The Alpha Woman Meets Her Match by Sonya Rhodes Susan Schneider

Author:Sonya Rhodes, Susan Schneider
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

THE NEW “CATCH”

The Beta man is out there in the culture, in the media, and in the sociologists’ studies and statistics—and he’s a great catch. He might be that dad pushing a stroller down the street, or the dad who is the Pied Piper of the playground set, or the father who knows the politics of the kids’ PTA far better than his working wife does. A New Yorker magazine cartoon features two Old West–style gunslinger hombres with their infants in BabyBjörns standing in a bar negotiating for a play date. A new ad campaign for shaving cream suggests men “man up,” a playful poke both at traditional notions of manhood and at today’s softer guy.

Today’s Beta guy is transformed and more complicated than the sensitive guy from the eighties and nineties. Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, a bestselling book in the eighties, satirized the sensitive man who was trying very, very hard to be acceptable to feminists. We’ve come further by now! The Beta man is no longer the guy assumed to be gay if he likes yoga, dresses well, or is a vegan. His ego doesn’t depend on scoring macho points. He is dependable, responsible, and supportive.

Many Alpha women have a sexual Achilles’ heel: openly sexual as they are, they still expect the man to take the lead in bed, which gets in the way of their falling for the tender lover, the Beta male. I call it the Fifty Shades of Grey syndrome, based on the series that found such a willing audience among Alpha dynamos who feel some sneaky retro shame about their sexual appetites. An Alpha who is secretly embarrassed by her intense sexual fantasies may feign passivity in order for the man to take the lead, so she can be taken. Her shame, which is not obvious to her, is paradoxical, contradicting everything about this alluring, sexy, spunky woman.

I will show how Beta males are—or can be—the best lovers because they want you to get off, too. With men, we tend to categorize Alphas as sexy, Betas as weak. Forget that! I will show you how to stop compartmentalizing and find the more complex man you’re really looking for.

But what do women and men really feel about the nonmacho male? After I’d begun thinking about Alpha female–Beta male partnerships, I mentioned to an Alpha friend of mine that her husband was a great Beta guy. Although I meant it as a compliment—her husband is a nurturing family man and a supercreative graphic designer who works on a vintage letterpress machine in his studio—I could tell from her body language that she was a little insulted. It made me realize just how loaded these terms are.

The old hierarchy of Alpha and Beta, in which the highest-ranking Alpha males run the show, isn’t operative anymore. Not every man is an Alpha player nor an Omega loser desultorily plucking his guitar on an old futon in his mom’s basement. Alpha players are alive and well—and enabled by technology (their best friend!) —and so are hopeless wimps and slackers.

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