Note: I could step back and degender this comment, but I have left in the gender roles and some prejudgement since beta tags where used when nurture versus provider roles could have been used.
That is how "she" rolls. While she is a fantastic provider, and she has achieved what quite a few women and women before her dreamt of achieving.
She has also become a poster person for toxic femininity. She leaves her husband, a nurturing person who fought through the societal expectations like she did, and she ridicules him and emasculates him.
She is projecting how she feels that while she has achieved what men have done, she feels empty inside and has to run from the family and household they built because she knows she is a failure.
Women that shun and call men "betas" when they same. This is an equality moment here, where a woman is shown to be as toxic as a man from the 1950s. In some ways it is worse, because it is a gender shaming and toxic attack on the good that one does.
As for her and the next friend, they don't deserve nor get men's desire. They are just as shallow as the men that use sports cars and other things to bang some women at a bar in an unknown town. As such, they get to have the "thirst" of the alpha man, but little do they realize it is drinking salt water. Men have realized this for many generations, now women can experience it too.
Two "leaders" or "alphas" as one can see in shades of your friend Liz, always shows what happens next. In college, I had quite a few friends. From athletes to head of organizations and was very popular. One guy who was a ladies man and trust me a lot of women "would go yum" over him, stated when he fucked a head of soriority it was like fucking himself. He is what I would term a toxic masculinity driven person, and as such he stated it was great just to release (akin to masturbation) but that was it.
I stated to him at the time, you do realize it doesn't say much about you, and his response is look at me "Al". I am fucking hot and a stud with a great cock. Well, flip the script on gender and she stated look at me I have a 4.0, lead an organization and will probably graduate the top of my class and I look great. Two shallow people, always leads to great and meaningful sex no?
So the answer is I have seen this story since it is a story that men have seen and shared amongst each other for generations, and guess what. The sex sucks, the relationships end, and at the end one is left with their accomplishments which we all know mean nothing on our death beds.
Lastly, look at Sheryl Sandberg. If a man does achieve it all, there is a great chance he dies early. As for her end product of body of work (facebook), is it really a product that has helped humanity?
Shonda Rhodes is partially correct. Nurturing men are better lovers, because they actually have fought the demons which would hold back women from their full potential while embracing their inner masculinity and adding layers to like women have done in the past.
Women that shun that are scared because IMO, they realize they are the shallow ones.
But in the end the most important thing is women should have the choice to be a toxic leader, a lonely older woman in a bar wishing she hadn't hurt the ones she has loved, the one having to pay child support and all that.
It is all about freedom of choice to live one's life in an attempt on their pursuit of happiness. It doesn't mean one gets to be happy at all.
But you call it out, having a male provider who nurtures and does what society shuns is the unicorn in today's world. Being a provider means nothing, it is a necessiity ,and it also means while one does have their freedom. They are replacable.
It is why at the start of the article friend one, could go away to see her friend. It is because the husband probably said good riddance I don't have to see her face and I can do something more enjoyable and pleasurable, which is to read a magazine and probably self pleasure.
Harsh I know, but how many woman have said I have a headache ...
We all need to do better. We also need to realize that we need to kill these gender based tropes off if we hope to have any happiness.
The answer is you can't have it all, sex between two leads never works, and for those that do have it all. They are burning the candle at both ends, which means a full life will only be a 1/2 of one.
