We never hear of men doing the gold digging, because it's always been exclusive to women. File image: Twitter
Let’s face it, the world probably needs a whole truth and reconciliation hearing after Netflix’s Tinder Swindler.
Apart from the audacious scheme that has trapped dozen’s of women into years of debt, there are men and women (but mostly men) out on several social media platforms calling his victims gold diggers.
So in this piece, I am addressing this notion that “the best gold digger won,” and I am going to reveal why men are the real gold diggers of today.
I am about to upset a lot of people with my opinion, but in the wise words of Eminem in his hit rap duet with Jay-Z, “If the shoes fit I’ll wear it, but if it don’t then ya’ll just swallow the truth, grin and bear it.”
People who are calling the Tinder Swindler’s victims gold diggers have missed a crucial detail in this documentary.
Simon Leviev is an emotional predator. He was able to prey on women’s deep-seated yearning for companionship with men who are financially secure/independent. His victims were looking for love and support, with a man who can hold his in own in a relationship.
The fact that he posed as the heir to a diamond fortune was a bonus. Leviev’s financial status was crucial to the con because the man he portrayed would be able to pay back loans his partner borrowed on his behalf effortlessly.
Leviev ran an emotional con. He said and did all the right things to get women to let their guards down and let him in passed the walls erected to keep them safe from previous assholes.
He preyed on a woman’s inherent desire to want to protect and support her partner when he is in distress.
The women Leviev prayed on were not poor women who needed a man’s financial support to survive or keep up a certain lifestyle.
They had clearly worked to establish independence and importantly, build up good credit scores. (I also have to take a moment and acknowledge the white privilege that entitled these women to multiple loans, extensions and large amounts of cash on a whim, and often with fake paperwork).
Their lives appear otherwise fulfilled, but they obviously lack love and companionship, which is why they are out on the web swiping and matching.
Their only claim to the title of ‘gold digger’ is because they chose to date a man that appeared to be wealthy.
Gold diggers don’t have much to bring to the relationship table apart from a trophy partner and physical intimacy.
He systematically and financially disempowered hard-working women and left them with a lifetime of debt.
Women who were independent, living alone and are just, in general, doing them, had to move back home because they are now broke.
This documentary also proves that cyber security officials globally are useless – incompetence in law enforcement is not exclusive to South Africa.
Worse, financial institutions have little incentive to catch people like Leviev because the women are paying back the money anyway, so it’s not their loss.
Basically, while our power-hungry leaders jostle for power, the cybercriminals are flourishing unfettered.
We never hear of men doing the gold digging, because it’s always been exclusive to women.
But here’s what the male version of gold digging looks like.
In this day and age, marriage is often delayed in favour of cohabitation first. You only really get to know your partner when you are living together, and it makes financial sense to split the cost of living.
Men will straight up tell their partners they want to get married in the future to get them to take the relationship to the next level.
This is the level where the man is most comfortable because economic burdens are split and he only had to make a promise without committing to a deadline, while the woman is left waiting for a proposal, often for years on end.
This elevation of the relationship is not motivated by love, it is an economic contract with benefits that essentially gives men more value out of the relationship.
The man who promises marriage as the end goal of cohabitation but never actually proposes, or worse, they propose with zero intention to walk down that aisle, are the real gold diggers.
They are using their partners for economic stability and to share the cost of living under false pretences. We just don’t call it what it is, because in the past gold digging was seen as exclusive to women.
Hell, a woman expecting a man to be financially stable or be the provider in the relationship also gets branded as gold diggers because women are less likely to date a poor man.
Men who cohabit on the initial promise for marriage as the end game over years would have benefitted from all the comforts and conveniences of marriage without actually having to commit. That’s a long-running emotional con, which is morally and ethically repugnant, but with no legal recourse.
The most audacious act of this everyday con, in my opinion, is how the couple in this situation end up buying property together because it’s hard to qualify for a home loan on a single income.
So the non-committed man suddenly has no issues committing to joint bond payments for decades, but no talk of the initial promise of marriage?
And men will have a quiver filled with readymade excuses for reneging on an initial declaration of love.
Male gold diggers are those who cannot manage to live on their own financial strength, so they elect to share the costs by promising lifelong commitment – but they never actually commit.
In this time, the women who have been entangled in this long-running con often end up wasting years of their lives with the wrong person.
But, thankfully, times are changing, and women are beginning to realise companionship and relationships is like owning a Lamborghini: it’s nice to have, but far too costly to keep and too much maintenance.
Trust in men is at an all-time low, and there is definitely a massive shift away from the idea that companionship and love relationships are the ultimate versions of happiness and fulfilment when it comes to living life abundantly on earth.
Of course, one cannot express an opinion of this nature without having to emphatically state, “Not all men.”
So, for legal and ego purposes, not all men, but if the gold-digging gumboots fit…
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