Either a Liar or a Fool

Dearest Rachel –

You probably remember this meme, as the template has been going around for ages: “Never Ask: a woman, her age; a man, his salary; and” the third option – the real punchline – being something that the questioner really wouldn’t want the answer to. It would either one of those ridiculous imponderables of life, or something where the response would likely be “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” I couldn’t give you examples of the latter, as they’re generally topical, and tended to go out of date after a few months (that’s just how news is, after all). There’s no sense in assigning a specific third topic to a format that is pretty much timeless and universal.

To be sure, you tended to defy that first category, mostly because you were proud of the fact that you didn’t look your age (or act it, for that matter – not that I minded in the slightest). You were more than happy to divulge your age, if only for the gratification of getting the inevitable comments about how you didn’t look at it all.  I will say, however, that even you recognized that you were something of an outlier in that regard.

As for the second injunction, while I won’t presume to speak for the entirety of the male race, I can certainly give a plausible explanation, based on my own experiences and observations, as to why we refuse to talk about our finances publicly.  No matter what number you give, or whether it applies to income or assets, it becomes a source of comparison and competitiveness, especially between fellow males. Granted, just about everything in life between males can be made into a competition; it all boils down to (at least, according to Freud), and I’ll try to put this as diplomatically as possible, the alleged dimensions of one’s genitalia (there’s another more common, cruder term for this, but you know that term, so I don’t really have to go into further details, do I?).  However, just like that particular measurement, divulging one’s financial situation merely leads to two similarly negative outcomes; either people will envy you, or pity you.

I hardly feel like I need to explain why a man wouldn’t want to be pitied; a lack of ability to provide for oneself and one’s family suggests a personal failing that one simply doesn’t want to admit to, even if one truly needs help in that sphere.  You and your family seemed to understand this, even as your dad explained what he and your mom discovered about your family’s legacy early on in our marriage and discussed it with us at the time. I still remember him asking me if it would bother me that you, as my wife, was worth more than I was, monetarily speaking.  I think he was speaking from his own experience, given that this legacy was coming from your mom’s side of the family.  To be sure, I made it clear that it didn’t bother me in the slightest (or if it did, I felt it was more than worth dealing with).  In any event, it didn’t even come into play until such time as they had both passed on, decades after revealing this to us – during which time I was the sole breadwinner for the three of us (including paying our mortgage to your folks, who had leveraged our home purchase, but were still charging us a market rate of interest).

In any event, let’s just make it clear that no man wants to admit to not being able to provide for himself or his family.

But what about the other side of the coin? Aren’t there a whole lot of guys who want to brag about how much they make, how much they own, and what all they have, when they have it?  Well, yes – which is why I don’t claim to speak for the race as a whole by myself – but there are those of us who realize that it’s not advisable to make our success, such as it may be, widely known.  Flaunting our situation is much like my take on winning at board games; you know what it’s like to lose (and that it’s no fun), and you don’t want to rub other people’s noses in the fact that you’re doing better than they are.

It doesn’t help that envy is not always the end state of this competition.  Sure, it could simply evolve into resentment in the other person – which is just a more long term, simmering version of itself – but it could also morph into a murderous rage in certain situations.  In some places, one is literally advised not to be seen with large amounts of cash or valuables, because they put a target on your back.  Why expose yourself to such dangers?

All of which leads me to tell you about the latest connection that I’ve made on the dating app. I’m going to use the actual name that she gave, since I’m not entirely sure that it’s real anyway – indeed, I could question whether ‘Marguerite’ is even a woman, for that matter – but she did make a conversational mistake that demonstrated that she knows nothing about men and their discretion regarding finances.

To be sure, talking about one’s occupation is a fairly standard opening gambit – and in our initial conversation, she went on a bit about her import and export business involving wines – but it wasn’t too long before she started talking about investments and cryptocurrency.  She claims to do for a hobby, even as it allegedly supported her business throughout the downturn of the pandemic, which begs the question as to why she would work for an alleged living, if her cryptocurrency trades made her more money than she could ever make from importing and exporting wine.  Maybe she just likes wine, though, which probably should be a red flag for me in and of itself.

In any event, about a day into our back-and-forth conversation, she sent an image to me:

At this point, I should mention that – like with walking through certain unsavory neighborhoods – I’ve been warned not to discuss finances with any prospective dates online. Not only is it gauche, but it just brings out the gold diggers as if by sheer magnetism, which is one of the last things I want to see in a woman. And yet, here she is, claiming she made some thirteen thousand dollars in profit on a trade the night before; anyone who does that with someone she’s just met is either a liar or a fool (or a braggart, but that’s just someone in the middle of those two options, so…).

What did she think was going to be my reaction? “Oh, darling, you’re so brilliant with your investments; show me how to do that, too!” At which point, she’d presumably collect whatever I would be willing to send her to invest in this cryptocurrency or that, and that’s the last I would ever hear from her. That would be my guess, in any event.

So I decided not to give her the satisfaction, but for some reason, she had to insist on a reaction from me. It seems she thought that I hadn’t understood what the image she was showing me represented.

The cherry on top is that line about how “I don’t brag, I like to tell the truth.” For starters, even if it’s the truth, it’s still bragging, ma’am. And I wasn’t talking to her to get involved in an investment scheme, particularly one I don’t understand well enough not to screw up (I even went so far as to quote Warren Buffett’s line about not making such investments earlier on, but she’s clearly keen on getting me – or some other suitor – interested in such a scheme). At least she’s right about my not appreciating the topic; and since she seems to have concluded that I’ve disappeared, why provoke things by going back and talking to her again? Best to let this one die here.

The thing is, I’m not greedy enough to be a mark for her; thirteen grand is nothing to sneeze at, sure, but even as I told her, it’s a month’s fluctuation for me. I can’t – and can’t afford to – get excited over a gain like that, since a misstep in the same market might just cost me a similar amount as easily. Best to stick with what I have, and the gains it might make me (and the dividends it will pay me), and be content with that.

If nothing else, a girl so obsessed with making money like this (like ‘Dara’ before her) is not the girl for me; best to drop her now – even if she isn’t a total fraud – and move on. As I do so, though, I’d ask you to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck; I’m certainly going to need it.