The long game (part 1: cos all the good guys were taken) & Hong Kong's multi-millionaire dating service.

So this is Hong Kong

Oh and this is Hong Kong dough… in case, you know, you take this blog too literally.

So before I write about my friends trying to get me to join (infiltrate) a Hong Kong millionaires’ dating service (awesome friends, awesome *rolls eyes*), I think it is probably time to introduce the long game, hell let’s turn it into a series; why you would play it, how to perfect it and eventually… well you will see.

The Long Game (Part 1): Why?

Erm, in case you need a definition:

The long game: essentially positioning yourself, so that you get a guy in the medium to long-term as said guy is either unavailable in the short-term or is available in the short-term but is mildly retarded and doesn’t see your value.

This time last year I played this game with 3 guys consciously and actively. Two of them had girlfriends (I later learnt so did the 3rd) and here in lies the ethical issue, the long game is usually used on people who are attached. It isn’t exactly an ‘ethical venture’ and is definitely not ‘cool’ (even the tamer version that I played), so what the hell led someone like me to experiment with it?

Honestly… the D word. Divorce, or more precisely getting married, coming out the other end and the penny dropping that while married all the good guys got snatched up. All of them, all the good guys were gone.

THEY WERE ALL GONE

(Yes I am shamelessly using a cute cat to distract you from judging me for playing the long game.) 

When the hell did this happen?? Apparently, sometime in my 8 year relationship and I of course never got the memo that went out to all the single ladies. But I did though didn’t I? All my single friends constantly complaining about how few good guys were left, begging me to set them up. Fucking hell, those girls were NOT kidding.

I suddenly understood my single friends when they complained that the only boys left were the, you know, ‘special’ ones:

 

To the extent that when you did come across a normal guy you acted a wee bit special yourself.

I was a good married girl; my eyes really didn’t wander in any noticeable way. So unlike some girls I hadn’t got a fall back catalogue and because my marriage was to my first sweetheart there was no back catalogue. There really were no catalogues at all, no binders full of men (first political joke of the blog *high five*), there wasn’t even a pamphlet, hell there was no point in bringing out a paper and pen. Ironically because I had been the ‘good girl’ I was now playing with a game that was not so good. The thing about irony is this; it is not always funny. The other thing is, and this took some growing up on my part to realise, the good men really weren’t all taken, there were and are lots and lots of good guys out there, they just need finding. Plus lots of the guys that were taken, on closer inspection, turned out to be kind of blah. But before I realised this I only had the words of a friend (ironically one of my few happily married friends), said to me a few weeks post separation: ‘Don’t worry hun, the guys are all taken now, but you will see, they will ALL come back around’. And so, in full view of my conscience, I committed to the long game.

Hong Kong Millionaires’ Dating Service

I used to be a rich girl. Last week this meant that my friends thought they would talk me through their rich divorcee friend’s life. I still can’t work out if it was a pep talk, meant as inspiration or just gossip.

So a girl is stuck out in a foreign city (Hong Kong), with divorce proceedings going on, a child (half Chinese) and nowhere to live. I also took the liberty of presuming that she had a broken heart and a shit tonne of baggage. Tragic story, just tragic… yeeeah, not so much.

See she has uber rich friends, who take her in, is about to be wealthy enough through divorce (note to self: next time) and most importantly is, without so much as a pause, on a mission to find multi-millionaire husband number two.

I genuinely don’t understand the desire for a millionaire but I really really don’t understand the husband thing. Who the hell wants a second husband so quickly, had her heart not exploded, had she not died a little inside and need reviving after her divorce?! Even if her need for a second husband is driven by her need to secure her financial position/social standing, would her emotional damage not override that? My friends insisted that she was a lovely human being, they also felt strongly that she didn’t appear to be carrying any baggage, that she wasn’t lamenting. It got me thinking, perhaps if I were driven by lifestyle, really driven, I too wouldn’t have time to lament. Maybe heartache is a luxury afforded to those of us not driven by materialistic luxury? Certainly the other extreme has been argued; that when you are fighting off starvation you have no time for heartache. Perhaps it works for either end of the scale. Alternatively they may just have really awesome happy pills in Hong Kong?

So my friends explained that my sister-divorcee signed up to a service for women looking for rich husbands. I have heard of these things. Dating services/spouse finders for the uber rich. Either your subscription costs are hefty or it is by the recommendation of a fellow uber rich friend. One of the universal truths of this world is this, money likes money, it likes money a lot. Hence my grinning when I heard that a Goldsmith was dating a Rothschild… of course they were.

Hong Kong of course is perfect, an international cosmopolitan cocktail of new and old money, apparently she had a serious relationship with a Russian, another with a Middle Easterner, another still with some Euro-trash guy. Although not a millionaire herself post divorce, she knew ‘money’ well and was quite acceptable a prospect for a millionaire. Of course in socialite-speak knowing money well means that you know how and where to spend it, how to generate the illusion of more money (socialites never actually make money directly but the family members that do know illusion is good for business) and of course how to entertain money (I think I just used the term ‘money’ as if it were a community). And so apparently came the moral of the story, my friends looked at me, their eyes lite up as though hit by genius: ’you could do that, you, YOU could so pull that off… we can come visit you in Hong Kong, it is really nice this time of year’.

Thanks guys.