No,
You said it was you OR charities that should be getting the ka ching. Maybe you meant things other than worthless bling to make you feel well paid, but thats not what you said. Don’t quit the day job.
No, I said that his change in priorities would need to be obvious. And that’s what I meant. The assumption is the guy has money, so it has to be going somewhere.
Also, a lifetime of dating superficial, gold-digging women will not endear a man to deep, caring women. It’s better to begin as you plan to continue.
This is a new(ish) twist on an age-old story - men and women have been exchanging favours together from time immemorial. Women wanted someone to protect them when they were vulnerable being pregnant or with young children - men wanted someone to cook the sabre-tooth tiger they brought home and be available for sex. Quid pro quo between men and women has been around since we climbed down out of the trees.
Do you make it “buy me this or no nookie”? Asking for a gift isn’t unreasonable, putting it in blackmail terms is a very short path to “fare thee well.” And ferchris’sake, never drag your SO’s ex into the relationship! “But you got HER one!” is the kind of stuff that shouldn’t be heard from anybody over age 3.
Re "“But you got HER one!”. Why is that an unreasonable metric for a person who values material expressions of affection? “If he’s capable of doing it for the ex why won’t he do it for me?” is not an entirely unreasonable question for an engaged woman to ask. It may be somewhat shallow, but it’s not unreasonable.
Saying it’s not unreasonable “for a person who values material expressions of affection” to demand diamonds in exchange for pussy is like saying it’s not unreasonable for a pickpocket to steal a wallet. A person who “values material expressions of affection” is ipso facto a twat (and this person doesn’t give a shit about the affection, by the way, just the material. It’s not like she gives a shit who gives it to her).
Well… our experiences may differ, but the married women I know who like their diamonds (or other material expressions of affection) are usually fairly proactive and hardworking wives and mothers and “taking care of business” type people…
Here’s the deal. In most circles it is considered crass and rude to demand a gift unless asked. A person is not obligated to provide you with something just because they can afford it.
Now, from her perspective, I might wonder why he is still buying expensive gifts for his ex wife of ten years while balking at providing her with a similar gift. To a certain extent it does send a message that his ex is the one he has feelings for while his current GF is just some piece of ass he’s banging.
He isn’t still buying gifts for his ex. It’s a gift he bought for her in the distant past when she was his first fiance.
Just to be clear the gift to the (now) ex-wife was 10 years ago when he was engaged to her. It is not a current gift to the ex-wife. She knows about the gift because it’s a small social set and the ex-wife was parading it around at the time.
Do they demand diamonds as a condition of a relationship?
Not as crassly as the ex-fiance, but if a woman feels (for whatever reason) that she’s bringing a lot to the table, and the well off SO is quite capable of a making nice gift happen … and he doesn’t … she might well need to re-evaluate the relationship.
I suppose there are places in this world where women are happy with poems and posies, but in the harsh light of the real world where many hard working women are scrambling to find Mr Right before their eggs get hard boiled, a middle class guy putting a few thousand of his hard earned dollars into an expression of affection is a significant indicator he’s a serious player for her affections.
Not everyone is model handsome, a natural poet or confidently seductive. You can call it shallow, but a practical woman will make her own evaluation.
This is what I would guess. He’s been known to do something pretty nice for the ex, while she was his current flame. However, he’s not willing to do the same for his current current flame. His CCF feels that she is not being valued as highly as he valued his first wife, and her feelings are hurt. Many people, male and female, think that if a man gives a diamond or diamonds to a woman, it’s a statement of commitment. Perhaps she was looking for such a statement.
Some people believe that one way that a man can express great love is with jewelry, especially diamonds. Yes, I DO blame DeBeers, but they have had a lot of very convincing ad campaigns over the years. My father really, really enjoys buying my mother expensive jewelry, and she really enjoys getting this stuff and wearing it. He’ll ask her to display the newest gift if she doesn’t do it spontaneously. Apparently, he gets to feel that he’s a Good Provider by buying bling, and she gets to feel Valued and Secure when she gets it. Her mother was the same way, except that Grandpa was notoriously stingy when it came to such gifts. One of the reasons that Grandma studied and became a nurse was so that she could buy herself what she wanted.
I never got into this myself, or at least not into the “he must buy me jewelry to prove his love to me” idea. I like jewelry, but usually I’m just as happy with costume jewelry as with the precious stuff, and since I don’t wear much jewelry, I’m far happier if someone gets me something like a computer monitor, which is what Bill got me a couple of years ago for my birthday. It’s not flashy, but I’m glad to have it and I appreciate the fact that Bill took a little time to think about what I need.
But it’s bad strategy. By putting it in those terms, you’re dragging the ex back into the relationship and you’re automatically getting your current SO as angry as if the ex was in the room.
There are other ways to put it which don’t place a third (and very much unwanted) person at the center of your current relationship.
You can think “he bought her one,” but you can’t say it.
This sounds so 1950’s to me.
Somehow after reading all your posts, I am thinking you may not actually “get it” when it comes to how women work. You seem to view women as prostitutes and golddiggers and seem to believe that buying their affection is the way to go. You probably think buying a girl in a bar a drink is an effective pick-up technique.
In reality, a woman who is simply about money is not going to be interested in some middle-class chump just for his money.
Women, as a general rule, care less about looks than men do. They are more responsive to what they perceive as a “dominant alpha male”. That is to say, in simple terms, a man who appears confident and in control. Money may factor into their mental equation calculating whether you fit the bill or not, but it is a mistake to think you can buy your way into a girls heart (or panties) without looking like a chump.
Typically unless you are making big money, your income is only really useful in establishing you as someone from the appropriate socioeconomic class. It only indicates if you are someone who is even in the pool of people to consider dating. But once there, she is evaluating whether you are someone who is worthwhile as a mate. Looks might attract her to you, but if you sound like a chump or an idiot, she will get turned off real quick.
And forget that poetry shit. Women do not respond to guys trying to suck up or faun all over them. I don’t want to say they respond to men who treat them like jerks, but they do respond to men who establish themselves as someone who may be list a bit out of their reach.
It’s actually pretty simple. A woman typically has a mental picture of what she imagines her lifestyle will be like when she finds “Mr Right”. It may be a nice house with white picket fences with a really nice guy who truly cares about her. It may be Hamptons houses and Upper West Side appartments. Maybe it’s driving across country on the back of some rebels motorcycle. So to get with a woman, you simply have to indicate that you are the type of guy she is looking for. Now unfortunately what she is looking for also tends to cost money. But that is incidental.
Also no man in his right mind would enter into a permanent “trophy wife” agreement without some sort of exit strategy. It’s quite simple really. She may be hot now but those looks are not going to last. From a strictly investment standpoint, she is a depreciating asset. His wealth, however, is likely to increase over time.
:rolleyes:
God bless us, every twat. Merry Christmas! 
What if they demand ‘poems and posies’ (re: astro) as a condition of the relationship? Or maybe taking out the trash (even though he haaaaaaaaates it)? What is reasonable to demand in a relationship? Is it okay as long as it’s not “material”? Or is it okay to demand, say, a new refrigerator, but not diamonds because they’re frivolous? Is it just the “demanding” part that has you het up? Because every relationship is it’s own little contract, and they all come with demands.
Hard to deny your point, although more than “demands,” I tend see them as “Price of Admission” (links to Dan Savage video)
Anecdotally, I’ve dated a great many middle-aged divorced women in the last 4 years. When they talk about why their mairrages failed (and they always do, and it was always never their fault, but that’s not women: that’s universal human nature) the reason given was never “he stopped buying me presents.”
It was always “he would come home from work…and just sit there!”
Make what you will of that. I certainly have.
OK let’s turn this around
Suppose you were going to marry a guy and he flew his first wife, first class on a honeymoon to Paris. And he’s taking you to Peoria, IL via the bus.
And then he bought his wife a 5 bedrooms house, and you and he are now going to live in a studio flat in a ghetto section of town.
Suppose he took his wife out to the Rainbow Room once a week while they were married, and how he’s demanding you cook all his meals at home.
It’d be one thing if he was rich then and poor now, but that doesn’t sound like the case
The fact is was she wrong to demand diamonds? Yes, because diamonds are artificially inflated in value, Platinum or Gold would be much better 
All joking aside, gifts tell you something. People say it’s the thought that counts. That’s not true, it’s the THOUGHT BEHIND the gift.
I once had someone give me two lawn chairs as a gift. What am I gonna do with that. This person knows I live in the city, in a studio flat, in a basement studio flat, I have absolutely no use for two lawn chairs. There was absolutely NO thought whatsoever behind this gift.
As I recall this was actually a plot on Everybody Loves Raymond where Ray shows no thought to Debra, but a lot of thought to his Mum’s gift. So Robert gives Ray an idea about Debra’s gift, but give no thought to his own wife’s gift.
You see the reaction to this woman from posters is coming from the “diamonds,” and the amount of money behind it.
I wonder if I wrote the same original post but replaced the diamonds with a simple gift and the second wife getting a toaster or appliance, for Christmas.
Now I’m not excusing anyone here, there are some people that don’t appreciate anything.
I have no issue with a trophy girlfriend or wife, 'cause frankly though she is trying to sell her love, after all he’s trying to buy it.
And if a man were to demand that his wife have sex with him at the same frequency as she did her college boyfriend?