> Being rich is an inner value?Being successful is, and being rich is one of the markers for success. I had problems with this view as well until it was explained to me from a woman's perspective. The operating assumption being, as I said earlier, that men and women use different heuristics to do preliminary mate filtering. By and large, you get through the filter by being beautiful as a woman, and by projecting success as a man. The argument goes that beauty has absolutely nothing to do with inner values, while success does (false positives not withstanding).
Then again, there might be a huge cultural component to this. I come from Germany, which has the most unapologetically darwinistic dating scene I ever experienced. German girls are by and large no-nonsense, goal-oriented, and not prone to poetic whimsy.
> One could say that, 'in a very real sense, men love you for who you are (how is how you look not part of "who you are"?)
Hey, the darker part of my epiphany story is actually up to that conversation I had believed finding a mate was about finding a partner that matches your inner essence, finding someone who recognizes the "real you". So I had dismissed both success and beauty as meaningless, because they tell you nothing about that essence. Again, I was very young at that point and had a lot of misconceptions.