I don't want to date poor people

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Actually, I am actively looking for work, and have a college degree. The average pay in my field is $60,000/year, but I would like to live somewhere nice, and have nice things.

That said, making a certain amount of money is not one of the criteria. In other words, I hope to be able to get the life I want with my income alone, and not be dependent on others for that.

Except I can tell you I know plenty of people with graphic arts degrees who are doing great. Same goes for people with Woman's studies and film making. Most people who do African Art end up getting a graduate degree and end up curating museums and galleries. Alot of people think that liberal art's degrees don't amount to much but low paying service sector jobs, but this is not really the case. This is often a mistaken attitude of those who do not go to college or those who tend to focus on technical degrees.
For example I know graphic artists who earn close to six figures designing logos and doing adverts, if they are not running thier own printing business or designing web pages. Most graphic artists end school often more versed in HTML, CSS, Flash and Javascript then thier IT and Computer Science counterparts. They often end up in pretty good jobs fairly quickly if they have talent. Do you want to see where there is graphic arts being used, just browse the web, you will run into it in two seconds. Graphic designers tend to do pretty well for themselves, they have to build up a rep and a good portfolio to crack into a good firm or do well on thier own. It is a highly competitive field.

With regards to Women's Studies majors, most end up in professional and graduate programs.

Honestly, it is a pretty good example of somebody without a college education not knowing what the hell they are talking about. You really think that people with such educations stay in low level service jobs?

I don't want to date dead people....

are you kidding?!
Bruce Willis was dead.
I'd still hit that.

before tammy (who has been my "girlfriend" for 10 years), i had a a few earlier girlfriends. there was sonia and melinda and caroline and chrissy that were prominent in my life each for a while.
they were all financially poor.

girls who are doing well for themselves rarely "stoop" to make the first move if they think i am not yet interested in them. they seem to have some kind of pride which makes it unlikely that they will sacrifice their integrity by "trying" to get to know me. i pay little attention to what happens around me in the world of people, and so i will never notice anyone who does not force themselves into my view field.

but the girls who have been my girlfriends all wanted for me to pay attention to them, so they were bold and put themselves in front of me, and i payed attention. they saw me as "successful" yet socially inept, and they thought they liked me in a special way until a few months into the relationship.

everywhere we went, i payed for everything, and i did not care because i had lots of money coming in. i bought all the meals and drinks and i also helped them pay their rent and got them things like TV's etc. my bed is extremely comfortable and they liked very much to sleep with me.

but the fact was brewing in their minds that i was providing everything (in a physical sense), and they started to feel inferior. it was not of my design that they felt inferior. they felt inferior all by themselves, and they started to think that i was like some sort of aristocrat who viewed them as "street urchins". progressively they became entertaining of the idea that i "looked down" on them.

they eventually felt that because my contribution to the relationship (financially) was inordinately high, i viewed them as "scum", and when i tried to dispel that idea, they did not believe me.

they could not believe that i could respect their position in life (unemployed) if i compared it to my own position in life.

they could not feel "equal", so they thought i was pitying them.

i never pitied them. i loved them and i felt that they were lucky to be so lovable. they had a richness that does not exist in me, and i liked to feel their affection, but i lost their affection because they felt inferior to me and they thought i could not really see anything of value in them.


such is life. tammy has no snags that impede our love for each other. she does not have a big ego.
she never compares herself to me, and she fails to see what my earlier girlfriends saw in me, but none the less she remains stuck to me and i am stuck to her because her love for me is not borne from "evaluation", and my love for her is crude and raw and can not be broken.



tra la la (as it were)

I can see how that would happen because I've done it myself. I am middle class. In college I spent about half a year dating a very wealthy fellow student. In that time I started to feel increasingly poor even though I'm middle class and the class difference eventually broke us apart.

I am a huge music fan and he had the biggest record collection I'd ever seen outside of a radio station. We spent hours in his apartment listening to every kind of music I could think of. He also knew more about music than any person I've ever known (since I don't know any actual musicologists) and he could play the guitar very well. He taught me how to play the guitar too. Naturally we went to concerts of seemingly every band that came through town. He always paid, since he had the money. I was dazzled and impressed by his music skills, knowledge and record collection. Eventually I was envious of how his money allowed him to musically indulge any way he wanted to by buying every record he wanted and attending every concert he wanted. I was envious even though I was the beneficiary in getting to attend concerts with him and he bought me some records. Eventually that envy turned to resentment and I felt like a poor urchin tagging along with him as he bought the best tickets to every concert. I started to think he was "slumming" (American slang for dating a poorer person out of curiosity and to take a vacation from the social expectations of wealth).

It isn't entirely the same situation because your former girlfriends thought you were taking pity on them and they felt reduced to a charity case (American slang for taking care of a person who has less, which puts the emphasis on how they have less). I didn't feel like a charity case because I did have some income and could have attended a couple of the concerts paying my own way (but only a few). But it did start to feel like he was slumming, even though he never did anything explicitly to show that. It was the corrosive affect of the wealth disparity.

It takes a particular sort of person to not be affected by a wealth disparity. I am not that sort of person because I am more like your previous girlfriends- the sort of person who is constantly evaluating situations and coming to conclusions which may or may not be accurate. It's an inability to just be. It seems from your posts that what you and Tammy have in common is the ability to just be. That makes the wealth disparity irrelevant.

For a lot of people a wealth disparity is corrosive.

It sounds to me that you were the one who had trouble with the disparity, he was fine with it - am I correct?

If so, you shouldn't let your income define your self-worth, rich or poor...

Correct. That's why I was likening myself to b9's former girlfriends. Like them, I'm the one who ultimately couldn't cope with being the poorer one.

i couldn't stand it if i didn't contribute any money to the relationship.

I haven't read the whole thread but I thought i'd chip in my 2 cents any way.

Couple of questions:

If you started dated someone who is middle or upper class then after a while they somehow lost most of their money, would you still date them?

How do you know they are poor exactly?

Is it actually you that is middle class or is it you're parents?

Have you ever given someone poorer than you a chance? you never know, you could hit it off.

You havent really gave a reason as to why you won't date poor people other than because they are poor. Which leads to believe its all about the social status. I don't think I would care that much about a woman's income unless she was being a leech obviously. You don't know why or if that person may be rich or poor. Flash cars and expensive things don't impress me much. Infact alot of the times things like that are a turn off for me.

As far as class and education goes? again couldn't care less. I'm sure there is lots of succefull and/or interesting people who have droped out of scool and most stereotypical working, middle and upper class people bore or annoy me to be honest.

Gotta get them edumacations! It's not as if any shoool or college drop out ever amounted to anything.

Agreed, people who are successful in life are adaptive and innovative, they have the ability to connect and relate well with others and understand how to connect A to B. Although there are a some people who go to university and come out with very successful jobs, not everyone does suceed to an extremely high level. It's not always what you know but who you know and how profitable and applicable you can be for the benefit of your peers.

Nonetheless, I find myself more attracted to someone who does something passionately and earns less than someone who does a boring mundane job for the simple need of social status or material gain. Someone who is poor with values that truly serve a cause is greater than someone who is a dull slave to a capitalist grind.

I concour with those sentiments.

if you ask me it still makes you a bad person.
That you reject them just because they don't have enough money.
It almost gives me "gold digger" vibes.
And thats pathetic man = /

I don't want to date rich people....wait....yes I do.

I don't want to date the OP.