Rich Woman Hides Her Family Wealth From Her Current Boyfriend After 2 Of Her Exes Admitted They Proposed For Her Money
Wealth does make most things in life easier, but research shows finding love is not among them.
avid_creative / Getty Images Signature / Canva Pro For most of us, marrying rich probably sounds like a dream. You fall in love, run off into the very wealthy sunset, and suddenly all your problems are solved, right?
But for one wealthy woman, her money has hobbled her dating life in ways that have left her apprehensive as a new relationship starts to turn a bit more serious. And it turns out, she's far from alone when it comes to rich people being unlucky in love.
The woman hides her wealth from her boyfriend because she's afraid knowing she's rich will change their relationship.
Gold-digging is nothing new of course, and nowadays many people are very open about being only open to rich partners when it comes to their dating lives.
But this Redditor's situation is slightly different — she doesn't have much money at the moment, but her family does, and she's set to inherit a LOT of cash down the road. And it's made for some interesting dynamics in her dating life.
"I live modestly" on a $65,000 salary, she wrote in her post, adding that she is currently living with her mom after a health battle. But her mom also lives in a $5 million house, and she "will undoubtedly inherit a large sum of money" — realities she's been keeping from her current beau.
She's been purposefully only seeing him at his house or in public to avoid him finding out about her financial situation. But their relationship has progressed to a point where she can no longer keep up the ruse, and she's had to finally agree to let him pick her up for a date — which will, of course, let the fat cat out the money bag, if you will, when he drives up her mom's $5 million manse.
Now, she's "nervous because I wonder if there will be a 'change' in him ... after seeing where I live and learning more about my family tomorrow," she wrote. And she has plenty of reasons to think so.
Two of her previous exes admitted to wanting to marry her because of her obvious family wealth.
"I’ve had plenty of experiences with men where their behavior towards me switches when they learn I am rich,'" she went on to say, "or at least, will be one day."
She explained that in the past, her boyfriends' ears had sort of perked up when they learned of her wealth, and they began talking about "marriage and finances" out of nowhere or sharing "future plans" that made it clear her money had become a motivator.
Even more worrying, some of her former partners actually copped to essentially being gold-diggers. "Two exes admitted to my family’s wealth being a big part of why they wanted to marry me," she wrote. "One bought a ring after 5 months of dating."
It's left her with an "insecurity" about dating in general. Her fellow Redditors suggested only meeting dates in public, but that can only last so long. Others suggested she only date fellow rich people, but this has been a minefield as well.
"I have not had luck dating wealthy men," she added. "They are usually so out of touch it gives me the ick, or they’re conservative politically displaying anti-woman, homophobic [and other] behavior that I don’t condone." It turns out that both that experience and her nerves are par for the course when it comes to dating while wealthy.
Studies have shown that wealthy people really do struggle with dating and are less likely to find true love.
We tend to think that the rich live frictionless, fairy-tale lives, and there is some truth to that. An Australian study found that financial status accounts for about 10% of the variance in life satisfaction between individuals. Money really does buy happiness, at least to a point.
But when it comes to finding love, the rich are actually at a disadvantage, because their wealth tends to make them poor decision-makers about conflict and communication in relationships.
The Royal Society, the UK's National Academy of the Sciences, found in a 2018 study that the wealthy tend to have a detriment in what is termed "wise reasoning" — the understanding of "the limits of their knowledge" and a willingness to "acknowledge and integrate different perspectives" in relationships.
That's a fancy way of saying that the rich tend to struggle with empathy, compromise, and open-mindedness, just like this woman said she experienced with her rich boyfriends. That's detrimental to finding lasting and stable partnerships, of course, and makes the rich less likely to find true love.
This woman obviously doesn't suffer from those pitfalls herself, but she certainly has suffered from another major factor experts say hobbles the rich from finding love — the difficulty of judging partners' motives for dating them and the very real propensity the non-rich have for wealth to affect their attraction to a person.
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There's probably no way around that, in the end, but at least this woman has a genuine and empathetic personality, which is always half the battle.
"You sound like you have a good head on your shoulders," one Reddit commenter told her. "You’ll find someone worthy; it just takes time." Money may make things easier, but some struggles, like finding true love, are universal.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.