The Telegraph’s Petronella Wyatt brings us this essay in which we learn that the economic slump has had a negative impact on love and dating in the UK. In the good times we can afford pretty much what we want. But when unemployment is high and jobs scarce, romance can become a luxury, especially when equality demands that you pay your share of the dinner tab.
As the cost of living escalates, so it seems, has the cost of loving, at least for the more mature woman. While older men remain willing to prise open their chequebooks for a 25-year-old whose alabaster complexion would grace the yacht of any concupiscent billionaire, an increasing number are ignoring the traditional etiquette of courting when it comes to women over the age of 35.
Gallantry is in retreat, buckling under the forces of recession, spurious excuses of equality – and the assumption that such women are in no position to protest, if they want to find themselves in an agreeable position in the boudoir. Michael Glass, a 50-year-old Scottish hedge funder, confirms that Cupid’s arsenal of arrows has been subject to age-sensitive cuts.
“While I would happily spend money on a real babe, over whom other men are competing, I don’t feel the need to do the same with an older woman who is probably desperate,” he says. “Many of my friends feel the same. They’ll ask such a woman to pay her share.”
A recently married male friend who, at 49, has a small production company, made it clear while dating potential partners that women who were unable or unprepared to spend need not apply. ”Part of my wife’s attraction was her executive salary and her willingness to foot the bill,” he says. “I earn, but in a recession I wasn’t prepared to throw my money about as I had on previous girlfriends.
