These guys often have the same mentality in the real world.
If they had met you in the real world instead of on an online dating site, they would have still been intimidated by your higher education.
Unfortunately, there are some guys who just feel very insecure when they come across a woman who may know more than them or who may have a higher status in life thanks to her higher education.
If this is a guy who grew up very traditionally, he may feel as though he should be the one who has the most knowledge or the higher status.
He may not have been around women with higher education throughout his upbringing and into his adulthood.
Hence, he has never had to feel intimidated by a woman with higher education because he just didn’t grow up around that.
The world that he has grown up in has probably been quite limited.
This has given him a degree of security and control.
However, online dating is a much bigger world.
He is going to come across all kinds of women while online dating.
These are the kinds of women that he may have never come across in his limited world while growing up and into adulthood.
Hence, coming across a woman who has higher education on an online dating site may give him pause.
This pause is what may ultimately lead to a feeling of being intimidated.
He isn’t used to this kind of experience.
He is used to being around women and even dating women that he has always had more knowledge than.
These are women who were within his limited space of experience while growing up and into adulthood.
Hence, all these women were probably the same.
They had less education and less life experience.
This is what he knows.
Thereby, he is comfortable with this.
He has always felt like the most intelligent person in the room whenever he has been around these women.
However, in joining an online dating site, he has entered a much bigger world.
This is why he starts feeling intimidated when he notices that women that he is coming across have higher education than him.
He simply doesn’t know how to respond to that.
That is not within his control.
He feels inadequate.
He worries that if he were to tell you about something, you would contradict him with your knowledge.
He worries that he will not be able to keep up with you in conversations on the online dating site.
As in, you may be so much more knowledgeable about topics that he may not really know how to respond to certain intelligent questions that you ask him.
The more he thinks about this, the more intimidated he becomes by your higher education.
If he chooses to message you on the online dating site, he may try to keep you in check.
In other words, he may try to exert the kind of control that he has had over women with less education that he has been in relationships with in his past.
He may try to use the same tricks.
Perhaps he starts criticizing you in some way so as to make you start doubting yourself.
Perhaps he starts telling you that your viewpoint about a particular topic is incorrect even though he is unable to come up with cogent counterpoints.
This is how he tries to exercise dominance or control over his interactions with you and put you at a place that he is most comfortable with.
If you have come across guys like this while online dating, it may be best to stop interacting with them and move on.
Guys who are intimidated by your higher education will often refuse to accept that and will always want to find a way to knock you down emotionally so that they can dominate a relationship.