Unable to face the fact that attractive women wouldn’t give me the time of day unless I paid them a great deal, I instead looked down on them, thinking, “All she cares about is money. I don’t want a woman like that.” Is this a common mindset among dating club members?

Maezawa from the CEO’s office here. > I can’t get attractive women to pay attention to me unless I spend a ton of money. That means you can afford to spend a lot, right? If so, don’t be stingy in odd places—keep spending generously while seeing them, and use the experience to figure out what you can improve to become more attractive. In that sense, you’re actually in a pretty advantageous position. I think you should keep seeing different women and challenge yourself to find out how you can become a better version of yourself. I can’t say I understand all the usual psychology behind it, but I do think there’s a world you can come to understand by seeing lots of different women.

I’m だて◎ゆめ, a male member. I used to look down on women who seemed to be saying, “All you care about is money. I’d never want a woman like that.” But I’ve never looked down on them for it. From the very beginning, relationships through dating clubs are based, in a sense, on a transactional relationship. The relationships work on that understanding, and within that framework, there are both the transactional type and the pseudo-romantic type. I think people pursue their relationships according to whichever approach suits them. So, if someone is completely transactional, I think it’s only natural for money to be a major concern. Even with the pseudo-romantic type, when you take into account the age difference and the woman’s financial circumstances—why else would she be doing papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan)?—it seems reasonable to me. I think it’s best to view these as relationships entered into with that understanding. There may be some female members who are different, but I believe they’re extremely rare.