Or that she’s an astute one.
What are you worried about?
She can’t take what you aren’t willing to give.
Don’t buy her lavish gifts or give her access to your savings, don’t have a joint bank account, don’t register any assets in her name, don’t pay her credit cards or co-sign any loans for her.
If it gets to the point where things are really serious, you sit down and work out a budget together and sort out who contributes what. Don’t just put thousands of dollars into her account and tell her to enjoy herself!
Why are you worrying that she wants to use your connections to advance her career? It’s called networking and she’d be nuts not to do it. The fact that she wants to use some of your connections to advance herself doesn’t mean she’s a gold-digger, she’s using you or doesn’t have feelings for you- it makes her smart.
I love my husband and if his family could help my career I’d certainly take advantage of that, but I wouldn’t be gold-digging.
Some people (like me) object to pre-nups, not because we’re gold-diggers, but because we entered into marriage as a permanent, life-long commitment. Pre-nups sort of run counter to the whole spirit of a marriage, which is that you CAN’T just walk away from it.
If her last boyfriends was wealthy and generous that’s one thing, if she was ONLY with him because he was wealthy and generous it’s another. Talk to her about him, and try to suss out how she really felt about him. If there was real affection and love there, I wouldn’t worry too much.
She’s coming from the UK, where there is no community property, pre-nups aren’t legally binding (and usually not necessary) and the lower income partner normally walks away from a divorce with only minimal maintainence. It’s quite possible she’s not looking at things the same way you and your friends are.
If you are just dating her the prenup thing is a long way off. So is this suggestion, which is to go over, in detail, both your financial position and hers - you should make it part of the prenup process. However, at some point when you are fairly serious, it may be worthwhile to know if she carries a lot of consumer debt or huge student loans. This is like the “do you have AIDS” talk or the “Are you on the pill” talk or the “I haven’t met your family and we’ve been dating five years, what’s wrong” talk, no really good way to do it except sort of blurt it out and explain why.
There are some signs you can look for as you get to know her. What does she do for a living and approximately how much does that make her? Then look at her style of living, a entry level accountant with a habit of Kate Spade bags and Prada shoes may really like you, but one of the criteria for liking you may be your ability to support her habits long term. Don’t test her, but do be aware of the choices she makes while you are around her.
Its also worthwhile to have the “life goals” discussion. A woman whose career goal is stay at home mom needs to find a guy who will be able to support that goal, financially and emotionally. That isn’t gold digging, its a criteria to get where she wants to get in life. If your goal is to be a two career couple without children and her goal is to have you have a nice career job that brings in a lot of money while she raises kids - you have a problem that is more fundamental than money, but can look like its all about money on the surface.
And in the end, it may not matter. I used to know a wealthy man who married a much younger woman. She was definately out for a meal ticket, he was out for a beautiful young wife, and they both got what they wanted. He did protect his assets, there was a prenup, she had no access to his accounts, he gave her an allowance and lots of gifts (jewlery, clothes). She stayed home, had a housekeeper for the house, no kids, and rode horses and read books and had her nails done or something. They were both very happy.
My test that I have used on my longtime girlfriend is to get laid off from my job every year or so. I then spend a few months bumming arround, moping and spending too much time drinking with pals.
Ok, it’s not so much a planned test, it’s just kind of worked out that way.
Campion’s brother is kinda’ correct. All women who make less than you are “gold-diggers” to some degree. You will generally have to dish out more money on them then they will on you. The generally rule in todays society is still pretty much the man has to work (as opposed to ‘finding yourself’ or some such BS) but the woman may or may not work, depending on your financial situation. That’s just how it goes.
That said, what you don’t want is a woman is just wants someone to take care of her, pay her bills and let her watch Oprah all day. My GF has a friend like that. She has no real job to speak of (she dabbles in a couple of thinks, none of which pays the bills), her dad pays for her appartment and her life basically consists of drinking in bars, sitting around all day and going on Internet dates. Guys obviously do not want someone to just take care of and she isn’t attractive or cultured enough to be someone’s “trophy wife”. Someone like that you can figure out within a few dates what they are about.
Some red flags:
-Excessive amounts of free time during the day
-Expresses desire to be “taken care of”
-Seems to live beyond her means (someone else obviously subsidizing)
-Career problems
:dubious:
That describes my wife to a T. We just celebrated our 19th anniversary, and now she starts gold-digging??? The nerve of some people…
I once got an anonymous phone call from a guy in a phone booth on a busy street to warn me that a girl I had just started dating was a serious gold digger.
I agree with all of these, especially if the woman is in her twenties or thirties, has no kids and thus no real excuse for NOT working, and complains about not being able to work due to nonspecific medical problems (chronic fatigue syndrome, etc). I have known a significant number of “feminist” women for whom this is a textbook definition; apparently now being “self-assured” is more important than being independent. Gives me a bad name.
Only if you accept the opposite, which is that every man who dates a woman who makes more than he does is also a gold digger to some extent. For the first few years of our marriage, I outearned Brainiac4 and did pay a higher percentage of our bills. Particularly when we first got together and he had some financial problems and only recently had gotten himself a full time job. I don’t think he was golddigging, however (though I suspect he was grateful). As our partnership has gone on (twelve years now), the financial balance has changed, but I’m not golddigging.
Its statistically improbable that two people will hold jobs and bring in the same salary. I don’t really think its fair to have to define one partner in nearly every relationship as the golddigger.
Two things here:
- This is true of friendships as well. I make much less than several of my friends, and more than a couple of others. The ones that make more than me spend more on me than I do on them, and the opposite is true of those I out-earn. It’s understood that we each give to one another proportionally to our ability to give.
Which leads me to…
- It’s not about the amount spent, but the percentage spent, if you’re going to attach value to this in your relationship. If you are each spending a relatively proportional amount on one another, regardless of the actual dollar amount, then you’re on pretty equal footing. Some of the best financial advice I ever got regarding household financing was to look at each person’s salary, and work out a budget where each was contributing the same percentage of their salary (may not work for everyone, but it did for me and my SO).
It’s not based on income. Simply making less money does not make you a “gold-digger”. A real gold-digger wants to be taken care of but really doesn’t care for the person taking care of them.
I don’t think men can be gold-diggers. I think the term is “bum”. As in “why are you going out with that broke-ass bum?”
Ethilrist - They are just character traits to watch for that might indicate goldbrickeritus. That doesn’t mean your wife is one. Now if she won’t have sex with you and wants to take your credit card to go on a shopping spree, then that’s a different story.
Not that dating impoverished skanks is a bad thing, so long as you’re doing it with your eyes open. 
How did i know that we would be able to rely on you for a ridiculous generalization about women? Nothing if not predictable, i guess.
OK, let’s turn this round for a moment. This is how a Brit might see it … if you (male) pay more then your fair share then I (female) owe you something / feel indebted in return. Maybe she’s thinking “Is he just after me for sex ? Does he want to pay his way into my knickers ? I think I’ll make sure I don’t feel I owe him anything before I know him a bit better.”
True she must have been in the US a fair time to have become a citizen but old habits die hard, I haven’t really lived at home for 11 years but still manage to offend the more Latin-minded male continentals with my attitude to what women can and can’t drink / pay for etc.
Also there light still be a difference between how she sees ‘a date’ and how you do. I’ve ‘been out’ for a meal/to the cinema with many a male friend who I had no intention of ever getting intimate with - you can’t know what her intentions are until you’ve spent time with her.
As others have said, it’s hard to find a couple where both earn/have the same money and either way it can cause problems - if she earns more he can feel emasculated, if she goes out to work he feels bad that he doesn’t earn enough to support her, if he earns more she feels guilty and risks being thought of as a gold digger so she goes out to work, her parents are rich so he is obviously looking for an inhertience etc. etc. you can twist these things pretty much any which way. If you think of things in monetary terms like that …well it’s not the best way to start a healthy relationship but that’s just MHO.
My advice don’t try and work out if she’s after your money or not - try to work out instead if she’s a good person, is she nice to other people ? Does you have the same sense of humour ? The same moral code ? If not, can you cope with the differences ? If you finally decide she is the one then … well … you’ll have something money can’t buy - no matter whose it is
That’s not exactly what I meant. What I was trying to say that in our society, courtesy still demands that the man generally pays. Not that women are money hungry or anything like that. I mean my girlfriend and I share the costs of going out, but it’s still heavily skewed in me paying more - ie she might pay for the $20 lunch but I’ll pay for the $150 dinner that night. And that’s fine.
The point is if your dating someone, realize that the expectation is the guy pays and you look really cheap going Dutch at least for the first few dates.
Well, it’s what you said.
First you said that “All women who make less than you are “gold-diggers” to some degree.”
Then you defined a gold-digger as someone who “wants to be taken care of but really doesn’t care for the person taking care of them.”
I’m not sure how one should read those comments anything but an offensive generalization.
Well, you might not want to assume that everyone else follows your pattern of cost sharing. Just a thought.
Actually, plenty of women i know insist on going dutch, especially during the first few dates, specifically for the types of reasons that Cat Jones talks about. Some men—no doubt a minority—seem to believe that it is their role to pay, but that this also gives them some sort of entitlement or expectation regarding what happens at the end of the date. Insisting on splitting the check allows women to head off those morons who think like this.
And yet as I read that, shivering in my cardboard box under a motorway overbridge with no companionship save the rats, and only roadkill and empty french fry boxes to eat, I ask myself, “Who is truly the happier man?” Him, with his riches, beautiful young wife and life of luxury and ease, or me, with all that I have?
It’s him, isn’t it? Sorry, should have thought a bit harder about that one. Bastard.
I’ve been in a steady relationship for some time now so I may not be up on all the nuances of modern dating, but I’m pretty sure things haven’t changed all that much. Maybe the kids are doing something different these days. I don’t know. All I know is that according to anyone I’ve ever talked to the guy, unless he wants to be viewed as cheap, generally pays.
As for entitlement or expectation, I would say that while paying does not ENTITLE you to anything, it sends a message “I am taking you out. We are on a date. This is not two casual friends sharing a drink or a meal.” Now if you are on a date and the idea that there might be sex at the end of it does not appeal to you, maybe you shouldn’t date that person.
AND?? How did it end?
To the OP, I suggest you learn as much about her as you can and put the opinions of others out of your head. They sound as though they may have an agenda, especially if this is all taking place within a group of established friends. Just enjoy dating! Golly, there’s little enough happiness and love in the world to not relish what you find. Good luck!
Does she love me for me, or does she love me because Uncle Mort can help her get ahead in the whatsit business? That’s a question for the ages. At some point in a relationship you have to operate on trust. In other words, if she says she loves you and wants to spend time with you, at some point you trust that she’s telling you the truth.
You stop trusting her when she does something inconsistent with her expressed intent and doesn’t have a good explanation. The other thing I’d look for is whether she sets up her next relationship before she exists the first. That’s not a trait limited to gold-diggers, but it would give me pause.
I’m not sure that’s wrong. Having a certain amount of money is a proxy for a couple things that can be attractive to a woman: ambition, a job, etc. So to say that a woman looks for a man with a decent bank account may be a false correlation. She may instead be looking for a man who works a good job, makes a steady paycheck, invests wisely, spends frugally, and as a consequence of those traits, has a decent bank account.
Bottom line, follow Portia’s advice: just enjoy dating her.
Yah. One question: are these female friends, by any chance, less attractive than your new girlfriend? Or anything like that? Women can be catty, and sometimes when a guy friend starts seeing someone new, we get defensive of him. Sometimes we do it in a polite way. Sometimes we turn into total bitches, insulting the new girlfriend, and such, like “I hear she has fat ankles” or “Yah, but you did know about the gold digging thing, right?”.
Also, do you have lots of money? Do you flaunt your wealth? Does she know the size of your bank account?