The Provocateur: ‘I don’t want a man who’s less smart than me’

OK, there aren’t enough good men, but that’s no reason to ‘marry down’, says Polly Dunbar

at a recent party to celebrate a friend’s book being published, a male guest – older, married – patiently took the time to explain, in exhaustive detail, where I’m going wrong. The reason I’m single is that I’m too fussy, he said. Instead of holding out for someone I fancy, I should settle for a man who’s just, well, a bit dull, a bit average, and learn to be content.

If his advice – OK, manologue – sounds like a throwback to the 1950s, it’s actually fairly common. I turned 37 this year, I’m single and I want children. These three facts seem to project a message as loudly as if I were shouting into a megaphone. As an unattached woman perilously close to 40, clearly I must be desperately, urgently, in want of a man. Not necessarily a particular kind – one on my wavelength, who makes me laugh, for example. No. Any man.

Strangely, this assumption doesn’t match the reality. I didn’t wake up on my 35th birthday – or 36th, or 37th – and think, ‘ Time to lower your standards, love.’ Yet I, along with all my single female friends, have been told repeatedly that we’re being unrealistic in wanting men who are as intelligent, successful and ambitious as us.

A new American study has confirmed what we already knew: that there aren’t enough available men who tick these boxes. Professors from Cornell and Brigham Young universities analysed data from 10.5 million US households and, based on the kind of men women marry, came up with a formula for what they believe we want. Apparently, we’re looking for a man who has an income 66% higher, and a likelihood of a university degree 49% higher, than what’s actually attainable. That’s because, in the US as in Britain, more women are going to university than men. (Here, it’s 55% of women compared to 43% of men.)

This disparity makes dating tricky for ‘high-flying’ women. The study’s authors say the solution may be for men to try harder to find good jobs. Inevitably, there are others who’ve taken the opportunity to exhort women to change instead because, as usual, this situation is our fault. Susanna Abse, a psychoanalytical psychotherapist, claims our ‘general ambitiousness’ is ‘causing us a lot of problems’, adding, ‘ We should be a bit more satisfied with being ordinary and having ordinary partners.’

Really? I was under the impression that as women battling an enduring gender pay gap and workplace attitudes still far from egalitarian (as #Metoo showed), we don’t have the luxury of being ‘ordinary’. It feels a mite regressive to be told the effort I applied to achieving my goals – going to a great university, becoming a successful journalist and buying my own property – would have been better poured into being average, just so I’d have more chance of finding a romantic partner.

Being told to ‘marry down’, as the study’s authors term it, may be a convenient way to prevent single women meeting the most hideous fate imaginable – AKA remaining alone – but frankly, it’s deeply patronising. Why should I apply different standards to men than those I have for myself ?

Before you ask, this isn’t about snobbery. I don’t care what social class my boyfriends come from – they’ve ranged from working class to properly posh – and my longest relationship was with a man who hadn’t been to university. What he did have was ambition, a fierce work ethic, a reading addiction and the ability to make me laugh: traits that made him successful at work, but, more importantly, fun to be around.

Contrary to what the report suggests, what most of us are looking for isn’t status or wealth, but a shared outlook. Of course, a person’s career doesn’t tell you who they are; whether they’re kind, calm or generous. But by my age, it’s usually a good indicator of their priorities. And just as I wouldn’t be compatible with a man who talked about nothing but sport, I know I couldn’t form a lasting relationship with someone content to drift along in dead-end jobs. What we want from life would be too different. A man less intelligent than me would bore me – and my geeky obsession with American presidents would probably bore him, too.

Lurking behind this entire ‘marrying down’ issue is a lingering discomfort about single women. Fewer women are marrying – a solution must be found, stat! Yes, there are downsides to being alone; having children is certainly more complicated. But it isn’t wrong to hope I meet a genuine match – and if I don’t, to pray society finally grasps that I’m OK by myself.