I need to vent about a conversation that left me absolutely floored over the weekend.
I was having coffee with a close friend of mine. She’s currently earning about S$4,000 a month gross. In Singapore’s current economic climate, that’s a decent, respectable mid-career salary, but let’s be real—after CPF deduction, her take-home pay is around S$3,200. After she factors in her insurance, student loans, food, giving money to her parents, and shopping, she is completely living paycheck to paycheck with zero savings.
Yet, during our catch-up, the topic of dating came up. She’s been single for a while and actively using the apps. She casually dropped a bombshell criteria that she filters guys by: She will immediately swipe left or reject any guy who doesn’t own a car or relies on the MRT/bus.
I thought she was joking, but she was dead serious. Her rationale? She claims that a guy taking public transport shows a “lack of ambition,” and she doesn’t want to squeeze on the East-West Line on a Friday date night. She wants to be picked up and sent home in comfort.
Here is the absolute kicker, and why the hypocrisy makes my blood boil: She took the MRT to meet me for coffee.
She literally tapped out of the gantry using her EZ-Link card, walked into the cafe, and then had the audacity to look down on guys who do the exact same thing she does every single day. The absolute double standard is mind-boggling. She demands a partner who lifestyle-inflates into a luxury bracket that she herself cannot afford to step foot in.
With COE prices consistently hovering well above the S$100,000 mark, running a car in Singapore easily bleeds S$2,000 to S$2,500 a month. If a guy chooses not to blow his entire disposable income on a depreciating metal box just to look cool, it means he actually has functioning brain cells. He’s likely maximizing his CPF OA, putting money into index funds, and building an actual asset base.
But my friend wants to sit in the passenger seat of a car she can’t afford, funded by a guy she expects to subsidize her lifestyle, while she continues to take the bus to work every Monday morning. It feels like so many people in SG want a high-flying partner just to compensate for their own financial stagnation.
Are dating expectations in Singapore really getting this superficial, or is my friend just trapped in a massive, delusional echo chamber?