It’s a bit on the grim side, but my grandfather used to always say: love flies out the window when you can’t eat or pay the bills. It was advice he used to give to my mom when she was younger, and she always loved repeating this nugget of wisdom to me. Hopeless romantic that I was, I never quite understood the idea — much less liked it.

Fast forward to last week, when our girl Mimiyuuuh made what ended up becoming a controversial statement: huwag kayong mag-date ng taong walang pera.

While I am still a hopeless romantic at my very core, growing up has also made me realize that there’s a kernel of truth to what Mimiyuuuh and my grandfather were saying. It’s just that, like most aphorisms, one needs context and there are degrees to these things. So let’s talk about why this advice isn’t as anti-poor as it sounds.

8. It shouldn’t be anti-poor to want financial stability.

It may be anti-poverty, but it’s not anti-poor. Ultimately, relationships are about happiness, and this fetish about “suffering for love” romanticizes the harsh realities of relationships instead of just accepting it as part of the package. In romanticizing it, we make it seem that without adversity, then the love can’t possibly be pure and true. Huh?

So what does this have to do with having money? Quite simply, wanting a relationship to not be complicated by money issues is not a bad thing at all, and it’s not about the person per se, but the situation.

7. How a person is about money can be a relationship red flag.

Mimiyuuuh may not be known for her eloquence, but anyone who knows her acknowledges that she is a kind and humble person who has not let internet fame change her (much). It’s in that inelegance of speech that she did not put the necessary qualifiers in “huwag kang mag-date ng walang pera,” which was the context of the entire video, if you bothered watching it.

What she meant went beyond the headline: It’s not about dating someone with no money, it’s about dating someone who would use you to get money, in her case, by borrowing money from her and turning her into a cash cow. Surely we’ve met people who more or less qualify as “no money” yet do not have these attitudes about money, preferring to do what they can to earn their keep. When it’s about the person and not the situation, it’s because of their attitudes about money, and not about the lack of money in and of itself. You just don’t expect that kind of nuance from Mimiyuuh, but that’s clearly what she meant.

6. Pinoys have some toxic notions about love, family, and money that we still haven’t dealt with.

It’s probably what some people would call “woke,” but there has only recently been pushback against the idea of parents treating their kids as lottery tickets out of poverty, and that’s problematic behavior the kids have to deal with for all of their lives. While yes, we shouldn’t be harshly judging people when this is the cultural upbringing we have to put up with, not pushing back against it will never change it for the better.

5. It also depends on you.

Are you truly capable of seeing someone as an equal even if you are significantly better off than your partner? The best relationships are partnerships — if you look at your significant other and see them as someone inferior to you because of their financial status, well first of all, that’s definitely problematic, but if that’s who you are, then you might both want to re-examine your own attitude towards money and your search filter for dates.

Orrrr, you could be the person with no money in this equation, and yeah, if that’s the case, you should know better than to treat your partner as a piggy bank. Just don’t.

4. Because you want to build forever.

And when building something, anything costs money. We know, we know: it sounds so cruel when people say “it’s just practical,” but it really is. But what if you are indeed with someone who is economically challenged? Then it goes back to that attitude we’re talking about: what are they going to do about it? It always goes back to attitude, because surely, a loving relationship isn’t about being stagnant but wanting what’s best for each other.

3. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure helps.

Do you know that it’s expensive to be poor? Everyone knows it’s cheaper to buy in bulk, but if you can’t afford the 120 Pesos bottle of shampoo, you’ll go for the 12-peso sachet that is obviously a lot less than 1/10th of the bottle. These little stresses add up in so many ways we don’t notice.

Nobody’s saying you have to be rich to be happy, but not having to worry about the roof over your head (even if you’re just renting a very small place) or where your next meal is coming from sounds pretty important for happiness. Because even if you’re blissful while you’re starving to death, how long is that going to last if you’re not going to do anything about it?

2. Plain compatibility.

Compatibility is one of those things we tend to overlook when our hormones are on overdrive, or if the other person is really hot. But it’s important. When your economic backgrounds differ too much, the things you enjoy, the things you’re used to, and the things you want to do differ so radically. But all that is workable — until it’s not.

So ask yourself — is the economic gap a compatibility issue, or is it something you both can deal with? Because if it’s not, then that’s the same as intellectual compatibility, or sexual compatibility, or compatibility period. It’s a factor that we never acknowledge when we’re in love, but once it’s over, we see that all the signs of incompatibility were always there.

1. Because you shouldn’t be keeping count.

Yes, you heard that right, and we know it sounds counterintuitive. But think about it. When we’re around a group of friends who always fight over who gets to pay for the bill first, do we keep track of who paid the bill last? No, not really. We only ever do that when someone in the group noticeably never tries to fight over paying the bill first. Any other time, it’s just a game people (with privilege, yes, because nobody’s denying that here) play, and if we have a friend who can’t play along, they’re usually close enough to us to be able to tell us with honesty that they can’t, and we still don’t keep count. It’s only when that person is clearly trying to get away with it that we do.

Because, as we have been harping on so many times here, it’s about the money, yes, but secretly, it’s really about the attitude towards money. Surely, if you were the better-off partner, if your partner has that willingness to improve themselves and you have the means to help, you would, right? And we don’t mean a handout: we mean giving them the opportunity and the best situation for them to improve their financial standing.

Absolutely. And when you’re in that kind of relationship? Nobody’s keeping count. Because nobody has to.

What’s your take on this issue? Tell us what you think in the comments!