Co-authored with Susan Schneider
One of our favorite stars (and an avowed bachelor) has finally met his match -- and she turns out to be a dynamic Alpha Woman! Amal Alamuddin is a human rights lawyer who speaks three languages and once clerked for Sonia Sotomayor. In fact, Amal is so highly accomplished that our heads are spinning just as Clooney's must be. The couple met while working on a human rights project in Syria. What is most striking about this love story is that Amal, 36, represents a whole new generation of Alpha women who have not sacrificed their career ambitions for fear of missing the marriage boat.
In The Alpha Woman Meets Her Match, we expose the nightmare that keeps so many high-achieving women in their 30s up at night: a vision of themselves ending up alone with their cats. Perhaps, they worry, it's too late for their chance at having marriage and family. And even worse, perhaps they brought this on themselves by being so accomplished and, God forbid, threatening men's egos! It's simply amazing that in the 21st century, when women are outpacing men in education and career advancement, that they are at the same time being victimized by media rants warning that their professional achievements doom their chances of personal happiness. The specter of having to choose between being alone and settling for less haunts women.
Well, we think that Amal Alamuddin should be an inspiration to every woman who spends her 20s and 30s painstakingly building her identity and her career (and worrying about her love life). George Clooney, with his stated aim of never marrying again after his divorce two decades ago, has chosen an independent woman with her own career and personal identity. She's complete as a person, and she's gotten ahead all on her own, thank you very much. The couple met on an equal basis, through shared interests, and it certainly looks as though their union will be an egalitarian one.
We love George even more because when he finally decided to overcome his aversion to commitment and settle down, he chose a woman he could both love and admire (kudos to him, for choosing intelligence and achievement!). As far as settling goes, "...[Alamuddin]'s peers in the London legal circuit are more shocked that Alamuddin settled for Clooney than they are that the actor has finally decided to settle down." (New York Daily News, April 29, 2014) (Italics our own!)
Ambitious, self-assured, hard-working Alpha women, take note: The marriage statistics are on your side: the highest rate overall is for women between the ages of 30 and 45. And the marriage rates for the top 15 percent of high wage earning women is higher than it is for others. According to the Council on Contemporary Families, "college educated women have a much greater likelihood of marrying at an older age than women of any other educational level... College educated women are [also] more likely than any other group of women to report themselves happy in their marriages..." This is all good news for you. Pursue your goals, get on the right career path -- and well, we can't promise you George Clooney, but we can give you some good odds that you will end up with a partner who loves and respects you for yourself in all your many aspects, and whom you love and admire right back.
Sonya Rhodes, PhD. and Susan Schneider are the authors of The Alpha Woman Meets Her Match, How Strong Women Can Find Love and Happiness Without Settling, available now online and in bookstores.