Male friend sees romantic relationships as transactional and thinks lower and middle class men should go to Asia to find wives

[Primrose86]

I am 33 and have been married for 10.5 years with a 7 month old son. When we married, my dh was a poor student and we supported each other through unemployment, burnout/sickness, family drama, 3 year stint of living with his mum in our 20s (to save a deposit to buy a london flat) etc. There has been times when our disposable income was great and we could afford lots of holidays and weekend breaks plus overpay 1k into our mortgage. Other times less so.

My friend is in his early 30s and is convinced that women only like rich men (he thinks my dh is rich because he has an income of 75k which isnt that amazing in London). He thinks that another guy we both know (let's call him Friend A) who has been unlucky in love, would be much more successful on dating apps if he wrote ' I have a mortgage free 2 bed house in North London, no student loans, a car paid for in cash and am a lawyer'. All true BTW but of course Friend A is still single and has been single for most of the 11 years i have known him. He thinks that it is because Friend A is much too modest about his money or the women would all be lining outside his door.

Is this why so many younger men struggle now with relationships. Cos they have this view that they need to be the provider and women are only attracted to providers. He thinks love marriages are the minority. And says he would encourage all lower and middle class men to go to Asia to find a wife cos they have more economic power in Asian countries. When I tried to counter with examples, he thinks I am in denial and cited that men in the top 20% of the income quintiles are mostly in relationships but most in the poorest quintiles are single (i think personally its because higher earning men can afford to go on lots of dates which increases their chances; also attributes that command a higher salary are also attributes valued on the dating market like charisma/emotional intelligence).

Its honestly quite warped because most married men are not millionaires and marrying someone solely because they aren't high earning isn't even that lucrative anyway given frozen income tax thresholds and also job insecurity (many HENRY jobs can be lost during redundancy or are very high stress leading to burnout). Also this is based on the assumption that he will share his money with you...

He's a misogynistic incel. HTH.

How on earth could you infer that from my post?

Let's not discuss this as if your "friend" is some outlier or we are having some sort of reasonable facts based discussion here. This is the standard rhetoric of all incels, everything he has said is directly from the Andrew Tate, red pill manosphere nonsense that is polluting more and more young mens minds. All they have to do is leave their house and use their eyes to see plenty of normal men in relationships. Women don't want to date men who hate them, and don't have to any more.

75k today is approx 38k in the early 00s…

Public sector salaries are the same plus a London Weighting/ High Cost Area Supplement. So nurses, doctors, teachers, job centre workers, social workers, police, fire service, RAF etc etc etc are nowhere near thinking that £75k is "not great".

Plenty of London doctors, police sergeants, teachers earn 75k if full time.

I work with a vulnerable client group, poverty is a big factor, they tend to have very large families with various partners. The men are not single and childless. Far from it

Your friend is misogynistic and racist.

@soupyspoon I was talking statistically though…

“The IFS based its findings on the most recent long-term study available, which surveyed people born in 1970 and followed them as they got older.
It found that more than a third of men aged 42 from the poorest fifth of families did not live with a partner in 2012. That compared with only a seventh from high-income backgrounds.”

ifs.org.uk/news/men-poor-backgrounds-have-lower-earnings-and-are-twice-likely-be-single-those-rich-families

You only need to read threads on here to see that there are still a large proportion of women who believe a man should pay for all the dates and a man should have a good job and provide for his family, otherwise he is deficient and would he a bad partner.

theres some truth in what your friend says

Why do you think he's failed to find a girlfriend (in the UK)?

That response has almost nothing to do with what was said in the comment you replied to.

I am disputing that income of 75k makes you appear rich. In today's market, other factors are more important in determining whether someone's household income guarantees you a comfortable life. Yet I have never heard of a woman saying- looking for a husband who has nice and helpful parents who want to do childcare for free and live locally and who conveniently has help from them with housing deposits. Those 2 factors alone would actually give you a lifestyle afforded to someone on 150k provided you both have moderate earnings. As many highly paid jobs have demanding hours that necessitate nannies who can provide more flexible childcare.

I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing.

He is sort of right. There is research that shows that women, completely independently of culture and economic circumstances, want men who can provide resources for them and their future children. I do find it hard to get my head around that idea that this is true at a biological level, i.e. it true in the same sense that it is true that women with a 0.7 hip-to-waist ratio are more attractive to men.

correction "waist-to-hip ratio".

Again, that response has almost nothing to do with what was said in the comment you (originally) replied to. Read it again.

I'll have a guess: because he constantly seeks women that are more attractive than he is (out of his pay grade, to coin his speak).

I come across guys like this from time to time. Distinctly average in every regard, yet ignoring every average looking woman on the dating app, and trying to hit up the 'stunners' instead.

If I’m honest, this whole thread reads as someone arguing furiously with a straw man of their own construction.

I cannot work out what point you are trying to make. You say your friend is wrong to think money matters, then spend several comments explaining in forensic detail how and why money, housing, family wealth, childcare, geography and timing all mattered enormously in your own life.

Also, you seem oddly resistant to the idea that £75k in the UK is, in plain English, rich. Not billionaire rich, not “buy a townhouse in Chelsea” rich, but solidly top-quintile, high-status, option-heavy rich. Most people do not live in the world of rent-free parental housing, gifted deposits and 2% mortgages. Repeatedly saying “it doesn’t feel rich to me” does not change what it looks like from below.

Finally, the friend. A man who talks about women as income-optimising units, ranks countries by female poverty, and frames relationships in terms of “economic power differentials” has an incredibly messed up and racist worldview. The fact you keep defending him while saying you are shocked by his views is…curious.

The level of demographic data, income quintiles, FT articles and mating-market theory you’re providing is wildly disproportionate to an “idle conversation with a friend”. Several posters have already asked the obvious question: are you actually arguing with yourself here? Are you the “friend”?

I agree with @Duckiewasthefirstniceguy. I don’t think I believe in the incel friend.

Exactly..

Why 'Friend A' too when we don't have a Friend B.
We just have Friend Arsehole who spouts shite and OP who talks like a text book.

I read the OP's word soup opener a dozen times and still couldn't make top nor tail of it.

If this isn't the biggest load of bilge on MN ever I don't know what is.

Chinese AI slop harvesting future Chinese AI slop?

I also found myself suspecting that the incel friend wasn't real.

I’m pretty sure I recognise the OPs posting style so she isn’t fake.

Just a load of old misogynist word soup then.

If your friend thinks he'd have more success finding a wife in Asia, why doesn't he do that? Plenty of British men are doing that, maybe because women here have more independence so are more choosy. In that sense he's not wrong.

Saw so many ‘relationships’ of this type in Asia, it was truly disgusting. Right now a British passport is attractive, as in high status, but who knows how long that will be the case. Oftentimes an awkward, ugly man would find a decent looking girl, but it’s surprising the amount who look absolutely normal (from the outside anyway)

But these marriages are wrecked from the get-go. The children pick up on its transactional nature, they tend to have a strained relationship with their father (don’t seem to respect them, who can blame them), these types of men know NOTHING about the local culture and can be somewhat distant if the wife hews to her traditional culture. They are also very content to just let the wife and her family raise his kids.

I have zero respect for men like this