Is a career required for a relationship?

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so does a guy who works a full time job not contribute? i don't get the career thing and there really aren't enough to go around. there simply isn't a career for every person on this planet. some people have to be janitors , security, cooks, fast food, garbage pick up, etc. so much of what keeps society running isn't done by career people.

some people with careers have no discipline or goals they are just from wealthy families or lucky. while some people who have discipline or goals may be stuck in the lower tier for years because they don't have enough upper level contacts despite working hard and being disciplined. life isn't black in white.



the problem I have with this is most the women who ask these questions stop replying or talking to me right after they get an answer.
like "oh he doesn't make 20 an hour, pass"

when I get nervous and ask questions its about shows/movies, interests, what they like doing. tells me a lot more about a person then what they do for a job. an accountant might be a big video game player or maybe they are super into music. but for both being an accountant is just a income not their passion.
only time i've asked is in response to being asked what my job is, as it seems like the proper response.



sadly i blew my one shot at getting a higher paying job from college. though those who got jobs in my field are making just above min wage not what they should be with the degree they have. now going into my late 20's i realize how screwed I am and how worse and worse its going get as I go into my 30s. to be frank i am just a wasted life that should end.

Yes, OF COURSE, having a career is helpful when you're an adult looking for a relationship. If you aren't gainfully employed, how can you afford a place to live, transportation, etc?

Assuming you ARE gainfully employed and managing living on your own (ie not with mommy or daddy), the type of career you have isn't that important. Working as a janitor, cook, garbage pick up person (which is a unionized job that pays upwards of $35/hr where I live!) or police officer COUNTS as a career. Plenty of fast food cooks, janitors, etc are happily married or in relationships!

(If you don't believe me, look at the wedding / engagement announcements in your local paper. Is every man a supermodel or high-powered lawyer? Or are there plenty of happily coupled guys with normal, everyday jobs?).

If you get nervous and squirrely if a girl you're on a date with asks what you do for work and you bumble the answer or come off as embarrassed / ashamed of how you earn a living THAT (embarrassment / shame) is probably the HUGE turnoff for women. Not the fact that your career may be considered "unglam".

It's sort of like a guest house but I don't live behind rich people. Granny flats are common here but there are no rich people in my neighborhood. People usually build them for their elderly parents or teenaged kids.

As for me, my landlord rents out the house and the granny flat separately. I think because it has it's own driveway and letter box they can technically call it a separate address.

The average house here is about a thousand square feet and I get 650 square feet for about 2/3 as much rent. I think such living arrangements are going to become increasingly common as the population density rises and people realize that the suburban plan of putting thousand square foot houses on ten thousand square foot blocks of land is a dumb idea. I mean, even though my neighbors have my flat in their backyard, they still have more backyard space than they need anyway. Such wastefulness leads to housing shortages, suburban sprawl and longer commutes.

Look at the bright side. You're already educated. Girls dig that.

Another victim of our workaholic culture where such ridiculous behavior is seen as virtuous.

There are times when I think there aren't even enough jobs to go 'round. Here in Australia our evil overlord prime minister's plan to reduce unemployment is to force to double the job application quota for the unemployment benefit without actually creating any new jobs. He thinks this plan will make a million jobs stretch for two million people. I figure, unemployment will increase due to increasing automation. Labour saving machinery could be used to reduce people's hours but instead it's used to reduce the number of workers.

Also, it seems like people are working longer hours, which could cause even more unemployement (since that means it takes less people to do the same work).

I know wealthy people with a salary of 100K a year who'd still get less than $20 an hour (if they had a wage, not a salary) due to the long hours they have to work (actually, they probably get about the same as the $16 an hour minimum wage). I know it's supposed to be better to have a salary, not a wage but sometimes I think the salary is just a way to trick middle class people into working unpaid overtime.

When working class people work extra hours, not only do they get paid for them but they even get paid at a higher rate

What? What happened. Can't you just try for the high paying job again?

I'm unemployed and I can still afford those things.

These topics are always so depressing to me to me since they make it seem that there really is nothing magical behind love, that we're all just animals doing are own little mating rituals.

Suuure we believe in love people say, just not in that child-like unconditional fantasy, but with all the conditions that make it not seem like love, but something much more carnal and artificial. It's mechanical love, so darn clunky and prone to rusting,

These threads make me realize just how alone people really are, even couples in this world are quite alone, because when love is done that way it's going to be lacking in a quality that goes far beyond those things... It's just so damn depressing the vast majority of people are wired this way.

Well of course we're animals. We're not plants. Ask a biologist and he'll tell you humans are a specials of animal. We're not descended from apes, we're a type of ape.

I think I have better odds of getting into a relationship in a world that doesn't run on fairy tale romance. It's easier to fall in love due to familiarly rather than looking for a needle in a haystack.

Yes, it's good that married people can still lead separate lives and retain their individually. I wouldn't want to get married if it meant having to do the things as her twenty fours a day. It would feel like selling my soul. But when they're in the same room, couples can still have alone time (that describes most of the couple's I've observed).

i didn't mumble it I am straight forward and honest with things I say. simply put they want a guy working an office job making over 22 an hour. a person working cashier/janitor/fastfood, is working "jobs meant for high school kids" I read and see this that and how i should quit cause its meant for kids not adults. so every adult should have a 22 or more an hour paying job, but reality is there just isn't a high paying job for every adult. and not enough kids to take the low paying jobs.

having a career seems to only matter to women, most guys could care less what kind of job a woman has a long as she can provide for herself, why is it that a career matters so much to women. o.O

how is a mom/dad different then say a random stranger as a roommate? i know most my friends ended up renting places together with family like me.

my local paper hardly has wedding announcements, and the ones it has had no pictures or information besides names and where and when its happening. which i totally understand why would you want a whole town of strange people knowing your personal info.

what do you consider gainfully employed ?

dating and relationships now are more about what can this other person provide for me do they meet my material requirements. then comparing those people and trying to find love. but the key is exluding those who don't met the material needs first. even though those people likely could make you happy and be the love of your life. we have become so materialistic that we can't see past such things and see people for being people. a doctor is a doctor regardless of his love of history and sic if. his hobbies aren't who he is its the being a doctor and money that comes with that. such a shame

I simply don't see people as their jobs like so many do. I don't care what people do for work and it hardly ever comes to my mind to ask. I'm more interested in hobbies, likes dieslikes, political views, etc. stuff that will help us connect or lead to us fighting.

we have similar here people buy who lots and only use a little of it. one day it'll become a problem. but people here can afford to live way beyond what they need and do so cause it makes them look cool.
there is quite a bit of basement or guest houses being turned into rental properties in the usa. people will buy a big house and renovate the first floor or basement into a apartment and rent it out to pay for the mortgage of the house. i went to a ladies place that was a house turned into 4-5 tiny apartments. the place i go to therapy is a house turned into 20-30 tiny offices. the housing prices and rent prices in that city are going high so I suppose dividing what was a giant house into smaller apartments makes sense. it was like the size of two and a half of my rooms. I could see myself living in something like that. though the heating was zero so winters suck there. the power can't handle much appliances either do to it being what was once just one bedroom.


they prefer men with degrees who work in the degree field.
the conversation always goes to why are arn't you using your degree, or why aren't you a mechanic?
my advice to people going to college is don't rush, take your time research possible degrees and their field job avialibility and if you really think you can do that job. otherwise you end up like me 11k in debt with a degree you can't use working a min wage job. others i have heard about got history/arts/etc degrees with are degrees with limited or no job openings. there are people with medical doctor degrees managing mcdonalds here. I went to college cause that is what the system pushed me to do and do fast. i had to pick a major fast or get kicked out. I liked school it was fun experience and I learned alot, but If i could go back I wouldn't go to college or try to find a more achievable degree, but I feel that college isn't needed for everyone's goal.

one of his jobs was paying for it, and they demanded he finish fast. its not like finishing faster saves any money either.


the trend is same here, fast food is looking at automating everything so they would only have one employee to watch the machines. and people are working people either under part time or way over, its to either avoid giving healthcare or to limit giving it to 1 person instead of having 2 people to provide for. the shop I interned at said without taxes he would hire 5 more people but due to taxes and insurance he can only afford the 5 people he has and stay open. businesses will always do whatever they have to to make as much profit as they can. if they could make slavery legal i'm sure they would. its always about how little can I pay my employees. to them.


yeah salary jobs sound terrible. the medim house income here is 19 an hour and 22 an hour in the next city. but that just means the people in the house all together make that much so could be two min wage working people etc. not 1 person making that and everyone else not working. wait min wage is 16 an hour there?
national here is like 6 something an hour and my state is 9.21. my friend at a sears makes 6 and hour and commission , and my friend in Missouri makes 7 an hour. and food is way cheaper here then there. so I don't get why women look down on a guy making 9.21 an hour.


I just can't work as a mechanic. I am too slow, have hearing sensitivity. and get submissive when yelled at. the tools also cost thousands of dollars and you have to provide your own before getting a job. they all also want you to have at least 6 months experience preferred 2 years to start out in oil changes which is the bottom level job.
its an employers market right now so many mechanic grades and experienced mechanics looking for work. they can be as pick as they want. I can't go back to college its a one time thing here unless you are able to get tons of scholarships. which requires you to have tons of volunteering and be a excellent writer and good at socializing. all of which I suck at . plus I would be a 27 year old competing with 17-18 year olds fresh out of school.



people really don't understand how things work. like i have a iphone 6 and i'm poor. the thing is you can get things like that on payments. so you pay 20 a month for 2-3 years instead of paying 750 up front. 3 years ago I couldn't dream of getting an iphone, i just couldn't afford the thing but I and many others can afford 20 a month. companies realize this heck they did it with cars for every. now you can get a lot of things on smaller payments. also saving up is how i got my ps4 took a while but meh.
what I can't afford is going out to concerts that cost 40 a night or eating at steak place that is 25 per person. none of which interest me anyways. but 10 n hour here is enough for a apartment and bills with some extra money too.

There are plenty of people in relationships who don't have careers.

Career or not doesn't matter. What does matter is that you enjoy and are passionate about what you do, and that you have enough money to support yourself and live your life comfortably. If you meet both of those criteria, then I don't think many people will care what exactly it is you do for a living. If you don't, then you need to consider whether or not you want to (or are even able to) put in the time/effort required to advance your professional goals.

At the end of the day, it's all just a slew of biochemical reactions that have been perfected over millions of years of evolution. Dating is just the way that the "mating rituals" evolved as we moved into modern-day society. Love has never been anything magical, but that doesn't lessen the impact that the emotion can have on a person's life or well-being.

I feel like in today's society, one issue many people face is that they are constantly holding out for the "perfect match", and end up perpetually dating trying to find that person. Lots of people go out with a checklist, and if you don't meet all the check marks on it, they'll dive back in the pool in search of someone who does.

Last edited by Stargazer43 on 18 Oct 2014, 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes and no. On dating sites women will judge you by your wealth. Many women want to have children so they want a wealthier man because raising children is a hugely expensive proposition.

However, if you should meet a girl in a chance encounter, your career or wealth may not matter so much. If you both go to the same club or something and gradually go from acquaintances to friends to something more, than by the time she falls for you she'll already know about your wealth or lack there off.

If you get to know a girl out there in meatspace and you end up together, she likes you not for your job but for you personality. In short she likes you for you. But on a dating site, it's less about personality and more about status. In meatspace common interest is a factor. In a club common interest is a given. On a dating site, common interest is seldom considered. Even if a girl says she likes all the same things as you, that may not be enough.

The funny thing is, I live on a ten thousand square foot block of land but it's not inhabited by rich people. I don't live behind a mansion, I live behind a modest house in a slightly more modest flat. I guess the thing America and Australia have in common is subdividing dwellings ('round here more and more corner lots are having second houses built on them) but from what I've read, the difference is that the well off over there have large blocks of land. Down here? The well off people live on smaller blocks of land. They all want to live in well to do neighborhoods or especially on the esplanade so that means they have to crowd into a small area. They have large houses on small blocks of land with almost no space 'between (I think they may have that in America too, they call them McMansions, right?) But for us paupers, the suburb I live in was built as a housing project 40 years ago and now it's mostly been sold off ( I hate it when they do that, there are people poorer than I am who can't get a house now because they sold off all the housing projects). Anyway, since it was meant for poor people it has modest houses. Since it was built in an area that before than was farmland on what at the time was the edge of the suburbs, they thought they could get away with putting small cheap houses on large blocks of land. They got the land dirt cheap anyway.

I know I should take things slowly but I feel like I have to rush everything due to my age. I'm going to go with a diploma of computer engineering and if that goes well follow it with a bachelor of computer engineering because I just have to pick something. I could spend years and years deciding what to study but I feel it would be better to just dive into something instead of trying to compare fields I know nothing about because I haven't worked or studied in them.

A number of people have told me I should study part time, at least for the first year. That would be a lot easier but I'm too old and I don't have a moment to lose so I must study full time, even if I get a job. If I was 18 I could study part time and still have time to spare but not now.

Lately I always feel like I'm in a rush whether I do nothing or something so I might as well do something. Either way I will never be able to relax again.

True but the company I worked for used a legal loophole to pay it's workers less than minimum wage and than issued a press release saying if they paid minimum wage they wouldn't be able to stay in business. Yes they were losing a lot of money, not due to wages but because they were very poorly managed. I think even with their sub minimum wages they're going to go under soon. They were already getting subsidies when they said that.

A badly run business will always say they can't afford to pay higher wages or hire more workers or pay their taxes but they're only trying to hide how badly run they are. Even if they paid no taxes and no wages, it would just delay the inevitable. If they were already paying no taxes and still failing, they'd demand the government pay them and claim they'll go out of business otherwise.

I don't think all this nonsense should be used as an excuse for a badly run business (I don't know if your company is but mine had more problems than I'd care to list right now). A well run business will be able to afford to pay wages, taxes, etc and still make a tidy profit. These social darwinist CEOs should apply the same darwinism to their own business instead of making excuses. If they're company is going to fail, let it fail instead of putting it on life support. Welfare is for people, not companies. They should not be rewarded for mismanagement.

Exactly. That's why I laugh at people like Stephen Fry who use their iPhone 6 as proof that they're rich

Everyone has a checklist, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; it just means that you know what qualities you want in a significant other and that you're not willing to settle for less. The difficult part is that it takes time to get to know a person and to see those qualities, so calling it quits after a few dates is definitely going to make it harder to find that special someone.

True enough. I mean, it's not good to end up with someone you don't like just because you were worried you'd never do better. No one is perfect but it's a matter of balancing "close enough match" with "will I find another?"

I have a problem with someone who lies about their career. I would rather date someone who was up front and said they don't have a career than someone who falsely says he has one when we first date. What do you mean by career? Just being employed or something like a doctor, lawyer, etc.? I would rather someone be employed and I don't care about their profession, and this is because I do not want to be in a situation where I am taken advantage of for money and other resources.

i am supported right now on ssi. i pay my bills, I rent a place with family and am able to buy food etc. yet most would find this a huge turn off for dating. so its not simply just being able to provide for yourself that they care about.
I like socializing and only see a job as income to survive off of. I like working as a cashier cause i get to meet and talk to people and help them. I'm going for security cause it pays more and I hope that will please women enough to consider me for dating.
I hope I can find a security job that deals with people rather then one will i'm by myself all the time in scary situations, but its what I got to do I guess :/

I don't hold out for a perfect match myself. I do have some qualities I want in a woman but there isn't a perfect match and I consider all kinds of women. I do agree though that it does seem to be what most people do now which is sad.

to RetroGamer87.

I don't come from a rich or middle class family, yet my mom raised me and my two siblings, my grand parents raised their 4 kids.
my poor friend is raising his 5 kids, and another one of my friends has 3 kids. you don't have to be middle class to have a family. millions of people do without it and have kids. you only need the money to pay for expensive schooling, clothes and daycare so you can work the job to afford daycare. lol not to say it doesn't help and then you can buy your kids ipads and stuff. I didn't have things like that growing up and I did fine. perhaps its why I'm not so materialistic as others from my generation and the ones in the next.


I don't beleive in mixing work/clubs etc with dating and friendships. the resulting possible drama can leak back into the work place or club. also clubs. o.O. yeah there were clubs in highschool, but as an adult i look around and see non. theres no club sign up board. people just seem to meet find out they have similar interests and then start meeting up to do those together. maybe its different elsewhere.

whats a esplanade?
I lived in a house that was built for a military base in the 50s then bought moved along with the others to a new area. the pips were made from cardboard. it was a real dump. now i live in an area that is mix old cheap houses and super nice wealthy people houses. its where a lot of the wealthier people move to. I see expensive 500k cars at the highschool sometimes. then we also have the gated communities.

I first started in the major of cooking, then changed to teaching then to mechanics. I have nothing to show for it all but a degree. its quite different here though . we have 70 year old people going to college for the first time. and every age from 15-80ish .
weather its people coming to learn tech or to get another job field. I can't tell you what to do I don't know how aid works there, but here one can go to school full time and live off the aid money alone depending on how much money you or your parents make. I just caution cause I don't want you to miss the chance like I did.