The New Trophy Wife

Alpha women are highly sought-after partners, but men may be more intimidated than they admit.

By Deborah Siegel, published on January 01, 2004 - last reviewed on June 27, 2007

If men in first marriages are relieved to be outearned by spouse or partner, some older men are positively "proud" of this fact, finds Pittman, who also notes a spike in the number of thirtysomething and fortysomething men pursuing older, successful women. But when it comes to second wives, some things never change. Whether she's a 27-year-old secretary or a 47-year-old corporate vice president, the second wife will likely not be as beneficial a partner as was the first, says Pittman. "The woman who has seen a man get started and develop is more useful than the woman for whom he always has to perform, who may bring out the worst in him."

Alpha-alpha first and second marriages make sense against the backdrop of a shifting pecking order in the nation's governing class. As author David Brooks noted, changes in the prestige factor among couples whose wedding announcements make The New York Times bear this out. "Pedigreed elite used to be based on noble birth and breeding," writes Brooks in Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. "Now it's genius that enables you to join the elect."

A Confidence Gap

If high-aiming women are more marriage-eligible than ever, why don't they seem to know it? When a Match.com poll asked marriage-minded men whether they were reluctant to seek out career women as partners, 62 percent said no. But 74 percent of the women surveyed think men are intimidated by women with high-powered careers. "Women have an asset they perceive as a liability," says Pepper Schwartz, author of Love Between Equals: How Peer Marriage Really Works and professor of sociology at the University of Washington. "Young men see these women growing up: She's your doctor, your teacher, your professor. These models can be quite erotic."

So why, then, the confidence gap? Men may be more intimidated by high-powered women than they're willing to admit. And high-achieving women, who tend to marry later, are used to being told that success causes their marrying and childbearing stock to plummet. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, made headlines in 2002 by recycling the claim that the more a woman achieves in the workplace, the less likely she is to marry or to have kids. The book triggered a panic reminiscent of Newsweek's highly publicized 1986 report that a 40-year-old woman was more likely to be attacked by terrorists than to marry. That "finding" turned out to be a tale as tall as the heels on single icon Carrie Bradshaw's Manolo Blahniks, and Hewlett's conclusions, based on a small sample of highly elite women, are equally suspect when applied to professionally ambitious women at large.

When Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, D.C., crunched numbers on 33.6 million American women (gleaned from the 2000 and 2001 Current Population Survey), she found that women between the ages of 28 and 35 who work full time and earn more than $55,000 per year or have a graduate or professional degree are just as likely to be successfully married as other women who work full time. They're just finding love slightly later. While American women marry on average at age 25, college graduates marry at 27. Those with masters or professional degrees wed on average at age 30.

Pop-psych punditry about fragile male egos may cloud the real problem inherent in many alpha-alpha marriages. Psychologists agree that difficulties most often arise not because a man feels emasculated by his wife's star power ("No one can emasculate you except you," avows Pak), but because the woman grows disappointed with her partner.

"If a woman is powerful, smart and ambitious, her expectations for her husband, and for the relationship, rise," says Nando Pelusi, a New York City psychologist who has counseled plenty of alpha-alpha pairings. McCarthy says it's the primary reason that middle-class marriages fail in the first five years: The woman feels her spouse is not keeping his end of the pact.

And when women feel that their husbands aren't reaching their earning or emoting potential, men may decide they've gotten more than they bargained for. "Men truly want brighter, more articulate, aggressive women. They want to be seen in the world with them. But they also want these women to leave some of it at the doorstep," says Real. "These guys love their wives. They just haven't figured out what to do when that strength is channeled toward them."

Real is quick to add that most wouldn't have it any other way. "I must have said it a thousand times," he quips: "'Mr. Jones, you wouldn't be happy with the kind of woman who would put up with you.'"

True to form, most alpha males take pride in the bumps. "If I can sustain a relationship with a real, serious, powerful, happening gal, it means that I'm more real, serious and happening," says Beeman.

"Being involved with these women is like driving a Ferrari," says Pelusi. "It can be uncomfortable and dangerous, but it's ultimately more rewarding than owning a Ford Taurus, which is safe but boring."