To Get the Girl, Put Your Career on a Pedestal

Want to be a true ladies man? Want to win over that special girl? Believe it or not, your career matters just as much as your social skills.

Or better stated, your mission means just as much. Your mission is your chosen pursuit in life -- the one thing you do that you feel most passionate about. It might or might not be your day job. You might be an accountant by day and coach youth hockey on the weekends. Your mission might be accounting, or your real mission might be coaching, or both. Either way, you need a girlfriend or wife who recognizes, supports and genuinely believes in your mission.

This is crucial for you to be happy as a man in a romantic relationship. It feeds her feminine instincts, too. Unfortunately, confusion reigns today among men and women over the proper role of career in relationships. Most marriage counselors, therapists and dating gurus are not helping at all. They treat men's and women's instinctual needs as exactly the same, or worse, they ignore career altogether.

One reason is the changing economy.

Last year, women surpassed men to become the majority of the American workforce. Seventy-five percent of the jobs lost during the great recession of 2008-2009 were manufacturing jobs held by men. Women now hold slightly more than half of all management jobs.

In today's highly technological economy, women are competing and winning in the workplace to a higher level, generally, than men. These trends will continue. Young women today make up more than 50 percent of all college, business school, medical school and law school students. They are graduating at higher rates and generally getting better grades than male students.**

Unfortunately, contemporary technology and economics have not changed millions of years of evolution. Back in the day, men developed a strong instinct to pursue a mission to the virtual exclusion of all else. The survival of our species depended on it. Imagine the single-minded determination of primitive men hunting in the forest or fighting off rival tribes.

As a result, the process of sexual attraction naturally evolved to include a strong element of female support for the man's mission. The result: a man cannot be truly attracted to a woman who does not support his mission. Women, in turn, have an instinctual desire to find a man who's mission they can and will support.

Unfortunately, in general, women in the developed world, have been conditioned to downplay or ignore this part of attraction. Thus, we live in an age of romantic frustration. Men often feel something lacking in their relationships, as if they exist to their girlfriends or wives only as cogs in wheel to serve outside interests. Many men simply do not feel the triumphant passion comes from winning the admiration of a woman.

Too often, our media and our culture encourage women to dismiss a man's need to be admired and adored as "demeaning to the woman," "selling out" or "feeding the fragile male ego."

How do we get past this stage? Communication helps. More men should step forward without shame or hesitation to champion their career or "mission." Men in the early stages of dating a women must ask themselves whether:

1) they are pursuing their true mission with success, and if so,
2) does the woman they are with truly support and admire them for it?

This is one way that men can separate a "keeper" from just another woman.

Men who are truly struggling to figure out what's missing from a current romantic relationship must examine whether or not she admires him for his mission. This is not the only element of a successful romantic relationship, but it is an indispensable one. A good man who is deserving of admiration yet who is nevertheless not supported by his girlfriend or wife might as well be single.

**Source: Hanna Rosin, "The End of Men," The Atlantic, July, 2010.

For more cutting edge tactics and strategies for advancing your success with women, work and being a man, visit www.menspsychology.com.