This dude is my new hero

Spot on!

I'm as annoyed as the guys are by the gold-diggers because they make it hard for the rest of us women who *don't* want to be regarded as so much meat (just like guys don't like being treated as a wallet). Seriously, her attitude belongs back in the stone ages. I'm not property waiting to be bought. (And I've had rich men try to "buy" me, and it's NOT a pleasant experience. I just wish it were that easy to make that much money so I would never have to be subject to such boorishness ever again!)

Furthermore, the "plain Janes with nothing to offer" probably bring a hell of a lot more to the table than she ever could.

Hell, I wish I had her number. I'd introduce her to my ex who makes about that much in a year. They deserve each other. :twisted:

Well, if she wants someone young, she's almost too old for that. At her age, she's only going to get the old, rich guys.

And trust me, they're no prize!

What's scary is that if you go anywhere on the Upper East Side, people do not really find this wrong. I had a rich, older man try to trap me into marriage by using my poverty against me and all these older women were like, "You should have married him. You would have been rich." And shit up a creek for a divorce lawyer because none of that money would have been mine. Clearly, something didn't get taught in Hebrew school when they were growing up. (These were women I met at synagogue.)

Well, personally, I want to be financially AND emotionally ready to have kids, which is the main reason why I have opted out of single motherhood. That, and the realization that while I might be a really good mother with the right sort of husband (i.e. someone more nuturing than me. I tend to nurture on an emergency basis and a kid shouldn't have to fling himself out a window to get some nuturing.) I would be a DISASTER as a single mom. And this is not a slight against single moms, because I know a few really good ones. I just know that *I* don't have what it takes.

I think I'm just about emotionally ready to mother, having resolved my parental issues in the past year, but financially, I'm a disaster. Gotta solve that soon. Oh, yeah, and the husband issue. Gotta find a man that I wouldn't want to kill with a fork. (You'd be surprised how hard that it is to find! :twisted: )

At this rate, there is a good chance I may not end up being a mother.

Oh well.

But to return to your point, much of the attitudes toward marriage that you discuss is rather antiquated, dating back from when women were considered property and brood mares. And that is the worst thing about dating rich men is that they treat you like property. I don't know why these men think I'm trophy wife material, because I wasn't raised like that.

I once had to choose between marrying a rich man or homelessness. He had manuevered me into a bad spot financially and I was living with a psychotic woman who put me in physical danger and I had to move fast! (Do not EVER use RoomFinders!) His whole line to me was, "Well, you're too old to be loved for yourself, so you may as well marry rich!" :shock: Holy shit! I felt like I was being put on the auction block! I told him that he couldn't afford me and I would rather fling myself off the Williamsburg bridge than marry him. He was shocked. "How can you leave me? I'm rich!!" :roll:

So I walked out into what I thought would be a bout of homelessness, but a friend bailed me out and gave me money to move. After that whole drama, I told my family about it, and EVERY SINGLE ONE told me, "Good for you! You made the right move."

It's not to say that my daddy wouldn't like me to marry someone rich if I could. He wants to make sure that I'm taken care of, but not at the expense of my dignity, happiness, or autonomy. I was raised to expect to have my own career and make my own money (oy! Is that hard!). Even if I should marry a rich mensch, I would never give up my career or working, because it's too much of who I am and I get too much satisfaction from it.

I don't judge men by their salaries because it's just as degrading to them to have me view them as a wallet, as it is degrading to me to be viewed just as a piece of meat. To me, the only financial criteria I look for in a man is if he is capable of paying his own bills and whether he's financially responsible with what he has. It's not how much a man has that matters to me, but what he does with it that counts.

Well, yeah. Your girlfriend would of course put a premium on the financial side of things because that's all she knew. Imagine how the OP was raised. Yikes!

It's unfortunate that most people tend to reproduce what they grew up with. I guess I'm different because I pretty much had to raise myself while trying to raise my parents (Kids should be easy after that!) so I had to decide early on what my values were going to be.

Not that the values that my parents instilled in me were all that bad. They just tend to be a bit narrow-minded in the possibilities of what's out there. The one thing I'm grateful for is that I've had almost no pressure to marry from my parents whatsoever. In my family, being a spinster is no shameful thing (which is why my family is so small; we don't tend to reproduce). My parents are even delusional enough to think that they are too young to be grandparents (even though the day that I might be too old to be a parent isn't too far off!) I get an occasional nudge, though. My dad will say that someone who turned out to be inappropriate is "not that bad". But ultimately, I think my family would rather I stay single rather than marry the wrong person.

Divorce is the big shanda. No one in my family has ever been divorced and while if I really make a mistake, I would get a divorce, that would be REALLY hard to live down. In my family, it's better not to get married than to marry the wrong person.

MichaelKeys wrote: You'd be surprised by how many people in this day and age look at marriage as "find the one who annoys you the least" and not "wait 'til you find 'the one' for you"

Call me a non-romantic if you'd like, but I don't buy in to the idea of 'the one' - I believe in the middle ground, somewhere. I think that the idea of someone that's perfect for you is dangerous and naive - EVERY good relationship requires constant work. Too few people (at least that I know) seem to grasp this.

Actually, a friend of mine told me that the post was a hoax, but what an interesting discussion it has sparked!

I think once a soulmate, always a soulmate, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship will always work. Two to tango and all that.

And people could say forever and think they mean it, only they are confused because they are out of touch with themselves and don't know what they want. I've been accused of lying by guys ("You said you loved me! Wah! You're a liar!") when the fact was, I was confused. It doesn't help when the guy is literally harassing you into marrying him. It makes it really hard to know what I want, and for some reason, men tend to treat that as irrelevant. (This has happened to me a lot.)

I do believe it's better to be single and happy than miserable with the wrong person. I don't know if I'll ever marry. Do you guys remember about twenty years back when they came out with that statistic that a woman would more likely to die in a terror attack than get married after 35? It was later debunked, but I'm beginning to think it is true, though not for what people think. It certainly isn't for a lack of suitors. I probably have more men chasing me now than I ever did. It's just that I don't *care* about being married anymore. When I think about having to plan a wedding, I just want to lie down. My last fiance was the Bridezilla from hell. He had STACKS of wedding magazines in his house. I bought ONE and ended up on the floor in a conniption fit because I couldn't cope. :?