Women are supposed to like money. So why don’t nice cars, jobs,
and apartments always get men laid?
In June 2006, I graduated university and took a job. I had an
important-sounding job at a prestigious corporation. Everyone knew the
name of this company, and everyone knew it was a great company. At the
time, I had a less nuanced notion of status more than I do
now, and I figured my great job for a high status corporation would net
me major points on the dating scene. After five months of grinding it
out in college town nightclubs three or four nights a week as just
another student trying to pick up girls, now, at last, I had the magic
pass: I was a high prestige, high
status, money-making machine!
My first month in my new town of Washington, D.C., I made sure every
girl I met found out where I worked and what I did. I did it in a
smooth way; I wasn’t socially awkward about it. I made sure the girl
asked me first where I worked, before I said anything. Most seemed
impressed; I’d often get raised eyebrows and a pleasant, “Oh!” And
when, after a few weeks, I received my business cards, I felt confident
I was about to become unstoppable with girls. I often took to handing
these out to women after I’d made a great first impression, confident
they’d fast get back in touch.
Yet within a month, I’d stashed my business cards away in the corner
of a cabinet somewhere; not a single girl I’d given a card to had
texted or called (and I’d given out a lot of cards). I quit mentioning
my company or position to
girls altogether. But I hadn’t learned my lesson quite yet. A
year-and-a-half later, I went down the
same status symbol road with my sleek Mercedes-Benz, and ended up at
the
same destination: after a month or so of showing it off, I soon shelved
“the Mercedes approach” and began to hide my car from
girls instead.
The reason why was the same both times: when women found out I had a
good job, or a nice car, they didn’t put out. Dates were more awkward;
sex would not happen. Sexual vibes were almost impossible to create.
These status symbols, impressed as my friends and coworkers were,
worked against me with women.
That’s the paradox: make more
money, buy more expensive things, and... get laid less.
But why should this be, when everything you see on TV, the
commercials, and the movies says it’s supposed to work completely
opposite to this?
