Sound like my ex . . . and I don’t mean that in a negative sense. I don’t think “ambition” is in any way relevant to a relationship.
A drive to make more money isn’t attractive in itself. Neither possessing nor lacking such a drive would in itself be determinative, but possessing only that “ambition” would be a major turn-off.
I voted Straight female: I’d date such a man exclusively but would not marry or cohabit with him but I guess I should state that my answer is a little tricky because I have no intention of marrying or cohabiting with anyone. I’m not dead set against it, but it’s not anything that I plan on.
I make my money, he makes his. As long as he didn’t expect me to pay any of his bills and whatnot I don’t care what he makes.
I don’t care about his financial ambitions as long as he’s making enough money to support our current lifestyle. I would care if he had absolutely no future goals whatsoever. But we’re still young. I might have a different answer 20 or 30 years later.
I’d be too afraid of resentment - from both sides. Of course, there are no absolutes. And it’s not like I’m out there searching for someone who makes within +/-x% of what I do.
I wouldn’t have any problem with the dollar amount at all, $30, 000 is fine if he’s happy and loves what he does for a living.
The lack of ambition bothers me though, not because everyone should be striving for higher income, but because I like the idea of improving my life in various ways as time goes by, and someone who was fine with things staying just as they are might get boring for me.
If he was interested in improving his skills and growing in his profession, but some fantasy rule said he’d never get a raise…ever…that would be fine by me.
They money doesn’t matter, but having some kind of ambition does. I’m a hugely passionate person, and I’d be a poor match for someone who is just sort of skating through life taking the good times as they come. I really believe we were put on this Earth with talents and have a moral obligation to use our talents to improve the world around us. Someone who is just coasting is wasting an incredible amount of energy that could be helping countless people. I believe it’s important for people to strive to challenge and improve themselves. Someone who no ambition is not going to do that, and will probably have trouble dealing with someone like me.
I dated someone like this once. He was perfect in every way- attractive, genius level intelligence, funny, artistic…and totally lacking in ambition. His family supported him, and he just whiled his days away doing not much of anything. I couldn’t deal with it.
The OP defined “ambition” as a desire for “financial improvement,” not as any kind of passion at all.
oh you and your pesky OP reading and answering the question the OP asked instead of what you want us to know about you 
I worked my butt off for the last 8 years, and 30K would still almost double our income. I’d rather she want to have some fun, than try to work and earn an extra $1000.
Yep. And, expanding on my previous answer now that I’m awake:
I’ve worked with people who wanted to do the best job they could at whatever job they happened to be doing at the time. In the words of a warehouse worker/photographer (he’s published several books): “my passion is photography, but when I’m driving pallets arond I try to be the best pallet driver I can be.” I’d be happy to date/marry/be friends with people like that.
I’ve worked with people (there’s two in my team right now) who wanted to get more money, more money, more money, but while doing as little as possible. One of them, I asked him to prepare something for him last Monday. In theory, for him it should be routine work and take 20min if he’s typing one handed while holding a cup of coffee in the other hand. 8 workdays later, he’s still not done it. Why would I want to have any more relationship with someone like that than I absolutely can’t avoid? But hey, he does want more money.
Crap, I realized too late that I was using a different definition of ‘ambitious’ than our dear Rhymer. Financial ambition doesn’t mean much to me, but having passion is important - if this is someone who has a 30k job they love to pieces, that’s fantastic. So take one off ‘straight male, date but not exclusively’, and put one in ‘straight male, no problem marrying’.
The results of this poll are of much use to me. Gendo Pose
Ya know, reading thru this thread has made me wonder a bit about myself: am i just an unambitious slacker, or have I got most of what I want?
I would fit the deifinition of “no ambition” for a lot of you, I think. I make less than 50k/yr (although more than 30k) generally, work less than 100 days a year usually, and spend most of the rest of my time playing video games, writing & recording songs, writing stuff no one wants to read, and just generally goofing off.
I don’t spend a lot of time on continuing education for my job outside of work hours. I work freelance, but I rarely if ever pick up the phone and look for more work than I already have on my plate. I don’t have a big house, a fancy car or a vacation home, and I have no desire to have them. I’d rather go hiking than work.
But see, it took me almost 20 years of unbelievably hard to work to get to this place in my life. I like it here. I’m (reasonably) comfortable, my needs and most of my wants are met, and I decide what to do with my time, not my employer.
Especially after reading thru this thread, I’m having a laugh thinking of the different perceptions people prolly have of me as I loaf around on weekdays during normal working hours, sometimes for weeks and weeks. I’m sure I fit the dictionary picture of “unambitious slacker” to a lot of people, but for the most part I feel like I got where I wanted to go all those years ago, it’s about as cool a place as I thought it would be, and I don’t see a need to go and fuck that up by being “ambitious”.
I voted that it wouldn’t bother me, but on further reflection it depends a bit. Are we talking about somebody who’s, say, a teacher, where it’s effectively impossible for her to make lots of money for switching careers? Or a McDonald’s drive-through jockey?
Autolycus, what does gendo pose mean?
My situation is fairly unusual, I guess, because I’ve already been married and divorced twice. While I may not have wanted to be with someone like this when I was younger, at this stage in my life I’d consider marrying such a person, because there is so much more to a person than how much money they make. Kindness, humor, companionship–those are all qualities that are more important to me than money. If said man had all of those, I’d like to spend time with him.
Bi female (but voted straight). My only requirements when it comes to money and jobs is that they can meet their needs and they are not miserable because of work.
If she lacks ambition how’d she end up asking me out?