Vital topic, nothing is more responsible for our collective misery, nothing sells more prozac.
Here's my 2c:
Women are sexually attracted to worldly success in men. Other things play a role, of course, but that is one of the fundamentals.
Men, on the other hand, are indifferent to worldly success in women. We don't fear it, we don't hate it - we just don't care about it.
Many high-end successful women expect that men will be attracted to their success in the same way they are attracted to successful men.
Alas, it's not so. Successful men can choose partners from essentially all available women, while successful women rule out all but 1% of men.
The resulting imbalance makes our successful women bitterly unhappy, and, given their verbal and manipulative skills, their unhappiness is being very effectively spread around.
As a former “high end successful woman,” I would say that you’re spot on. In college, I always sneered at the girls pursuing less high powered careers like teaching in part because I thought that no intelligent, successful man wanted an MRS degree type. I really thought that men would be turned on by my Ivy League law degree. In truth, they could care less as you said. And if anything, it only made most of them uncomfortable with a woman who was better educated than they were.
I also believe that women have a fundamental need to respect and look up to their men. If they cannot, the dynamics of the relationship get completely screwed up as this article shows. Call it shallow or whatever, but it’s true.
(And FWIW, I ended up married to a man in the 1% and now stay home with our kids. If I had stayed on the high end career track, I would have been miserable. As it is, I am very happy with my life save for the harping of other people telling me that I am wasting it.)