How much money have you burned on a girlfriend?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Had to multi-quote this.

So basically he was putting in a lot of time, money, and effort, not because it was what he wanted to do right then, but on the expectation of a future payoff (marriage).

Yep, certainly sounds like the language of doing stuff you don’t want to do now, in the hopes of a payoff down the road. IOW, an investment.

Most people get into relationships to find out if it’s going to be for the long haul. You can’t just decide it on your own up front.

Yep, an investment!

And here I thought my wife was that one special person I wanted to go through life with.

Maybe whether you’re in it for the long haul or not, the ‘returns’ should be right then, in real time. You do stuff with your significant other because you enjoy being with them. If you do stuff for them, you do it because you care about that person enough to do it.

Is this some new kink? :eek:

“Prove it or be called cheap”?

Prove it to whom?? Be called cheap by whom??

Who are these people whose opinions matter to you more than that of your beloved?

And if she’s the sort of person who needs this sort of proof, then she’s surely the right person for you, but for pretty much anyone I know, it would be a huge mistake to marry that sort of person.

When I met my wife, I was in grad school. I had never had more than a few thousand in the bank in my life, and my girlfriends along the way had been in pretty much the same shape.

Ditto my then-future wife. She wasn’t looking for a $5000 ring. (“Why, that’s nothing but a two-bit ring from a crackerback jox!”) Like me, she was looking for the right person, not the right bank account. I didn’t have money, neither did she, and nobody who mattered to either of us was going to give us any crap over an engagement ring.

Learn some manners yourself. And some values that don’t turn people into “investments.” In the words of Terry Pratchett, “sin is treating people as things.” Sure sounds like what you and your friend are doing with women. You might should repent.

42

The thing about treating women like prostitutes is it weeds out the ones who can’t be bought. If you keep falling into the same traps with women, it could be because you’re driving away the ones who exceed your rock-bottom expectations.

43

I recently broke up with a lady. I gave her a debit card and put about 600 a month into it so she could take a little better care of herself than she could afford. I was pretty generous with fixing things around the house that needed doing, shopping etc. Guessing about 15 grand over a year. No regrets and no hard feelings. It didn’t work out and life goes on we had a great year together.

44

Apparently “cost of doing bidness”

45

Not quite what you’re asking, but for Jeff Bezos the answer is 35 billion dollars.

46

Female here. I haven’t dated in years, because I got married young. But back then… We always paid our own way for everything. Most of the guys I dated were as poor as I was, and it worked fine. One had a lot more income than I did, and he found it frustrating that I wouldn’t go to nicer restaurants and stuff because I didn’t want to pay that much. He pointed out that he was happy to pay for that, but then the date felt awkward to me, like I owed him something.

I’m really cheap, so I cared about the money. I’ve gotten better about that since my youth, and now I can enjoy someone else treating me, or treating someone else. But I still don’t want to do it to the point that either party feel in debt to the other. Because I’m still basically cheap.

So… I burned zero on boyfriends, and they burned zero on me, although of course we did spend money together, going to shows and restaurants and stuff. But… you know, like others said, we only did stuff that we actually wanted to do. any honestly, it’s more fun to go to a show with a friend, so I strictly benefited from going out with them, because the show cost the same but was worth more to me. I assume the same was true for them.

47

I suppose around $500 a year. But then I got to be at the event or movie or restaurant or whatever so I enjoyed them also. I hated going to places by myself.

Now my GF also got to come over and use my washing machine and dryer for free and after we broke up she suddenly realized she had to now pay for that herself.

I can see the OP’s friends issue but then this was college and people are young and dont always do the smartest things. She may have well have been stringing him among with promises of a future together to get him to pay for things. It happens. I got used for money alot at that age. He needs to move on.

48

Didn’t anyone tell you? Well, I guess it’s not your fault.

Look–On the first date, you’re supposed to give them a marriage contract to sign. No signature? No dinner. No date.

I guarantee you won’t burn any money that way. You’ll never get married, either. Everyone wins.

You’re welcome.

49

Gee, OP, how dare your “friend’s” girlfriend accept all that from him and then have the audacity not to marry him! I mean, really. If she’s going to let him spend money on her, the least she could do is swear lifetime fealty to him regardless of whether or not they continue to be a good match. Anything else means she’s a gold-digger, right?

This kind of rationale is straight out of the Fifties: If you’re going to buy a broad a steak dinner, she’d better put out, dammit. And if you’re going to buy her a lot of steak dinners, she has no right to end the relationship. After all, she’s been bought and paid for! :rolleyes:

50

Not one dime that I have ‘spent’ on a friendship has been wasted. What an odd concept.

51

What an absurd conversation. Even more absurd is how many people appear to agree that monetizing a relationship in term of an investment is a meaningful exercise. Pathetic doesn’t even begin…

52

The fact that someone enjoyed doing something doesn’t mean that it was worth the cost of doing it, whether it’s monetary cost, time cost, or opportunity cost. So if you invested X amount of time, energy, and money etc. in something in the hope that you would get X value out of it, and you ended up with considerably less than X, then you lost out even if you got more than nothing at all. This seems pretty simple. (And it does not imply that the partner owed you anything, only that from your perspective you took a gamble and lost.)

The quibbling over lingo seems picayune. You see this type of analysis and language all the time from psychologists and game theorists and the like.

53

It’s one thing to talk about things like that. But people aren’t things.

54

It’s the same thing. And as previous, it’s routinely done by social scientists, without eliciting the sort of negative reaction that this thread has provoked.

For one random example that came up in a brief google search, see: Aplia Econ Blog: News for Economics Students: The Opportunity Costs of Relationships

55

I have occasionally done something social and then thought, “that wasn’t worth the time/effort/cost” and decided not to do that again. I’ve never kept a running tally of those things, though. It’s certainly not a major problem in my life.

56

To move this out of the purely monetary, and into a broader metric of cost… I definitely believe that you need to invest in maintaining relationships. And I have participated in some social activities that I wasn’t really excited about at the time because I knew that I had to participate somewhat frequently to maintain the relationship. Right now I am REALLY glad that I “invested” my my local bridge group that way, because that the moment my weekly BBO/Zoom bridge game is one of the high points of my social calendar, which is somehow much sparser than usual.

57

Nope, they’re right. You strike me as quite sexist and gross.

Why are you assuming that only women can be a drain on men’s bank accounts? Men can’t be a drain on a woman’s? A man can’t be a drain on another man’s bank account? And like others have brought up, are you implying men aren’t getting anything out of a relationship where marriage doesn’t ultimately happen? Men don’t go see movies or eat out unless they’re dating? And are all women who date without getting married gold-diggers?

Dude.

58

And in the end, it didn’t work out. Doesn’t mean she was some evil witch who took advantage of a him. MOST relationships don’t work out for the long haul.

59

A good point. In my last long term relationship, there was definitely stress over social activities. I was working a brutal job dealing directly with customers in the financial markets while he had a work from home job and only dealt with employees of his own company, often chit chatting about American Idol on a conference call while waiting for a report to run.

When the weekend came, the last thing I wanted to do was be a social butterfly and be around people. So, yes, we definitely had to talk and compromise. I’ll be there for anything that’s important to you, but I’m going to miss a lot of other social events. I understand that he liked to get out on the weekends and that’s fine, go to the BBQ 30 miles away with your college buddies. I want to stay at home, watch a ballgame, crack a beer, and get the voices out of my head blaming me for the stock market as well as every Obama policy decision!

60

More amazing than the op are those answering it while apparently accepting the framing thereof.
Shared experiences are just better. I have always been pretty good at making money, and I’ve always been ok with paying for others, be they college buddies or girlfriends or just, you know, friends. Their being there made the thing better, if they could afford it themselves, great, if not, why shouldn’t I help out? The idea of keeping a running count for any of them seems ridiculous. Now, some people try to take advantage, and that’s not ok and something you stop the moment you see it. But it makes no difference if they are gf or just f.

Also the idea that wives are “good investments“ is ridiculous. My current wife is awesome, but the idea of trying to put a monetary value on how being with her brings me joy has never occurred to me.
My first wife was no more an investment than would be a ticket on Titanic’s maiden voyage, in dark dank steerage, earned by being a test subject in a lab developing hemorrhoid rasps and eye tattoo ink.