I’m a 33M and I’m looking for some honest opinions from women.
I’m a “blue collar” guy. I live in a lower-middle class neighborhood and I work a factory job in agro-industry. I’m not rich by any means but I make a decent enough living by the standards of the area.
I’ve always thought that women wouldn’t bother dating, or even talking to, someone from a socio-economic status that they felt was beneath them. And that was always my experience too.
But this year I ended up meeting a 30F at bar with a high-salary white collar job that I was like 90% sure would reject me for being “out of my league”. But I thought “meh, what the hell” and asked for her number. (It helped that I was more confident than normal from being kind of drunk) Ngl I was shocked when she gave it to me. We ended up hitting it off and dated for a while.
It ended up not working out but the whole thing has me wondering: should I rethink my conventional wisdom or was that just a fluke?
TLDR: Women of Reddit, hypothetically how open are you to dating someone that earns substantiality less than you?
NOTE: fwiw I’m a military reservist so idk if the man-in-uniform factor helped sway her.
4 comments
I’m going to school right now but I’m planning to go into a career in robotics and will probably make good money. I will probably make more than any potential boyfriend or girlfriend I might one day have and that’s fine with me. I’d be find with a stay at home husband too.
I think your mindset is outdated, frankly. The men don’t have to be providers anymore.
Some women will care a lot and others won’t.
I might get some flack for this, but I wouldn’t date someone who made significantly less than me unless they were, say, in graduate school or med school and going to get a career where they’d make in my range.
I also have friends who don’t care as long as the guy cares about his job and is ambitious with it. It really varies. I wouldn’t let someone making way more than you stop you from at least asking them out because you never know how they feel about it.
I don’t hang out with the trad wife or more conservative expect-a-man-to-provide crowd, I can’t attest to their perspective.
For the rest, I don’t think making less (unless it’s like poverty levels) is an issue in and of itself, but the feelings of inadequacy that come with it… that can be unbearable.
In other words, having enough money to comfortably get by and not being an insecure little boy about it should be enough – in that regard.
There are other contributions like emotional labor, household labor, child rearing (if applicable), etc that also need to be addressed. It’s not all about money.