I was talking to a friend of mine who’s a CEO of a successful tech start-up.
Over dinner, he was sharing how he regularly comes across guys who are super successful on paper yet struggle to find the love they want and keep the love they find.
They have what most men dream of; sports cars, city apartments, chiselled bodies and promising futures. But when it comes to women, they stumble.
That’s because there are three common types of successful men:
TYPE 1: are usually engineers, nerds and thinkers who excel in their field but cannot play the field. They often struggle to connect with and pursue the women they desire because they lack social and emotional skills. They may find it challenging to navigate the dating scene despite their intellectual aptitude.
TYPE 2: can attract attractive women effortlessly but struggles to maintain a stable relationship with them. This may be due to their lack of self-awareness and their tendency to give in to the women’s charms solely based on their physical appearance, sexual prowess, and high level of beauty, which in turn boosts the guy’s social status among his peers.
TYPE 3: are capable of entering relationships but struggle to connect with the women they truly desire. Consequently, they often settle for less and become serial cheaters, leading an unsatisfying life. These individuals find it challenging to overcome their relationship issues, which leaves them feeling stuck with their current partner.
So you are wondering why they can’t successfully meet or keep the love they want?
Here are 8 reasons why successful men have it all on paper yet struggle to have thriving relationships:
- High standards: Successful men have likely to have achieved a lot in their life and will have high expectations for their partners. Finding a woman who meets those standards can be difficult and can take time.
- Limited time: With a busy schedule, finding time to meet new women and build relationships can be challenging. Between work commitments, social events, and personal time, it can be hard to carve out the time needed to develop a meaningful relationship.
- Fear of being used: Successful men are often seen as attractive partners due to their wealth, status, or power. They’ve had many unscrupulous experiences with gold diggers or women who’ve used them that they now hold back. This can make it difficult to trust others, as they may worry that women will only be interested in them for their wealth and connections.
- Lack of vulnerability: Successful men often feel as though they need to present a strong, confident image to the world. As a result, many of them come across as logical, matter of fact and particle that she doesn’t feel his warmth. This can make it difficult to be vulnerable and open up to a partner, which is essential for building a strong, lasting relationship.
- Fear of commitment: Some successful men may fear commitment due to past experiences or the fear of losing their independence. They also fear that a relationship may hold them back or a breakup may be costly. This can make it difficult to invest in a relationship fully and often prevents them from finding a long-term partner.
- Lack of empathy: Successful men often are highly driven and work strategically, spending much of their time in their logical sphere. This makes them come across cold and emotionless, and they usually lack the patience for feelings, creating an emotional divide. Successful men are effective hunters; therefore, part of their software design, they believe spending too much time in emotions will slow them down, and it’s unnecessary for what they want to achieve.
- Unresolved mother issues: all men must go through a rite of passage to psychologically move from boy to man and separate from mum (even if she’s passed away). If they don’t, they will end up with broken women (usually hot and/or great in bed) that need a lot of fixing and create dysfunctional relationships with burdening co-dependency, trauma bonding or outright avoidance.
- Masculine purpose: the core of masculine energy is ‘purpose’ and the core of feminine energy is ‘connection.’ Men by design are focused on: providing, protecting and presiding. This makes them less skilful in communication, relationship and nurturing skills by default because their focus for millions of years was needed to be effective hunters
Some wildly successful men (and women) also rate high on the dark triads (narcissism, psychopathy and machiavellianism) spectrum, making them incredible in business and skilful at getting women but extremely poor at emotionally connecting and maintaining relationships with people at a deeper level.
They can put on a facade and mimic empathic and caring characteristics, but these can usually for show to win the deal or get the girl. Their strategic thinking can make them successful and also very dangerous.
This is not to say only men are capable of this; women are far superior to men when it comes to emotional strategies and therefore far more manipulative arsenal in their realm. Don’t let the innocent, soft and attractive deminer fool you. Both men and women have their superweapons that can be used for both good and evil.
Remember this quote:
“Narcissistic men, or men who only care about themselves, will end up in relationships sometimes, but only with narcissistic and shallow women. Both the narcissistic man and woman will view each other merely as ornaments to adorn their self-absorbed lives. These relationships also are toxic. And these relationships also often end poorly.”
Mark Manson
So can successful men create loving and nurturing relationships? Provided they don’t have an outright diagnosable Neuropsychiatric disorder, they certainly can get the love they want and keep the love they get with the right guidance, effort and support.