Vixen Manual - Karrine Steffans [25]
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Recap
The more desperate you are in your quest to obtain something, the more elusive it becomes.
The universe always delivers, as long as you believe.
If you don’t believe your man is out there, then guess what? He isn’t.
Start by imagining your life the way it would be if there were a man around.
Your preparation goes further than just your looks and the order of your home.
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Chapter Eleven
Dating for Love or Money
The society we live in is so much more than a capitalistic society. It is a virtual reality where, for a new urban generation, money truly has become the root of all things. For women, in many instances, it’s the basis for romantic and sexual relationships. Nowadays, if a man isn’t ballin’— making and spending money in a grand display—he’s considered by many women to be not worth their time and respect. This is very prevalent among women of my generation and even of my mother’s. All of them are looking for the same thing: they want a man to rescue them from themselves.
Dating or marrying for money is not a new concept. It’s been a way of life for the elite and nobility around the world for centuries. Marriages were frequently prearranged, sometimes at birth. Families of so-called good stock and great wealth wanted to assure that their children married into a family of equal or greater stock, thus stabilizing or improving the family’s overall social and political stature. So, “marrying up” isn’t an issue. It means you’re smart and practical enough to have a plan for the place you want your future family to have in the world. We should all want to financially improve our lots in life, not diminish them. The real issue, however, is that it has to be a fair trade.
Even in those prearranged marriages of old, the bride’s family always made sure they had something to offer the groom in exchange for him taking on their daughter. She couldn’t just show up. She had to come with something. This something was known as a dowry—an offering which included things like money, livestock, and/or land—and it was presented along with the bride. What, exactly, is your “dowry”? What do you have to offer? I’m not just talking about money. I mean, overall. For instance, you can’t be in your eighth year of nail school, living in your granny’s basement with nothing substantial to speak of, expecting a man to come and rescue you!
We all want to shoot for the stars, but are you really bright enough to live among them? Think about that, ladies. It’s not meant as an insult. It’s a bona fide question you should be asking yourself. I’m not talking about whether you’re worthy to live among the stars. We all are. I asked if you were bright enough. Do you have what it takes to strive for excellence and maintain it, not just have it handed to you by way of a man? It’s a shame that we expect more from our men than we do from ourselves. Many men find it difficult to respect a woman who thinks this way. No one wants to be saddled with the responsibility of saving you and, as we discuss in another chapter, even if a man gets swept up in the romantic notion of doing so, that feeling will soon wear off once he realizes that he’s got dead weight on his hands. If you enter into a relationship based on a man’s ability to support you financially, the likelihood increases that either he will begin to resent what he’ll view as your gold-digging ways, or he will use your laziness and lack of ambition against you by abusing you financially.
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Vixen Say What?
When a man knows you don’t need him to live, he won’t want to live without you.
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What? You’ve never heard of financial abuse? You probably have, even though you might not have given it a name. It is a very real form of abuse in which a man uses his position as