"Do You Know What I'm Worth?": A Ridiculous New York Adventure.

One thing I learnt, when living in New York, is that people put money at the top of their dating CVs.

Whether it’s because the high pressures of city life encourage high expectations, or whether the NYC crowd are just more superficial, never has hard cash been so boldly touted as on dates in Manhattan.

The problem with dating for the dollar, is that both players have to do a balancing act.

The 'Golddigger' has to craft a clever sequence of questions, in order to unearth Hamptons houses and career trajectories, while sounding disinterested, even bored.

The 'Benefactor', a willing participant in this commodity exchange, has to peacock his riches in the face of his date, without seeming too crass.

Very often, actual paycheck discussions crop up on NY dates so, unlike us coy English folk, the Amex cards are on the table from the get go.

However, a worse situation does exist.

There is a breed of young dater, who hasn't quite made it yet, but still feels the need to advertise his wealth, so he resorts to waving parental bucks in your face.

When a young sprout throws money at a situation, I suspect Daddy is footing the bill.

The Columbia Undergrad

This happened to a friend...

A Londoner in New York decided to make the most of the dating life out there, so hit a sweaty club in the Meatpacking District.

Avoiding the sleazeballs, she opted for a sweet and slightly chubby Columbia student, three years her junior.

They danced for an hour and then exchanged details.

Two days later, he called.

"I’m on the other line to Disneyland Florida. We’re going!"

She was not one to normally shirk adventure, but she wondered whether a minibreak in a children’s theme park was perhaps a little much for a first date.

"Can we just do dinner?," she suggested.

Sure.

Arriving that Friday night in a nice part of town, she had high expectations.

Sitting down to dinner, he speed ordered FOUR tequila shots – then barking at her to "down nit down nit," like a jock in a room full of teammates.

"Order anything you want," he piped up, "I can literally buy it all."

She decided upon a normal amount of food and picked at it while her companion necked Jack and Jose and refused to touch his Lobster Thermidor.

As the meal drew to a close, the restaurant-come-club politely informed the pair that they’d need to hand over the table to the night revelers.

Sweet respite!

But, the undergrad was not ready to quit, so he went ahead and bought a club table.

"Just for the two of us??," his date piped up. "I don’t think we could drink a magnum of vodka on a Tuesday."

He pooh-poohed her objections and ordered it anyway.

The student worked his way through the bottle, sporadically running from the table to the floor to pull unsuspecting girls to join them.

After an hour of this, the Londoner decided to leave. She thanked him profusely and said she’d see him soon.

Walking down the pavement to find a taxi, she was finally free.

She wasn’t.

After a kerfuffle with the bouncers, the boozed up young sprout ran over to her, dribbling drunk and ready to let loose.

"How can you walk away from this?," he yelped, "You don’t even know what I’m worth!."

She let him carry on.

"You know you’ll never have a man spend this on you again, so you BETTER make sure you know what you’re doing."

Quite sure, she turned, ran and jumped into a cab.

Later that night she received a voicemail from his female flatmate.

"Gurl, I don’t know what you did to him, but you ain’t never gonna get something like that again."

Thank f*ck, she thought. But what a story.

So what’s the takeaway here?

That cash-rich students in New York can’t date?

Not really, some can.

The point is that there were early warning signs that this Daddy’s boy was going to be a bit intense (read: deranged).

It’s not that hard to read people and it’s not that hard to seek out those who are more in love with the spectacle and expense of dating, than the prospect of actually connecting.

The question is, do you choose to read the warning signs or do you, very occasionally, just date for the story?

Nana is the newest addition to our Yahoo Lifestyle blogging team. She's runs a bespoke dating service called Social Concierge.

Check out her full bio HERE.

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