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...

Yes, and it can backfire. The new wife may have an extended family who she now expects the 'wealthy' British husband to pay out for. Two can play the transactional game.

We had a long conversation about it.

I explained my own circumstances simply to illustrate how in today's world, relying on one single person's raw income doesn't make all the puzzle pieces fall together. So it is far more worth it for a woman to focus on her own career and to find an equal partner with whom she can forge a future together so the numbers make sense.

I shared a bit on how my dh and I try (and continue to) try to make things work and this is the case even for people with above average incomes (the very people he seems to think are guaranteed a smooth sailing life in love and life).

You’re still not engaging with what‘s being said to you. It reads as though you’ve decided on the conversation you want to have and are sticking to it regardless of the actual content of our responses.

No one is disputing that modern life is expensive, that two incomes help, or that £75k doesn’t buy a fantasy lifestyle. However, it’s still rich by U.K. standards. I addressed this pretty thoroughly in my previous comment.

The main issue here is the worldview you are repeatedly defending by proxy. This is a man who reduces relationships to income, frames women as economic actors to be acquired where they are poorer, and talks about Asian women as less “Instagram-exposed” and therefore more suitable. This is disgustingly misogynistic and racialised, and you are consistently refusing to properly address that.

Instead, you keep returning to household budgeting, income quintiles, and your own marriage as a case study. None of that explains why you are so comfortable normalising a friend who talks about women, and entire regions of the world, in this way. Nor does it explain why you are so invested in researching and debating this topic with women on MN.

If this were genuinely just about “the numbers making sense”, there would be no need to invoke evolution, protection, or advise men to look abroad for wives. The fact that he (or you?) does is the point people are making. Your continued sidestepping of that point is very weird indeed.

Why exactly are you keeping this toxic misogynist in your life?