Donal has some musings:
The basic strategy which many (most?) women employ right now, which is regularly known as AF/BB (see Rollo’s post for more), is one that requires two distinct elements to pull off: deceit and desperation. Many, if not most, men would not be content to marry a woman whom they realize is choosing to marry them solely as a meal ticket, and effectively a sperm donor as well. It should surprise no one that men don’t like to be used in that way, and will balk at it if they realize that is what is happening. Hence the importance of hiding what is going on from them.
Maybe I’m odd, but I honestly wouldn’t mind taking a wife who was wanting to make rational deal upfront. I’d be quite willing to go along with a young woman who proposed an honest, straightforward marriage deal: ‘you provide for me, protect me, and father my children, and I’ll bear you many children, keep your house, and provide regular sexual access.’
If she met my list and I had some positive feelings for her, I’d jump at the chance for such a rational young girl.
That’s not to say I’m willing to be the beta bux for a woman who’s already had her alpha fux, but that’s something quite different a family-oriented girl with a low time preference rationally planning her future. In fact, that kind of future-time orientation would be rather attractive in its own right.
My problem with being the beta bux is not that a woman would want “a meal-ticket” but rather that she is not offering a worthwhile value in trade by trying to sell damaged and/or decaying goods for full price through deceit.
If a young woman wanted to make a fair and honest trade on the marriage market for a meal-ticket, I’d be game.
But then again, I’ve always been rather emotionally-detached and bloodlessly rational, so I’m probably the odd one out here.
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Which leads me to further musings on romance.
The slow, agonizing death of modern marriage did not start with gay marriage nor did it start with no-fault divorce. It didn’t even start with the creation of ‘marital rape‘ or mass contraception.
It started well before that: it started with the acceptance of romantic love as the basis of marriage and the conflation of romantic love and Christian love.
Romantic love is a feeling and feelings change, for this reason romance and romantic love are a horrible basis for marriage.
Christian love is not a feeling, it is a series of purposeful attitudes and actions adopted.
‘Love’ is not love.
If you accept that romantic ‘love’ should be the basis of marriage, you are the problem.