6 Professions That Produce The Worst Boyfriends

1. Startups

Let’s start off with the one we can likely all agree on: Nightmare Startup Bros are nothing short of mutated fish that crawled out of a lake situated between a Brooks Brothers and a nuclear power plant. It’s like their gills haven’t fully transformed into lungs yet and if they aren’t constantly in a state of flopping around and aggressively telling you about their business model, they’ll die. I recently went out for a party that contained a certified Startup Bro who all but chewed through the wooden bar tables in an effort to get us to care about his monthly subscription plans (though I confess that his sockless loafer look was on point). Who could possibly date this? I would not wish these FitBit-wearing human Voss water bottles on anyone.

2. Academia

There are two reasons that academia dudes make bad boyfriends: One, it’s likely that they are in their late 20s/early 30s and still paying upwards of 50k a year for the privilege of providing indentured servant labor for a private university. And two, even if they do land an (increasingly unlikely) position teaching a bunch of tank-topped 19-year-olds about free markets, that means their air of importance is only going to increase tenfold. We’ve all dated a dude in academia and, yes, that mysterious air of “think of all these deep, important, bookish things that he knows” can be intoxicating at first. His vague condescension can even be a turn-on, in the right context. But cut to six months later when you’re hungover, blearily sharing a plate of hash browns at the Waffle House he deeply feels is beneath him, and you’re trying to tune him out while he corrects you on the correct pronunciation of a French author’s name. (Or make the mistake of pointing out the hypocrisy of being a Marxist who participates in a for-profit, class-crushing academic system, and watch his thin lacquer of Enlightened Male Feminism™ magically melt away.) No one needs that shit.

3. Marketing

What do people in ~*~MaRkEtInG aNd CoMmUnIcAtIoNs~*~ even do though? I mean, yes, they are a close ideological cousin of the Startup Bro, in that half of their vocabulary is buzzwords that only they and their coworkers understand the definitions of, but no one whose job title is Community Manager And Social Marketing Strategist For Dick’s Sporting Goods should be taking themselves so seriously, and yet, these guys are SO PRETENTIOUS. (And let’s be clear: I write lists about chicken nuggets for a living, I know that my job is the equivalent of reduced-fat Cool Whip, but I am ABOUT my basicness.) Marketing dudes are the ego of a top-rated neurosurgeon in the body of someone who has to make official hashtags take off for a living, and no one wants to be cornered at a party with an explanation about “personal brand extension.” I once heard a Social Media Bro fleecing an innocent small business-owning couple at a Starbucks, convincing them to cough up hard-earned money so he could buy them Facebook followers and make #tbt posts on their behalf. Like, YOU MONSTER.

4. Finance

Finance Bros are significant for somehow being worse in real life than even their most comically over-the-top portrayals in film and TV. Unless they’re one of the overworked math/computer geniuses who are the actual cogs that make the machine go forward, they are every bit the comic book villains you imagine them to be. I once had a conversation with a Finance Bro who openly told me that they “pretty much exclusively date girls in the fashion industry” because they are “hot, work as many hours as we do, and are going to leave their jobs around 30 to raise kids.” This is a real thing that happened. And he was actually pretty nice, as far as it goes. If you’re interested in dating an Ivy League frat boy as imagined by an Eli Roth movie, by all means. If it’s good enough for 50 percent of the Real Housewives, it’s good enough for you.

5. Politics

Let’s make the distinction that, even if they get the will to continue crushed out of them at an early juncture in their career, there are good male politicians. They are sparkly-eyed and rosy-cheeked and have the ice-cream-scoop-butts of a strapping, idealistic young lad. But a LOT of guys who work in politics are straight-up sociopaths, and a thousand times worse if they come from some Illuminati-esque family dynasty that makes their entry into the industry a given. You meet enough of these guys in DC and the story about the Kennedys not letting a little incident of secretary manslaughter stop them makes total sense. (And to be fair, most of us have no chance of ending up with these guys anyway, because powerful Politician Bros all end up with straight-brown-haired girls from old family money who have the personality of gluten-free pizza crusts.) But the truth remains: These dudes are scary as shit, and would probably kill the call girls they hire at 40 if they got a little too chatty. They’re out here trying to pocket some sweet agricultural lobby money, and none of us bitches are getting in their way.

6. Law

Twice as much school as Finance Bros, half as much money, the same amount of work hours (and therefore outbursts about how “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE KIND OF PRESSURE I AM UNDER, CHRIST.”). You do the math.