Dating unemployed man

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It was a generalized remark about a common occurrence on WP that wasn’t directed at anyone in particular.

Fair enough.

I find it perplexing that the stereotype is women want men who will be able to provide for children.
It seems that in reality, it's the other way around.
Men are more likely than women to abandon their children to the mother.
Many of those men fail to pay their court-ordered support for those children.
It seems, then, that men should be hoping to find wealthy women to raise their future kids alone.

Men still typically get paid more money than women. Not always, but typically.
In the event of a divorce and there are children, almost always the mother gets custody and the father pays child support.
There are deadbeat dads, of course, but they are the exception not the rule.
That's why the stereotype remains that the father pays the bills. Because in most cases it remains true.

I think it might be a convenient thing to blame one’s single status on. Even with the example of Goldfish’s friend, maybe if the man wasn’t struggling with depression, she would’ve dated him. I’m not knocking people who have depression. I struggle with it myself. It can pose obvious challenges in the beginning of a relationship, though, especially if the person is openly negative or pessimistic all the time.

Relationships are complex. Why they work or don’t work is complex. I doubt most women would reject an otherwise great guy because of low income, though.

I’m saying this as a woman who has known a lot of women.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 07 Jan 2024, 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Okay; you do you & feel free to judge others all you want for doing them but don't suggest others should share your particular value system and if they don't they're somehow "cheapening things."

It's really just as simple as someone wanting to maintain or improve their quality of life in terms of what their income affords them. If that's a life partner criteria for them, then so be it that's what it is. Simple as that, really.

Also, your example is apples to oranges to the one I described. Your friend married an entrepreneur with decent earnings potential, not someone with a fixed income below the poverty line. Quite the difference. I wonder if she'd have married him if he were chronically depressed and would never earn more than $16.5k/year in an economy where people are still poor at 4x that income? I doubt it, IMO.

"Child support" doesn't mean that the father's payments cover all of the child's expenses.
Custodial mothers pay the same amount of "support" for the child.

For example if the child's needs will cost $2000 / month, they each pay half.
Dad pays by court order.
Mother pays by using her own money.

Receipts are required to be provided to the court by both parents.
The mother couldn't fail to pay her share and go to Hawaii, for example.

In that regard both parents pay equal child support, in ideal circumstances.
If the payor is a deadbeat, then the custodial parent pays more than 50%, often 100%.

^^ He was below the poverty line. The business ended up not being a success. She married him because she fell in love, not because of his earning potential.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 07 Jan 2024, 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree Twilight.

I don't want to derail about child support etc but I know a lot of men think women are gold diggers for wanting their child to be provided for. Most women I've known throughout my life wouldn't dream of having kids unless they thought they could support that child on their own, in a worse case scenario. It's beneath most women's dignity to chase ex-partners around looking for breadcrumbs of money, even though many of us have no choice but to do that for the child's sake.

You and I and other women have stated repeatedly that we don't care about a man's income so long as he's a good person who treats us well. It seems that some people on this site are incredulous and don't believe us, so I'm getting tired of repeating myself. I think they'd be happier if we made a Gold Diggers Anonymous thread, soliciting for rich men with six-pack abs to come and rescue us from our womanly destitution and peril.

That might work better than the truth.

That would be a fun satire thread.

It’s very tiresome when male posters tell female posters how women actually feel. I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed.

This isn’t the 50s. Most women are not looking for good providers. None of the women I’ve known cared about that, and I was raised in a patriarchal cult ffs.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 07 Jan 2024, 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Still a guy that could attempt to get a business going and is likely employable and can earn an income. Big difference between a man like him and someone who has been on disability for years and has an approaching 0% chance of ever earning more than $16.5k/year.

Which is why it makes sense that MOST people end up partnering with someone that's at Least at a certain minimum level so that they can pull their weight in a partnership. It's especially critical here where a 3 bedroom apartment in the far suburbs now costs approximately $6500/month. Marriages have always been in large part about financial/business partnerships and the tax benefits that come with them (otherwise people can simply be in love and not formally legalize their relationship) but these days it's critically important that a partner earns a healthy income so you both don't end up homeless, bankrupt, starving etc. Low-no earning people are ever more undesirable to partner with because they are an accounting balance sheet liability that almost no one can afford to house & feed. There's no room for adult babies in this economy. That's a HUGE reason why people who cannot earn money Mostly remain single OR if they're not, they're partnered up with someone else struggling just has hard as they are who has no expectations of stability or any sort of luxuries in life like driving cars, savings, home ownership (out of reach for most earners, too) or vacations etc.

You don't have to like it or think it's nice but this is modern reality.

You don’t know my friend. She fell in love. She didn’t give a f**k about how much money he made or could potentially make.

I wouldn’t have anything against being with someone on disability. She wouldn’t have either. We both care more about innate character qualities.

She also came from a rich family, you said. Did she inherit enough wealth to be comfortable and could then partner for love and not have to worry about how they'd provide for themselves? Perhaps that's a part of why she could even make that decision - she didn't Have To partner with someone that could match her income and afford to pay the bills if she didn't have the same working class struggles of bills to pay in the first place.

It's annoying when men tell women how they feel.
It's also annoying when they discuss topics they've never experienced.
Single parenting seems to be a biggy.

Most of the people who tell us what it's like don't even have kids.

No.

Yep. Exactly.

It’s utterly bizarre.