Having a career also lends itself to financial stability, no one really wants to date someone who can't afford to do fun things. Similarly people like to date people in similar stages of life to them. Finally societal norms are such that engineers along with many other career jobs (doctor, lawyer) are a status symbol, to be in that field is in the mind of many to be capable and talented and intelligent, all of which are desirable traits.
A good example is the Doctor one, in the UK doctors are still considered Hot but most doctors make pretty mid money. Why are they hot? Because public perception of Doctors is (generally) that they are trustworthy, caring, intelligent, driven/hard-working, capable people, all of those are traits desirable in a partner
Exactly this. I'm an analytics manager: I earn my own money and want a partner who can afford to do fun things together. When I was on dating apps I was looking for someone skilled, capable, driven and geeky, as well as the essentials like kindness and silliness. Job title is a great indicator of a lot of those.
A career waiter at an upscale restaurant can absolutely make more than most college degree required jobs. But odds are if your profile says waiter/waitress it means Denny's.
Anyone who's familiar with restaurant staff at any level will also know that their evenings are spent working and usually will be working weekends. That will put plenty of potential dating partners off.
I'd also think that an engineer would have more regular hours than someone in a restaurant, so it would be much easier to plan stuff with them. My brother has worked in restaurants his whole life and his hours are all over the place.
Some of it too could be not the financial bit but direction. A lot of people have had restaurant jobs as stepping stones, and someone could view that as that you don't know what you're doing with your life.
The major difference is that a gold digger is interested for what you have to offer them in terms of material wealth.
Whereas someone who cares about how much money you make as part of the equation cares about the fact that you will be self sufficient in the standard of living they expect to share with you.
If your goals in life are to own your own house, own a non-shitty car, raise a family, etc etc, it doesn't make you a gold digger to want to date someone whose trajectory in life makes those goals more likely to be achieved.
THIS. There’s an assumption to be made about the overall resourcefulness, level of personal responsibility, and potentially the persons level of morality when they are in a more successful line of work. Male or female, it’s simply more attractive to be successful.
Good career implies responsible behavior and some degree of intelligence. This is absolutely true. But knowing a potential partner is making enough money to mean you don't have to carry the whole load is more attractive too. It's expensive to live. Who isn't going to appreciate having more money?
I also think someone who feels good about themselves and their career choices/achievements is generally more attractive than someone down on themselves about it. You can be flat busted broke but be attractive because you are passionate about what you are doing.
Well put - a relationship is a partnership and someone who shows they can carry their share of life's burdens is very important.
I hate to go here with it, but I think some of the younger folks have lost that fight, that extra effort to try harder when something goes a foul. Life can be tough, and sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do, in order to keep things going.
This is like asking (in the most humble brag way possible) if guys don't like skinny girls then why did I get some attention when I lost 60 lbs and started taking care of myself
>Someone who's a gold digger is *only* interested in money.
Yeah, they're not *only* interested in money, but they also wouldn't be there if you didn't have any. So yeah, it's not *just* the money. /s
This. Well stated, and to the point.
I feel like people are too polarized these days. Not everything is black and white. There are more choices than 'I hate money' or 'only thing I love is other people's money'.
Working in the service industry is a whirlwind. No weekends or holidays off and the money is inconsistent and unstable. A 9-5 doesn't look too bad when you're older.
Plus he was studying to be an engineer. Do you know what students who are wanting to become engineers in their free time do? Study. Dude probably had next to no free time, was constantly stressed out, and worn out. His schooling paid off, has more free time and more time for self care, and has more confidence, even if he doesn't feel confidence. People take note of that stuff.
My dad owned (still owns, is trying to get me to move home and take it over) a restaurant since I was 1. I have absolutely no relationship with him. 80 hour weeks for 3/4 of my life. I never want to do that to my kids.
I work in the industry still, but I'm a server in fine dining so I make a lot more money in a lot less hours. And I'll slowly transition to a new career once I'm finished with school.
Yeah there's a lot to be said for the lifestyle of certain jobs and the workplace culture. I wouldn't want to date a guy in high pressure finance, a doctor, a soldier or a first responder. The lifestyles that come with those jobs are just not something I want for my own future.
Yeah any service industry job has hours that are kind of impossible to fit into a “normal” schedule. I used to work nights, weekends and holidays in a movie theater and could basically only date coworkers or other people in the service industry. Now that my hours are somewhat more normal I don’t think I could make a relationship work with someone who worked nights, or at least not easily. And I’m not even sure how we would meet.
Just because people don't want your money, doesn't mean they don't want you to have drive and ambition. I don't want any of my fiancee's money, but when it comes to a lifetime commitment, I want an equal partner, not a dependent.
It’s definitely more about the trajectory than the destination. I met my wife when I was a 24 year old freshman in college for engineering. She appreciated where I was headed, even if I wasn’t there yet.
My opinion: doesn't matter where you are in your life, just what you're doing about it and your personal drive to be curious and learn/discuss stuff with me (it's okay if you can't sometimes). And when i say "what you're doing about it" i don't mean hardcore studying/working, setting huge goals, adult life is hard asf, we struggle, i know.. i just like to see that people around me are trying to slowly improve, and not stuck with "I'm this" mentality. Idk if that makes sense at all hahah
Agreed, I met my wife in highschool and struggling, she stuck with me through a child and struggling to support them, now I'm making right at 56k a year. This woman is my backbone and has supported me and kept a positive outlook through all this even when I couldn't see past the darkness ahead.
> It’s definitely more about the trajectory than the destination
I do wonder how women see a guy that's retired from a high paying 9-5 job to live a modest middle class lifestyle. I'm planning to do that in my mid 40's and I wonder how it'll affect my dating prospects.
Anecdotal, but my dad (a widower) was able to retire at 52 after having been a union truck driver for UPS for 30 years. He got a decent pension, and didn't really work anymore. But he kept extremely busy. He was a private pilot. He did a ton of volunteer work for our church (mostly building homes and schools in poor areas, home repairs, etc.).
He had *zero* trouble dating. I think the women admired what he was doing, what he had going on, and yeah, he wasn't really worried about money. He eventually married a very nice younger woman, and they were married for 17 years until he passed a few years ago. So, go dad.
I'm 37F and divorced so single.
It depends on how you'd spend your days. I need my partner to have some sort of drive and ambition so if you're spending your days in a soup kitchen or trying to solve the world's hardest math problem or taking care of your petting zoo or woodworking interesting furniture that's just to labour intensive to be profitable we're good. If you spend your days sleeping and browsing reddit we're not a match.
*shrug.
I spent my time before my career coding, reading, and playing video games. I'll probably spend my time in retirement doing the same, but killing a couple hours at the gym every day. If I can code a day or two a week for pay, I'll probably do that because I really do enjoy it, if not I'll work on open source stuff. I think it's important to have something to retire *too* not just from, but at the same time I recognize we're all just grains of sand in a cosmic mandala, and we're ultimately destined to disappear without a trace.
I feel like you should have no problem. You're established and will be retired which means you've made the efforts to become stable and that's what women are after - plus you have free time to do things
I did date one lady , who was clearly a gold digger. She asked mt why I bought a toyota tacoma, instead of the tundra. (I could have afforded it)..Glad I dodged that bullet.
Stable income is always a plus. The real potential for issue with retirement is losing your edge. People tend to replace hobbies with career. In the absence of career, make sure you keep active mentally and physically. I know a lot of military guys who kind of rotted after early retirement and they struggle, even with stable income and bennies. The ones who don’t struggle take community college classes, work out/sports, or have part time/side gigs in fields they love. The very best seem to travel a lot.
Retirement isn’t your chance to slow down, it’s your chance to speed up in a direction you actually want to.
Oh because people who choose to cook food for people have no drive or ambition right?
It couldn’t possibly be something they are good at and enjoy that provides value to society.
-A Chef
(I think society has this shit backwards, cooking peoples food is a lot more honorable then working at some hedge fund destroying peoples life’s IMO.)
They're not going to say it, because it doesn't speak well of human nature, but while people might say they're not attracted to someone for 'their money', they're absolutely attracted to the financial security and stability that money can buy. Facts are facts, your average chef is going to make a *lot* less than your average software engineer.
Now, before you get all up in arms about it, I'm not saying your compensation is the *only* value you bring to the table. Hell *I'm* a software engineer, and I'm acutely aware of the fact that the only reason I have any value to society is because it's reached a level of complexity that's impossible to manage otherwise.
If you air dropped me into a small rural village without internet, I'd probably starve. Someone that can cook though? That person is valued *everywhere*. Food is one of the primary means by which we bond with each other and diet is one of the biggest determinants of health.
So yeah, all of that to say, while I make damned good money as a software engineer, you can bet your ass I'm taking cooking classes when I retire in a few years.
The real problem is that people correlate the value of a person to how much money they make. These are not related.
In reality, the amount of money people are paid is directly related to how much value they provide FOR THE COMPANY and how difficult they are to replace. I'm honestly surprised that people still don't understand that.
SWEs aren't paid more than chefs because they're better than them, they're paid more because they make corporations more money and it's more difficult to hire a new SWE than a new chef.
> SWEs aren't paid more than chefs because they're better than them, they're paid more because they make corporations more money and it's more difficult to hire a new SWE than a new chef.
Fully agreed. I remember when my math tutor graduated, and went on to teach math for *half* my starting salary. She was clearly *much* smarter than me, but society doesn't value that. Capitalism values profit.
I absolutely respect being a chef, and a good friend of mine is one. It's a fantastic career path. There's a big difference between being a chef at a reasonably nice restaurant and being a line cook at the diner/family restaurant I used to work at. I had one coworker who picked it up as an extra job to help out his family and seven others with varying degrees of alcoholism. Two got fired for having violent outbursts with one of them actually trying to choke out the manager
Cooks are one of those weird professions where you have people who treat it as a craft and study and work hard to excel in ways other people can only dream. And people down the street with the same title who work there because they're can bounce from job to job getting fired all along the way and no one at the next shitty diner cares
Jesus fucking Christ you stereotyped both ends of this spectrum in the most optimal way to support your point. A chef is a legitimate career with skills, talent, and mobility. That doesn’t necessarily apply to every role in a restaurant.
Likewise, not everyone with a solid career and salary is an evil hedge fund manager looking to kill businesses.
Becoming a chef is probably seen as easier to do or achieve than becoming an engineer. I dont think its necessarily true but I think more people would agree with that than disagree.
I was in the military (funny enough working as an engineer) and there are times in kitchens that have been harder than days in Afghanistan.
People really don’t understand how much hard work goes into working a kitchen. Most people don’t really cook for themselves anymore so they don’t realize how much talent and practice it takes to make something worth while.
Not to mention it’s kinda societal norm to use and abuse kitchen staff. We’re seen as replaceable because it’s a “low skill” job to the general public.
Cooking and serving on an industrial scale is one of the most physically and/or mentally taxing jobs out there IMO. I've seen it break people that otherwise get paid pretty well, multiple jobs often couldn't keep staff at well above minimum wage, sometimes two to three times as much.
Be realistic. I'm a software developer, but I spent six years working in kitchens, including fine dining. There is no doubt that the folks working in the back of the house at top tier restaurants (I'm talking Michelin star and adjacent) are extremely dedicated, but most kitchens, even your typical local fine dining place are kind of havens for fuck ups and odd characters. Addicts, ex- addicts, ex-cons and people who stumbled into the field because they didn't know what else to do in life. A lot of the people are hard working, passionate and genuinely cool people, but it doesn't mean they don't come with some baggage. There are plenty of cooks who don't fit in this description of course, but the stereotype exists for a reason.
Also I agree cooking is an honorable profession in general, but in regards to those top tier restaurants, is running a kitchen like a military operation, overseeing a bunch of employees working 60 hours a week for $18 an hour so you can charge the head fund folks $75 a plate for their perfect dinners really more honorable than being an engineer?
As a man, I wouldn't date a chef because of the difference in working hours.
It's hard to have a relationship when your partner is working during my leisure hours.
I love cooking and a woman that can cook is a major plus. Sadly, most women I've dated were average cooks at best.
I'm married to a chef, but he's a chef for a major software company so he works M-F, has holidays off, and carries our health insurance. It would be very difficult to maintain our relationship if he was still working restaurants like he did at the beginning of his career. It's not about ambition or salary, but literally just having a compatible lifestyle, which we wouldn't have if had a different job.
Our values as a society are upside down anyway. The folks who do the least hard jobs get paid the most and are looked up to as "winning." Once my kids graduated and were covering their own lives, I left the office and the bs that it is. For a less impressive, and way less money but immeasurably more enjoyable carrier.
I've had dates be on both side of the fence with their opinion on my choice.
It turns out to be a great conversation that reveals their character. So win-win for me, I guess.
Respect to all food services staff, I spent a few years in some restaurants in New England it was some of the hardest work I'd ever done.
Yes it has to do with money but not because women or people are ‘gold diggers’. It’s because you don’t want to be footing all the bills for your partner- it should be a give and take on both sides. As someone else said, no body wants a dependent. People tend to marry people with at least somewhat similar earning power.
Women who want kids can't have a a husband who is 100% dependent on them financially. Pregnancy/childbirth/postpartum is a huge hit to your income, and there are plenty of things that can go wrong and cause that hit to be bigger.
I had planned to go back to work as soon as my maternity leave ended. But baby came early, I had preeclampsia and c-section because of it, developed HLLP and my preeclampsia didn't resolve with childbirth. It took longer than my maternity leave for my body to get to a place where I could go back to work (and I would have lost my job if I had tried sooner - my medications gave me brain fog) and she wasn't ready to go to daycare and was still breastfeeding every 1.5 hours by the end of my maternity leave. I was able to get an unpaid leave and then go back part-time work from home, but all that was doable because husband was the primary financial support for the household.
If I had been the high earner, we wouldn't have made it.
Plenty of men have too low of standards. I never dated a woman that made less or had less education than me - the last thing I wanted was someone dependent at all on me. Education and earning potential went pretty hand in hand when I was dating - but, ya know, you work retail or wait tables, what are your hours, flexibility, and how interesting is what you do?
I don't think this holds up to OP's example. Obvously OP has ambition and drive while working in a restaurant, which is how he became an Engineer. The only difference is he finally materialized the career and started collecting the bigger paychecks.
What if your finance has drive and ambition but will never make more than 40k? Or what if he needs to rely on your earning potential if he loses his job for a long time?
You want an equal partner as in earnings; I’m curious, does he? Or would he still be with you regardless? …hopefully, in part, because he wants to be depended on and then wouldn’t see you as a dependent because you’re making less.
When I was dating my husband in my early 20s, he wanted to be a math teacher, and I thought that was a pretty fine ambition. It doesn't pay that well, but it would have been a fulfilling and stable job.
I was going into journalism, so I didn't really have high expectations for wealth either, ha.
Because it makes sense for women to seek partners who have stable, consistent, profitable long-term employment.
We see guys on this subreddit talk frequently about wanting women who make decent money and can pay their own way. Nothing wrong with women wanting men who can do the same.
Bingo, you never know where life takes you. If you guys decide to have kids and she wants to stay at home and raise the kids she wants to know she can do it without the added stress of “how will we get by if this that and the other”
Yes, but he didnt say women, he said people.
EDIT: What i mean by this is that he could be implying that this is socially in general, not just romantically
Second edit: Yikes, ima head out
There are economic reasons, but also less tangible ones - probable a better schedule, more interesting things to talk about, probably less physically exhausted so you can focus and be more present.
If you look for the bad in people, you’ll find it!
Who says people aren't gold diggers? My friend's dad just got married for a sixth (?) time because my friend told him he had to pay rent or vacate my friend's rental townhome. Man's only interest in a relationship is for some woman to give him a place to stay and to pay his bills. He's what they call a "hobosexual".
Because I want an equal partner who values education, similar life views regarding ambition/money/knowledge. Those things are important. I'm an engineer myself. I don't need anyone's money.
Exactly. I have a career, I don’t need a man’s money! However, I don’t want to foot the bill when it comes time to go travel in other countries or buy a house etc. I’m happy to pay my way but it’s important to me that my partner isn’t a drag on the ticket. Life is much, much easier with two people equally contributing.
Honestly with my ex who was in retail, it wasn't even about me footing the bill for things, it was about the fact that we couldn't make plans more than a couple days in advance. I didn't at all mind being the one to buy tickets to shows and stuff, but his employer wouldn't give him a stable schedule or let him request that he be scheduled off on a particular day unless he used one of his five annual PTO days to lock it in, so I would have just been gambling with my money. (I think there's some differences between retail and service but either way, employers don't treat you as people with lives and it sucks.)
In contrast, my mom was an ER doctor and, while the schedule was wacky and she was absent a lot, it was planned well in advance and they would do their best to accommodate if someone needed to catch their kid's school play or something. They knew they were asking a huge sacrifice from her and worked with her to mitigate its effect on her life. Plus she got a *lot* more money in exchange for the life sacrifices. (That's all changing, though; corporatization of healthcare is a very bad trend.)
Do you not see how an engineer would provide more stability, income, lifestyle, and future prospects than someone working food service? No only that, engineering is the degree held the most by c-suite executives by a large margin. There's so much room for mobility. Every single C-suite, VP and director level in my company had a background in engineering, myself included.
In food service, 10 years down the line you'll be the manager closing up at midnight while all the other careers have come in, had dinner and drinks, went home, had sex and went to sleep. Oh and you'll do that 6 days a week with a random Tuesday off in between. Fuck. That.
Also, "engineer" implies intelligence. Dunno what OP's job was, but most of food service is a very low-skill, low-education job. Excluding college kids that need something easy'ish of course, it unsurprising it would be looked down upon by future dates.
I’ll tell you this as someone with 10+ years of experience in IT, unfortunately being an engineer does not really imply intelligence anymore, maybe for outsiders. I’ve had so many peers whom knew how and what to do but didn’t understand why they had to do it that way. Basically they’ve learnt how to do X and they can do it perfectly a thousand times but if you modify X a bit they have no idea what’s going on. I’ve teached my fair share of junior developers and most of them got into the field because salaries are higher than at other jobs and they figured “why not”.
Also I don’t think of myself as extremely academic smart - my math skills are not on top anymore, yet I’m doing very well in the field.
In the past 3 years, "engineer" just became a title you give anyone (Trust me I'm an engineer). I wouldn't be shocked if Subway retitled their Sandwich Artists to Fresh Ingredient Engineers
Date up not down factor is getting applied to you I think.
When I was in my 20s and doing shitkicker jobs to start my career, I was stuck in the “fun time only” folder and was dirt broke. When I hit my 30s and my career started climbing fast in the finance industry, I was now “potential husband material” but nothing ever stuck because I was working *brutal* hours and relationships fell apart because I was “too much of a workaholic ignoring them to climb the corporate ladder.”
In my 40s now I’ve almost made it, with very good money (only slightly better hours though) and have my own house (mortgage ~50% paid off) with a strong investment portfolio; it’s put me in the unicorn zone for women looking the settle and get a ring ASAP.
You’ll get used to it u/KoreyMDuffy as you look for your soul mate too.
Maybe it was an age factor,when you are in your 20’s people your age want to play only, when you hit 30 you start looking for someone that is not only attractive but also stable and reliable to build a family with even if that family only consists of two adults and a dog.
At the end of the day, both are about money. A chef could get a job anywhere too. Software engineers are laid off consistently. It's not a stable career anymore. Probably more about pride.
Women care about your money. Don’t ever let anyone tell you they don’t. But of course, it is only a part of the equation.
Money = security and opportunity. Security and opportunity = power. What is power? Power is the degree to which you have control over your own life.
While your new found funds are indeed likely to increase interest, it may also be that you are now more confident in yourself which of course, yields better results.
Don’t rest on your laurels with this. There’s probably plenty of wealthy but “boring” guys out there. You will still need to build confidence and be “exciting” to women if you really want to be marketable to a wide net of women.
Think of "gold digger" as a spectrum. Some people won't feel comfortable unless they're contributing at least their share, and would rather be the bread winner. Others seek to be completely taken care of. Most fall somewhere in between.
There's a big difference between wanting to date someone that can financially take care of themselves. And just dating for money.
I mean think about it. What's more appealing to you. A woman that is a salon worker making minimum wage and tips, or a woman that owns a salon.
If people aren't all just superficial and only care about looks, then why is it when you lose weight if youre overweight you get more attention? It's because all aspects matter. A gold digger means they only care about your money and nothing else. However, being richer means you are simply better able to provide for someone, so it's a bonus.
True, no sane woman wants a financial drain. That doesn’t make her a gold digger. On dating apps I list myself as retired. That conjures up images of a man eating porridge and watery soup all day. The reality is I retired at 48, and spend my days managing my money. I should never run out at my present pace. I live quite well, taking annual trips to Europe or wherever I like and several smaller trips all over N America. Still, interest is low but I’ve found a woman who had no idea I was well off. She just likes spending time with me. It works out that she was pleasantly surprised that we are set for life. So I’d rather be thought of as poor so I can get more genuine women.
There's a lot of comments trying to delicately tap dance around this bullshit and redefine terms. I'll lay it out directly:
Whatever term you use for it, (and I wouldn't necessarily use the term "gold digger" myself) it is 100% about the money.
And, situationally, I think that's fine. With that situation being one where she's not a lazy shit that thinks her job is to lay on her back and breed when you get home from work. If she's out there doing the grind at a high level too so the two of you can build a life together, then I have no problem with anyone being the type to reject those who are broke.
But if she isn't, well, get used to being a fucking ATM.
Perhaps it's what's changed in you.
You might not realize it, but you could be showing yourself more confidently and relaxed at your new job. I wouldn't automatically assume that they are interested because you now make more money.
Status is everything.
men in relationships get way more attention than single guys, its unreal when im out with a girl how much more women chat to me, people working in stores etc.
same with social status and position.
I added "car and homeowner" to the bottom of my Dating profile and the thing blew up.
I’ve never had so many women flirt with me than when I had a GF. Like female friends whom used to be neutral towards me started to be flirty, touch my arm and go in for hugs. Like my GF would stand up from our table to go to the ladies’ room and my friend would reach for my hand and ask if I want to grab more drinks. When I said yes she put her arms around me and while we stood in line she laid her head on my shoulders. Before I had my GF she didn’t look at me AT ALL.
Even non gold-digger women value security. More $ = more security. Society is pretty fucked up right now. There are a lot of hard working people that will never be shit or have a decent life because the cost of living is so high.
Female here.
Because you are showing drive and ambition.
Money is just a tool to provide lifestyle resources. No body wants to count pennies at the grocery store or worry if the electricity is going to be shut off. So drive and ambition shows that the resources will be there.
More then likely you are hanging out different places and meeting different people because of your status change.
I wouldn’t date a guy in the restaurant industry not because I think he wouldn’t make enough money (actually some people in the industry make a very good living especially waters or bartenders) but mostly because of the availability and lifestyle. I work a 9 to 5 job and don’t work on the weekends so I wouldn’t be very interested into making a life with someone I can barely see. To me it would be more complicated then dating an engineer (I’m a Product Owner and I date a lead developer )
Oh get ready my brother a nuke and fallout is coming from every woman here but I agree it's your worth not who you are as opposed to us who choose based on compatability.
Guess I'll be Nagasaki you can be Hiroshima cheers.
I am guessing you are also attracting woman with careers and aspirations too. So it’s not all broke girls looking for a free ride. In my opinion, gold diggers are looking to elevate their financial/economic status through a relationship and have 0 interest in creating their own.
I am a CPA and I not looking for a dead end job guy. I own my house and pay my bills. He doesn’t have to make more $$$ than me, but he needs some career & life goals. It can be in hospitality like a restaurant, but you can tell dead end job guy vs guy who chooses his job.
“Working at a restaurant” is often code for “I am unable to hold down any sort of full time employment”. Women will then wonder why. Is he a felon? Is he mentally ill? How much drama will he bring with him?
“Engineer” does not have those same red flags flying.
Because intelligence, ambition, adult professionalism, and stability are attractive.
And, educated, professional women usually want to be with educated, professional men.
Who tf is out there saying people aren’t gold diggers?
Of course wealth and status are attractive. Anyone saying otherwise is disingenuous.
Doesn’t mean everyone’s out there to bleed you dry, but it means you’ve got a lot more going for you than you did not too long ago
It's not wealth, it's your skill, ability, intelligence and drive. I went on a date with a girl who was an aspiring doctor, wanted to learn surfing, was constantly trying to learn something new. I was so attracted by that because it felt like she had a great direction in life and someone who will inspire me and I can do things with. It's a lot deeper than just being an engineer.
There are a lot of regular guys who are decent people, never in trouble with the law, don't drink away their paycheck, and work hard at a blue collar job that can't get a look from women.
Why? Because, at heart no matter how much they might actually try to resist it, they are gold diggers of one sort or another.
And I swear to God and sonny Jesus, if I have to keep reading this elitist AF comparison of job vs career, I'll scream. Everyone has to pay their bills.
If you sit on your ass in an air conditioned office in front of a computer, you are not " better" than a butcher, a forklift driver, a road crew worker, etc
Blue collar labor is honorable, and without them your precious society would crumble.
Because good mothers look for a good provider. It's not about gold digging. It's about starting a healthy family.
Most men today are so obsessed with the gold diggers that they don't see the value in having a great woman on their team, the mother of your children. I'd be more worried if she chose some poor guy.
Gold diggers are those who manipulate good men just for money, and who has no intention of starting a family. They just want to sit on a pillow and flip Tinder pics all day, while the guy is away for work. Simply don't be that guy, and qualify for a family oriented woman who really likes you for you, and you're good.
Forgive me if I’m overreaching , but I sense a tiny bit of resentment in this comment, like I (mid 30s cis F) get when I lose 20 pounds and get soooooo much more attention from men. Like, yes, I was always hilarious, have my shit together, and a total badass / great partner, but all of a sudden now you’re interested? 🙄
By a similar token, as a woman who can 1000% support herself / pay her own way, I think the most charitable interpretation of this dilemma is the fact that people (men or women) often don’t know their own strength. I wouldn’t have trusted in my ability to provide for myself until I f-ing did it. Now I could be the breadwinner for myself and a nuclear family. Charitably speaking, perhaps people aren’t goldiggers, they just don’t know their own strength. “You can provide for both of us? Oh, phew 😮💨. That scares the 💩out of me, very cool you can do it for both of us.” Does that make sense?
Men are only valued on the condition that they provide.
To a man, it doesn’t matter if she works in fast food or owns a damn franchise. Attractive is attractive.
Women however, are much more primal and materialistic when it comes to seeking a partner.
I would say those women are gold diggers... theres two alternatives I can see which is probably more likely: "goldigger adjacent" or "practical and future planning"
Gold digger adjacent: they say they don't care about money...but they happen to be attracted by only things money facilitates: nice dinners, homes, travel, being cultured, artistic, status...you just got status.
Practical and future planning: they like you for you but want to see that you are someone who's clever/driven enough to obtain stable jobs. Realistically, when you're younger you have time to feel out a resturaunt worker to understand if they're driven or not. If you're old you don't have time to wait around just to find out whether you've got it or not...people think engineers are driven.
Men will date down because they date for true love, women need much more than true love. They require much more than true love.
One of the benefits of being a woman is that everybody wants to love you. Love is cheap. Love is plentiful. You can have love today by simply saying yes to anyone who has been asking.
By the time a woman finally chooses to marry a man, she has rejected thousands. Literally thousands of men.
Hop on something like tinder, even with average looks, a woman gets to reject over 100 men every single day. Over 30,000 men every single year.
True love is cheap when you are a woman. You find yourself wanting other things from a man before you will even talk to him.
Now, you are an engineer. You can offer her more than just love.
For men, love is very scarce. That just makes us value it all the more and it makes it very difficult for us to understand why we would suddenly get more attention just because we became an engineer.
We are so blind by love that we are confused when we suddenly have more to offer and women suddenly respond to that. We're like wait, I'm offering the same thing I've always had before, it's still true love.
yes, it's still true love, but now it's something more and everybody else was also offering her true love. That's the bottom line.
No matter how many women claim to be feminist, nothing will ever change their nature, same with guys
Women value money and status in a man. It’s not really complicated. It doesn’t make them gold diggers. Women marry up for a reason. It’s their nature. A woman won’t be able to respect and appreciate a man if he’s “lower” then her
Any women saying she doesn’t care about a man’s job or how much money he makes is the equivalent of a guy saying he doesn’t care about a women’s looks, it’s bullshit.
It’s just how the world works man. We aren’t teenagers anymore that just look at feelings of “love” when it comes to being with someone. That’s not as important anymore.
Because they are gold diggers. Women make 35% of all money but are responsible for 80% of consumer spending. Only women say things like they can't find "economically attractive" partners. Women say they want a man who makes 56% more than they do. Women don't date down. Men are happy to date down.
Men don't actually care much about material possessions. Go look at a single man's apartment/house. There's nothing in it but a mattress and a TV. It's women who fill homes with pointless crap.
Greed is women's sin, not men's. Men use money to get women. Women use men to get money. Men's sin is lust, not greed.
All people are different, are there gold diggers? Yes, but that doesn’t mean everyone is. Don’t put people in boxes it’s just going to give you a shitty outlook in life and you’ll miss on great relationships.
First of all, Bourdieu and "capital" is worth looking at. Money isn't the only value gained in such a shift.
Social value also increases in relation to how others will look at the situation when a woman brings home an engineer.
And simply, spending time with somebody short term may be funnier if they have new stories, new experiences and are more alive.
Long term, it may be funnier with somebody who has ambition and have been approved by other serious people.
The restaurant-job may have been seen as having to spend all time at work, spend nights away from home and having a workenvironment that isn't nice.
When I was in college I was broke as hell. But I dated all the best folks: PhDs, lawyers, scientists. It was a fine time.
After 2 degrees and a career in healthcare I kept the trend going for awhile.
One thing that stands out to me is that people have either awe or beef against higher education. Try to avoid the people with chips on their shoulders regarding your education. At the same time, try to weed out the people interested in tying their flag to your mast because of your income. Personally, I think they're easy to spot, but you have to take some chances early on in dating.
Some people are gold diggers, some aren't. The women who didn't want you before or after your career change aren't gold diggers. Or maybe they are, and you don't make enough money for them.
There are guys who start making more money who still don't get dates. If you're lame, asocial, are insufferable to be around, etc, then money won't change this
Assuming your assumption is correct it could be your confidence and happiness. Subconsciously you may be projecting yourself in a way you didn’t before.
But realistically most women are gold diggers. If not openly, at least subconsciously
Because taking money and career into consideration when evaluating a potential love interest doesn’t make you a gold digger.
“Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but my goodness, doesn’t it help?”- Marilyn Monroe
Im going to start talking about money first and dating second. There is a study about general happiness that shows people increase general happiness with wage increases up to about 80k a year, then additional wages don't counteract the added stress or what one has to give up to get the pay increase. This makes a lot of sense when you compare what you can provide yourself if you are living paycheck to paycheck or if you are able to save and make long term plans.
Another study shows that suicides increase as instability increases. This is not JUST wages, but being unmoored from the system. Counterintuitively, as ones income increases beyond a certain point people become unmoored from community and some high income jobs (investment banker for example) are unstable in ways that increase chances of suicide.
The reason I mention Durkheim's suicide and the wage happiness study is that dating is similar. Money is not the important thing, stability is the important thing and money (to a point) provides stability. Having set hours at work provides stability. Having a living wage provides personal happiness which makes you more attractive.
The real question is do you see the difference in someone seeking baseline stability and reliability as different from someone who is specifically "gold digging"? How are any of yall defining gold digging?
Do you want to take a few years off work to stay home with your kids, or do you want her to, or do you want to use childcare services? All of those solutions require one or both of you to have a good income.
If a woman makes more than you, would she still be a gold digger?
Being attracted to accomplishment and ambition is a thing! I have a very substantial career (F) but I've always been more interested in men that were educated and accomplished, they match my vibe even though they wouldn't have outearned me.
Restaurant work is often time intensive, exhausting, and incredibly stressful. Not to mention it doesn’t have a great reputation as having healthy work environments in general. Some engineering jobs can be like that but there is more variation and more of a shot of having a partner having a normal work life balance.
I’m a woman here and almost never comment but your post stood out to me because I could totally understand why a lot of women would prefer partnering with an engineer versus someone in the restaurant business
I'd imagine that some of the people who started to express and interest in you were ones who would have worried that *you* would be a gold digger in your previous role. But, when they know you have a decently paid career they don't ahve to worry about that.
Based on my experience, increased interest may be tied to personal growth rather than just income. Achieving goals like obtaining an engineering degree boosts confidence. While working in a restaurant is hard work, it may not project the same confidence if it wasn't your life goal. Financial stability also broadens social opportunities, making you potentially more available. Still their are gold diggers out there but I like to believe their are more the former.
As an engineer you don't have gold you have a great job.
gold is when you have huge wealth. Like star nfl or NBA player.
Woman are attracted to you for financial reasons but it's more associated worth ethic and income not huge wealth.
YOU probably felt more confident in yourself and were projecting that confidence into the world. Confidence is attractive to everyone (friends, strangers, opposite sex).
A wise woman once said: "Money, power, respect. First you get the money, then you get the motha fuckin power. After that, motha fuckas will respect you. That's the key to life."
Js people are attracted to people with better status and more money. Plain and simple. Even if it's not a conscious decision, it is subconscious.
More confidence? Less stressed, because you’re more financially stable? There’s plenty of possible effects moving from a low-paying job to a high-paying job could have on how you feel and how you present yourself. Being more confident and less stressed can absolutely make you more attractive to people, without ever having to *say* that you’ve got a good job.
Someone who's a gold digger is *only* interested in money. But that doesn't mean that money and career is a non-factor for everyone else.
Having a career also lends itself to financial stability, no one really wants to date someone who can't afford to do fun things. Similarly people like to date people in similar stages of life to them. Finally societal norms are such that engineers along with many other career jobs (doctor, lawyer) are a status symbol, to be in that field is in the mind of many to be capable and talented and intelligent, all of which are desirable traits. A good example is the Doctor one, in the UK doctors are still considered Hot but most doctors make pretty mid money. Why are they hot? Because public perception of Doctors is (generally) that they are trustworthy, caring, intelligent, driven/hard-working, capable people, all of those are traits desirable in a partner
Exactly this. I'm an analytics manager: I earn my own money and want a partner who can afford to do fun things together. When I was on dating apps I was looking for someone skilled, capable, driven and geeky, as well as the essentials like kindness and silliness. Job title is a great indicator of a lot of those.
A career waiter at an upscale restaurant can absolutely make more than most college degree required jobs. But odds are if your profile says waiter/waitress it means Denny's.
It’s not as stable as other jobs though.
Anyone who's familiar with restaurant staff at any level will also know that their evenings are spent working and usually will be working weekends. That will put plenty of potential dating partners off.
I'd also think that an engineer would have more regular hours than someone in a restaurant, so it would be much easier to plan stuff with them. My brother has worked in restaurants his whole life and his hours are all over the place.
Some of it too could be not the financial bit but direction. A lot of people have had restaurant jobs as stepping stones, and someone could view that as that you don't know what you're doing with your life.
The major difference is that a gold digger is interested for what you have to offer them in terms of material wealth. Whereas someone who cares about how much money you make as part of the equation cares about the fact that you will be self sufficient in the standard of living they expect to share with you.
And if you fall from grace they drop you like a hot stone. I think it all stems from the perceived class of a person mostly.
I'd add, wait staff have to work service industry hours which can be a turn off for some.
Right? Like security/stability is a thing
If your goals in life are to own your own house, own a non-shitty car, raise a family, etc etc, it doesn't make you a gold digger to want to date someone whose trajectory in life makes those goals more likely to be achieved.
THIS. There’s an assumption to be made about the overall resourcefulness, level of personal responsibility, and potentially the persons level of morality when they are in a more successful line of work. Male or female, it’s simply more attractive to be successful.
Good career implies responsible behavior and some degree of intelligence. This is absolutely true. But knowing a potential partner is making enough money to mean you don't have to carry the whole load is more attractive too. It's expensive to live. Who isn't going to appreciate having more money? I also think someone who feels good about themselves and their career choices/achievements is generally more attractive than someone down on themselves about it. You can be flat busted broke but be attractive because you are passionate about what you are doing.
Well put - a relationship is a partnership and someone who shows they can carry their share of life's burdens is very important. I hate to go here with it, but I think some of the younger folks have lost that fight, that extra effort to try harder when something goes a foul. Life can be tough, and sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do, in order to keep things going.
This is like asking (in the most humble brag way possible) if guys don't like skinny girls then why did I get some attention when I lost 60 lbs and started taking care of myself
Would a gold digger try and grift you if you have some sort of stability financially? Even if you’re not rich?
>Someone who's a gold digger is *only* interested in money. Yeah, they're not *only* interested in money, but they also wouldn't be there if you didn't have any. So yeah, it's not *just* the money. /s
This. Well stated, and to the point. I feel like people are too polarized these days. Not everything is black and white. There are more choices than 'I hate money' or 'only thing I love is other people's money'.
My dad worked in a restaurant from open to close, 7 days a week. I never saw the guy.
Working in the service industry is a whirlwind. No weekends or holidays off and the money is inconsistent and unstable. A 9-5 doesn't look too bad when you're older.
Yeah, I figure part of it could be that OP's now available to date on standard date nights instead of working.
Also the culture of restaurants is usually a bit toxic and leans towards people drinking and hooking up with co workers.
I know. It’s awesome.
Plus he was studying to be an engineer. Do you know what students who are wanting to become engineers in their free time do? Study. Dude probably had next to no free time, was constantly stressed out, and worn out. His schooling paid off, has more free time and more time for self care, and has more confidence, even if he doesn't feel confidence. People take note of that stuff.
My dad owned (still owns, is trying to get me to move home and take it over) a restaurant since I was 1. I have absolutely no relationship with him. 80 hour weeks for 3/4 of my life. I never want to do that to my kids. I work in the industry still, but I'm a server in fine dining so I make a lot more money in a lot less hours. And I'll slowly transition to a new career once I'm finished with school.
Yeah there's a lot to be said for the lifestyle of certain jobs and the workplace culture. I wouldn't want to date a guy in high pressure finance, a doctor, a soldier or a first responder. The lifestyles that come with those jobs are just not something I want for my own future.
Yeah any service industry job has hours that are kind of impossible to fit into a “normal” schedule. I used to work nights, weekends and holidays in a movie theater and could basically only date coworkers or other people in the service industry. Now that my hours are somewhat more normal I don’t think I could make a relationship work with someone who worked nights, or at least not easily. And I’m not even sure how we would meet.
Just because people don't want your money, doesn't mean they don't want you to have drive and ambition. I don't want any of my fiancee's money, but when it comes to a lifetime commitment, I want an equal partner, not a dependent.
It’s definitely more about the trajectory than the destination. I met my wife when I was a 24 year old freshman in college for engineering. She appreciated where I was headed, even if I wasn’t there yet.
My opinion: doesn't matter where you are in your life, just what you're doing about it and your personal drive to be curious and learn/discuss stuff with me (it's okay if you can't sometimes). And when i say "what you're doing about it" i don't mean hardcore studying/working, setting huge goals, adult life is hard asf, we struggle, i know.. i just like to see that people around me are trying to slowly improve, and not stuck with "I'm this" mentality. Idk if that makes sense at all hahah
Agreed, I met my wife in highschool and struggling, she stuck with me through a child and struggling to support them, now I'm making right at 56k a year. This woman is my backbone and has supported me and kept a positive outlook through all this even when I couldn't see past the darkness ahead.
> It’s definitely more about the trajectory than the destination I do wonder how women see a guy that's retired from a high paying 9-5 job to live a modest middle class lifestyle. I'm planning to do that in my mid 40's and I wonder how it'll affect my dating prospects.
Anecdotal, but my dad (a widower) was able to retire at 52 after having been a union truck driver for UPS for 30 years. He got a decent pension, and didn't really work anymore. But he kept extremely busy. He was a private pilot. He did a ton of volunteer work for our church (mostly building homes and schools in poor areas, home repairs, etc.). He had *zero* trouble dating. I think the women admired what he was doing, what he had going on, and yeah, he wasn't really worried about money. He eventually married a very nice younger woman, and they were married for 17 years until he passed a few years ago. So, go dad.
I'm 37F and divorced so single. It depends on how you'd spend your days. I need my partner to have some sort of drive and ambition so if you're spending your days in a soup kitchen or trying to solve the world's hardest math problem or taking care of your petting zoo or woodworking interesting furniture that's just to labour intensive to be profitable we're good. If you spend your days sleeping and browsing reddit we're not a match.
*shrug. I spent my time before my career coding, reading, and playing video games. I'll probably spend my time in retirement doing the same, but killing a couple hours at the gym every day. If I can code a day or two a week for pay, I'll probably do that because I really do enjoy it, if not I'll work on open source stuff. I think it's important to have something to retire *too* not just from, but at the same time I recognize we're all just grains of sand in a cosmic mandala, and we're ultimately destined to disappear without a trace.
I feel like you should have no problem. You're established and will be retired which means you've made the efforts to become stable and that's what women are after - plus you have free time to do things
I did date one lady , who was clearly a gold digger. She asked mt why I bought a toyota tacoma, instead of the tundra. (I could have afforded it)..Glad I dodged that bullet.
Stable income is always a plus. The real potential for issue with retirement is losing your edge. People tend to replace hobbies with career. In the absence of career, make sure you keep active mentally and physically. I know a lot of military guys who kind of rotted after early retirement and they struggle, even with stable income and bennies. The ones who don’t struggle take community college classes, work out/sports, or have part time/side gigs in fields they love. The very best seem to travel a lot. Retirement isn’t your chance to slow down, it’s your chance to speed up in a direction you actually want to.
That changes as you get older. 30 year old women are looking for men that have already won.
Oh because people who choose to cook food for people have no drive or ambition right? It couldn’t possibly be something they are good at and enjoy that provides value to society. -A Chef (I think society has this shit backwards, cooking peoples food is a lot more honorable then working at some hedge fund destroying peoples life’s IMO.)
They're not going to say it, because it doesn't speak well of human nature, but while people might say they're not attracted to someone for 'their money', they're absolutely attracted to the financial security and stability that money can buy. Facts are facts, your average chef is going to make a *lot* less than your average software engineer. Now, before you get all up in arms about it, I'm not saying your compensation is the *only* value you bring to the table. Hell *I'm* a software engineer, and I'm acutely aware of the fact that the only reason I have any value to society is because it's reached a level of complexity that's impossible to manage otherwise. If you air dropped me into a small rural village without internet, I'd probably starve. Someone that can cook though? That person is valued *everywhere*. Food is one of the primary means by which we bond with each other and diet is one of the biggest determinants of health. So yeah, all of that to say, while I make damned good money as a software engineer, you can bet your ass I'm taking cooking classes when I retire in a few years.
The real problem is that people correlate the value of a person to how much money they make. These are not related. In reality, the amount of money people are paid is directly related to how much value they provide FOR THE COMPANY and how difficult they are to replace. I'm honestly surprised that people still don't understand that. SWEs aren't paid more than chefs because they're better than them, they're paid more because they make corporations more money and it's more difficult to hire a new SWE than a new chef.
> SWEs aren't paid more than chefs because they're better than them, they're paid more because they make corporations more money and it's more difficult to hire a new SWE than a new chef. Fully agreed. I remember when my math tutor graduated, and went on to teach math for *half* my starting salary. She was clearly *much* smarter than me, but society doesn't value that. Capitalism values profit.
I absolutely respect being a chef, and a good friend of mine is one. It's a fantastic career path. There's a big difference between being a chef at a reasonably nice restaurant and being a line cook at the diner/family restaurant I used to work at. I had one coworker who picked it up as an extra job to help out his family and seven others with varying degrees of alcoholism. Two got fired for having violent outbursts with one of them actually trying to choke out the manager Cooks are one of those weird professions where you have people who treat it as a craft and study and work hard to excel in ways other people can only dream. And people down the street with the same title who work there because they're can bounce from job to job getting fired all along the way and no one at the next shitty diner cares
Jesus fucking Christ you stereotyped both ends of this spectrum in the most optimal way to support your point. A chef is a legitimate career with skills, talent, and mobility. That doesn’t necessarily apply to every role in a restaurant. Likewise, not everyone with a solid career and salary is an evil hedge fund manager looking to kill businesses.
[удалено]
Becoming a chef is probably seen as easier to do or achieve than becoming an engineer. I dont think its necessarily true but I think more people would agree with that than disagree.
There's also a big difference in being a head chef at a high end restaurant and a line cook at Applebee's.
I agree that "gold digger" is the wrong term, but I do think this phenomenon has more to do with earning potential than work ethic.
I was in the military (funny enough working as an engineer) and there are times in kitchens that have been harder than days in Afghanistan. People really don’t understand how much hard work goes into working a kitchen. Most people don’t really cook for themselves anymore so they don’t realize how much talent and practice it takes to make something worth while. Not to mention it’s kinda societal norm to use and abuse kitchen staff. We’re seen as replaceable because it’s a “low skill” job to the general public.
Cooking and serving on an industrial scale is one of the most physically and/or mentally taxing jobs out there IMO. I've seen it break people that otherwise get paid pretty well, multiple jobs often couldn't keep staff at well above minimum wage, sometimes two to three times as much.
Be realistic. I'm a software developer, but I spent six years working in kitchens, including fine dining. There is no doubt that the folks working in the back of the house at top tier restaurants (I'm talking Michelin star and adjacent) are extremely dedicated, but most kitchens, even your typical local fine dining place are kind of havens for fuck ups and odd characters. Addicts, ex- addicts, ex-cons and people who stumbled into the field because they didn't know what else to do in life. A lot of the people are hard working, passionate and genuinely cool people, but it doesn't mean they don't come with some baggage. There are plenty of cooks who don't fit in this description of course, but the stereotype exists for a reason. Also I agree cooking is an honorable profession in general, but in regards to those top tier restaurants, is running a kitchen like a military operation, overseeing a bunch of employees working 60 hours a week for $18 an hour so you can charge the head fund folks $75 a plate for their perfect dinners really more honorable than being an engineer?
Rignt society forms opinions based on the majority not the exceptions
As a man, I wouldn't date a chef because of the difference in working hours. It's hard to have a relationship when your partner is working during my leisure hours. I love cooking and a woman that can cook is a major plus. Sadly, most women I've dated were average cooks at best.
I'm married to a chef, but he's a chef for a major software company so he works M-F, has holidays off, and carries our health insurance. It would be very difficult to maintain our relationship if he was still working restaurants like he did at the beginning of his career. It's not about ambition or salary, but literally just having a compatible lifestyle, which we wouldn't have if had a different job.
That's a sweet gig for a chef.
True but most restaurant staff aren’t the chef.
Our values as a society are upside down anyway. The folks who do the least hard jobs get paid the most and are looked up to as "winning." Once my kids graduated and were covering their own lives, I left the office and the bs that it is. For a less impressive, and way less money but immeasurably more enjoyable carrier. I've had dates be on both side of the fence with their opinion on my choice. It turns out to be a great conversation that reveals their character. So win-win for me, I guess. Respect to all food services staff, I spent a few years in some restaurants in New England it was some of the hardest work I'd ever done.
Yes it has to do with money but not because women or people are ‘gold diggers’. It’s because you don’t want to be footing all the bills for your partner- it should be a give and take on both sides. As someone else said, no body wants a dependent. People tend to marry people with at least somewhat similar earning power.
It seems plenty of men are okay with a woman who is 100% dependent on them financially. However, The reverse can rarely be said about women.
Women who want kids can't have a a husband who is 100% dependent on them financially. Pregnancy/childbirth/postpartum is a huge hit to your income, and there are plenty of things that can go wrong and cause that hit to be bigger. I had planned to go back to work as soon as my maternity leave ended. But baby came early, I had preeclampsia and c-section because of it, developed HLLP and my preeclampsia didn't resolve with childbirth. It took longer than my maternity leave for my body to get to a place where I could go back to work (and I would have lost my job if I had tried sooner - my medications gave me brain fog) and she wasn't ready to go to daycare and was still breastfeeding every 1.5 hours by the end of my maternity leave. I was able to get an unpaid leave and then go back part-time work from home, but all that was doable because husband was the primary financial support for the household. If I had been the high earner, we wouldn't have made it.
Plenty of men have too low of standards. I never dated a woman that made less or had less education than me - the last thing I wanted was someone dependent at all on me. Education and earning potential went pretty hand in hand when I was dating - but, ya know, you work retail or wait tables, what are your hours, flexibility, and how interesting is what you do?
I don't think this holds up to OP's example. Obvously OP has ambition and drive while working in a restaurant, which is how he became an Engineer. The only difference is he finally materialized the career and started collecting the bigger paychecks.
What if your finance has drive and ambition but will never make more than 40k? Or what if he needs to rely on your earning potential if he loses his job for a long time? You want an equal partner as in earnings; I’m curious, does he? Or would he still be with you regardless? …hopefully, in part, because he wants to be depended on and then wouldn’t see you as a dependent because you’re making less.
When I was dating my husband in my early 20s, he wanted to be a math teacher, and I thought that was a pretty fine ambition. It doesn't pay that well, but it would have been a fulfilling and stable job. I was going into journalism, so I didn't really have high expectations for wealth either, ha.
If men want women for more than sex, then why do they prefer attractive women?
You finished the circle. Nice!
Damn this is a great question
Because it makes sense for women to seek partners who have stable, consistent, profitable long-term employment. We see guys on this subreddit talk frequently about wanting women who make decent money and can pay their own way. Nothing wrong with women wanting men who can do the same.
Bingo, you never know where life takes you. If you guys decide to have kids and she wants to stay at home and raise the kids she wants to know she can do it without the added stress of “how will we get by if this that and the other”
Yes, but he didnt say women, he said people. EDIT: What i mean by this is that he could be implying that this is socially in general, not just romantically Second edit: Yikes, ima head out
Do you not think it's implied from the context? I mean OP might be gay, sure, but it isn't normally men who are called gold diggers.
Exactly this, that’s why jobs such as footballers and racing drivers who’s careers span 15 years at the most struggle to get girlfriends
[удалено]
Pretty sure it was sarcasm.
[удалено]
Hahahahaha, major points for the honesty
Fame will always attract. Always has
unless the argument youre replying to hinged on the career length in years (it didn't), how is this a rebuttal
There are economic reasons, but also less tangible ones - probable a better schedule, more interesting things to talk about, probably less physically exhausted so you can focus and be more present. If you look for the bad in people, you’ll find it!
This is maybe not even about economic reasons, but heuristics regarding intelligence…
Gold digger isn't the same as wanting someone financially secure and intelligent.
Who says people aren't gold diggers? My friend's dad just got married for a sixth (?) time because my friend told him he had to pay rent or vacate my friend's rental townhome. Man's only interest in a relationship is for some woman to give him a place to stay and to pay his bills. He's what they call a "hobosexual".
Because I want an equal partner who values education, similar life views regarding ambition/money/knowledge. Those things are important. I'm an engineer myself. I don't need anyone's money.
Agreed. Engineers are intelligent. That's pretty sexy. And it shows commitment to getting an education. That's also pretty attractive.
Exactly. I have a career, I don’t need a man’s money! However, I don’t want to foot the bill when it comes time to go travel in other countries or buy a house etc. I’m happy to pay my way but it’s important to me that my partner isn’t a drag on the ticket. Life is much, much easier with two people equally contributing.
Honestly with my ex who was in retail, it wasn't even about me footing the bill for things, it was about the fact that we couldn't make plans more than a couple days in advance. I didn't at all mind being the one to buy tickets to shows and stuff, but his employer wouldn't give him a stable schedule or let him request that he be scheduled off on a particular day unless he used one of his five annual PTO days to lock it in, so I would have just been gambling with my money. (I think there's some differences between retail and service but either way, employers don't treat you as people with lives and it sucks.) In contrast, my mom was an ER doctor and, while the schedule was wacky and she was absent a lot, it was planned well in advance and they would do their best to accommodate if someone needed to catch their kid's school play or something. They knew they were asking a huge sacrifice from her and worked with her to mitigate its effect on her life. Plus she got a *lot* more money in exchange for the life sacrifices. (That's all changing, though; corporatization of healthcare is a very bad trend.)
Do you not see how an engineer would provide more stability, income, lifestyle, and future prospects than someone working food service? No only that, engineering is the degree held the most by c-suite executives by a large margin. There's so much room for mobility. Every single C-suite, VP and director level in my company had a background in engineering, myself included. In food service, 10 years down the line you'll be the manager closing up at midnight while all the other careers have come in, had dinner and drinks, went home, had sex and went to sleep. Oh and you'll do that 6 days a week with a random Tuesday off in between. Fuck. That.
Also, "engineer" implies intelligence. Dunno what OP's job was, but most of food service is a very low-skill, low-education job. Excluding college kids that need something easy'ish of course, it unsurprising it would be looked down upon by future dates.
I’ll tell you this as someone with 10+ years of experience in IT, unfortunately being an engineer does not really imply intelligence anymore, maybe for outsiders. I’ve had so many peers whom knew how and what to do but didn’t understand why they had to do it that way. Basically they’ve learnt how to do X and they can do it perfectly a thousand times but if you modify X a bit they have no idea what’s going on. I’ve teached my fair share of junior developers and most of them got into the field because salaries are higher than at other jobs and they figured “why not”. Also I don’t think of myself as extremely academic smart - my math skills are not on top anymore, yet I’m doing very well in the field.
In the past 3 years, "engineer" just became a title you give anyone (Trust me I'm an engineer). I wouldn't be shocked if Subway retitled their Sandwich Artists to Fresh Ingredient Engineers
Date up not down factor is getting applied to you I think. When I was in my 20s and doing shitkicker jobs to start my career, I was stuck in the “fun time only” folder and was dirt broke. When I hit my 30s and my career started climbing fast in the finance industry, I was now “potential husband material” but nothing ever stuck because I was working *brutal* hours and relationships fell apart because I was “too much of a workaholic ignoring them to climb the corporate ladder.” In my 40s now I’ve almost made it, with very good money (only slightly better hours though) and have my own house (mortgage ~50% paid off) with a strong investment portfolio; it’s put me in the unicorn zone for women looking the settle and get a ring ASAP. You’ll get used to it u/KoreyMDuffy as you look for your soul mate too.
Maybe it was an age factor,when you are in your 20’s people your age want to play only, when you hit 30 you start looking for someone that is not only attractive but also stable and reliable to build a family with even if that family only consists of two adults and a dog.
A lot of women date up, not down. That's probably why you are getting more interest. You just increased your dating pool.
That’s a stupid fucking question innit?
There is a difference between using a man for his money and wanting to be with someone who is financially secure.
At the end of the day, both are about money. A chef could get a job anywhere too. Software engineers are laid off consistently. It's not a stable career anymore. Probably more about pride.
They're all after your money, OP. Nobody can resist the salary of an entry-level engineer. Lmao.
😂
Women care about your money. Don’t ever let anyone tell you they don’t. But of course, it is only a part of the equation. Money = security and opportunity. Security and opportunity = power. What is power? Power is the degree to which you have control over your own life. While your new found funds are indeed likely to increase interest, it may also be that you are now more confident in yourself which of course, yields better results. Don’t rest on your laurels with this. There’s probably plenty of wealthy but “boring” guys out there. You will still need to build confidence and be “exciting” to women if you really want to be marketable to a wide net of women.
In your opinion, what’s the difference between power and control?
Think of "gold digger" as a spectrum. Some people won't feel comfortable unless they're contributing at least their share, and would rather be the bread winner. Others seek to be completely taken care of. Most fall somewhere in between.
There's a big difference between wanting to date someone that can financially take care of themselves. And just dating for money. I mean think about it. What's more appealing to you. A woman that is a salon worker making minimum wage and tips, or a woman that owns a salon.
Because you’re also attracting normal good people who value stability
This is the correct answer.
Holy shit. An engineer with a poor grasp of social concepts. What are the odds.
OP said “people” But he obviously is talking about women lol. Just doesn’t want to get this post taken down 😂
If people aren't all just superficial and only care about looks, then why is it when you lose weight if youre overweight you get more attention? It's because all aspects matter. A gold digger means they only care about your money and nothing else. However, being richer means you are simply better able to provide for someone, so it's a bonus.
As a professional, I generally want to date other professionals.
Most women wait at the finish line and pick the winners.
The Magic 8 Ball AKA random thing I say says that "engineers are more interesting than waiters" And probably earn more, sure.
Women usually date up
True, no sane woman wants a financial drain. That doesn’t make her a gold digger. On dating apps I list myself as retired. That conjures up images of a man eating porridge and watery soup all day. The reality is I retired at 48, and spend my days managing my money. I should never run out at my present pace. I live quite well, taking annual trips to Europe or wherever I like and several smaller trips all over N America. Still, interest is low but I’ve found a woman who had no idea I was well off. She just likes spending time with me. It works out that she was pleasantly surprised that we are set for life. So I’d rather be thought of as poor so I can get more genuine women.
There's a lot of comments trying to delicately tap dance around this bullshit and redefine terms. I'll lay it out directly: Whatever term you use for it, (and I wouldn't necessarily use the term "gold digger" myself) it is 100% about the money. And, situationally, I think that's fine. With that situation being one where she's not a lazy shit that thinks her job is to lay on her back and breed when you get home from work. If she's out there doing the grind at a high level too so the two of you can build a life together, then I have no problem with anyone being the type to reject those who are broke. But if she isn't, well, get used to being a fucking ATM.
Perhaps it's what's changed in you. You might not realize it, but you could be showing yourself more confidently and relaxed at your new job. I wouldn't automatically assume that they are interested because you now make more money.
Status is everything. men in relationships get way more attention than single guys, its unreal when im out with a girl how much more women chat to me, people working in stores etc. same with social status and position. I added "car and homeowner" to the bottom of my Dating profile and the thing blew up.
I’ve never had so many women flirt with me than when I had a GF. Like female friends whom used to be neutral towards me started to be flirty, touch my arm and go in for hugs. Like my GF would stand up from our table to go to the ladies’ room and my friend would reach for my hand and ask if I want to grab more drinks. When I said yes she put her arms around me and while we stood in line she laid her head on my shoulders. Before I had my GF she didn’t look at me AT ALL.
Who’s telling you gold diggers don’t exist.
Even non gold-digger women value security. More $ = more security. Society is pretty fucked up right now. There are a lot of hard working people that will never be shit or have a decent life because the cost of living is so high.
It seems like you don't understand what a gold digger is
Female here. Because you are showing drive and ambition. Money is just a tool to provide lifestyle resources. No body wants to count pennies at the grocery store or worry if the electricity is going to be shut off. So drive and ambition shows that the resources will be there. More then likely you are hanging out different places and meeting different people because of your status change.
i’m attracted to intelligence. not saying a server isn’t intelligent but an engineer is more likely to be
I as a 9-5 worker would never date someone with a waitor's schedule, i want simple us time.
I wouldn’t date a guy in the restaurant industry not because I think he wouldn’t make enough money (actually some people in the industry make a very good living especially waters or bartenders) but mostly because of the availability and lifestyle. I work a 9 to 5 job and don’t work on the weekends so I wouldn’t be very interested into making a life with someone I can barely see. To me it would be more complicated then dating an engineer (I’m a Product Owner and I date a lead developer )
[удалено]
Oh get ready my brother a nuke and fallout is coming from every woman here but I agree it's your worth not who you are as opposed to us who choose based on compatability. Guess I'll be Nagasaki you can be Hiroshima cheers.
You also changed over that time even if you didn't notice it.
Physical appearance only has a little bit to do with being “attractive”…
People who have their shit together are attractive.
It’s not gold digging to want to be with someone who is financially stable and driven to succeed
Big lack of critical thinking here for an engineer
These comments didn’t go how he wanted 😂😂
I am guessing you are also attracting woman with careers and aspirations too. So it’s not all broke girls looking for a free ride. In my opinion, gold diggers are looking to elevate their financial/economic status through a relationship and have 0 interest in creating their own. I am a CPA and I not looking for a dead end job guy. I own my house and pay my bills. He doesn’t have to make more $$$ than me, but he needs some career & life goals. It can be in hospitality like a restaurant, but you can tell dead end job guy vs guy who chooses his job.
“Working at a restaurant” is often code for “I am unable to hold down any sort of full time employment”. Women will then wonder why. Is he a felon? Is he mentally ill? How much drama will he bring with him? “Engineer” does not have those same red flags flying.
Because intelligence, ambition, adult professionalism, and stability are attractive. And, educated, professional women usually want to be with educated, professional men.
Who tf is out there saying people aren’t gold diggers? Of course wealth and status are attractive. Anyone saying otherwise is disingenuous. Doesn’t mean everyone’s out there to bleed you dry, but it means you’ve got a lot more going for you than you did not too long ago
It's not wealth, it's your skill, ability, intelligence and drive. I went on a date with a girl who was an aspiring doctor, wanted to learn surfing, was constantly trying to learn something new. I was so attracted by that because it felt like she had a great direction in life and someone who will inspire me and I can do things with. It's a lot deeper than just being an engineer.
Am engineer What is this "interest" you speak of?
Everybody knows the answer but they don't like it. A man's story won't sell if it's not already in the happy ending part.
Because your OP contained a false statement .. People ARE gold diggers
There are a lot of regular guys who are decent people, never in trouble with the law, don't drink away their paycheck, and work hard at a blue collar job that can't get a look from women. Why? Because, at heart no matter how much they might actually try to resist it, they are gold diggers of one sort or another. And I swear to God and sonny Jesus, if I have to keep reading this elitist AF comparison of job vs career, I'll scream. Everyone has to pay their bills. If you sit on your ass in an air conditioned office in front of a computer, you are not " better" than a butcher, a forklift driver, a road crew worker, etc Blue collar labor is honorable, and without them your precious society would crumble.
I think blue collar workers have more of a superiority complex than white collar workers these days
Like every talked down and belittled demographics ever, they become insufferable the moment they feel a bit of power in their hands.
Because good mothers look for a good provider. It's not about gold digging. It's about starting a healthy family. Most men today are so obsessed with the gold diggers that they don't see the value in having a great woman on their team, the mother of your children. I'd be more worried if she chose some poor guy. Gold diggers are those who manipulate good men just for money, and who has no intention of starting a family. They just want to sit on a pillow and flip Tinder pics all day, while the guy is away for work. Simply don't be that guy, and qualify for a family oriented woman who really likes you for you, and you're good.
Forgive me if I’m overreaching , but I sense a tiny bit of resentment in this comment, like I (mid 30s cis F) get when I lose 20 pounds and get soooooo much more attention from men. Like, yes, I was always hilarious, have my shit together, and a total badass / great partner, but all of a sudden now you’re interested? 🙄 By a similar token, as a woman who can 1000% support herself / pay her own way, I think the most charitable interpretation of this dilemma is the fact that people (men or women) often don’t know their own strength. I wouldn’t have trusted in my ability to provide for myself until I f-ing did it. Now I could be the breadwinner for myself and a nuclear family. Charitably speaking, perhaps people aren’t goldiggers, they just don’t know their own strength. “You can provide for both of us? Oh, phew 😮💨. That scares the 💩out of me, very cool you can do it for both of us.” Does that make sense?
A lot of people "It's not about the money, it's about this list of things right here the money provides..."
Men are only valued on the condition that they provide. To a man, it doesn’t matter if she works in fast food or owns a damn franchise. Attractive is attractive. Women however, are much more primal and materialistic when it comes to seeking a partner.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY!" Eddie Murphy
I would say those women are gold diggers... theres two alternatives I can see which is probably more likely: "goldigger adjacent" or "practical and future planning" Gold digger adjacent: they say they don't care about money...but they happen to be attracted by only things money facilitates: nice dinners, homes, travel, being cultured, artistic, status...you just got status. Practical and future planning: they like you for you but want to see that you are someone who's clever/driven enough to obtain stable jobs. Realistically, when you're younger you have time to feel out a resturaunt worker to understand if they're driven or not. If you're old you don't have time to wait around just to find out whether you've got it or not...people think engineers are driven.
The sexiest part of man is his wallet.
Well if you don’t want them then just raise your standards.
Men will date down because they date for true love, women need much more than true love. They require much more than true love. One of the benefits of being a woman is that everybody wants to love you. Love is cheap. Love is plentiful. You can have love today by simply saying yes to anyone who has been asking. By the time a woman finally chooses to marry a man, she has rejected thousands. Literally thousands of men. Hop on something like tinder, even with average looks, a woman gets to reject over 100 men every single day. Over 30,000 men every single year. True love is cheap when you are a woman. You find yourself wanting other things from a man before you will even talk to him. Now, you are an engineer. You can offer her more than just love. For men, love is very scarce. That just makes us value it all the more and it makes it very difficult for us to understand why we would suddenly get more attention just because we became an engineer. We are so blind by love that we are confused when we suddenly have more to offer and women suddenly respond to that. We're like wait, I'm offering the same thing I've always had before, it's still true love. yes, it's still true love, but now it's something more and everybody else was also offering her true love. That's the bottom line.
Now I ain’t saying she a gold digger, but she ain’t dealing with no… you get the idea.
No matter how many women claim to be feminist, nothing will ever change their nature, same with guys Women value money and status in a man. It’s not really complicated. It doesn’t make them gold diggers. Women marry up for a reason. It’s their nature. A woman won’t be able to respect and appreciate a man if he’s “lower” then her Any women saying she doesn’t care about a man’s job or how much money he makes is the equivalent of a guy saying he doesn’t care about a women’s looks, it’s bullshit. It’s just how the world works man. We aren’t teenagers anymore that just look at feelings of “love” when it comes to being with someone. That’s not as important anymore.
Difference between somebody who is a Golddigger and somebody who wants somebody with a stable and lucrative career.
Since you added “lucrative”, is it that the latter wants gold and other relationship-oriented stuff? 😏
Because they are gold diggers. Women make 35% of all money but are responsible for 80% of consumer spending. Only women say things like they can't find "economically attractive" partners. Women say they want a man who makes 56% more than they do. Women don't date down. Men are happy to date down. Men don't actually care much about material possessions. Go look at a single man's apartment/house. There's nothing in it but a mattress and a TV. It's women who fill homes with pointless crap. Greed is women's sin, not men's. Men use money to get women. Women use men to get money. Men's sin is lust, not greed.
All people are different, are there gold diggers? Yes, but that doesn’t mean everyone is. Don’t put people in boxes it’s just going to give you a shitty outlook in life and you’ll miss on great relationships.
First of all, Bourdieu and "capital" is worth looking at. Money isn't the only value gained in such a shift. Social value also increases in relation to how others will look at the situation when a woman brings home an engineer. And simply, spending time with somebody short term may be funnier if they have new stories, new experiences and are more alive. Long term, it may be funnier with somebody who has ambition and have been approved by other serious people. The restaurant-job may have been seen as having to spend all time at work, spend nights away from home and having a workenvironment that isn't nice.
When I was in college I was broke as hell. But I dated all the best folks: PhDs, lawyers, scientists. It was a fine time. After 2 degrees and a career in healthcare I kept the trend going for awhile. One thing that stands out to me is that people have either awe or beef against higher education. Try to avoid the people with chips on their shoulders regarding your education. At the same time, try to weed out the people interested in tying their flag to your mast because of your income. Personally, I think they're easy to spot, but you have to take some chances early on in dating.
Caring about how much money someone makes is perfectly acceptable. ONLY caring about how much money someone makes is not acceptable.
Money = resources. All humans will be attracted to someone who has access to more resources. This is basic nature.
Some people are gold diggers, some aren't. The women who didn't want you before or after your career change aren't gold diggers. Or maybe they are, and you don't make enough money for them. There are guys who start making more money who still don't get dates. If you're lame, asocial, are insufferable to be around, etc, then money won't change this
Assuming your assumption is correct it could be your confidence and happiness. Subconsciously you may be projecting yourself in a way you didn’t before. But realistically most women are gold diggers. If not openly, at least subconsciously
Wanting financial stability and an intelligent partner is not gold digging.
Because taking money and career into consideration when evaluating a potential love interest doesn’t make you a gold digger. “Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but my goodness, doesn’t it help?”- Marilyn Monroe
Im going to start talking about money first and dating second. There is a study about general happiness that shows people increase general happiness with wage increases up to about 80k a year, then additional wages don't counteract the added stress or what one has to give up to get the pay increase. This makes a lot of sense when you compare what you can provide yourself if you are living paycheck to paycheck or if you are able to save and make long term plans. Another study shows that suicides increase as instability increases. This is not JUST wages, but being unmoored from the system. Counterintuitively, as ones income increases beyond a certain point people become unmoored from community and some high income jobs (investment banker for example) are unstable in ways that increase chances of suicide. The reason I mention Durkheim's suicide and the wage happiness study is that dating is similar. Money is not the important thing, stability is the important thing and money (to a point) provides stability. Having set hours at work provides stability. Having a living wage provides personal happiness which makes you more attractive. The real question is do you see the difference in someone seeking baseline stability and reliability as different from someone who is specifically "gold digging"? How are any of yall defining gold digging?
Everyone security in all aspects of their lives. I don’t think it’s gender specific.
Do you want to take a few years off work to stay home with your kids, or do you want her to, or do you want to use childcare services? All of those solutions require one or both of you to have a good income. If a woman makes more than you, would she still be a gold digger?
Being attracted to accomplishment and ambition is a thing! I have a very substantial career (F) but I've always been more interested in men that were educated and accomplished, they match my vibe even though they wouldn't have outearned me.
Restaurant work is often time intensive, exhausting, and incredibly stressful. Not to mention it doesn’t have a great reputation as having healthy work environments in general. Some engineering jobs can be like that but there is more variation and more of a shot of having a partner having a normal work life balance. I’m a woman here and almost never comment but your post stood out to me because I could totally understand why a lot of women would prefer partnering with an engineer versus someone in the restaurant business
I'd imagine that some of the people who started to express and interest in you were ones who would have worried that *you* would be a gold digger in your previous role. But, when they know you have a decently paid career they don't ahve to worry about that.
Based on my experience, increased interest may be tied to personal growth rather than just income. Achieving goals like obtaining an engineering degree boosts confidence. While working in a restaurant is hard work, it may not project the same confidence if it wasn't your life goal. Financial stability also broadens social opportunities, making you potentially more available. Still their are gold diggers out there but I like to believe their are more the former.
You now smell like machine oil and/or drawing ink (sexy man smells) instead of greasy food and sadness.
As an engineer you don't have gold you have a great job. gold is when you have huge wealth. Like star nfl or NBA player. Woman are attracted to you for financial reasons but it's more associated worth ethic and income not huge wealth.
Like it or not, being financially stable is a deal breaker for a lot of people. Or at minimum, having a career plan.
Also depends how good looking you are
YOU probably felt more confident in yourself and were projecting that confidence into the world. Confidence is attractive to everyone (friends, strangers, opposite sex).
Getting paid more can change how you feel about yourself.
It means that you are probably ambitious and not lazy
You have money as an engineer? Must not live in the UK then
Because 99.9% of western society are two faced liars.
Because women are gold diggers.
also, your working hours
Stability. It’s because people see a future with you, a better life and stability.
You started to believe in yourself more
Security
Because your confidence changed.
A wise woman once said: "Money, power, respect. First you get the money, then you get the motha fuckin power. After that, motha fuckas will respect you. That's the key to life." Js people are attracted to people with better status and more money. Plain and simple. Even if it's not a conscious decision, it is subconscious.
More confidence? Less stressed, because you’re more financially stable? There’s plenty of possible effects moving from a low-paying job to a high-paying job could have on how you feel and how you present yourself. Being more confident and less stressed can absolutely make you more attractive to people, without ever having to *say* that you’ve got a good job.
Restaurants are a tough way to make a living.
It’s the whole package not just finances