Love is expensive
If money goes before,
All ways do lie open.
— Shakespeare
Is that quote implying that money opens all doors, makes life easier, allows more creature comforts? Well, they do say that money makes the mare run. But having money is one thing, holding on to it is another matter. It’s not how much you earn, but how you spend it that’s important, as many people who are in big jobs but always playing catch-up have learnt.
“Look how much money that man earning yet he’s always broke.”
And yet, in contrast, the seemingly poor lady who struggles with low-paying jobs can still afford to send her children to school, plus buy the necessary stuff without burdening other people. She knows how to work that dollar and make it stretch.
And still, there is another category of people who start out with more than a little extra cash at their disposal, but find out that it dwindles faster than an ice cube sitting in the Portmore sun. That’s the person who has fallen in love. Why do they say ‘fall in love’ though, as if it’s a downward spiral or tumbling off a cliff?
For some reason, being in love lets people spend more than they normally would. It’s as if those hormones, fuelled by heightened testosterone and estrogen levels, let people loosen their grip on money.
After all, it has been said that this love element is akin to a touch of insanity, and we have all heard that a fool and his money are soon parted.
“ Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact;
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman, the lover;
All is frantic.
That’s from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, written so long ago, but still applicable to this day. Would you trust your finances to a madman? Then, by extension, would you trust your finances to a man who’s in love, based on the correlation? To compound this, there’s no fool like an old fool, so an old man who’s in love is an even greater financial liability and risk than any other person.
So, let’s see why love is expensive and if it only affects old fools or others, right after these responses to my take on ‘Sex suppressants’.
Hi Tony,
Just as sailors of olden times were given saltpetre to suppress their sexual urges, male prisoners back in the day were given the same or a similar concoction for the same reason. Today’s prisoners are given no such medication, so as to preserve their civil rights. Prison rape is rampant and young guys had better not bend over to pick up dropped soap in the communal shower. I can understand why some women would take suppressors, concocted or otherwise, but not why men would voluntarily do so.
Robert
Brampton
Ontario, Canada
Hey Tony,
My wife hasn’t got to take any sex suppressants as she hasn’t had the urge in years. I think that the wedding ring was suppressant enough. Sure, she’ll do her wifely duties once in a while when it looks bad, but I know that she’s only going through the motions, without any motion, if you know what I mean. For some women, marriage is the real sex suppressant.
Marlon
I recently read an article in the Sunday Observer titled ‘Love’s Financial and emotional toll’. It touched on areas such as: Take care of your finances; Make a budget; Have an emergency fund; Start investing; Get out of debt. All sage advice that people should follow, whether they’re in love or not.
But being in love has a tremendous impact on a person’s finances, and this begins from they’re very young too, as any schoolboy being involved with a girl can attest to. And when I say being in love, there are degrees of love, but the extent does not matter, as long as that bug bites you, the itch to spend emerges.
Even if it’s an infatuation — puppy love as they call it — or full-blown heart-pounding, pulse-raging, shortness of breath love, it has an impact on expenses. Is it because love turns people fool-fool as we say in Jamaica, echoing what Shakespeare said about love and insanity, and, by extension, loosens the knots of generosity, making the person more willing to part with their money?
First of all, let’s take the guy who’s young and single. He spends all on himself, his car, his clothes, his food and drinks, and his entertainment. Then he meets a young lady, his baby, and now has to not only spend on himself, but also on her. Is that why men call their women, baby, or babes, because just like a pregnant woman, he’s now eating for two?
He may only like her at first, but as that like grows into love he discovers that his expenses grow proportionately and exponentially. He now has to spend more on gas, for he has to pick her up frequently, then he has to take her out to nice places — movies, nightclubs parties, dinner. Yes, women love to be fed, and that all adds up. They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but could it be said that the way to a woman’s parts is also through her stomach?
COVID may have been a bad thing, but it sure saved a lot of people from high expenses, as so many places of entertainment were closed. “Thank God for COVID, and everything lock down or I’d be broke by now.”
So, even as he falls deeper and deeper in love and his expenses grow, his income remains the same, and it doesn’t take a financial genius to do the calculations and see that it just does not add up. Income plus love equals expenses. That’s the love expenses equation.
Combine that with the fact that some women have no conscience when it comes to expenses and will drain the man of his resources faster than he can read the menu. Of course, some men are foolish that way and try to buy women’s love, but even if they’re not, the natural order of society dictates that the man spends on the woman.
Many men have lost money by loving women, but few men have lost women by loving money. But the deeper that he loves is the more expenses that he accrues. The more that he loves is the more that he has to show that he loves. It was Romeo who said to Juliet, ‘How do I love thee, let me count the ways.’ Maybe he should have said, ‘How do I love thee, let me count my pay.’
Christmas/new year spending has to be a substantial expense, for he loves and has to show it. When he was single he could go where he wanted to, spend exactly how much he wanted to, and still have change left over. But the love equation leads to financial folly, for the lady wants to go to certain places, and he has to show how much he loves her by acceding to her wishes.
When he was single he could settle for a box lunch and a juice, but being in love requires that he spends on dinner at a nice restaurant with waiters who have to be tipped. Before he even has a chance to recover in January, Wham! Valentine’s Day has him staring down the barrel of a 12 gauge multi-flowered bouquet of roses, backed up by expensive chocolates.
Then, if he happens to fall deeper in love, his expenses increase in direct proportion to his feelings. He may now be thinking about an engagement, and you know how some women are, they measure a man’s love by the size of the ring. Remember that saying about the measure of greatness not being found on a yardstick? Forget about it, the bigger the better, as far as some women are concerned.
“He must really love her a lot, look at the size of the diamond ring that he gave her.”
But if you think that the engagement was expensive, just wait until the wedding comes around. Many young couples spend enormous amounts of money on their wedding day and start the marriage deep in debt.
Remember, being in love addles the brain, and brings out a generosity in people that never seemed to exist before.
“Imagine, the old man gave the woman everything that he owned and has nothing left now.”
Women are afflicted too, for some of them — usually the ones without a man for a long time and a little up in age — find themselves accruing expenses that they didn’t have before. So desperate and grateful are they, that money is no object and no expenses are spared, for love is in the air. So whether you like it or not, love is expensive, but at least if it’s only money that it costs you, then you’re still fortunate.
More time.
seido1yard@gmail.com
Footnote: “War is hell. If nominated I will not run; if elected, I will not serve. It is those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation.” So said General William Sherman. And yet mankind is so warlike with savagery based on religion, politics, domination and plain bad mind from pre biblical days until now. The Crusades in Europe, World War I and II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Middle East, Ukraine, and others that don’t even make the news. No matter what your politics are, seeing innocent people being decimated, bombed and displaced by a cruel, merciless dictator is heart-rending. We pray for peace.