If you answered mostly C’s . . .
Your date values money at its market-relationship value, without inflation; he sees it for what it can do in a practical sense, not for how it makes him feel or impresses dates such as you. He may never be a sugar daddy, but he’ll also never be a leech, and most important, you’ll be able to trust him to make smart financial decisions for your possible family. He cares less about spoiling you than contributing to a dream you can build together, and if you’re more interested in building a family than being flashy, he’s probably got his priorities straight.
The Particulars of the 1 Percent: Pros and Cons of Dating Different Varieties of Rich People
While dating any rich person has the advantage of financial security, not every fortune is created equal; whether someone’s finances are earned or inherited, nouveau or historical, can all impact his or her good and bad qualities as a potential mate. Here’s a simple breakdown of a few different types of wealthy people and how their specific type of wealth can shape them as a partner.
* * *
Pro
Con
Secret trust fund
Often creative, using his wealth to underwrite a career in the arts or to start charities, and eager to disassociate himself from his wealth (as opposed to spending ostentatiously and making it rain in strip clubs) due to embarrassment, since, unlike the artists he runs with, he ain’t starving.
Given his combination of financial security and shame, he can be terrible at managing money and appreciating his luck. May be aimless and bad at making important decisions due to the lack of motivation and experience making hard choices that needing to afford electricity can provide.
New money
Is willing to spend large sums on all the stuff she always wanted but could never before afford, not just so every day can feel like Christmas (if you have a tree under which you can fit pool tables and boats), but so she can keep up with the old-money crowd, not realizing said crowd is running away from her gauche behavior.
Having never been rich means having never learned how to save or invest money in bulk; even if business savvy is what got her rich, saving savvy is a different Learning Annex class altogether, so she’s at risk for burning through her new fortune or just squandering it on Jet Skis and loans to cousins who need the start-up funds to open vape shops.
Old money
Can offer a window into a world that is foreign to at least 99.9 percent of the population, who’ve only seen it on PBS and in Brooks Brothers catalogs. Financial security can extend to guaranteed jobs in family-run businesses, to financial firms, to private islands off Massachusetts, etc.
Snobbishness abounds, so that window into his world is often only opened a crack to those whose money is newer or, gross, far less plentiful. Laziness and aimlessness also arise from not having the (powerful, terrifying) motivation to get paid or die trying.
Having Wealth
If John Hughes, Rupert Murdoch, and Bill Gates could agree on one thing, it’d be a tie between “malaria is bad” and “being rich makes it soooo much easier to get laid.” On the other hand, if we can learn anything from slimy James Spader in Pretty in Pink, Murdoch’s string of ex-wives, and Gates’s ability to find a steady partner able to ignore his haircut, it’s that money might be able to get you dates, but unless you’re smart (about everything but how to choose a barber), it can prevent you from getting dates that you can trust, connect with, or do anything but spoil and perhaps resent. That’s because wealth shapes others’ expectations, as well as yours, in ways that interfere with friendship, mutual respect, and even having a good time. Instead of holding out hope for a spark that makes all the wealth-related prejudices and reflexes melt away, learn what to expect from others and develop methods for managing their attitudes. Then you can know whether someone likes you for you and not just for your parents’ giant house or media empire or philanthropic fortune and the chance you’ll go bald.
Here are three examples:
• I didn’t grow up in a mansion or anything, but my family was wealthy, and now that I’ve achieved some professional success myself, I’m fairly well-off. I try not to be ostentatious or flaunt what I have, but when I start dating someone and she finds out that I do have some money, it always causes problems. She either thinks I’m judging her for having less money (I’m not) or that my having money means I’m an asshole (I’m not, I hope). My goal is to find someone who doesn’t think the worst of me once she finds out I’m not broke.
• I’m not a repulsive man, but I know that my most attractive quality isn’t my face. I’m extremely successful, and I’m not ashamed of it, but I’m also not looking to be with someone who only sees me as a fat bank account. Because I work hard for my success, I don’t have a lot of time to meet women, and that makes it even more frustrating when the women who want to meet me are only interested in my net worth. My goal is to find a woman who doesn’t care about my wealth.
• I grew up with money, but I don’t have much any more now that I’m grown-up and I’m not good at making it, so I’ve realized I need a man who is financially successful. I wish it weren’t this way because it makes me feel shallow, but I can’t support any guy I’m with and I don’t want to live less comfortably than I’m used to. My goal is to find someone nice who is also reasonably wealthy, without feeling guilty about it, so I can return to the kind of lifestyle I’ve always been accustomed to.
Unlike a sense of humor, family, brains, and many other qualities described in this book, wealth isn’t a permanent part, or even necessarily a reflection, of who somebody is. Sure, wealth is desirable, can shape a person’s character, and be as inherited as your mother’s comic timing or your father’s love of reading historical biographies; unlike those things, however, wealth can be impermanent, impersonal, and a sometimes unimportant indicator of someone’s true nature.
As discussed earlier, seeking someone with resources isn’t unwise or superficial, but if you are wealthy and judged only by those resources, money becomes a barrier to finding a partner instead of a shortcut. So, when one person has more than the other, building chemistry based on character and discovering whether that chemistry makes for genuine compatibility requires extra work and patience.
People who come from old money—the kind that goes back generations, not that has cobwebs on it or lives in the old-Krugerrand home—often notice the negative feelings their wealth arouses when they date outside their economic and social class. Whether envious or not or whether their prejudices are deserved or not, people are quick to assume that wealthy people, especially those raised with wealth, are spoiled, lazy monsters who hire personal assistants for their cats and limit their work to that on their tans at beachfront estates in St. Barts. So, if you’re wealthy and wish to date outside your social class, you will probably run into negative judgments you don’t deserve, and it’s natural to become defensive and frustrated when that dating is more difficult than you expected.
It won’t help to hide or apologize for your wealth or to worry too much about how it will be perceived. Instead, review your spending priorities and practices and determine for yourself whether what you do with money reflects values you believe in, such as education, self-reliance, and being a good friend and family member. The more confident you are in your money management, not simply in profit making (but not excluding it, either), the more you can share your wealth-related activities with a prospective partner as if you’re sharing a part of who you are, not what you were born into.
As long as you’re comfortable that your spending decisions reflect your personality and moral priorities, you can use wealth as a screening tool. Those who can’t see past their negative feelings or prejudice about money are never going to be real friends, but those who respect what you’re doing with your money, as you do, can respect the real you and be the kind of friends and partners that last.
If you’re particularly good at making money, it’s hard to escape the false attractiveness t
hat draws supermodels, supersycophants, and the generally shallow. Even people who don’t intend to be gold diggers find themselves attracted to and impressed with financial success, and since working takes up most of your time, that is bound to make the screening and searching of dating a lot more difficult.
One way to use wealth to make dating easier is to hire a matchmaker. Yes, they exist in real life, and unlike the worn leather sack filled with rabid possums who does the job on Bravo, good matchmakers do the detective work and commonsense screening that we advise people to do for themselves. There’s nothing wrong with delegating, particularly if you’re using an experienced, not-sack-based professional who helps you approach the task the way a headhunter would help you find a coexecutive.
Write a job description and the criteria for skills, education, background, and personality traits that you think are necessary. Keep in mind your availability, or lack of it; you obviously need someone who is sufficiently independent not to resent your work commitment. Even if you don’t feel comfortable working with a matchmaker, don’t let financial success turn you into a lonely prince of commerce. If you use your wealth and business acumen to streamline the search, you’ve got a good chance of filling your partnership position.
If you’ve grown up with wealth but then grow out of it and discover you have no talent for making it on your own, looking for someone with money may seem like the best way to secure your return to the class you consider home. While there’s nothing shallow about wanting and needing material comfort, especially if it’s the only kind of life you’ve ever known, it can be dangerous to let financial neediness lower your standards, weaken your evaluation of a rich man’s character, and blind you to flaws, faults, and incompatibilities that will prevent you from developing a real, respectful partnership.
Unless you’re particularly mercenary and insensitive, winning a rich partner will hurt you as much as him when you find yourselves bound to someone you don’t like or trust. So, instead of wasting time with guilt and self-doubt, take extra care getting to know a wealthy potential partner until you’re as sure of his character and your mutual affection as you are of his pocketbook. Yes, it’s easier to evaluate a partnership candidate when you’re not feeling needy, but life doesn’t offer you that choice. So rely on your experience, be extra careful, and trust your ability to get to know someone and develop a real relationship, even when distracted by financial need.
Having wealth may be good for your ego, sense of security, and your cat’s PA, but it doesn’t make finding or developing a good relationship any easier. Wealth can become more of an asset to your search than an obstacle, however, if you use it as a reflection of your good character or as a tool to find someone worthwhile. The dating pool is the great equalizer in that everybody, rich and poor alike, is required to learn the basics of what they need and conduct a search according to carefully developed standards. Do that, and wealth won’t prevent you from finding someone who accepts and loves you for who you are, not what you’ve got.
Too Motivated by Money?
Red flags that you’re on a first date with someone who’s way too fixated on finances:
• He refuses to ride to the restaurant in your trusted old Toyota since he doesn’t get into cars that are older than the fancy cheese in his fridge and more embarrassing than the experimental Danish anti-hair-loss ointment he keeps next to it.
• After noticing the cumulative classiness of your watch, car, and address, he rejects your offer to treat him to a movie for your second date and suggests you instead treat him to a weeklong getaway in Bermuda.
• Says she’d love to meet up for coffee once she gets some fundamental information, e.g., the coffee shop address, a description of what you’ll be wearing, and copies of your last three months of bank statements.
• After you assure him that you are, in fact, treating him to dinner at what is his favorite restaurant, he orders six entrées and calls his roommate to ask what he’d like for dinner this week since some sucker is buying and you’re not sharing your shrimp risotto.
• You assumed he wanted to meet for an early dinner because he had plans later, but you discover it was so he could catch the early-bird special and ride his bike there and back while it was still light out, when it’s easier to see and collect soda cans by the side of the road. You correctly assume he’s not paying for dinner.
Wealth and Marriage
Even if you’re a die-hard romantic and still believe, after all these pages, that love must be at the core of any good marriage, you have to acknowledge that money is at the core of almost all marital arguments. And if a fight isn’t directly about money, it’s usually only a few degrees of separation away from it; after all, money, not love, is necessary to a family’s survival and growth, forces you to make tough decisions, and, if you have kids, always seems to be in short supply. You might think that, if you had enough wealth, you wouldn’t have to worry about survival, hard choices, or arguments, but no amount of money can buy you out of marital conflict because there are always reasonable and meaningful options that cost more money, and the more those options cost, the more important they are. So making decisions about money—the making, spending, saving, sharing, and prioritizing of it—is, in a way, what marriage is about. You can be rich in love, but if you’re poor in funds, your marriage may still end up broke.
Here are three examples:
• My wife and I had a successful business for a long time that provided us with a comfortable lifestyle, but then our industry went bust and we suddenly find ourselves hustling in the job market, looking for a smaller place to rent, and turning down invitations to dine at unaffordable restaurants with friends who eventually stop returning our calls. My wife and I are holding on to each other for dear life, wondering if we can survive this transition, hoping we can do so with our marriage intact. My goal is to protect my marriage despite my being angry, scared, and feeling like a failure.
• I felt like Cinderella when I married a smart, creative guy with a big trust fund, and I liked that our family would be secure while he pursued his interests. The trouble is that he’s never found anything that’s grabbed him for more than a year or two. If he’s not so entranced with something that he’s relatively unavailable, then he’s around all the time and depressed until he finds something new. I’m pretty happy raising the kids, but ten years into our marriage, he’s still drifting and restless. My goal is to have a relationship with my husband that I can count on (or just a reliable husband, period).
• I feel I made a bad deal with my marriage, and I can’t help resenting my husband. He’s a nice guy with a good heart and an excellent job, so I married him, even though I didn’t love him, because I knew he’d be a good dad and a reliable partner, and I didn’t think I’d find someone better. Plus my parents married for love and my family was broke and miserable, so I thought it was a small sacrifice. My husband’s all that I thought he’d be and we have a lovely home, but I find myself resenting him more and more as the years go by. It’s not his fault or anything he’s doing specifically, it’s just the small things that I find irritating, that maybe I wouldn’t find so irritating if I’d loved him more in the first place. So I feel bad about putting him down, hurting the kids, and being a jerk. My goal is to stop hurting him but stay married.
The simplest way to look at how wealth factors into a marriage is to see it as the fuel that gets your marriage-mobile to where you need it to go; if you want to have enough food or take a vacation or get the kids to private school, money is what makes all of that possible. Shared values, beliefs, and goals are what build the vehicle, and maybe, to paraphrase the film Serenity, love is what keeps it on the road, but without fuel, it will get stuck, and then there’s no guarantee you won’t end up hitchhiking off in separate directions.
Of the many factors that can impact your family’s wealth, luck is a major one, and suddenly losing money (and the friends, social standing, and lifestyle that go with it) is one of th
e toughest challenges a marriage can endure besides severe illness and moving in with your in-laws on their houseboat. While nobody can control luck, your response to that financial luck (or lack thereof) is not only within your control, it’s also a measure of your character, both as an individual and as a family comanager.
Loss of wealth naturally prompts you to wonder what you did wrong, who’s responsible, and what you should have done differently. The more severe the loss, the broader its impact on where you live, what you can do for your kids, and how you spend time with friends. The deeper your ties to a community and your commitment to raising children, the more it hurts. That’s why losing wealth feels like the essence of failure, and if you make the mistake of believing those feelings, failure becomes reality. Feelings of failure drive you to withdraw, stop working or looking for work, blame your partner, yell at the kids, possibly drink too much, and become everything you don’t respect. They are infectious and can demoralize everyone in the family, including your partner, kids, and pets.
What you must accept is that financial loss is an unavoidable part of life and that what counts is what you do with it. Yes, you may have made stupid mistakes or be bad with money, and daily events, along with your spouse and kids, may provide you with regular reminders of the impact of your loss. Don’t make it worse by holding yourself responsible for your pain. Instead, judge your situation as you would a friend’s, giving yourself the benefit of the doubt and thinking constructively instead of focusing on blame; refuse to criminalize stupid mistakes or assume that guilt and suffering should be proportionate to how much pain results from that mistake.
F*ck Love: One Shrink's Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship Page 21