You're Not Filtering for a Provider, You're Filtering for a Pay Pig

The hazards of filtering for men using financial demands.

I saw an Instagram reel the other day of a young woman talking about dating.¹ She had included a link to her gift list on her Hinge profile so that men could buy her something to get her attention.

I was shocked. One of the commenters said something like:

Girl, you’re not looking for a boyfriend. You’re looking for a pay pig.²

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For women traumatized by dating, the thought pattern is something like this: all men are trash and just want sex, so if you demand financial compensation and gifts, you’ll at least get paid for your time.

Or, if you put up enough demands and barriers, you protect yourself from stingy, broke men.

Unfortunately, there is a very strong filter put into place when women use these strategies.

Women end up filtering for transactional men who give not out of generosity, but out of inability or unwillingness to provide the non-financial benefits of relationships. The type of man who is ok with these upfront demands is the kind of man who either thinks very little of himself, is profoundly cynical, uses money as a form of control, or who prefers giving gifts in lieu of emotional connection and time.

The last one is essentially sex work. There’s nothing wrong with sex work, but if you’re going to do sex work, do sex work with your eyes wide open. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re actually finding a generous provider.

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After our initial few weeks of dating, my boyfriend and I talked about financial expectations in a relationship.

“I know I will pay for most things in a relationship,” he said, “and I don’t mind! But I hate when the girl literally never makes any attempt to pay.”

He described a scenario with a woman he had dated in NYC. They were planning on taking a weekend trip to Mexico together where he’d be covering everything on the trip. But something she had said earlier haunted him: “If I’m not living my Barbie princess dream life, I’m out.”

So as a test, he asked if she would cover a portion of her flight. “It could have been $100,” he said. But she refused. So he broke it off with her.

This is the same man who now pays all of our living expenses, meals, and entertainment. He has zero issues being a provider, but he doesn’t want a woman to say it in such a crass, rigid way.

If a man expected to get laid by writing, “Have sex with me on the first date or don’t bother messaging me,” he would rightly be reviled as an entitled, psychotic weirdo.

Just as a woman doesn’t want to feel objectified for her sexuality, a man doesn’t want to feel objectified for his wallet.

Even in business, the most nakedly capitalist pursuit there is, there’s a reason the most successful, long lasting businesses will center their culture around oblique aims like “being the earth’s most customer centric company” rather than “make the most money.” So many of these early dating tactics feel like the equivalent of suggesting Amazon.com cut its entire customer service staff to improve profit margins. Sure, it may work for a bit. But it doesn’t take a genius to understand that over the long run, customers stop buying when the trust is gone.

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I have no interest in coaching women how to get men to pay for things, in no small part because I am fucking terrible at it.

I realized I was terrible at it in my 20’s when I had a two month stint where I tried to get one older man to buy me things. I was awful! The worst! Skin-crawlingly bad! I was so humiliated by the experience³ that I wrote a long journal entry about how the takeaway was that I should focus on making my own money because why spend the time learning how to execute the Man as a Financial Plan strategy when I could spend that time learning to start businesses instead.

I was so utterly disgusted by the power dynamic that I ran off in the midst of hanging out with the dude to the Louboutin store where I bought myself a pair of $900 platform pumps followed by a $1200 Herve Leger bandage dress with my own money.⁴

I remember looking at my credit card charges on my phone, feeling the power crackle in my fingertips. Call it a capitalist bloodletting ritual to cleanse myself. It reminded me that I was the one in control. This was the era of the #girlboss, after all.⁵ Nobody puts baby in a corner and makes her choose only one pair of shoes!

Back in those early days of social media, there wasn’t this mainstreaming of sex work, OF, sugar babying, sprinkle sprinkle culture. In some ways, I think it’s smart for clear-eyed Gen Z women to more proactively cash in on their hottest years. Make hay while the sun shines and all.

But I get the feeling that a lot of women who approach dating—not sex work— with such overt cynicism are ultimately sabotaging their own chances for genuine connection. Every cultural mood is prone to excess. The #girlboss era over-emphasized individuality, ignoring the fact that we are often happiest interdependent. The #softgirl era ignores the fact that women need to maintain some level of independence to have leverage in relationships. It also overlooks that multi-dimensional, mentally engaging women coincidentally have an easier time finding a quality spouse.

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The Infinite Pussy Glitch Pt 3 man sent me a screenshot the other day of a woman who had swiped right on him. She was looking for a “provider.”

He spent decades providing a lavish lifestyle for his ex-wife and never splits a bill. He has paid for business class tickets for women he’s dating. But he still sent me the profile, commenting how much it was a turnoff to see profiles like hers.

This obviously written by ChatGPT.

It is one thing if these demands for providers are turning off men without the interest or ability to be a provider.

However, that’s not what is happening.

Instead, it is turning off men who know they have a lot more to give than just their money and leaves those who are so spiritually impoverished that money is all they have to offer.

A lot of dating strategies have a cruelly self-propagating logic hidden inside them. Pickup artists use negs and it works—but only on insecure women. They then wonder why all women seem to display so many needy, emotionally unstable behaviors. Some women play manipulation games, then wonder why all men are avoidant and disingenuous.

We all play games to try to protect ourselves from rejection and disappointment. What I learned is that you can never fully protect yourself from heartbreak and that excessive attempts to do so are counterproductive.

Be smarter, be more discerning, learn to read signs and walk away earlier. But don’t lose sight of the fact that every protection strategy is also a filtering strategy. You might keep out the wrong men, but is it really worth it if it also repels the right ones?

1. Sorry, I can’t find it anymore!!!

2. There’s a kink called financial domination (“findom”) where some men get off on sending money to women who provide the service of calling them small-dicked losers who are only good for their money.

No, I’m not making this up.

I matched with a findom guy one time on Feeld and he suggested we do a “cashmeet.” I asked what that was. Apparently, a cashmeet is when you meet up at an ATM and the guy takes out the max ATM withdrawal, gives you the cash, no sexual favors involved. He was like, “I think it would be really hot if I saw you walking away from me, holding my money, laughing at me.”

The overwhelming thought I had was: there has to be a catch. I decided the psychological overhead of extreme anxiety over this act would supersede any financial benefit. It really felt like a prelude to becoming a lampshade.

3. Maybe if enough of you beg me, I will publish the story for paid readers. It involves a Vegas nightclub, a Philadephia mobster, and a fake bachelorette party.

4. I wish I hadn’t tbh, Louboutins are horribly uncomfortable and I ended up selling them off for $200 on Poshmark many years later and the Herve Leger dress got pawned off on The Real Real.

5. The entire #girlboss movement did some merits that get overlooked today. First of all, that work provides an additional source of identity, purpose, and financial optionality outside of a relationship. People are more resilient when their identities and self-worth aren’t dependent on a single category.

Second, that there are both financial and psychological benefits to earning your own money. The irony does not escape me that almost all of the modern-day women who talk about how to snag a rich guy are just #girlbosses in sugar baby clothes: they’re invariably selling a course or coaching packages.