Is It Worth It As a Woman to Never Marry?
I know a year ago I made the post "Is Being a Working Woman Worth It?" and the foundation of that question was a pro-marriage attitude. But now I want to take the opposite stance.
Is life better for women who have no intentions of marriage? I have female friends that are sugar babies and get money from affluent men temporarily and are happy that way. But the way I see it - being a sugar baby is like being an employee to the man. Giving sex for money (and frankly not a lot of money). And frankly - isn't being a wife also like being an employee to a man? A woman is expected to let go of career opportunities for the benefit of her husband, and is expected to do more child care and household chores.
I've been getting by in life by getting the support of older men. My dad wasn't very active in my life after my parents divorced when I was a child, so I mainly got support from my brother who was way older. In college, I got support from professors that helped me get higher grades than I deserved because they liked me, and I had guys interested in me tutor me for my classes so I could get a high grade. Men have literally dropped everything to help me succeed.
Now at work, same scenario. I have older men helping me advance my career in ways I couldn't do on my own.
Point is: I've been provided for all my life without giving any man my body or sex. I could technically live a fulfilling and successful life by continuing to use my beauty to have older wiser men help me in all aspects of my life. Wouldn't that set me up for a financially stable life if I use their help wisely until I'm no longer young and beautiful? Post 30, I can just travel, have no kids (which transitions into me having more time to carve out time to put in more time at work or start a business). If I'm lonely, I can just get a pet and travel. When I'm super old, I could just hire a nurse.
Thoughts??? I'm doubting the benefits of marriage for women. It feels like there's no benefit.
I might say that the best picture you could paint would come from talking to women in their 30s/40s who chose to marry and women in their 30s/40s who chose not to marry, and see how each group feels they benefited (or vice versa).
wolfofwso
Whatever it takes to get the sugar baby population larger I’m all for.
I think you are underestimating how lonely life can be. Pets have a finite life, and for how much one might feel connected to them, it's not the same as a human connection. And I think this applies to both men and women. People at that age probably talk about these things in therapy, not casually.
You're really asking a bunch of college freshmen & sophomore boys what they think life will be like as an unmarried 30 to 40 year old woman?
Your "sugar baby" (you know this term is basically synonymous with escort, right?) friends are polluting your brain. I have dabbled on those types of dating sites, and seriously the vast majority of the women on the site contribute nothing to society other than their body. And that's why they're on those sites to begin with.
If you're a smart woman, you are not the employee of your husband. Plenty of people I know marry women who are close to or above their level of earnings. Or it's enough to the point that the marriage is an actual partnership, and not just the husband funding the wife's entire life. This aint the 1930s.
How pleased do you think her “partnership” husband will be if she denies any type of physical intimacy with him? If you feel 0 care or emotion for the guy then it is definitely an employee type relationship.
Similar to how she would feel if he denied physical intimacy to her. When you get older, it happens both ways.
2nd question IDK where to begin. Why are you marrying someone you dont love if you're an independent woman who can support herself? That's the whole point. If you can support yourself comfortably, you don't need to marry anyone for safety, support or whatever. You just marry them because you love them
jesus what has this world come to
Find a woman in her 70s who is unmarried with no kids. Almost guaranteed to be bitter and miserable. Money or not. Once people age they realize relationships are the most valuable thing in life. To rule out spouse/children in your 20s… seems like a dumb move.
Also your view on marriage seems jaded. Maybe because your parents didn’t work out. Plenty of happily married people where the spouses view each other as equal partners. Also plenty of happy marriages where one partner clearly calls the shots. No reason it couldn’t be you.
Yup, unmarried men with money fare better than unmarried women with money. I actually know a couple people in those categories, people like to pretend like there aren't innate biological differences between men and women and further pretend like the same things make them happy in the long run only for women to get the short end of the stick as they get older. No
Yea but divorce rate is 50% these days. One in two chance divorce happens.
Boils down to your definition of "fulfilling and successful" life. Some women (and men) believe that is possible by having a family. If you don't subscribe to that notion, and can cope with more loneliness than as a wife mother, marriage certainly can be optional for you. (This is not to say you need to be married to have a mate and kids.)
To answer your question more specifically of whether you can have your cake and eat it too (favor/money of guys + total independence), I would say a few things:
1) Guys are being really friendly to you because either they want your body or want to pursue a LTR. When it becomes clear to guys in camp 1 you’re not interested in sleeping with them you’ll see their favors start to fade. When guys in camp 2 realize you’re using them to get ahead and not actually interested in anything their favors will start to fade.
In college things worked out fine because you have a lot of guys who cycle out every year many who have no clue who you are and can easily be fooled. Assuming you stay in finance in the same city, guys will start quickly whispering about you to the newer ones and your schemes telling them to not waste their time with you. Whether you believe it or not guys talk about girls that they know behind their back all the time and start to generalize them. Your generalizations will not be favorable once the period of tricking everyone has been found out and honestly it won’t take too long
2) Even in your current scheme, the financial compensation you’re getting relative to work is far less than a sugar baby. You’re getting “favors” at the work sure but you’ve said before you work like 12-14 hours/day. And you have to be hot to even get the favors which requires additional hours. For the same amount of money you make (if not more), and luxury vacations, ride in nice cars, etc. a sugar baby only has to “work” maybe 7 days a month or so apart from the time at the gym. Even if you’re married, your husband whose an MD or partner doesn’t have a lot of free time so he won’t be demanding a ton of time from you, although if he wants kids you’ll be stuck with them.
Your counter to this is that you’ll eventually reach these things in your 40s through work but that means 2 decades of long hours, and there’s really no guarantee once you hit that age you’ll be in the best position to travel.
While it seems like currently I’ve been fully supportive of the sugar baby lifestyle I’m going to make some points against it now:
1) Ethics. More often than not a sugar baby is similar to a married man’s mistress so you’re actively participating in the destruction of a marriage
2) Timeline: If a 20 year old is a sugar baby for a 60 year old and he died at 80 that means she’s a widower at 40 and it can be difficult to move on from that assuming she developed any sort of emotional connection with him
3) Sex: Premarital sex is required almost by definition (as this is basically an extended escort) something that many for understandable reasons do not want to do.
TLDR: From a completely transactional perspective being a sugar baby is better, but there are potential ethical qualms for the higher expected return.. Being a sugar baby requires less work and has higher reward but has potential ethical qualms and may make a girl feel extremely uncomfortable/used. Being single has less rewards, requires more work, but allows a girl to preserve her dignity.
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50 is not that old honestly if we’re talking about the sugar baby industry. Most guys are ~60 because that’s a fairly optimal age in terms of being old enough to die soon (and the woman reaps some of the inheritance) but young enough that he can actually take the chick on fancy vacations. Nobody wants to be pushing a frail old man, but on the flip side guys won’t be doing this at 40 because the girl will age out of her prime and the guy doesn’t to pay money for a girl who isn’t even hot.
It’s a bit silly to generalize all men based off of one poor experience, but it’s not uncommon to do so. Many escorts come from backgrounds where they were sexually assaulted/ forced into incest leading them to a different view of relationships. I don’t think it’s fair to them to partake in the destruction of another relationship just because their life has been poor but that’s another discussion entirely.
What do you mean by “Ivy League husband”? If you mean a man who went to the Ivy League then yes by definition NYC has the most Ivy League grads due to proximity. I do think you should reassess though if you want to give up the beaches and weather of LA to look for a man who went to Harvard or Yale instead of Stanford, Berkeley, Cal Tech, etc. If by Ivy League grad you mean “quality man”, I’m not really sure how if you can’t find a man in LA you’re going to find one elsewhere. Yes given that you are a Latina who was raised Catholic although now nominally religious/atheist Miami would be a good fit from a demographic perspective. But while Miami is a fairly religious city, there is a strong partying/clubbing culture in Miami, and part of the reason for this is that Miami was built on a combination of drug money and tourism money. So while guys may be religious don’t expect a majority of them to be mellow in the way you would think of an evangelical in Oklahoma to be. The finance scene is mediocre (although more buyside firms are relocating to SoFlo), and of the roles that exist the entry level roles are even less. 2 or 3 years ago you still probably would have had a good shot given your Ivy education but post pandemic the demand for Miami roles has skyrocketed so even from a practical standpoint breaking in won’t be easy. If you can speak fluent Spanish though that is a huge plus and will put you on the top of the stack of resumes. The only decent scene is real estate (Starwood, etc.) given all the luxury real estate but that’s probably not even relevant to you. Instead of optimizing for city perhaps try acting less flirtatious and constantly using guys for favors. From a guys pov I know girls like that and honestly I don’t see them as being able to stick to one guy for long or as long term material. Yes, I get that there’s an entire field devoted to the whole “opposites attract” in attraction theory, but I think there’s a threshold for it to actually work. It’s true an outgoing girl will probably attract a more reserved guy and vice versa but on an extreme example a girl sleeps with a new guy every day or a guy who mumbles over his words and can’t even make eye contact? Close to 0 chance the girl is getting a nice introverted guy or the guy is getting a chill extroverted girl.
There is a trope that single women (and people broadly) without kids are unhappy in their older years, but I've seen mixed studies on that and think it's ultimately neutral.
Looking at my older family members who don't have kids, they are a mixed bag - some are/were super happy and some are very unhappy. My view is that having kids gives you a natural purpose because you have to take care of them and be involved with them, and if you have a good relationship with them, they will occupy your time when you are older. You can replace children with something else, BUT the key caveat is that you have to put in more, deliberate work to get fulfilment, also because ~80-85% of your friends are going to be devoting nearly all of their time to their families.
"A woman is expected to let go of career opportunities for the benefit of her husband, and is expected to do more child care and household chores."
This is true in some cases and has historically been true, but you have the power to select who you marry and there are certainly men who would be happy to split roles and/or use your dual income to get outside help (nanny, cleaning, etc.). That being said, the bias in finance is that you're probably meeting men who want/need wives who would be the ones to step back from their work when push comes to shove rather than the husband. Also, if you're dual income, you have the resources to get help from nannies, cleaning services, etc.
>And frankly - isn't being a wife also like being an employee to a man? A woman is expected to let go of career opportunities for the benefit of her husband, and is expected to do more child care and household chores.
In this day and age, this is 100% false.
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