Although I haven’t released the full study yet, of the hundreds of men who filled out my survey for high earning ($200K+) men, 94% of married or otherwise partnered high-earning men had a partner with at least a college degree, and 77% of them had a partner who worked.

I did not fill out this survey, but I am in this group. And though I am not actually married I’m as good as. That said, I want my partner to work because I want her to have her own independent life. She’s not some extension of me. If something happens to me, I want her to be ok financially and career-wise.

But it’s also because I want nothing to do with unambitious women. I likely would not date or be with anyone who did not want to work at least most of the time. Even if she’s doing art or something. And I mean really doing it, not futzing around with some turd for two hours she sells on Etsy for $3 once a month.

And selfishly, if I get sick of it all and decide to throw in the towel for a while or forever, it makes it easier on me if my partner works (though I’d still pay my share, I just mean that it’s a lot cheaper to live as two instead of a singleton). Of course, the same goes for her. Unlike most, I actually believe in equality.

Wanting a woman who doesn’t work just mostly means you want a bangmaid (at least for most men). And that is not the life nor the partner for me.

This is slightly misogynistic but also incredibly useful. Or at least, it would’ve been to me when I was 16. I already know 99% of this but unfortunately like most guys I learned it all the hard way.

Even though I have asked half a dozen women friends this, I still have never gotten an actual clear answer: Why must women use so many-difficult-to-parse and opaque signals and obfuscations? Threat reduction? Plausible deniability? Something else?

I really do want to know.

My sister was the golden child of the family. Once she was born, I was pretty much ignored. She was cuter, more charismatic, more cheerful and more extroverted and more eager to please.

Whereas I was not any of those things. I was contrary, irascible, not cute, and more than happy to argue adults into vitriolic anger and very averse to pleasing anyone. In most ways, I was actually content to be overlooked and ignored. I am naturally an introvert and was this way from a very young age. I believe my early experiences of being the unfavored child and then bullied for years amplified this tendency, but it was already pretty dang strong congenitally before any of that occurred.

As I said, I mostly was happy to be ignored. People not paying attention to me allowed me to do what I wanted to do and that was better than the alternative.

Mainly, though, I just hated being saddled with the responsibility for taking care of and watching my sister constantly while I received all the derision and blame for both anything she did wrong or that I did wrong. And all the while, people gleefully praised her for the most minor accomplishment while not even acknowledging that I did things like score at a 12.9 grade level (the highest possible grade level) in all subjects on a state-wide standardized test when I was in fourth fucking grade¹. (My dad: “Must have been some kind of fluke.” Readers, it was not a fluke.)

That was not cool.

1. My teacher told me I was the only one in the county who’d done that, and one of three kids in the state.

It sure is. It’s one of the things that tanked the resurgence of feminism and repelled many people away from the cause. “I’m not here to educate you” is a rejection of the curious and that is absolutely fatal to anyone being on your side.

There is no easier nor stupider way to self-own.

That’s because everyone now knows Canada fucking sucks and is getting drastically worse extremely quickly — and that the worsening is accelerating and the rate of increase of that decline is also accelerating.

Who would want to move into that mess?

The thing you figure out over the course of getting a lot hotter over a short time is that women are just as shallow as men (if not more so), they just hide it better.

Till they don’t.

A polycule sounds like the worst thing ever.

Leave me out of all that.

I miss working with my old intern who was good at everything and learned just as quickly as I do.

Where do you find people like that? She was one in a million I guess. But she had like a 160+ IQ so there’s that.

I’ve dated a few women taller than me, and one who was considerably taller (six inches, to be exact). All were surprised that I didn’t care if they chose to wear heels ¹.

Why would I give a crap? My ego is the size of Jupiter! I’m still just as awesome if a woman is towering over me. Maybe even more so.

1. I personally do not like heels but also want people to wear what they like.

Just got told I was “rude” and “stand-off ish” because I don’t share enough of my personal life or attend company parties.

I got told this at one job. So I just started making up absolute hogwash and lies to tell people. That was a lot more fun. Except then I had to remember it all.

Standard Time sucks so much. Can’t believe we’re about to be back in that turd again.

DST forevermore!

When you’re already with your dream woman, other options ring hollow and unappealing even if they throw themselves at you.

Try again next life, ladies. 😉

AITA for telling my vegan friend I don’t want to come over for Thanksgiving Dinner?

Because of a girl I was dating, I did a vegetarian (not vegan) Thanksgiving one year. The crucial point was we didn’t try to make anything that mimicked another food. And it helped that she was (like me) a good cook. She asked me if I’d be willing to try it and I think was surprised I said yes. (She would’ve been ok if I’d said no.) But shit, I’ll try anything that won’t wind up with me in prison, a buncha people dead or Putin serving me a polonium pie.

I don’t remember what all we made but every bit of it was great. I didn’t miss the meat at all, though I’d not want to do a veggie Thanksgiving every year. I do recall we made some sort of nutty stuffing that was quite delectable.

You can do a lot with mushrooms and nuts, for sure.

Men do you actually care or find it more attractive if a woman wears heels, why or why not?

I despise heels. They look unnatural and those feminine cues do absolutely nothing for me. It just screams incapability. If the shit hits the fan, I need any woman with me to be able to run.

Nope, do not like heels.

Career advice: find your superpower, if you have one, and capitalize on that. To be fair, that only works for a few. Mine is understanding and making use of complex information very, very quickly.

Failing that, the best strategy to pursue (I stole this from somewhere, but forget the origin) is to be okay to good in several disparate but related areas. Most of your peers won’t take the time and effort to do this and instead they’ll only be competent in one small area. This makes them limited. Even though I do in fact have a superpower, I’ve relied more on this “many skills” strategy as it’s more beneficial in my specific field. For instance apart from my technical skills I am good at these things, all of which I am not a “natural” at (that is, I had to learn them from scratch):

• How to talk to executives and management in terms they understand
• Good social skills, especially as it relates to the norms of the corporate world
• Ability to distill information so the less competent/technical can act on it
• Understanding how a business works
• Negotiation of conflicting parties
• Various regulatory and compliance regimes and how they apply to business
• Perception management for me and my team
• Learning how to prioritize what matters to execs
• How to write a decent business analysis

And learning none of this to a “good enough” level requires being a genius! Just perseverance. That’s the advantage of the latter strategy — it just takes some determination. It’s like working out in that if you devote a couple of extra hours a week to acquiring 3-4 of the above you’ll be far ahead of your competition. Anyone can do it if they want to and I can guarantee it’ll benefit them.

This is exactly what I did and it’s why I am where I am.