Thinking about buying love with money? Think again. It’s the wrong way to find a loving partner.
This guide features 19 reasons why you can’t buy love and what will happen if you try it.
In my role as a life coach, I’m always helping clients to strengthen their relationships with the people closest to them.
That’s why I’m excited to share this guide with you.
So, let’s dive in.
What Does “Money Can’t Buy Love” Mean?
It means buying gifts or donating money to someone won’t make them fall in love with you.
Does True Love Need Money?
There have probably been tens of thousands of definitions of true love in music, film and literature created in the last week alone.
I like the video above which suggests true love is mostly about celebrating all parts of a person. That means accepting their strengths and weaknesses. It means forgiving their mistakes. It means staying loyal, no matter what adversity surrounds this person. It means putting in effort to show your affection. None of this requires a penny invested.
Buying Love And Affection
You’ll do well to find a creditable definition which suggests that true love involves buying things.
You may see attractive and highly-coveted women get into relationships with wealthy men, who seemingly have little else going for them.
But these relationships eventually break when flaws bubble to the surface and the other can’t bear to accept or celebrate them. A manufactured love like this isn’t strong enough to withstand the trials and tribulations of a long-term relationship
These people will (hopefully) come to realise that there’s more happiness to be found in a relationship beyond the money spent on a shopping trip.
Guys Who Try To Buy Your Love
It is mostly men trying to buy the love of a woman in modern society. Several studies prove that men are the higher earners in most relationships. There are also studies showing high levels of dissatisfaction from both halves of a heterosexual couple when the woman earns more.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll address men trying to buy a woman’s love for the rest of the article, even though it is possible for a woman to attempt this or for it to happen in same-sex relationships.
Can Love Be Bought?
True love can’t be bought. We’ll explore 19 reasons why below.
1. What Does It Mean When Someone Buys Your Love?
When someone tries to spend their way into a relationship, it’s because they think they have to. They feel as if their heart, their soul, their time, their attention is not enough on its own. They feel they need to be buying gifts and providing a lavish lifestyle to be loved by this person in return.
How sad is that, by the way? Imagine being willing to give your whole spirit and believing that’s still not enough. It would take a notable lack of self-love to feel like this.
This lack of self-belief is incredibly unattractive – and that’s part of the reason why people who try to buy affection can rarely even receive respect from the recipient.
There are guys out there who try to buy affection instead of giving their heart, mind and spirit. Maybe these guys are busy business owners or super-rich men who have been hurt by unrequited love in the past. Either way, no matter how much cash they spend, these men aren’t giving true love or receiving it.
2. You Are Not Your Money, You Are Not Your Material Possessions
True love is about two souls connecting. Your cash is not part of your soul. Material possessions are not your soul. You can gain or lose these and still be the same person inside. So, how can you expect to buy love with them? A woman has to love you, not the money you spend or the lifestyle you provide.
3. Love Isn’t Conditional
True love is about caring for someone during their ups and downs. It’s not conditional. The only thing it should depend on is whether both partners continue to feel loved in return.
4. Can Anyone Buy Her?
If you believe that providing a certain lifestyle will make a woman love you, you must surely also believe that anyone else who can afford that lifestyle could also have her. Does that sound like true love to you?
5. There Will Always Be Someone Better
If you believe you can buy true love, that would surely also mean that someone richer could easily steal your woman away. In what universe does that sound like the true love of your life?
6. Can You Buy Genuine Desire?
You can pay for sex. The prospect of repeat custom might even inspire a woman to fake enthusiasm as she’s lying on her back dreaming of spending your cash. But what about the genuine burning desire of a woman wanting to make love to you? That can’t be faked and therefore it can’t be bought.
7. Love Means Wanting To Give
Lovers want the best for each other. They want each other to thrive. They want to give more than receive.
If you’re giving something you don’t want to (like a gift you can barely afford), she should notice, feel guilt and want to stop taking from you.
If she’s giving something she doesn’t want to (like sex without genuine burning desire), you should notice and want to stop taking.
This is what respect in a relationship looks like. Real love isn’t transactional. The occasional favor (out of real love) is fine, but it shouldn’t feel like an obligation. You should want each other to be happy with all elements of the relationship.
8. The Joy Of Material Possessions Fades
Once you’ve owned a Ferrari for a while, the excitement of driving it fades. Once you’ve finished your holiday, the memories begin to fade. Even lust fades once you’ve been together for a while.
The only thing that doesn’t fade is the bond between two people connected by the heart.
9. How Much Is Enough?
If money can buy you true love, how much does it cost to trigger these feelings?
What happens if you spend a few dollars less next month? Does the emotion shut down, like when you can’t pay the gas bill?
Is this how genuine emotions work?
10. It’s Never Enough
You set the standards of your relationship on your first few dates. If the standards slip, the affection slips.
In money-led relationships, you’ll often notice the standards need to keep rising to stop the other person looking elsewhere. That’s inflation for you!
The only way not to drown in this emotional spending trap is to be loved for who you are, not the things you provide.
11. You Can’t Make Someone Love You By Giving Them More Of What They Already Don’t Appreciate
A man who tries to buy love will usually first try to arrange a normal date. When he sees that women don’t appreciate that offer, he’ll then try to spend his way into her heart.
If he skips trying for a normal date, it’s usually because he assumes that women won’t appreciate his company on these terms.
The thing is: by paying for a woman’s time and attention, you’re only offering them more of what they didn’t want. Even if this works, how the heck is it true love?
12. The Sad Link Between Consumerism And Love
A huge chunk of consumerism is people buying things to feel better about themselves.
They buy a fancy car to try and feel ‘good enough’. They wear a Gucci shirt to impress others in a desperate attempt to find ‘self-love’. It’s called emotional spending. But this love is not real. It’s dependent on things outside of them. As soon as these items disappear, the self-love disappears too.
By the same token, you can’t truly love someone who buys material things for you. It’s dependent on things outside of them. Once again, as soon as this spending disappears, the feelings do too.
13. The Love Languages Don’t Mention Money
According to Gary Chapman’s theory, there are five categories of ‘love languages’, which explain how people like to receive affection. These are words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service and receiving gifts.
That final love language might suggest that money might be enough to buy love from some people.
However, if you research Chapman’s theory in more detail, you’ll see that those with the ‘receiving gifts’ language appreciate the gesture from their partner, rather than the gift itself.
14. Why Do Money-Led Relationships Fail?
If you could buy love, surely all money-led relationships would lead to a happilly ever after forever. As long as the man keeps spending cash, the love would last forever, right?
In reality, that’s not what happens.
I’m sure you’ve read enough high-profile Hollywood divorce stories to know that. Instead of staying with their celebrity husbands, the women leave with the kids and half of his fortune in their back pocket.
The newly-crowned world’s richest man Elon Musk is divorced three times and split with the mother of his youngest child this year. Jeff Bezos, now the world’s second-richest man according to recent news stories, went through a high-profile divorce in 2019.
15. The Studies About Money And Happiness.
Most studies about whether money buys happiness agree that it does, up until a certain point. For example, a 2010 study published in the PNAS journal concluded that money can increase life satisfaction up until a point of around $75,000 a year. Crucially though, this study found that wealth doesn’t increase your emotional wellbeing.
16. Money Isn’t Mentioned In Wedding Vows
The traditional wedding vows, created by Thomas Cranmer in the 16th century, literally say: “for better for worse, for richer for poorer.”
Yes, you can be in love without getting married. But these vows have been recited and accepted by millions (maybe billions) of couples while completing the most committed act of love. Surely they count for something?
17. Parents That Buy Their Childrens Love
More than anything else, a child needs attention and affection from their parents.
Don’t get me wrong, a child would love their parents to spoil them with a new gift every week! But if a parent is too busy earning money to play and spend time with their kids, it can harm their child development.
One final note for parents; there are plenty of stories and studies which suggest that spoiled kids grow up to be trashy adults.
18. Trying To Buy Friends
You may think it’s possible to make friends by spending tons of cash on lavish get-togethers – and this will get you superficial friends.
However, a true friend is someone who you can speak to about anything. It’s someone who has your back in tough times. This isn’t always the same friend who accepts all the free parties.
19. When Does Money Start Buying You Love?
We’ve all experienced the incredible rush of ‘puppy love’ as a child. Most kids don’t have enough money to lavish on their crush. But that doesn’t matter, because they’re thrilled to be holding hands at the park or snogging as they watch TV.
Why does this change in adulthood? Perhaps it doesn’t. Maybe it’s always ultimately the person on the inside that we fall in love with.
Related Content: Consciousness & Love – Ideas To Combine These Powerful Forces And Thrive
Buying Love: A Glossary
You can use this as a list of things to avoid as you search for the love of your life.
Love Bombing
The act of overwhelming someone with excessive amounts of romantic gestures just after meeting them. This could be donating money or purchasing gifts, or simply bombarding them with compliments.
Sugar Dating
An arrangement where a woman will date a man in exchange for money or gifts. The terms of the deal are usually put forward and agreed before the couple meets.
There are sugar dating websites. A woman will create a social profile on the site, explaining how much she wants men to spend on her. A man will fill out a profile to prove his financial worth, then message women on the site to tell them how much he’s interested in spending for her company.
Sugar Baby
A woman who engages in romantic or sexual relationships with men in exchange for money or gifts. WIth that said, there are some women out there who run a sugar baby business, receiving gifts and money without even having to meet their donors.
Sugar Daddy
A man who donates money or gifts to the woman he’s dating as part of an official arrangement. He is stereotypically far older and richer than the woman, hence the term ‘daddy’. An older woman who donates to a man is called a ‘sugar momma’.
Simp
This is a derogatory term for a man who shows excessive affection for a woman who is deemed to not deserve it, usually because she has no feelings and shows little appreciation for him in return.
The behavior most commonly described as ‘simping’ is: donating money to attractive women who post suggestive content on social media or content sharing websites like Twitch or OnlyFans.
As we’ve explored, this is the wrong way to impress women. In fact, simps are mercilessly mocked by men and women all over the internet.
Any Questions?
Thanks for reading my guide about why buying love is a bad idea.
If you’d like to agree, disagree or ask a question about this advice, feel free to fill out a comment below. If you’d like to share a related story from your personal life, I’d love to hear it!
I’d like to keep talking about this topic. Your opinions matter, so join the conversation! It would be a joy to hear from you.
