takes to do well here?
Watch out though, most peoples startups bomb. Raising money is not making money. If you did date him you could get stuck with someone below your (own perceived) social (economic) status. Horrors!
You really are stuck- you won’t risk a less than optimal outcome in life but you are not enough of a catch to be somebody else’s best possible alternative. There is no hope for that situation. Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash Princess.
Above poster is right. You essentially admit you want an unttainable man. In such a situation lower your expectations and date geeks or leave SF. Its like a guy saying he wants to date supermodels, but doesn’t want to move to NYC or Miami beach, doesn’t have any money and has average personality/game.
There’s so much truth to this. I am a 29 yr old alpha female with a website looking for a start-uppy alpha male, but in the end, you can’t marry yourself, which is what always happens. Two insanely busy people will not equate to a normal, loving relationship. I moved to the Silicon Valley/Bay Area 2 yrs ago thinking it would be an amazing place to date like-minded men, but you are really painting an accurate picture, with these profiles. I actually did better in LA, with all their superficial starving-actor men! Kudos to your honesty.
I must admit there is truth to this post here. I would love to date successful men but they are really married to their work. When they tell me they have a startup company or a management consultant, I usually run the other way. There’s a reason why they are so accomplished and successful: because they spent most of their time on work and not enough on themselves.
Successful men do not want successful, busy, alpha women. Successful men want charming, loving, devoted, buy new curtains and pick-up-the-kids women. They want a support system, that allows them the continued luxury of maintaining and elevating that success. Alpha women with powerful careers and dreams are competing with them. The only problem is, the women don’t necessarily get the luxury of the same support system.
Agreed that 2 super-busy people make the logistics of spending time together hard, but frankly most men would prefer a women that can accommodate to their lifestyle and needs [if they are in fact alpha]. Sorry successful, intelligent, rich women, you’re on you’re own. Just accept your solitude and find joy in other things besides the hope of marrying alpha-prince-charming. Go play some on-line games, at least a geek will take you.
Successful men do not want successful, busy, alpha women. Successful men want charming, loving, devoted, buy new curtains and pick-up-the-kids women. They want a support system, that allows them the continued luxury of maintaining and elevating that success. Alpha women with powerful careers and dreams are competing with them. The only problem is, the women don’t necessarily get the luxury of the same support system.
Agreed that 2 super-busy people make the logistics of spending time together hard, but frankly most men would prefer a women that can accommodate to their lifestyle and needs [if they are in fact alpha]. Sorry successful, intelligent, rich women, you’re on you’re own. Just accept your solitude and find joy in other things besides the hope of marrying alpha-prince-charming. Go play some on-line games, at least a geek will take you.
Hmmm it seems you are only after the guys… So good luck with it! No complaints!
It’s very interesting to see replies from women here who say they “would like to date successful men” but bemoan that they “spend all their time working on their careers instead of on themselves.”
How, then, are these men successful? They are not successful men. They are under-developed as individuals. They are over-devoted to the pursuit of their work, something that is easy to understand as an avoidance mechanism. People who work too much frequently do so because it helps them to avoid the stresses and challenges of their personal and internal lives.
Be honest with yourself and you’ll see that you are not interested in successful men, you are interested in marrying into status. That makes you shallow and undesirable to the myriad men who are developed and successful persons who also happen to have good careers, hygiene, and social skills.
[...] I just read a female who has a bit at stake and playing with some skin in the game http://whysfreallyisthatbad.com/part-iii-absent-alpha-males/ [...]
Happening upon this blog has made me glad that I’m on the cusp of middle age and can now view these onanistic 20something diatribes with an air of bemused detachment that generally only comes with a few gray hairs. Look, it’s not been so long since I’ve been trying to “make it” myself (although the sort of Elon Musk worship perpetuated by the media has only set the bar even more unattainably high in the ~15 years since I might’ve slightly resonated with this article) so I can somewhat-kinda sympathize, but — not really.
Look, the descriptor “average” exists for a reason. Most people are painstakingly average: physically, mentally, and financially. The average salary in the US is only $40-something thousand dollars a year for crying out loud! (Granted, that means a little more outside of the Bay Area, but still, it isn’t exactly a fortune even in Des Moines or Peoria.) You seem to pine for “absent” alpha males but my guess is you’re not taking an honest look in the mirror here: do you honestly think that if someone called up “Trent” and said “Hey, y’know, I know this super awesome girl, highly educated, witty, great vocabulary… oh, and let’s not forget smoking hot…” he would be “too busy” for five years to make a note of you? Do you honestly think that highly driven, successful men are celibate for years? Of course not: odds are, like 99% of everyone else out there, you’re a lot more painfully average than you’d like to realize.
It seems like 99% of female attention is now focused on 1% of the “alpha” male population. Fair enough — it works both ways. If you want an “alpha” male, you need to honestly tell yourself what you’re bringing to the table, since most thinking men these days can’t help but be deathly afraid of marriage. Basically, we’re wising up to no-fault divorce laws and the brutal reality of alimony: so, assume that I’ve got seven figures in cash in the bank, a weekend home near Santa Cruz, and (here’s the kicker) I’m so darn powerful and “alpha” that I could have _any_ woman I wanted to, _but you just so happened to luck out and I view monogamy as my ideal and for some reason I’ll love you, and only you, forever_: even if you’re a drop-dead “hottie” that just so happens to be a loving, nurturing person who won’t drop her pants for the gardener the first time her husband is out of town (which she usually thinks she’s completely justified in doing, since that’s what the little BS “Sex and the City” pro-”womyn” media has promoted for countless years now) _what are you doing for me?_ Do I really need someone that just sponges off of me for a few years (when you more than likely stop working a breadwinner type job and start pursuing your “passion” for yoga or short story writing which will inevitably leave me with all the bills, especially if we have kids) only to divorce me a few years later and take 50% of what I own?
Yes, there are decent women out there, but they’re probably doing volunteer work, going to church, etc. and generally doing other tragically un-hip things (they might not even Brazilian wax!) Plus, they’re probably not in San Francisco, arguably the world’s #1 hotbed for emasculated, wimpy, consumer-product-addled testosterone-free Cory Doctorow types.
Honestly, the happiest people are those that accept the reality that they might not be quite what they’re cracked up to be, and adjust their lives accordingly. There’s only so many Elon Musks out there, and even if you _do_ land one, are you really going to be happy then? Really? I hate to sound like some dbag that walks around with a bag of ready-made Buddhist Lite self-help cliches, but true happiness comes from within. Take it from someone who’s been there, and done that: a $500k/year salary is like a new toy: after you’ve got a couple of luxury cars you realize that there’s only so many nights a week you can go to the best sushi restaurant in town and it all starts to get old. Try to wise up a little, now: wisdom is like interest in the bank (well, maybe not interest in this day and age) — it accrues with age, and the sooner you put things in proper perspective the more satisfied you will end up being.
http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/relationship-issues/millionaire-starter-wife
Holy cow dude. I nominate you for blog poster of the year. You couldn’t have said it better. Totally average girls dont deserve anything more than totally average dudes, and vice versa, but take the totally average American male (slightly overweight, making 20 bucks an hour, with 1 or 2 years of college) and he’s treated like a leper here.