finding a partner with same beliefs?

[mohawkbrah]

Im wondering how many of you out there have a significant other that shares the same lifestyle as you. Im probably at the most extreme side of ERE and willing to live in a tent wildcamping across the UK to avoid getting trapped int he UK housing market. So my prospects are probably very slim unless i find a hippie chick

[RealPerson]

Good news! The crazy UK housing market just got a lot less crazy and is likely to get far cheaper in the coming years. Until Brexit is complete you can expect the housing market to just keep dropping. Excellent buying opportunities to come! Can't offer much help on the hippie girlfriend. Sorry.

[Tyler9000]

Sometimes the best way to meet that person is to just be yourself, live the life you want, and go introduce yourself to the girl in the next tent over.

[IlliniDave]

I don't have any partner at the moment. I can say my overall life approach has scared off a few (dunno how much of it was due to the cheapskate perception versus how much was horror at the though of ultimately being sequestered in the virtual Arctic (common southern perception of Minnesota) versus how much was just due to my general social ineptness). I wouldn't even begin to know how to go about prescreening the field for compatibility. Tyler9000 I think has it right. Just be yourself, unashamedly so. When the right one comes along you'll know (or so I'm told).

[wood]

Im probably at the most extreme side of ERE and willing to live in a tent wildcamping across the UK to avoid getting trapped int he UK housing market.

Question is, are you willing to compromise? You gotta be willing to compromise.

[7Wannabe5]

I find it works better to have a variety of partners. I joke about being a barter-courtesan in relationship to my more affluent partners, but all the men I like are frugal in some way. For instance, one of my partners chooses to bicycle over 30 miles/day for transportation, so he is my frugal transportation, exercise and picnic partner. Another one of my partners is a permaculture salvage artist. Everything in his house and garden is made out of nothing, but it is gorgeous. So, he is the partner who is engaged with me in the design and construction of the bones of my permaculture home-site. My third partner is frugal in ways having to do with having valuable practical skills and getting lots of free benefits. For instance, he has to travel for work a lot, so he lives for free with a ridiculously wealthy older friend in exchange for minor help with technology etc., so we stay in hotels together which he gets for free with the bajillion points he gets from work-travel and scavenge all the coffee, breakfast, tiny shampoos we want, and his mileage covers his car lease. We're both foodies, so he throws down for dinner, but we usually split one meal and get water with no ice to drink, and sometimes he gets the hotel room with the kitchenette and makes me cook. So, pretty much the value/price ratio of being one of my partners is something like google-to-the-infinity.

OTOH, none of them will live with me in my camper and eat dried mulberries, and they all said the same thing to me which was "You are not going to live in that camper." which is obviously different from my belief that I will live in my camper.

[George the original one]

Every time you hear a woman exclaim, "I can't believe how spendy this is", you have a potential partner.

[Riggerjack]

The internet. Dating sites. Unabashedly describe your living situation, and the ideal you are trying for. Let the ladies filter themselves out. It may mean dates on the other side of town, but 4 hours commuting to a 2 hour date you really like, beats the hell out of 12 dates close in that make you contemplate vows of celibacy and silence.

The world is full of women into frugality, but it's even more full of women standing in front of such principalled ladies. Your search will go better when you motivate the unworthy to find other places to be.

[Sclass]

. I joke about being a barter-courtesan in relationship to my more affluent partners,.

One of the best lessons I learned from 7wannabe5 was that if you go into a relationship with your only offering being money, you will find a counter party who will expect you to be an ATM machine with legs.

I never really saw it this way before I started reading her posts. I fell into my multi year relationship by offering up other things besides money. Mostly because I didn't have much when we met. Money wasn't something I brought to the table. I never really understood why my SO was kind of my teammate but I suspect it was this phenomena playing out. We basically worked together at surviving, then building wealth, then finally retirement.

My brother and my dad have both entered into money for sex relationships and have opened themselves up to seriously mercenary marriages. Mail order brides of sorts. Now I get it. Thank you 7w. They came to the table pretty much offering money only. And this is what they got in return. My sister actually pointed out how gross these men are and how their wives deserve the monetary compensation they voraciously extract. She gets it too.

Riggerjack pretty much hits it on the head. Be yourself. Be clear about what you're offering and what you are not. Cast a wide net. And try to have more charm than an ATM. Let the filters do the rest. You may just find somebody as passionate about efficiency as yourself.

And no 7W I'm not targeting women only. There are plenty of guys out there who treat their successful lady friends as ATMs. It cuts both ways. Just had to say that before you jumped me.

[akratic]

Finding the right partner is probably about as hard as achieving FI -- and even more important. I found her eventually, but it took me years.

[7Wannabe5]

SClass said: One of the best lessons I learned from 7wannabe5 was that if you go into a relationship with your only offering being money, you will find a counter party who will expect you to be an ATM machine with legs.

You're welcome.

My problem is that I read and think too much about the overlapping realm between relationship theory and economics (science of human decision making most frequently measured by observing flows of money.) For instance, why did romantic love begin to be heavily promoted as a decision-making factor in forming marriage contract in late 19th century America? In Bertrand Russell's 1929 work "Marriage and Morals", he promotes social acceptance of sex outside of marriage, and one of his arguments in favor of "free love" is that given no other option, young affluent men will form sexual relationships with girls of lower social class in which they will not be able to enjoy the gentler feelings of communion that would more likely occur if they were permitted to engage in sexual dalliance with girls of their own social class. Flash forward 80 years (2009)in the same culture, and I make the acquaintance of a very intelligent (her father is a Jewish anti-Zionist academic), kind-hearted young woman who is working on her Master's in Political Science and making her living, facilitated by internet, as a GFE (girlfriend experience) escort. IOW, she is selling sex to a clientele that prefers some "gentler feelings" in the mix. At first, I was fascinated and appalled to learn that such a thing as a GFE escort even existed, "What sort of desperate loser pays a woman to behave as though she is his girlfriend?" , but as I talked with her some more about her extremely varied clientele and experiences, the pieces of the puzzle started to deconstruct and make sense to me.

In "The 4 Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferriss, 2009, he creates a character (paraphrasing here) he refers to as "the rich,fat guy in an expensive sports car." I have dated this man. I do not know the names of cars, but he drove some little red thing where I had to stick my legs in a chute. He was an inch or two shorter than me, balding, drank too much, florid flush to his skin, hard-high-like-a-swallowed-ball paunch, not-quite-legally-divorced-yet. He was also an intelligent, kind-hearted person who was having problems with his adolescent children similar to some I had experienced, so I let him buy me a few Thai dinners and hold my hand. We kept in touch by correspondence for a while longer, and became facebook friends. A couple years later, I noted that he had re-married. A couple more years later, I noted that he had died.

From "Play or Be Played: What Every Female Should Know About Men, Dating and Relationships" by Tariq "K-Flex" Nasheed, 2004.

Always Rely on Your Game, and Not Your Coochie
Nowadays, too many women are taught that their coochie is gold. And this causes too many women to rely on their coochies to get them through in life. In our society, the moment that a woman becomes sexually active, she realizes that her coochie has value to certain men. So, automatically, many women try to figure out how to benefit from the value of their coochies. Many women also feel a great sense of power knowing that they can control and manipulate men. What women need to understand is that coochie is equivalent to currency, but it is not gold.

However, it is also true that one of the men I am currently dating made the statement "Women who make more than 6-figures are un-date-able." And, recent statistical study of online dating site revealed that women will date men judged to be in the bottom 10% for appearance if they also have incomes over approximately $250,000/yr., but women who are judged to be in the bottom 10% for appearance are deemed to be un-date-able by all men no matter how high their income.

Flashback. My very assertively upwardly-mobile shop-aholic/status-oriented mother to me, (1982), as I am about to leave the house wearing a black string bikini and some short-shorts, "A man won't buy the cow, if he can get the milk for free." My mother to me, (2010), upon learning that I am dating a much older man, "Well, better an old man's darling than a young man's slave." In 1982, it was my inclination to automatically reject and do the exact opposite of any advice my mother offered me. By 2010, after many years of therapy towards self-aware self-care, I became inclined towards at least considering what she had to say before making the decision to reject it and engage in the exact opposite behavior. In her own unique, terrible way, what my mother was trying to express is a very, very common universal female fear which is that she will lend her energy to a man and then be cast aside. Mid-20th century American version would be something like a woman works for 10 years as a secretary and cooks dinner every night to help her husband make it through med school and internship and then he dumps her for a younger, more attractive woman. Similar fears and dramas play out among the primitive villagers in "Voodoo Eros: Ethnological Studies in the Sex Life of the African Aborigines" Bryk and Sexton, 1933.

There is a common thread of wisdom to be found underlying the hodge-podge I have posted here. It has to do with getting in touch with your sense of purpose in life. You can not and will not find an appropriate partner(s) unless or until you are very self-aware about your sense of purpose. This is true whether you are a young man who is "just pimping/counting coup" or aimlessly drifting, or you are a middle-aged man who is bogged in a rut heading in the wrong direction or weighted down with responsibilities out of proportion to ability to assert authority, or you are an old man who is sitting too easy or sliding down in cozy comfort chair on the backside of a curve of previously exerted masculine energy now piled up as houses, cars, boats and uber-funds. The same-yet-opposite (doing it backwards in heels) holds true for any female (or person self-aware choosing to be primarily in feminine energy in relationship.)


Being frugal is not a purpose. Promoting frugality or conservation of resources might be a purpose. For example, if you are being frugal towards saving up enough money so you can use your time to create giant welded sculptures, then your purpose is "art" and "frugality" is just one of your tools or methods. So, you would be better served finding a partner who valued "art" even if she didn't have any knowledge or skills or inherent abilities in the realm of frugality, because that woman might make you a little bit crazy or frustrated at times, like somebody who chose to wear impractical shoes for a hike, but there wouldn't be this huge disconnect where you aren't even heading in the same direction, or you feel disrespected or misunderstood in your core purpose. A man who is clear and resolute in his core purpose will be extremely attractive to the right woman. OTOH, any man who is "just pimping" will attract a woman who is "just gold-digging" to the exact extent that is what he "deserves." This kind of trade is okay in the realm of self-aware play or fun, but not in the realm where two adults are attempting to form important contract.

If you accept the premise that "coochie is currency, but it is not gold" then, all other things being equal (which they rarely are), if you are a heterosexual man, you are going to have to determine how you will choose to pay P.O.P. in relationship. My strong suggestion, which I would offer to my own DS28 if he were inclined towards listening to one word his silly old mother had to say, would be that you choose to "pay" primarily with leadership skills or in ballroom dance lingo by "maintaining the frame." In some circumstances, money might be the appropriate or efficient tool to apply in the moment in the interest of "maintaining frame" while "pursuing purpose", but it can never substitute for the core practice. For instance, like frugality, physical health/fitness might be a tool or resource used in the pursuit of purpose. If you request that a female accompany you on a 4 hour bicycle ride towards the promotion of your physical health, and you notice that she is turning bright pink, and you choose to throw down for some better sunblock for her, that would just be a considerate thing to do, and would not make her think you were trying to buy your way into her panties. OTOH, if you are inclined towards overly grouchy, err-on-the-side-of-cheap-rather-than-frugal or selfish-rather-than-self-aware behavior, which would cause you to make derogatory comments on the likely lack of intelligence or fore-thought of people who do not apply or pack adequate sunscreen then you may find yourself at a future date engaged in lonely contemplation of statistics related to health expenses likely to be incurred by men over the age of 40 who do not get laid at least twice a week.