Will a Nice Car and Good Job Get You Laid?

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?