Why DO clever women fall for second-rate men?

We all know the type: she's successful, bright and, oh yes, too often has a man who humiliates her. What on earth is the attraction?







Logic would, or should, dictate that a high-flying woman who has everything going for her (looks, talent, drive) should,

by definition, attract a man who is her equal, if not her superior, in terms of looks, intellect and wealth. Yet in my experience, this is simply not the case.

The more accomplished the woman, the less accomplished the man is likely to be. In fact, smart women seem to have a knack for attracting the sort of men that most of us were raised to stay well clear of.

I noticed this as a teenager, when my first night at university was punctuated by the arrival of police officers next door. I went over to find a petite, beautiful blonde woman shaking uncontrollably.



She told me that her boyfriend had threatened her at gunpoint for breaking off their relationship, so she'd called 999.

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Tina, now a medical consultant, quickly became my best friend - and her (awful) choice of men soon became a big part of my life.

She left the stalking psychopath (with a restraining order) for a serial philanderer - only to end up in the hands of a terrifying but gorgeous German surgeon with a passion for heavy black leather coats.

He criticised her weight, publicly humiliated her and betrayed her without even trying to cover his tracks. She left him a few times, only to return sheepishly several weeks later.

One day, when she was flying back into London, my husband drove to the airport and effectively kidnapped her to get her away from this man. We soon heard the German circling outside our house like a rabid Doberman.

It was only then that Tina realised she was no different from the abused women on Oprah Winfrey - except that she had a PhD.

This is not an isolated story. Over the years, I have watched some of my most accomplished girlfriends enter a string of relationships which have left them wrung out like wet towels.

So it was with great interest that I read the findings of Dr Steve Stewart-Williams, one of the psychologists behind the study Why Do Men Insult Their Intimate Partners?

Published in a recent issue of the Journal Of Personality And Individual Differences, Dr Stewart-Williams concluded that when it comes to women with high IQs, a form of meanness is actually programmed into male behaviour.

'Meanness is a form of "mate retention" in many men,' he says.

'Typically, men want lower status women because they feel they can control them. It can be threatening for a man if their partner has a higher IQ because they will often feel that makes the woman more desirable than they are themselves.

'That's when a man is likely to be unfaithful or aggressive as a means of asserting control over the woman.

'If a man demeans a woman, it makes her feel low, neglected and disrespected. And if a woman feels humiliated, they will eventually come to believe they can't do any better and stick around with that man.'

It's a classic cycle of abuse, however subtle. The real surprise is that it appears to be happening to such brilliant women, and so many of them.

I recently flew to Paris to comfort a friend abandoned by the father of her seven-month-old boy - a child born only after she had been through no fewer than four IVF treatments.

This is a funny woman with a fat bank account who turns heads wherever she goes. And here she is alone again, at the age of 44, having signally failed to choose a man in the past two decades who will be kind and faithful to her.

Those of us with a 'cad antenna' superglued to our foreheads could tell that the man who left her was bad news. (Even before he ran off with another woman, he refused to make any adjustments in his work schedule to include my friend.)

But last week, my friend said something that shocked me. 'I think love is conditional,' she opined. 'I expect to be loved only if I am perfect in every sense of the word.' How could someone so bright, so beautiful, have such appallingly low self-esteem?

It made me think. Over the years, there had been a string of men who had fallen for her wit, sexiness and competence - but all had bolted when she showed any signs of neediness. I counted five who'd abandoned her in this fashion.

I think the trouble with my friend is that, apart from choosing hopeless men in the first place, she is seemingly unable to leave them when it all goes horribly wrong - hence her feeling that it was her fault because she was not perfect.

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Simply put, she was so used to taking on challenges in her career - and winning - that she assumed men would be the same. And because she couldn't stand to lose at anything, she couldn't give up on her relationships, no matter how unsuitable.

You see, clever women also tend to be perfectionists who are programmed to succeed. Perhaps rather than walk away at the first sign of trouble with a man, they simply try harder.

Many, too, never learned the difficult art of compromise because they did not think they had to. The tug-of-war that usually happens at the beginning of a relationship - when a couple seeks to find out who's boss - becomes a nuclear battle for them; and too often, the women lose.

They also, I think, tend to have little experience of men. While the less clever girls were busy playing (and learning to master) the field, the smart ones were revising.

One of my literary editors, a Cambridge graduate, tells me: 'Making fun of men was what we did in school. We didn't have a clue how to handle them, though.'

This makes smart women prime targets for cads, says Dr Andy Clark, a psychologist at Bristol University, who noted in New Scientist magazine that 'anti-social men can make up a lot of ground just by being flirtatious. This sort of behaviour often fools women into thinking that the man is not so bad'.

By the time a woman figures out what he's really like, she's already hooked.

In other words, clever women are remarkably naive when it comes to emotional matters, and too easily fooled by men who are charming on the surface but really not very nice at all.

So, while my less accomplished, less driven girlfriends settled down happily (all, I noticed, quit the big jobs when the children came along), those with the Oxbridge Firsts and the business awards ploughed on alone, seemingly destined for romantic misery.

I've discussed this issue with a writer friend. At 5ft 10in, with knockout looks, she hypnotises every man she meets, yet she has fallen for some horrible cads.

'I don't know the psychological reasons why "Wheat" women choose "Chaff" men, but I do know that I've done it myself,' she says.

'But maybe this is the key: terrible men can be terribly amusing. There's a fine line between humour and hurt; between what's powerfully insightful and connecting, and what's cruel and, often, stupid. Sometimes, we women get mixed up while we're laughing.

'I almost married a man who treated me terribly, doing drugs and cheating, because he was the funniest man I'd ever met. The only thing that set me straight was finding someone else's underwear in his dresser.

'That's a pretty blatant betrayal - but I've found that "abusive" behaviour comes in many forms. Sometimes, the worst treatment is almost invisible - like carbon monoxide leaking undetected into the relationship.

'I once dated a charming, energetic, successful man whom others may still see as a catch. But there was that carbon monoxide there: an almost total lack of thoughtfulness - except in social situations when others were watching.'

Perhaps this is not an issue we read about much because it's not the kind of thing most women want to talk about.

Career women who can't pick the right guy tend to be embarrassed that they keep getting it wrong romantically. Let's face it, we expect women in trailer parks to get beaten up emotionally - not women who dominate boardrooms and earn six-figure salaries.

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Ours is a generation of women that was spoon-fed self-esteem by teachers and parents: it's not nice to have to admit that your love life is a failure.

One of my girlfriends got a First at Cambridge and was among the first women to become a managing director of an international bank. She was earning six figures by the age of 28, but when she came home, her husband (also a well-paid banker) would attack her verbally.

'He would rubbish my bank constantly and do things such as change the TV channel when I was watching. One evening, when we had a couple over, he brought only three glasses to the table so that I had to do without.

'He was permanently humiliating me in endless small ways.'

It's only now, after they divorced, that she realises he must have felt threatened.

'Interestingly, he remarried someone with a low-grade career and less brains,' says my friend drily.

Alpha females, the theory goes, get a bum deal because men are biologically hard-wired to avoid successful partners for the fear of being cheated on.



A 2004 study by psychologists at the University of Michigan found that high status men preferred to marry their secretaries rather than colleagues.

Dr Stephanie Brown, a social psychologist who reported the results in the Journal Of Evolution And Human Behaviour, said: 'These findings provide empirical support for the widespread belief that powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less accomplished women.'

To make matters worse, a study published a few months ago by the Centre of Longitudinal Studies in London estimates that 40 per cent of female graduates born in 1970 are likely to enter their 40s single.

So the lonely life known as 'sologamy' may be the price that high-achieving women have to pay.

New York Times journalist Maureen Dowd inspired a lot of vitriol recently when she wrote: 'The aroma of male power is an aphrodisiac for women - but the perfume of female power is a turnoff for men.

'It took women a few decades to realise that everything they were doing to advance themselves in the boardroom could be sabotaging their chances in the bedroom.'

So can these women escape the pattern of picking Mr Wrong time and again?

Self-awareness seems to be the main ticket out of this emotional mire - learning that the kind of powerful man who makes you laugh, but also tells you you're 5lb too fat and you can't cook is really not the man for you.

My abandoned friend in Paris coped with her own emotional disaster by teaching herself to think the way abused women in shelters are told to think: by constantly reminding herself of just what an unpleasant piece of work her child's father was.

'I just remember everything bad he did; how every weekend he graced me with ten minutes of attention at breakfast before he went back to reading and sleeping the rest of the time,' she says. 'And then I feel a lot better about the fact that he left me.

She at least is finding the strength to get over that disastrous affair. But the question remains as to why she allowed herself to get into it in the first place.

Maybe high-achieving women just strive harder - and relationships are no exception? Easy just doesn't feel right for them.

But in searching for a strong man whom they feel will be their equal, they often mistake bullying, or charm, for strength.

Maybe that's why so many brilliant woman are so lonely.