Girls Just Wanna Have Funding?

I'm a 34-year-old man, newly single after a relationship that started in college. Though I love the work I do running a small nonprofit, I don't make tons of money. I'm worried that my inability to "provide" in any sort of lavish way will make it hard for me to attract post-college women. Do I need to win the lottery?

--Making A Difference

It is best if the dream date you're proposing isn't all in the presentation: "We have reservations tonight at a cozy new hot spot -- my studio apartment with the heat that won't shut off. Dress tropical!" I do often write about how women evolved to prefer male partners with high status -- men with the ability to "provide" (like by being a hotshot spearmeister who regularly brings home the bison, earning others' respect and loyalty). However, what's important to note -- and what has some bearing on your chances with the ladies -- is that ancestral humans lacked anything resembling "wealth" (portable, conservable assets). Though no modern woman wants a man who lives paycheck advance to paycheck advance, there's hope for you -- from research on one of the few cultures today in which men aren't the primary earners. Political scientist Nechumi Yaffe looked at ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel -- a community in which the men spend all day hunched over studying the Torah and the women are the breadwinners. Yaffe finds that, as in other cultures, the men the ultra-Orthodox women prefer as mates are those who are the best in their "field" -- which, in this community, comes out of the level of "religious devotion and piety" the men show. In other words, though men's status is a vital mating asset across cultures, "how status is achieved may be culturally specific." As for you, I'm guessing you don't work at a nonprofit because you hit your head and forgot to become a cold corporate tool. You're surely part of a community that shares your beliefs about the importance of making a difference. Chances are, many of the women in your world don't want some money-worshipping hedge fund buttknuckle. In other words, to ramp up your status, you need to stand out as a top do-gooder -- like by coming up with and implementing innovative ideas to ease people's suffering and make the world a better place. This should make you extremely attractive to a woman with similar values -- the sort who spends time every week beautifying the planet...and not because picking up trash along the highway is a condition of her probation for her DUI.