@uriel,
I am a lot into independent ambitious women (career, business owner, etc...) but I have always had trouble to get with them.
...
Could it be that women only let their ambition free once they have already secure a relationship with the right guy?
In women, as in men, there are tiers of ambition.
It is rare to meet SERIOUSLY ambitious women. Though you will meet some.
I had a female friend (attractive, intelligent, gregarious) who was one of the most ambitious people I knew in the multinational business consultancy I worked for four years after university. She was a lot of fun, but was always super focused on advancing her career as well. This was the case regardless whether she was single or seeing a guy. When I first met her she was 26 and single (and quite the playette!). She's since had a series of promotions, from senior consultant, to manager, to, now, director, at the large multinational we worked together at. Last I heard she'd finally tied the knot a few years back.
I had as cofounder for a social club I ran a female public relations analyst who was, when I met her, very ambitious, at least appearance-wise. She was hyper-driven on getting our social club started up, keeping the standard of member very high, and getting everything to look and feel just right. For a while I thought I had a winner in a business partner like her. But once we had the club up and running, she relaxed into it, and I realized her ambition was just to get the club going, then enjoy it as a lifestyle business. Whereas for me it wasn't worth the time to run if we weren't going to blow it up into an international super club (so I walked).
This seems to be a pattern I have seen from lots and lots of women (and men, as well): they are ambitious
to a point, then once they achieve that ambition they settle.
You can even see that with most very ambitious men: Arnold Schwarzenegger set himself goals of 1.) best body builder, 2.) best Hollywood action star, and then 3.) I am pretty sure he wanted to be U.S. President. He made it to Governor, realized how hard a job it was, and there are of course the laws against foreign nationals becoming President, and after that he's just faded away, ambition spent. Mission accomplished.
I have dated numerous women who had good educations and careers. I tend to avoid female entrepreneurs myself... there is something weird about them that never clicks with me. I don't know what it is. I have never met a female entrepreneur I was attracted to (I have met some who are very
attractive, physically... but personality-wise all the ones I've met have been a bit too masculine for my tastes). Educated girls with good careers I like. However, in my experience these girls too will tend to plateau with their ambition. I have had women like this telling me their gigantic career ambitions, but after a few years it is clear they have settled into a role and aren't going to get promoted much beyond that, let alone carve out a place for themselves. Chalk it up to youthful inexperience -- they think they want to take on the world, until they realize how big the world actually is, and how much there is to take on, and they decide they are happy having a slightly-better-than-average career and life.
I tried to turn one girlfriend into an entrepreneur, at her request. I built her a business, and got it profitable, and handed it over to her. She was so happy with it. Then she lost interest in it and stopped running it. This was a girl who'd been fretting so much about what she was going to do with her life before. She didn't really fret about career after that. I guess the experience was enough: "I've seen it, I can do it, and I've realized it is going to be a much tougher slog than I thought and that I don't get nearly as much satisfaction out of it than I expected."
I have a buddy who's married to a gal who makes 3x or 4x what he does. They have one child together. My buddy would like to have more, but his wife thinks pregnancy is the worst thing in the world and that being pregnant negatively affected her business, and she doesn't ever want to have more because it would derail her business further. He says she's been a largely disinterested mother, and most of the parenting of their child has been done by him and his wife's mother. Wife is mostly just focused on her business. She had it before she met him, and it was already big before she met him, and I don't
think has grown significantly since they've been together. Mostly just remained as it is.
So, I've not seen much to suggest relationships help women to become more ambitious.
It might be possible.
I used to even think I could encourage girls to wake up their ambition and do/produce more.
That was probably from watching too many movies about people encouraging people or whatever. Or maybe indirectly absorbing too much feminist propaganda about women just needing to feel encouraged.
The ultimate conclusion I've arrived at is, "People are going to be however ambitious they are going to be. And there's not a lot anybody else is going to be able to do about that."
Also, some general observations about female vs. male ambition:
- It is generally much lower than male ambition. A woman who's in the top 1% of ambitious women is at about the same level of ambition as a man who's in the top 5% of ambitious men (with ambition increasing logarithmically, not linearly)
- Women's ambition tends to revolve around female imperatives (e.g., she wants to make enough money to feel safe, she wants to be successful enough to outshine her peers, she wants to succeed in a well-established system created and organized by men)
- Men's ambition, especially at the upper levels, tends to revolve around male imperatives (e.g., he wants to build something to contribute to civilization, he wants to achieve a lifestyle filled with mating opportunities, he wants to acquire large amounts of power, he wants to disrupt and do something innovative, rebellious, or totally new and different)
- Women who are not top 1% or 2% ambitious women tend to have their ambition placated by being with a sufficiently ambitious man -- they rally behind the man to support and cheerlead him going out and bringing home the bacon, security, and social status, and gradually give up most of their dreams of personal (independent) ambition. Top 1% or 2% women, on the other hand, tend to know exactly what they want, and carefully choose a mate who will either support them, or at least not get in their ways as they pursue it
But no, I have not IME seen a "settling in" boost for productivity in women.
There are charts saying that this happens in MEN -- that they get more productive for a while after they marry and start having children.
Does not seem to be the case for women.
Additionally, you'd expect children (the product of many a settled relationship) to be a major dampener on women's non-familial ambitions, too. Once a woman has children, unless she is a disinterested 1% mother (like my buddy's wife), she is going to put a LOT of her time and attention and
ambition into her kids.
Even women who used to be dyed-in-the-wool career women will often transform into Super Mom once they have kids. Your banker girlfriend will be posting baby pictures on social media just like every other woman, trading mother tips on social media mommy groups, taking her kids out on play dates.
It is not really that they lose ambition at this point.
It is just more that they decide raising these little people they birthed into the world is a nobler ambition than moving from one gray cubicle to a bigger gray cubicle, or a gray room with a wooden door, or starting the next picture-sharing Silicon Valley startup.
And that ambition gets transferred and redirected.
Now they are trying to get Little Suzie to be the best in her class and learn ballet, piano, and calligraphy, instead of gunning for the VP role by 40.
Chase