Considering that for the first time in my life, I would go to my car in the parking lot and it wasn’t uncommon to find 2-3 guys near it talking about it and then asking me questions about it when they saw it was mine…I would have to question your judgment.
Is it a high end very expensive 100K+ car? No. But it was flashy and got attention.
Also, it may be a coincidence but going from dates hard to get and never going beyond first to dates easier to get and almost always willing to go beyond the first date…I know low n-size and could be a coincidence…but geez…living it made it hard to not believe it was what did it. It was just such a HUGE difference.
To be fair, my old, while married car was a Cavalier…
I find it interesting that people seem to resist women being shallow/valuing wealth. I mean, come on…of course many, if not MOST do. Why is it so irritating to hear? Men are just as shallow. PEOPLE are shallow. Many delude themselves into thinking they are not but the ‘list’ that men and women have that sound so not-shallow are AFTER their love interest meets more materialistic and physical requirements. This doesn’t make them ‘bad people’. It just makes them people.
Not as bad as learning that your new stick shift VW beetle had cruise control… After the third trip to California from Arizona. I always thought that stick shift cars could not do cruise control as (I thought) it would require automatic shifting.
No one is resisting that. You were talking about cars. Women who date me know that I’m fairly wealthy and successful. They are certainly attracted to that. They just don’t give a shit about what kind of car I drive. Wealth and materialism are two different things.
Valuing symbols of status over character is a huge problem. At the first-second date barrier, you have clues to character and social status but usually not enough information to judge reliably. (I give very mixed signals for social status: I drive a 3-year-old pickup, though, which actually probably pegs me pretty well.)
I’m not resisting the idea of women being shallow and materialistic - plenty are . But in my experience those women are not going to be drawn to a not particularly flashy car that went for around $30k - they want flashier or more expensive or both.
I think men are typically interested in different aspects of cars than shallow, materialistic women - what specifically were those guys in the parking lot talking to you about?
I spent 4 years cursing the too-short sun visors in my truck. When the sun was coming in from the side window I had to lean forward to get it out of my eyes. (I’m talking about when you’ve swung the visor 90 degrees over to the side – hope this makes sense)
Then when my wife was riding with me and the sun was low on her side, I watched her casually pull on the visor and extend it back across her window.
Yeah. Rarely helps me though. If I foresee driving with the sun low. I always take my Tilly hat. When you are driving right into it though, you’re kinda out of luck.
When I was younger I always drove practical cars; my last car before I got my Miata was a Corolla. Then I decided I was going to get a fun sports car when I turned 40*. I know exactly how it looks for a 40 year old man to buy a sports car, but I have a theory about that (which might count as a thing I finally figured out to keep the thread on topic). My theory is that I always drove practical cars in my 20s and 30s to prove how mature I was. Now I’m old enough that I don’t care what people think about the car I drive.
*I actually ended up getting it a year early, because my old Corolla died exactly on my 39th birthday. It somehow ran out of coolant while driving to San Francisco to see Hamilton on my birthday, and killed the engine. So I ended up replacing it with the Miata at 39 instead of 40.
when I was a kid I thought in the wham! song “Freedom” he was telling the girl he wanted her for more than just her body… it wasn’t until I was older that I realized he was saying he didn’t want the open relationship she did
I have been female for a bit over 70 years. I’ve heard a lot of women talk about what they did or didn’t like in men. What particular car(s) the man had or drove haven’t been mentioned much during any time in those years.
It’s not intuitive to me at all. What’s intuitive to me is that the bat costs a dollar; then the non-intuitive part of my head says ‘wait, that doesn’t work’; then the two of them stare at it together and say things like ‘well, the bat has to cost at least a dollar or it couldn’t cost a dollar more than – oh!’
Back in 2020, my ex and I were visiting a quaint little town in Germany which was very pedestrian-friendly. As a result, there weren’t many cars in the streets and tourists were walking pretty much all over the place.
At one point, we heard a car very loudly revving up behind us and we moved to the sidewalk. It was an obviously expensive convertible driven deliberately slowly by a man who, to me, looked like a caricature of the ageing playboy : late-60s, sunglasses, suntan, poloshirt, gray hair combed back.
My ex said : “That guy sure wants us to notice him.”
I replied : “Yes, he’s definitely trying hard to impress.”
She added : “Well, it definitely works on me.”
I was totally floored.
We’d been together for over 6 months by then, and I’d never have thought that this extremely bright (PhD in a STEM field), quiet, sensible 35-year-old woman who preferred staying home and go to bed at 8pm than going out, would fall for this sort of… display.
Which leads me to my own late realisation (n-size of about 30) : A lot of women want first and foremost to be impressed by their male partners. Now, this can be accomplished in many different ways, through intellectual, professional, artistic, humorous, physical, or financial achievements. But that’s the key : men must bring some concrete skill to the table. And that’s where “Nice Guy” whiners get it completely wrong. Being nice is… nice, but comes second in terms of importance.
I wouldn’t say that - first off , plenty of those “Nice Guy” whiners aren’t really nice in anyone’s opinion but their own. Secondly, I don’t think being genuinely nice comes second in terms of importance as much as it’s not sufficient.
She was an amazing woman in many respects… and a horrible person in many others, one being a pathological liar. But one of the very few things that I’m sure of is that she really cared about status. Our 2 ½ year relationship “coincidentally” ended just 4 months after our boss declined to finance my PhD, meaning that, then 47, I’d probably never have one. Two of her brothers, all of her friends and both her exes had one.
I had one skill : I spoke English. Apart from that, I was affectionate, understanding and respectful and that’s why she stayed with me for so long. But it fell short of what she was really looking for in a man. I was her rebound after a traumatic breakup.
Well, this sort of proves my point… She was crazy about sports .
Oh, that’s for sure.
You’ve expressed it better than I have, but that’s the idea.
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