Now you have no money and She's Just Not That Into You

A few months ago I read a novel that had been left behind by some German girls who were residents in our complex last year left to return home. 'Chasing Harry Winston', it was called- I forget who the author was, but it was by the same woman who wrote 'The Devil Wears Prada'. I haven't read the latter, nor seen the movie, but the cover informed me that this was the case.

The novel was about a bunch of really irritating, vapid, shallow women living in New York. Poetic license, you'd think, not really reflective of any real live New York women. No?

This piece in the New York Times a couple of weeks back made me rethink that assumption. Women who date guys in finance: a more vapid, pathetic, gold-digging bunch you would be hard-pressed to find. They put the book's characters to shame.

Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Wow, she sounds like she really gives a shit about her husband's mental health, huh?

They shared their sad stories the other night at an informal gathering of Dating a Banker Anonymous, a support group founded in November to help women cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from, say, the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the Dow’s shedding 777 points in a single day, as it did on Sept. 29.

In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”

Who expects to get a shopping 'allowance' from their husband or boyfriend? Is this guy your daddy, doling out pocket money, or your life partner in a relationship of equals?

Answer:

Once it was seen as a blessing in certain circles to have a wealthy, powerful partner who would leave you alone with the credit card while he was busy brokering deals. Now, many Wall Street wives, girlfriends and, increasingly, exes, are living the curse of cutbacks in nanny hours and reservations at Masa or Megu. And that credit card? Canceled.

Wow. So that's why some women aspire to be nothing more than a pathetic, poorer version of Carrie Bradshaw, like a beauty writer, until someone rich who ticks all the boxes that allow them to keep up with a particular social circle, comes along to sweep them off their feet. They aspire to be trophy wives, i.e. nothing more than a certain class of prostitute.

Some women in the group said the men in their lives had gone from being aloof and unattainable to unattractively needy and clinging.

So your partner goes through an incredibly tough time at work, people being fired left, right and centre- it may be him next- and you complain when he needs emotional support. Oh, I forgot- that's not what you signed up for...

Another, though, seemed chagrined, after her boyfriend told her to “grow up” and stop “complaining about vacations and dinner” since he had to “fire 20 people by the end of the week.”

Shallow, inconsiderate, greedy, lacking in empathy and perspective.

Then again, what does this say about the guys who choose to date these bimbos? Talk about a wake-up call for some of them...