A few years ago, dating a man in finance<\/a> would’ve been something women<\/a> felt compelled to confess in, say, a dark room where nobody could possibly overhear them. <\/p>\n The act itself was almost a source of shame, one that reflected superficial values and cast you into a gold-digging caricature. Well, now it\u2019s more like a badge of honour that can be worn with pride, a trend to follow if you want to be like one of the cool girls.<\/p>\n Two years on from 29-year-old Megan Boni\u2019s viral TikTok jingle<\/a> (\u201cI\u2019m looking for a man in finance. Trust fund. 6ft 5in. Blue eyes\u2026\u201d) it seems that the brainwashing was successful \u2013 did I mention that all of the aforementioned men<\/a> are rather tall? \u2013 and whatever negative connotations we once associated with finance bros have long been forgotten. <\/p>\n Cold, obsessive, ruthless, and almost always bordering on alcoholism or sociopathy, the stereotypical finance guy is hardly someone that appeals.<\/p>\n So, have we had it wrong this whole time? It\u2019s a fascinating pivot when you consider the trajectory of the aforementioned celebrities\u2019 love lives; Kidman\u2019s most recent ex was a musician (Keith Urban)<\/a>. <\/p>\n Rodrigo\u2019s? An actor (Louis Partridge). And Witherspoon was married to Ryan Phillippe for eight years. <\/p>\n Creative men have long been the de facto partners for famous heterosexual women, the thesis being that they were the cool, smart, forward-thinking feminists with kind eyes and good hair. Everyone else was inferior debris.<\/p>\n Now, the tide has turned. It would be myopic to say it\u2019s all about the money, though arguably there\u2019s a pretty strong case to be made for high net worth women wanting to be with high net worth men. For Michelle*, 33, who has been dating a lovely, kind and generous financier for several months, it marks a surprising change from the string of emotionally unavailable, non-committal creatives she\u2019d dated previously. <\/p>\n \u201cWe spend a lot of time talking about stocks<\/a> and shares and where they\u2019re at today and where he hopes they’re going,\u201d she admits. \u201cI know how much he earned last year, how much he invested yesterday and so on. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve never had that happen with someone at this early-ish stage in the dating cycle. But, I suppose it\u2019s like dating a graphic designer and him sharing his latest work.\u201d The negativity tends to stem from other people, who are quick to judge Michelle\u2019s new partner before having even met him based on his career. <\/p>\n Creative men have long been the de facto partners for famous heterosexual women, the thesis being that they were the cool, smart, forward-thinking feminists. Now, the tide has turned<\/p>\n \u201cSome smirk, some snark and others go \u2018of course\u2019,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I think some of my friends<\/a> are a bit intimidated by it. But that\u2019s their issue with their own situations.\u201d <\/p>\n When it comes to dates, he also pays for everything. <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t decipher if it\u2019s because he\u2019s a very traditional gent or because he can and wants to. I have paid for some smaller things and he\u2019s been really grateful and quite shocked \u2013 I think a lot of people take him for granted and as a result he\u2019s quite scarred from the way previous partners have approached him and ultimately his wealth<\/a>. I haven\u2019t told him how much I earn.\u201d<\/p>\n For Jenny*, 33, the finance bro offers a refreshing alternative to the flaky, lethargic, and unreliable f*** boys she has dated in the past. \u201cThey\u2019re up at 5.30am, they\u2019re off to Third Space, and they look annoyingly good,\u201d she says. They\u2019re also extremely proactive, booking dates in advance, making reservations, choosing good restaurants and sending links to menus. <\/p>\n \u201cThey also let you know that they like you and take charge, so you really know where you stand with them and don\u2019t have to mind-read as you do with other guys,\u201d Jenny adds. \u201cBut I never have the feeling these men are going to be my soulmate. They\u2019re mostly just nice, organised robots that look good and pay for dates.\u201d<\/p>\n Typically, these men also have a deals-first mindset, which can colour the dating experience with a unique, financial-hued shade. \u201cI tend to be quite avoidant, and I\u2019ve noticed that the finance bros sense that and their competitive nature comes out. <\/p>\n They really want to win the deal, and they see dating someone as a way of winning. So, they come on really thick and fast at the beginning. But then they do tend to get bored once they\u2019ve broken me down or I start liking them.\u201d<\/p>\n Working in finance requires a fast pace: money moves quickly, and so must you. <\/p>\n Perhaps, then, it makes sense that men in these industries will have a particularly focused and slightly ruthless approach to dating. It\u2019s the way they\u2019re built to operate. <\/p>\n That has certainly been my experience; while I\u2019ve never dated anyone in finance for a long period of time, I\u2019ve gone on the odd date here and there with men in the sector: investment bankers and venture capitalists, mostly. On the whole, they have not been good experiences. <\/p>\n There was the very tall man who told me he wanted to buy a Ferrari<\/a> because of the \u201cstatus\u201d it offered him. The curly-haired VC who called his female boss a psychopath and made sexist remarks over cocktails. And the French banker who bailed on a second date with an hour to spare because he wanted to take drugs at a music festival instead. <\/p>\n If I was going to find commonalities between these men, it would be that all of them valued money a little too much, aligning it with their self-worth to mask some other kind of inadequacy. Forget about men in finance; it\u2019s the ones trying to hide their low sense of themselves you need to really watch out for. It just so happens that many of them happen to work in the same sector.<\/p>\n There are other risk factors, too. \u201cI dated two finance bros in my twenties, both until we hit the two- to three-month mark, which I think came down to their inability to commit,\u201d says Yasmin*, 36. \u201cTheir careers were so full of high-risk, volatility and speed, that I think their personal lives became quite similar. I didn’t get the sense that they were really looking for something stable; from the chats we had, that always seemed quite boring to them.\u201d<\/p>\n I never have the feeling these men are going to be my soulmate. They\u2019re mostly just nice, organised robots that look good and pay for dates<\/p>\n *Jenny, 33<\/p>\n Of course, the wealth was a nice perk. \u201cI did love the fact that they could take me to nice restaurants and I could accept them paying for the bill without feeling guilty, but that quickly wore off,\u201d adds Yasmin. \u201cIn the end, I found them quite superficial. Their careers were so focused on money and image that it made their conversations a bit dull. Personally, I wouldn’t do it again. I’d much rather connect with people I can have deep chats with and I think with the nature of their jobs and lives, that just wasn’t something they were able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n There are risks, however, to becoming embroiled with someone in such high net worth circles, particularly where marriage is concerned. Consider Belle Burden, who confessed to having little knowledge of her husband\u2019s financial career in her memoir, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, and was subsequently left dealing with myriad losses after he unexpectedly abandoned the family home. As a descendant of the American dynasty, the Vanderbilt family, Burden had her own wealth, too, so it\u2019s a unique case, but one that speaks to the high stakes of marrying someone in a sector you aren\u2019t a part of.<\/p>\n How do the men in finance themselves feel about any of this? Well, Andreas, 35, says assumptions can obviously be grating: \u201cThe supposition from 80 per cent of women I meet is that I\u2019m a f***-boy for being a banker,\u201d he explains. \u201cI\u2019ve found that frustrating and felt like I was sometimes pushing water uphill.\u201d <\/p>\n Equally vexing are the high expectations on dates in terms of cost. \u201cI had a few instances where I pitched going to The Toucan or French House for a relaxed Soho drink with dates and had their noses turned up,\u201d Andreas adds. \u201cThe strong implication was that they expected better because I could afford more. In the end, I decided that it was a red flag if anyone turned their nose up<\/a> at a relaxed boozer.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, everyone knows that a person\u2019s job cannot dictate their character. While I\u2019ve had negative experiences with men in finance, I\u2019ve arguably had more with those in creative careers. <\/p>\n How someone behaves in a romantic relationship hinges on so much more than their CV could possibly declare, like their childhood, their attachment style, and the nature of their relationship with their mother. <\/p>\n It would be all too easy to dismiss every man in finance as a walking red flag, just as it would be too simple to give them a green one because of this newfound celebrity endorsement. <\/p>\n The best any of us can hope to do is judge a person based on who they are, not what they do. But for those who are dating finance bros, they may want to watch out for a lack of commitment \u2013 and beware their ruthless sides making their way into their romantic relationships. <\/p>\n *Names have been changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-734933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"No](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2223219184.jpeg\")
No more drama: Olivia Rodrigo and her ex-boyfriend, the actor Louis Partridge \u2013 she\u2019s recently been spotted with a man in private equity (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Reese](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2279778370...jpeg\")
Reese Witherspoon has been dating Oliver Haarmann for years \u2013 he\u2019s a private equity financier and a minority owner of the New York Islanders (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n