No, You Don’t Have To Settle For a Broke Boyfriend
There’s a new trend on social media and it’s really pissing us off: memes that encourage girls and women to date guys who are flat broke and “hold them down” until they come into their own.
It would be one thing if the memes focused on dating someone who’s your equal. Or if they encouraged men to date women who are down on their luck, too. But no. All they do is tell women that we shouldn’t expect a guy to take us out to dinner. We should be happy with someone who only has a few bucks to his name. We shouldn’t have the audacity to expect a dinner date. And if we do expect a guy to be financially stable — not rich — that makes us gold diggers.
Well, it’s bull shit.
Listen, we’re all happy for Tia Mowry’s husband she picked up at a bus stop. But there’s nothing wrong with expecting your dude to have a job and at least enough cash to take you out to dinner once in a while. Lord knows men’s standards for women are much higher than that.
Some of the most suspect memes include:
I can’t even believe this needs to be said, but women and girls: you don’t have to date broke men. It’s okay for you to hold out for someone who’s at the same level of success as you are.
Women are allowed to set a standard for access to them. And that doesn’t mean a broke man is undeserving of love or that some relationships don’t form outside of traditional dates. But so often lately, women are shamed for having the preference of dating a financially stable man. And it’s ridiculous.
Oh, and did you ever notice no one ever faults a guy for wanting to date a woman who’s employed, successful, or attractive? Why are men allowed to have standards when women aren’t?
Wanting a date that consists of more than just splitting a Four for Four doesn’t make you a gold digger. So-called gold diggers have higher aspirations than a dinner date, anyway. They aren’t even looking at the average man, and yet the average man is scared of running into a gold digger.
Other women also enforce the idea that we shouldn’t need a man who has his own money. I see about eighty posts a day from women like, “Ya’ll really need dinner or a movie to go on a date? You’ll do anything for a free meal.” It’s insulting that if you desire a man who can take you out to dinner, someone would assume you don’t have your own or you’re just using him. When you cut down other women for participating in dating culture, here’s what you sound like to me:
Yall can keep your $200 dates. A Lunchables and a bottle of warm Boone Farm is enough for me, bae #TweetLikeAPickMe
— Nope. (@MissZindzi) February 29, 2016
I think some women are scared of seeming high maintenance and instead, pretend to be no maintenance at all. “We can split a large fry, like, I’m just so chill,” they claim, which shifts the focus of the date from seeing if this person is worth their time to proving that they’re easy to date.
You can convince anyone that a relationship with you requires zero work. But would that make you happy? Is that sustainable? Probably not.
When we ask women to settle for financially unstable men, we make it seem like their need for a romantic partner should outweigh any standards they have. We’re told to accept anyone who falls in love with us, to “hold him down” just to say we did, but our value isn’t tied to whether or not we secure a relationship. Women who are striving to be the best version of themselves don’t need to settle for men with no idea what their best self would even look like. We don’t need to settle, period.
It’s okay not to commit yourself to the potential of someone. You can hope that they catch up to where you are, but they might not. You can’t wait to find that out ten years down the line. You can’t carry someone to their next level just because they promise you a future that might not even happen.
Work on making yourself a better person, not making your dude a better person. You deserve someone who is your equal from the start. Claim it.
