A super motivated boyfriend is great. There’s just one problem, you might have trouble locking him down.
“Why won’t he marry me?” pops up a lot nowadays. Seemingly beautiful, smart women can’t find the love of their lives, and when they do, they can’t lock them down.
Women have it tougher today. It amazes me how some can juggle career and motherhood so well. Those who do deserve a gold star because there are only so many hours in a day.
What’s less talked about is the pressure society puts on men to succeed. Women need to know that men have it rough too. Society expects us to provide, and provide some more!
Ever since I was a kid, my parents stressed the importance of education, so that I can make enough money to support a family and support them. The pressure was latent, but immense making each poor grade or non-promotion that much more stressful. When you’re a teenage boy, frankly all you want to do is chase girls and not plan out the next two decades of your life!
The Super Motivated Boyfriend (SMB) is a curious being. He is a potential gem to any women out there with enough polishing.
Polish him too much and he loses his edge and rolls away. It’s important to understand his ambitions, for once you do, wedding bells won’t be far away!
Five Ways To Get Your Super Motivated Boyfriend To Marry You
1) SMB’s Are Insecure.
SMB’s are terrified of failure given the massive amount of expectations placed upon them since they were kids. The more education they receive (i.e. grad school), the more time and money spent, and the more is expected of them to become great successes.
Some SMB’s are late bloomers, which is even worse because they are playing catch up with peers who’ve already checked all the boxes growing up. Beware of the late bloomer SMB!
Action: Be selfless in your support, no matter how silly his goals are. SMB’s need constant reinforcement that they are doing the right thing, even though you think they’re not.
2) SMB’s Set Target Ages For Achievement.
A classic target age is 30. Where many women shoot to marry by 30, the SMB generally has some type of monetary, or career goal they must achieve by then. SMB’s are often told that by the time they’re 30, they’ll have either made it, or failed completely. Talk about pressure!
What’s important to realize is that the closer your SMB is to 30 without much to show for, the less he’ll likely want to marry you. The other typical age targets are 35, 40, and 45. It’s important to find out what his age anchors are.
Action: Assess whether you think he’ll reach his dreams by 30, or whatever his age anchor may be. If you don’t think he is going to become a Vice President in his firm by then, you should either dump him while you’re still young, or reset your marriage expectations by the corresponding years you think it’ll take for him to reach his goals. The choice is yours.
3) SMB’s Have Big Ego’s, Stroke Wisely.
Despite being insecure, SMB’s often come across as overly confident. Because they’ve been working towards their one goal for so long and with so much effort, any person who doesn’t share their passion will be scoffed at.
It may be the simple smirk during a conversation, or the brush off during an initial meeting once they find out what the other guys does. SMB’s believe they are the best thing since sliced bread and have superiority complexes.
Action: Realize that a lot of his ego is born out of his insecurities. Give your boyfriend constant reinforcement, while complimenting him on his successes. There will always be some other colleague of his who gets paid more, or gets promoted before him, so make him feel like he’s doing a great job.
4) SMB’s Like To Play The Field.
The deadliest SMB is the good looking SMB. He’s confident, motivated, and makes women other than yourself swoon. Meeting a career-oriented, highly motivated man is attractive enough. Add on good looks and it’s game over! The hot SMB is hardest to lock down.
Because they are insecure and know they are handsome, they need even more reinforcement than you can give him. He also needs the attention of other fine ladies who will oooh and ahh at his stature and success.
Action: Let him loose, or else he will resent you. All men have the insatiable desire to flirt with women. You may think you are only innocently inquiring about his whereabouts through your constant texting, but in his eyes every single inquiry is a nag.
The more you inquire, the more you nag, and the more he’s reminded of being in youth prison where his mom doesn’t allow him to go out and play!
5) Super Motivated Boyfriends Love Confident Women.
Nothing turns off SMB’s more than a woman who doesn’t know what she wants. If you’re the type of girl who always replies “you choose” when it comes to watching a movie, you have very little chance of becoming Mrs. SMB.
Part of the attractiveness of a confident woman is the counterbalance of an SMB’s own insecurities. SMB’s think subconsciously that if a strong, confident, sexy women wants to be with them, they must be doing something right with their lives.
Action: Have a core group of girlfriends you can always hang out with. He needs to know you can have fun without him. Tell him about your plans with other girls and never invite him. The more you spend time with your girlfriends, the more the SMB wants to spend time with you.
Don’t believe me? Next time you’re with your boyfriend, tell him that you are spending time with your girlfriends one Thursday and don’t ask him what he’s doing. He’ll come groveling to spend all the time he can with you when you return.
There’s nothing more attractive to an SMB than a women who can show her feminine side and kick butt in the board room.
Don’t Let Your Super Motivated Boyfriend Get Away
You may be the most loving girlfriend in the world, but if you don’t understand the pressures and milestone targets every SMB faces, you’re going to have an awfully difficult time locking him down. Having a SMB is both a blessing and a curse.
On the one hand, your SMB is so focused on making a name for himself that he loses sight of you. On the other hand, if your SMB finally achieves his goals with your support, he will not only emerge as a secure person, he will be forever grateful and want to take care of you forever!
Related:
How To Get A Rich Man To Be Your Husband
The New Rules For Engagement Ring Buying
The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Married Couple
This post was originally published on February 9, 2010. It has since been updated for 2020+. There’s nothing greater than having a partner to spend your life with, especially during difficult times.
Super late to the game. Its interesting as I think i am dating SMB right now. I wonder if you can help me (assuming if by chance you do read this comment). The guy I am with, we are not in a relationship. We dated for 1 month and he said he wanted to be just friends. He is a grad student at H university in Cambridge/Boston and he is planning to transition to a top consultant firm. So he puts all his energy into preparing for the interview. He is also applying for his green card (which luckily he got after 6 month). I on the other hand are successful to him, (not to myself, i think i am doing very averagely) I work in I-Banking but on the technology side making low 6 figures. I own my own apartment in one of the best neighborhood but only by the help of my mom. He said he cannot commit to a relationship where he feels like he is so uncertain about his situation. He told me he likes me a lot he just can’t be with me until he reaches his goal. And when i read your description of SMB, it fits him to the T. He is highly insecure, but at the same time he is very handsome, he has a complex of being really confident of himself but also extremely insecure at the same time. I on the other hand is in general very positive and extroverted person. I always try to give him as much as encouragement as i can, and support him 120%.
AT first I thought he is just using this as excuse but since we decided to be friend, he would call me every single day, and we will hang out 3, 4 times a week including every Saturday for the whole day. And it has been consistent for 1 year. He will tell me he is not and do not want to date anyone else, which it is true as he does not have the time or energy for anything else. He is not a flirtatious person at all rather a very serious person. besides his job, he spends 3 hours every single day on practicing in additional to various business club he participate in to boost his chance at the consulting firms. He will tell me if he has any free time and if i want he will spend it with me. He will call me and tell me how he did after every practice of the case study and every business club meeting who he met. He will accompany me to all the social events i asked him to. He met all my friends, and he treats my dog as his own. So i hope he will get the job if he doesn’t i think probably I shd call it off base on your blog?
I appreciate your blog and have learned a lot from it, but I must say this article kind of puts me off because of the mold it presents. I’m an 18 year old female, and my life goals certainly don’t culminate in “marry by 30”; I’m the “SMB”! But the way this is written is a little damning. The way to “lock down” a super motivated boyfriend is to not give a shit about locking anyone down and be super motivated yourself, not to be whiny and dependent and google ways to get someone to marry you. What if I want to play the field? What if I am the one setting age based achievement goals? I know you didn’t mean any of this in a demeaning way, and I’m certainly not coming from an accusatory place, I’m just genuinely disappointed by the assumptions. I came here from a link in the “First Million” article because I thought the title sounded a little curious. In any case, I’ll just keep reading, keep hustling, and keep working my way to *my* first million, and anyone else along the way who shows up can just deal with it. Cheers!
I wonder how many women reading this blog would fit into the category of women who are trying to lock down their guys for financial reasons. I’d think that your female contingent would be a lot more financially savvy / set. Would have been more interesting to see this from your own POV – are you trying to snag a woman who’s well off financially? Or are you just presuming that the woman will be more financially dependent?
Also, unless if one person in the relationship is making extremely little money (or not working), there is a pretty significant marriage tax. All the women that I know who are financially savvy are less likely to get married / re-married as a result of it.
Check out:
How To Get Your Spouse To Work Longer So You Can Retire Earlier
The Marriage Penalty Tax: When Does It Kick In?
Scraping By On $200,000 A Year
Sorry you just misidentified what ego is. Its not overconfidence or the act of being “cocky”. Ego isn’t really something we identify with especially if we’ve studied some Theology class that touched upon Buddhism. Its something we suppress. Ego is associated with psychotic behavior. We tend to think it is the underlying cause of most “evil” in this world. Most psychotherapists will tell you people with any ego will lie cheat steal and kill to protect their ego from being identified. If that thing in your head said “That’s not me! He’s referring to crazy people” I have some bad news for you. Your ego just told you what you needed to hear to prevent you from identifying it. That thing in your head is what is limiting you from excelling. Identify it and realize what it does. There are of course varying degrees of ego or the other “I” “me” or “my”. For example there is always someone that everyone here knows that acts like a real jack ass on the freeway. You know the type. Its the guy that wont let anyone pass him. Then there is the other self or possessive my. This is where ego becomes “acceptable” by society’s standard. It simply makes life more interesting and glamorous. Examples of this includes things like “my watch” “my house” “my girlfriend”. Realize these things we think we own really aren’t something we own. We are more or less temporary stewards of them. Simply put its a watch, a house, a girlfriend. The point is no SMB (as you have so delicately put it) will ever identify with the term ego. Simply put we don’t have them. They are dead weight.
I can’t believe I found such a on-point article. My SMB is 29 and I’m 28. We’ve been together 6 months and up until me, he told me gf’s were more of a companion to date and spend time with rather than being a serious committed relationship. I feel completely stuck in that I genuinely love my SMB to bits and when we’re together it’s really great, but I’m bound by his schedule and he even bought me an ipad so we can plan our get-togethers and facetime when he’s away for work. I’d love nothing more than pin him down but as you’ve rightly indicated, these types of people respond to independent, self-fulfilled women which isn’t always me. His age anchor for children for eg is 40. Now for me that’s too late and although i’m reasonably career oriented, 35 is an absolute push for me. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that if I’m not satisfied with the way things are now (and I certainly can’t even picture a future of ‘us’ in terms of marriage, living together, babies) where can I go from here?! I don’t want to end things as I deeply love him but I can’t see a way to improve the situation for me.
How did you find this article always curious to know?
I think you have to be greedy for yourself and see who else is out there while you wait.
Hi Sam, via google when I typed in something like ‘career-orientated’ boyfriend. I can’t do what you suggest, not when I have the feelings I do for SMB. Thank you for replying, I’ve been reading a little about you and am following you on Twitter. I do feel like I want to talk to him about it but I doubt that although he loves me I believe he would be willing to just let me go – perhaps something I fear more than anything.
The BF just sold his company? Sounds like he’s a good catch. Lock him down! :)
Nice post. But I work hard too, and am very driven to succeed. I am a RN. Very Confident and established. Own my own beautiful home, and have lots of girlfriends. He own’s his own home too. We’ve been together for 2.5 years. Enough already. Men invented marriage, so what is their problem?
Great article! My boyfriend’s definitely an SMB. I don’t see how this is a controversial post – I would have totally have you write this for my blog if I had the chance =p
Thanks for this. My boyfriend is an SMB. I’m a home body. People pleaser. This advice helps me to see his perspective. Nothing offensive about it!
Excellent write up. I don’t see any reason for women to get offended by this post!
Hahahaha. The great thing about the Internet and their blogs: it’s never too late to post. Perhaps this is why my wife and are not getting along too well. I’m super-motivated and she always says, “you choose.”
What the hell was so wrong with this post that Wisebread didn’t accept it?
They felt it would offend women, which make up a majority of their readers. It’s cool, I can see that. They are running a business and don’t want to offend anybody.
Although I don’t think this article is offensive, I also don’t rely on this blog to live.