To ask who would date a man without a college degree and/or earning less?

[CleopatraSelene]

It's such a big talking point with sexist men now & also in general think pieces in media. So I thought I'd do an AIBU poll out of curiosity.
I personally would date someone who earns less & I would date someone without a degree. I would want someone smart but that isn't synonymous, esp when you look at idiots like Owen Jones & Boris who went to good unis.

However, I date women so not directly comparable

. Also housing is not an issue for me, and I know I am very lucky in this as right now housing costs are ofc out of control & the government fails to do anything...

I suspect housing & wish to be SAHM are big factors, and reasonably so.

DH doesn’t have a degree. We earned similar amounts when we met, and for about 10 years after that, me always slightly more than him.

After 25 years together I now earn 3 x what he does, but it doesn’t matter as we’ve got here together.

If I ended up single in the future I probably wouldn’t tell a man how much I earn, but I also would want a man who was financially secure, not so he can lol after me but so I don’t have to support/subsidise him. Don’t care whether he has a degree, just that he works hard & isn’t a financial basket case.

DP earns less than me and always has done - before mat leave, I earned about 1.5 what he did.

The gap used to be significantly bigger before I took pay cuts for quality of life reasons (City lawyer).

Both university educated.

My partner doesn’t have a degree and earns less than half what I do. It’s fine and in many ways preferable for me: I would hate to date or marry someone who earns a lot more than me as I would worry about dependency.

I dont think a degree is necessarily a meaningful measure of intelligence anymore: increasing its more a signifier of your parents’ income and social status. My DP grew up in grinding poverty and it would have been incredibly hard for him to have gone to university.

I wouldn’t date or marry someone who didn’t work at all though. Self sufficiency is very important and I couldn’t be with a cocklodger.

Yes? Same for everyone.

My husband has no qualifications at all. He earns a bit less than me, but he works much harder!
Shared values are the most important things to me. Solid morals, sense of duty, social responsibility, kindness. Oh, and hot sex obvs!

My dh does not have a degree. He's still intelligent enough, has had a good engineering job with the same company for 34 years & is a whizz around the house. Wouldn't trade him in a million years for a degree educated man who doesn't know one end of a screw driver from another.

DH had just dropped out of uni when I met him! And had no job either. Lots of water under the bridge later, he still doesn't have a degree, I've got even more of the buggers and he earns more than me anyway!

I didn't give much thought to financial prospects and the like, but was very young then.

I don’t think having a degree necessarily signifies parental status / income. I am from a poverty stricken background and have a post graduate degree and professional qualification. I was the first in my immediate family to go to uni straight from
A-levels. I actually have more family members that have been to jail than uni (or had, a few female family members have pivoted to nursing so getting degrees as mature students.)

I don’t get that poverty is a barrier.
Yes I had to work while studying and had student loans. But it wasn’t impossible.

True.

But it ultimately wouldn’t make a difference if women chose higher paid roles.
Average earnings fall in industries that become feminised. The opposite is true for men.

And of course choices happen in contexts.

Agreed.

Why? It is an agreement we have, works for both of us.

@JHound

I don’t think having a degree necessarily signifies parental status / income. I am from a poverty stricken background and have a post graduate degree and professional qualification. I was the first in my immediate family to go to uni straight from
A-levels. I actually have more family members that have been to jail than uni (or had, a few female family members have pivoted to nursing so getting degrees as mature students.)

Yeah that's fair. I guess what I meant is that not having a degree doesn't necessarily tell you anything about anyone's intelligence level. There are plenty of clever people who haven't done degrees and plenty of people of fairly average intelligence who have.

Only if he had a plan and ambition to earn more.

I don't expect someone wealthy but I do expect someone who earns a decent salary, I'm talking £40k and above, not megabucks but enough to contribute (for reference I'm in the mid 50s for my salary).

Life is hard and expensive tbh and when I was dating for marriage I was aware I wanted a child, and that means me being on mat leave for a while, maybe wanting to work part time when they're little, kids cost a bomb anyway, so I wouldn't have settled down with a very low earner unless I was young enough to have time to watch him progress.

I just wanted someone who could match me and work together as a team for a good life, instead of end up struggling or me carrying them.

Yep, worth pointing out that history suggests if a woman chooses and succeeds in a highly paid field, her renumeration is reliant on not enough other women doing the same thing. The patriarchy, ladies and gentlemen!

I don’t mind as long as there are lifestyle compatibility and fair contribution to the partnership. Contribution doesn’t need to be financial, but input in life admin, childcare, chores, etc.

In reality it usually means partners with similar levels of education and income.

Without a degree, no. Earning less, yes. DH earns significantly less than me but contributes more to the family in terms of childcare/chores/cooking.

I think that's a bit offensive tbh. Not having a degree doent mean you're not intelligent.

My partner doesn't have a degree and is waaaay smarter than me. I have one, but I've never used it. I earn a lot but it wasn't in any way aided by my degree! (I have a media based degree and work in a clinical role)

I did and he was an abusive cock lodger. Now if I were to date again I’d not risk being used.

I wouldn’t put any value on having a degree. Anyone with half a brain can get one. It’s not the flex it once was. I value someone naturally smart with common sense.

I wouldn’t be put off by a lower salary - unless it significantly impacted lifestyle.

Would struggle to date someone without a degree in truth as someone educated to post doc level. DH has an MBA and earns way more than I do as a humble senior lecturer. When we met we were very young and poor but knew we had similar ambitions and it all worked out as a result.

I dated someone with zero ambition, no degree or even A Levels prior to DH and we just struggled to converse.