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  • Times Are Tough for Gold-diggers too

    A group called Dating a Banker Anonymous offers support to women whose romantic relationships have suffered from the economic downturn.


    January 28, 2009
    It’s the Economy, Girlfriend
    By RAVI SOMAIYA
    The economic crisis came home to 27-year-old Megan Petrus early last year when her boyfriend of eight months, a derivatives trader for a major bank, proved to be more concerned about helping a laid-off colleague than comforting Ms. Petrus after her father had a heart attack.

    For Christine Cameron, the recession became real when the financial analyst she had been dating for about a year would get drunk and disappear while they were out together, then accuse her the next day of being the one who had absconded.

    Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

    They shared their sad stories the other night at an informal gathering of Dating a Banker Anonymous, a support group founded in November to help women cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from, say, the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the Dow’s shedding 777 points in a single day, as it did on Sept. 29.

    In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”

    Theirs is not the typical 12-step program.

    Step 1: Slip into a dress and heels. Step 2: Sip a cocktail and wait your turn to talk. Step 3: Pour your heart out. Repeat as needed.

    About 30 women, generally in their mid- to late-20s, regularly post to the Web site or attend meetings.

    “We do make light of everything on the blog and it’s very tongue in cheek,” said Laney Crowell, 27, who parted ways with a corporate real estate investor last month after a tumultuous relationship. “But it all stems out of really serious and heartfelt situations.”

    When she introduces other Wall Street widows to the group, Ms. Crowell added, “They call their friends and say, ‘You’re not going to believe what I just read. It’s going to make you feel so much better.’ ”

    Once it was seen as a blessing in certain circles to have a wealthy, powerful partner who would leave you alone with the credit card while he was busy brokering deals. "I thought I was dating a big pile of money. But now, he has feelings and expects me to respond to them," complained one woman on the blog. Now, many Wall Street wives, girlfriends and, increasingly, exes, are living the curse of cutbacks in nanny hours and reservations at Masa or Megu. And that credit card? Canceled.

    Raoul Felder, the Manhattan divorce lawyer, said that cases involving financiers always stack up as the economy starts to slip, because layoffs and shrinking bonuses place stress on relationships — and, he said, because “there aren’t funds or time for mistresses any more.”

    (One such mistress wrote on the blog that when she pouted about not having been taken on a trip lately, her married man explained that with money so tight, his wife had taken to checking up on his accounts.)

    Harriet Pappenheim, a psychotherapist at Park Avenue Relationship Consultants who wrote “For Richer or Poorer,” a 2006 book on money in marriage, said that the repercussions could be acute for Wall Street wunderkinds who define their identities through their job titles and the size of their bonuses.

    “It’s a big blow to their egos and to their self-esteem,” she said of the endless stream of economic bad news, “and they may take it out on their partners and children.”

    Ms. Petrus, a lawyer, and Ms. Crowell, who works for a fashion Web site, started the support group when they realized that they were facing similar problems in their relationships with bankers last fall.

    “We put two and two together and figured out that it was the economy, not us,” Ms. Petrus recalled at a recent meeting in the lobby bar of the Bowery Hotel. “When guys in banking are going through this, they can’t handle a relationship.”(She and her boyfriend split up last year; he declined to discuss it.)

    Many of the women said that as the economic crisis struck last fall, they began tracking the markets during the day to predict the moods that the men they loved might be in later. On big news days, like when the first proposed government bailout failed in Congress, or when Lehman went belly-up, they knew that plans to see their partners would be put off.

    “I was like, ‘O.K. I signed up for that, it’s fine,’ “ said Ms. Cameron. “But all of a sudden,” she said, her boyfriend “couldn’t focus. If he stayed over he’d be up at some random hour checking his BlackBerry, Bloomberg and CNBC.”

    Ms. Cameron said that she and her boyfriend broke up at the end of November but that they still saw each other occasionally.

    One frequent topic among the group is the link between the boardroom and the bedroom. “There’s actually the type of person who has a bad day on the trading floor and they want to have sex more,” Ms. Spinner Davis offered as she sipped a vodka gimlet, declining to say how she knew.

    Ms. Petrus chimed in.

    “If you’re lucky you’ll get that guy,” she said, not revealing whether she considered herself lucky. “Middle-case scenario: It gets relegated to the weekends.

    “Worst-case scenario,” she began, and then took another sip of her drink.

    Brandon Davis, Ms. Spinner Davis’s husband of almost three months, acknowledged in a recent telephone interview that his new job was “certainly more stressful and there’s certainly more pressure” because of the economy, but disagreed that such stresses had affected his home life. He did not want to talk about golf.

    Some women in the group said the men in their lives had gone from being aloof and unattainable to unattractively needy and clinging. Others complained of being ignored — one, who called herself A.P., wrote on the blog that three weeks had passed without her boyfriend “asking a single question” about her life. Another wrote, fearfully, that her beau had told her to make a list of their favorite New York restaurants before the bad market forced a move to the Midwest.

    “Next time you are stressing over some finance guy, remember that he is just a math-club nerd,” one woman wrote after recounting a breakup. “This recession just bought everyone an extra two years of the single life.”

    Another, though, seemed chagrined, after her boyfriend told her to “grow up” and stop “complaining about vacations and dinner” since he had to “fire 20 people by the end of the week.”

    On the blog, the objects of their affections — and disdain — are referred to as F.B.F.’s, for Financial-Guy Boyfriends. Financial news is conveyed via a color-coded daily warning system: red, when the Dow fell 300 points on Oct. 6 (“Good night to have dinner with your girlfriends and do laundry”); yellow, when Warren Buffet invested $3 billion in General Electric (“Good night to hang out with your F.B.F.”); green on Jan. 21, in honor of President Obama’s hope.

    Despite the seemingly endless stream of disparaging remarks and shaking heads, some of the appeal of dating a banker remains.

    “It’s not even about a $200 dinner,” Ms. Petrus said. “It’s that he’s an alpha male, he’s aggressive, he’s a go-getter, he doesn’t take no for an answer, he’s confident, people respect him and that creates the whole mystique of who he is.”
    “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
    "Capitalism ho!"

  • #2
    haha gold diggin biatches.

    Comment


    • #3
      That "dating a big pile of money" remark sounds like it must be a joke. But far be it from me to assume that women can't really get that shallow and dense...
      1011 1100
      Pyrebound--a free online serial fantasy novel

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      • #4
        “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”
        Heh. Must've skipped the "in sickness and in health" vow.

        My niece is a total gold digger. Seeing as she's now 30 and still digging w/o success...

        -Arrian
        grog want tank...Grog Want Tank... GROG WANT TANK!

        The trick isn't to break some eggs to make an omelette, it's convincing the eggs to break themselves in order to aspire to omelettehood.

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        • #5
          Hmmmm....

          I think we are missing the point of all this. As money drowned rich boys become scarce, gold diggers either have to lower thier bank account standards or work. Since we all know which one will happen first that means you, yes YOU, may be able to afford a super modelesque piece of arm candy/ass on the side.
          "The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.

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          • #6
            No one smells

            an onion????
            “It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.”

            ― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

            Comment


            • #7
              Not as advertised

              Originally posted by Patroklos View Post
              Since we all know which one will happen first that means you, yes YOU, may be able to afford a super modelesque piece of arm candy/ass on the side.
              Click through to the article. Arm candy is not how I would describe some of them.
              I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by DanS View Post
                Click through to the article. Arm candy is not how I would describe some of them.
                DanS is a whizz at economics, so I will take the lead on the gals

                These are, at best, beer, bowling and pizza bobbin-fo-pooooontang pickups(BBPBFPP's), nothing more nuttin less
                Attached Files
                Hi, I'm RAH and I'm a Benaholic.-rah

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Arrian View Post
                  Heh. Must've skipped the "in sickness and in health" vow.

                  My niece is a total gold digger. Seeing as she's now 30 and still digging w/o success...
                  What strategies has she adopted?
                  I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Eh, of the four whose faces are visible in that pic, I'd say only the one on the far left is really attractive.
                    1011 1100
                    Pyrebound--a free online serial fantasy novel

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Elok View Post
                      Eh, of the four whose faces are visible in that pic, I'd say only the one on the far left is really attractive.

                      Thats why I put them in my Beer,Bowling and Pizza category..certainly nt uptown eye candy
                      Hi, I'm RAH and I'm a Benaholic.-rah

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                      • #12
                        Yeah, but...maybe it's just a good picture, but the one on the far left looks almost like Demi Moore to me. She's a notch above the rest on face alone. And we really can't judge the one on the far right, who's turned away from the camera. So they may be up to 40% arm candy. Be fair.
                        1011 1100
                        Pyrebound--a free online serial fantasy novel

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Elok View Post
                          Yeah, but...maybe it's just a good picture, but the one on the far left looks almost like Demi Moore to me. She's a notch above the rest on face alone. And we really can't judge the one on the far right, who's turned away from the camera. So they may be up to 40% arm candy. Be fair.
                          Ok, because your a fair and impartial person..no, thats not it I will say the worse I ever had was good or great so I see beauty in many forms that others dont.

                          But on the same token, wats wrong with Beer,Bowling and Pizza?

                          Some of the hottest 'Tang 'N 'Taint I ever had was from a Bowling Alley

                          More pics of Gold Diggers please
                          Hi, I'm RAH and I'm a Benaholic.-rah

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Grandpa Troll View Post
                            But on the same token, wats wrong with Beer,Bowling and Pizza?
                            Two many calories, not enough exercise.
                            Gaius Mucius Scaevola Sinistra
                            Japher: "crap, did I just post in this thread?"
                            "Bloody hell, Lefty.....number one in my list of persons I have no intention of annoying, ever." Bugs ****ing Bunny
                            From a 6th grader who readily adpated to internet culture: "Pay attention now, because your opinions suck"

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola View Post
                              Two many calories, not enough exercise.
                              Lefty, wat ya thimk dem broads are fer
                              Hi, I'm RAH and I'm a Benaholic.-rah

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