Men aren't a monolith. Some men DO have insecurities about being outearned by a woman. That's pretty common.
Some men DO engage in what would be called gold digger behavior if it came from a woman. Word from the ether is that it's becoming increasingly prevalent. The only times I personally have been affected by what I would call gold digging behavior from men is after my daughter was born and throughout her infancy. I got hit up a lot by mostly younger men (I was 33 when I had her) who grilled me about what benefits I had, insisted on educating me on what I could get, demanded to know why I didn't have any, and then suggested that I needed a man, they were available, and they didn't have nothing against kids even if they weren't theirs.
That ended once Urchling got past infancy and into toddlerhood. It wasn't a one time thing either.
The other thing that I consider gold digging behavior has to do with paying for a date. I personally prefer alternating who pays. Whoever pays for that date should also plan, because they're the one paying. That way neither party has to stress about money on the date and it takes a lot of pressure off all the way around. I have had men insist that for fairness the party who doesn't pay should get to plan and then, because they want it to be a "surprise", they spring costly venues on you when it's your week to pay and then leading up to their turn to pay, it's one not so subtle hint after another that they don't want to pay for costly dates. I'm making up terms here, but I would consider that passive aggressive gold digging or covert gold digging behavior.
That bugges me a lot back in the day, mostly because at the time Urchling was in school and while I'm not cheap about dates and make a decent enough living, I had no option to work overtime to cover a budget deficit at the time as a single parent, never knew when the school might spring an unexpected expense on you, or there might be a medical bill cause kids are going to be kids, and I've always been 100% financially responsible for Urchling's care. I have never gotten child support. Not to mention, if I go down in some way, there's no one to take care of Urchling long term.
So, male gold digging behavior caused me a lot of undue and unnecessary stress.
In fairness, I do not believe these men were all behaving this way out of a sense of entitlement or malice. I think at least some were just run away with themselves and being particularly obtuse, others were subconsciously getting even with women they perceived had wronged them, and others were just ignorant about the costs of raising a child and how fast and hard a medical cost hit can wipe you out or they just assumed that even though I didn't get child support, if I fell behind I could just go get money from Urchlings father and of course he would give me whatever I asked for. Because it's men who get shafted by family court and it's always in the woman's favor. Right.
