Love and Marriage: What's REALLY Important?

I walked into the back room of Wal-Mart, my current and temporary place of employment, and picked up a copy of Elle magazine (there weren’t any copies of Sports Illustrated or Rolling Stone, okay!) to pass the time on my hour-long break. I looked at the Table of Contents to decipher which article in this strongly female magazine would be of most interest to me, assuming I’d be lucky to find even one. I saw an article on how women over 40 shouldn’t stress if they aren’t currently married and it peaked my interest, so I flipped to the designated page.
The article was written by a woman over 40 whose opinions on love were refreshing and portrayed a sexy confidence. She said that women shouldn’t have to put their careers on the backburner in order to find a mate, how love she be something that finds you naturally and that everyone, no matter what age, has the opportunity to find love if they put themselves out there. These were opinions that I completely agreed with, and her article was unapologetically positive, an absolute breath of fresh air in my day.
Just as I was soaking in the optimism that surrounded the aforementioned article, the breath of fresh air was taken right out of my lungs by another article entitled “How to Marry a Rich Man”. I laughed and figured it would be a facetious step by step program on finding a wealthy mate. What I found instead was paragraph upon paragraph of a woman over 40, Daphne Merkin, preaching to younger women about separating men based on marriage potential. Merkin’s criteria for marriage potential in a man put his bank account at the top of the list, literally dismissing any other possible attraction as being irrelevant.
Her life story might help clear some things up. Merkin grew up with a wealthy father who always preached to her to marry a man with money. Instead, she opted to marry a financially struggling man who she now has a daughter with. The two eventually divorced (that’s a shock) and she now dreams of going back in time and doing it all over again, this time sniffing out a man who can provide her with the finer things in life.
Let’s step back a minute here. This woman is a writer for one the most popular magazines in the world, lives in an apartment in New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world, and has a maid to clean her apartment for her. But as she says in one paragraph, she still walks down the street and looks at jewelry and large televisions in stores and wishes she had a man who could buy these things for her. Clearly this woman has never been to places like Iraq or Kenya, where children grow up with dreams of safe, secure environments and a stable supply of food and water, not Plasma televisions and Chanel handbags.
There is one part where she breaks down other possible attractions in a man and weighs them against financial freedom. She says that most wealthy men are not the most physically attractive, but being able to cuddle with someone is of less value than weekend trips to the Hamptons. She says that most wealthy men are not the best listeners or conversationalists, but being able to have a meaningful talk about, say, your childhood, is of less value than a man who can leave a large tip at an expensive restaurant.
This ridiculousness led me to begin reading the article with a search for some kind of sarcasm. As a man with a healthy sense of humour, I was sure she couldn’t be serious about this advice she was giving young women. Sadly, she was. The article closed out with the writer saying that wealthy men are attracted to young, slim and sexually promiscuous women and that if she had the time and money, she would get a tummy tuck, a boob job and work around her eyes in order to start the hunt for a rich husband. It is right around this time that I almost vomited at the thought of young women buying into this drivel.
Let’s do a little role reversal, shall we? The equivalent to this article being written by a man would be a 50 year old preaching that young men should seek out women with large breasts, pretty faces and tight butts while disregarding what’s going on upstairs or any sort of mental chemistry between the two. Would that article ever be published in a widely circulated magazine? Perhaps, but it’s not likely. And if it was, the female backlash would be deafening. I doubt Elle received too many complaints from men.
Personally, as a 22 year-old man, I want to settle down with a woman whose telephone calls brighten up my day, whose compassion for others makes me proud to be a part of her life, and whose potential for being a great mother, should I decide to have children, is extraordinary. Physical attraction is crucial of course, but without the other, divorce would be imminent.
So I put down the magazine in a sour mood, considering that it was probably a lot harder to find a woman whose opinions about love and marriage matched mine and a lot easier to find women whose opinions matched the gold-digging views of Merkin. I went back to work, stacking DVD’s in a bin, and remembered how a few days prior, I had overheard a group of women at Wal-Mart talking about how they need to marry a rich man, and discussing different occupations which pay well. I didn’t have the heart to break it to these ladies that a wealthy man probably wasn’t coming into Wal-Mart in search of a potential spouse. A few minutes after this thought vanished from my mind, in walks a girl I went to high school with looking like an absolute goddess. This beautiful girl walked by me and we exchanged the inevitable “Hey, how’s it going?” part of run-ins. Want to know my immediate thought after she walked away? 'I could never get a girl like that, I work at Wal-Mart'. Would I have had that thought had I not read the article “How to Marry a Rich Man” earlier that day? It’s possible, but not probable. I have a healthy self esteem and personally think I make a great boyfriend and will later make a great husband. But after reading such a disgusting, disrespectful and degrading article, I judged myself on my net worth.
The fact is, some women do judge men on their financial assets and some men do judge women on their physical ones. Regardless, I never want to become as jaded as this woman and think that that beautiful girl from my high school wouldn’t want to be with me because I don’t have enough money. I could offer her a lot more happiness than most rich men. That is, if she bases her happiness on loving the man she shares her life with, as opposed to being a lonely girl in a large house.
But maybe Merkin should call up every rich man who has ever cheated on his wife (does anyone have Alex Rodriguez’s phone number?) and tell them “Don’t feel bad, at least your wife has your money”.