Letters to the Editor
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First: "Short guy not good enough" Now: "Guy with no degree = too retarded for me to date"
A couple weeks ago, a woman wrote in to Cary complaining about how her husband was too damn short to turn her on.
Now, we have a woman complaining about how her boyfriend is too uneducated to make her happy.
My advice to the current LW is the same as it was for the "short hubby" LW: Do right by your man, and let him go. He deserves better than you.
I have met/known doctors and lawyers who are as stupid and anti-intellectual as they come. How they passed their respective bar exams is a mystery to me...and makes me feel kinda scared about our healthcare/legal systems!!
I also have met/known people with only a HS education who are incredibly erudite - capable of and passionate for critical thinking, well-versed in literature, art and science...and with nary an air of smug elitism about them.
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Is your boyfriend intelligent, LW? I have no idea.
But if he is as decent a person/mate as you say, then he deserves to be loved and respected. Clearly, you are unable to fulfill the latter requirement, if not the former.
So get some good karma by breaking up with him and letting him go. He will find true love after you. There are no doubt many women out there who will not get hung up just because he does not have an abbreviation like PhD or MD after his name - they will just see him, love him and be able to respect him because he is a great partner and man.
And you? Make yourself happy by going back to dating your fellow "book-larn'd" academics...JDs, PhDs, MDs, BVDs etc etc. Sure, many of them may turn out to be supremely arrogant, anal-retentive, hyper-competitive with you and insecure...but at least you can respect their education credentials.
Meanwhile, your reads-at-a-12th-grade level ex will probably be ultimately happy; and if there is any justice in the world, that is all that matters.
P.S. - Rent and watch the movie "Good Will Hunting" sometime. And in doing so, realise that you may be disposing of Will Hunting in favor of the Ivy League Ponytail-Poseur. Do you like apples, LW??
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I read something once that struck me as rather wise...
There are not all that many people who come to the end of their life and say "You know, I wish I had spent more time at the office".
There are those who live to work and those who work to live.
I suspect that your boyfriend is in the latter group.
Perhaps you should figure out which group you belong to.
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doubtful
You don't have the same values. You're very achievement oriented. Regardless of whether you look back on any given achievement in 20 years time and think it was the right one, you're driven to notch 'em up. If you decide in 20 years that becoming a doctor wasn't really the right thing for you, you'll switch to a different set of achievements to strive after. No judgment intended in those statements good or bad, it's just who you are, it's how you're wired. It's how you structure your life, it's what you *do*. The specifics don't matter so much, you're driven to be achieving, doing your best, 24x7.
He's not.
You can be a great couple for awhile, you can honestly respect him for his intelligence (not all smart people go to college, not everyone who goes to college is smart) and his happy life that is successful by his own measure. But the tension in values won't go away. It's not what he does (or what you do) it's what he wants compared to what you want.
If you want to have a chance of this relationship succeeding, you need to really get deep down into what he does want. How does he measure success? How does he measure happiness? You can admire his measures, but can you share them? I can read your measure of life from your letter, but not his. What does he want?
I submit that if you can't share his measures of success and happiness the long term prognosis of your relationship is doubtful.
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Can she accept that he might be exactly who is now... forever?
The LW might do a couple things.
One thing would be to contemplate accepting that her bf will never change significantly, that he'll forever be who he is right now. Can she let go of the pushing, the urging him to be better, the encouragement to take advantage of his gifts? How does that feel? What would it take for her to completely stop trying to change him into someone else?
The second thing would be to look ahead at the professional life she might have and his role in it. Accepting that the person he is right now is who he's going to be forever... can she proudly introduce him to her associates at parties? Can she be thrilled that he's sitting next to her at dinner in another doctor's plush dining room somewhere? Assuming she ends up there, can she be comfortable moving up in the world, being the one with the money and probably the drive to live an ever more upscale life while he takes whatever comes along? How will they each feel about that?
Can she do all that and still feel like she's the luckiest gal in the world because she has him?
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Happiness with a less-educated fella
I'm going to echo many other posts here and say that there's hope for this relationship, depending on the details. My own experience is proof.
I'm a very ambitious science PhD and professor while my husband has an associate's degree and a decent, but not all-consuming job, not really something you'd even call a career. My career has always been extremely important to me, whereas his goal in working is to make enough money doing something he doesn't hate in order to enjoy the rest of his life. Now that we have young children, he works less and spends more time with them. For a while, he was even a stay-home dad. You might say he lacks ambition, at least where work is concerned, but that sure doesn't mean he's letting his life slip by him without even trying. He's an extremely intelligent person with non-work interests about which he is passionate (it would be another story if he were a dull-witted couch potato). We've been together for 16 years, and it's been near-perfect all the way.
Honestly, although I'd have supported him if he wanted to go back to school, etc., I feel very lucky that he is so much less career-oriented than me. Comparing myself with my colleagues in different situations, it seems like especially for women, it's a lot easier to be successful in your work when you're the only major career in the family.