Same heads up as the last chapter, this one is specifically the conversation for men, so if it's not yours, skim or skip. Though again, the underlying logic carries, so reading it probably won't hurt.
Alright.
If you're a man, then a good chunk of what you should be thinking about is how you're going to provide. Not in a "men are wallets" kind of way, but in a real, traditional, this is part of the job kind of way. Whoever you marry, whatever children you end up having, the bulk of the financial weight of that family is probably going to fall on you. That's not a bad thing. That's actually a beautiful and meaningful thing. But it does mean that your degree, or your trade, or whatever you decide to do, has to actually be able to carry it.
So you have to think honestly about how much you actually need to be able to provide.
And before we go any further, I want to push back on something, because if you're a young man on the internet you've probably been marinating in it for a while.
The redpill movement will try to tell you that women only marry for money, or for looks, or for status, and that if you don't have those things you're cooked. I'm here to tell you that's not really true. There are absolutely some women out there for whom that's the whole game, and you should run from those women anyway, because they wouldn't be a good wife for you regardless of how much you make. But there are also a lot of really good women, way more than the internet will admit to, who are not looking for a rich man or a tall man or a particularly good looking man. They're looking for a man of character. They're looking for someone who carries himself well, who has his life relatively in order, who treats people with dignity, and who they can build something real with.
You don't have to be Brad Pitt with a million dollar salary to find a wife. You have to be a man worth marrying, and that's almost entirely within your control.
But, all that said, you do still have to be able to provide.
So the question becomes, what kind of life are you actually trying to build, and how much does that cost? Because the answer to that question shapes the kind of degree, or trade, or path you should be picking.
If you're someone who genuinely doesn't need much to be content, a small house, a stable wife, a few kids, dinner on the table, then your bar is actually pretty manageable. You don't need a Wall Street salary to provide for that life. You need a stable trade, or a steady mid level career, or a small business that does real work for real people. That's it. And that's actually a much freer place to live from than the guy who's decided he needs to make three hundred grand a year to feel like a man.
But if you've got bigger ambitions, that's also fine. Just be honest about it, because a bigger ambition means a more demanding path, more years of training, more debt potentially, more risk. And it also tends to mean you'll be looking for a different kind of woman, because the woman who's happy in the small house with the kids and the simple life isn't usually the same woman who wants the Manhattan apartment and the dinner parties.
Both are valid. They just cost different things. And the cost is on you to carry.
So the question I'd really want you to sit with, before you pick anything, is what kind of provider you're actually trying to become. Because the answer shapes everything else, and a lot of guys never stop to ask it. They just pick the most prestigious degree they can get into and assume the life will sort itself out from there.
It usually doesn't.
