Picture a single, cash-strapped brother in your mind. He could be a full-time student living off of financial aid, a recent grad who is underemployed at a low paying gig, or a man who is simply between jobs and currently searching for work.

The man in your mind’s eye is very single, trying to get his life together, and like most single folks of any socioeconomic reality, he wants to have a romantic connection with another person. Yet, he’s constantly inundated with things like this:

IF YOUR BROKE ASS AINT GOT A JOB, WHAT BUSINESS DO YOU HAVE SWEATING ON TOP OF SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER?! — RIP baba. (@y3miii_) October 5, 2016

Men literally have one job. Don’t be broke. They don’t get pregnant. They don’t have kids. They’re bigger and stronger on average. — Lilith (@Liberienne) December 6, 2016

Men with no money shouldn’t be in a relationship, yes https://t.co/cwB8cIkIeT — Yam Yam (@Intemnandi) November 28, 2016

Because this brother is constantly hearing that he needs to be successful—a truly subjective concept—in order to bring value into a woman’s life, he continues his grind with a more singular focus, realizing that building with a woman is effectively off the table, because his intrinsic worth must be actualized through establishing himself as a success. So he detaches himself from the prior goal of finding a compatible partner, to simply entertaining casual encounters until he’s “where he wants to be.”

He realizes that broke men hold no value, and in this society “value” isn’t just a synonym for worth, but rather a wholesale evaluation of his masculinity. And in a world where so many of us struggle to define and accept what our masculinity truly means to us, he blindly ties his masculinity to a dollar figure, material possessions, and/or a job title.

But here’s the kicker. This same man who refrained from building serious relationships with women when he was broke, now finds himself in casual “situationships” with women who are interested in building a serious relationship with him now—but not solely due to the fact—that he’s more successful. But he turns them away because he has yet to achieve his requisite level of success—the same success he’s partially motivated to achieve because it would make him feel personally secure enough in his own value as a man to pursue a serious relationship.

The mental roadblock that many men face on their own road to success is navigating their way around being defined as less of a man due to their inability to provide more or equal to the woman they want to date.

Broke men hold no value in relationships, but the more successful some men become, the less value relationships hold to them. There are a good deal of single, successful men out here who are only inclined to offer women flings, as opposed to substantive romantic connections. So what causes that switch?

Well, the truth is that single successful men have a serious dating conundrum: attempt to build with a woman and risk being labeled as a broke ass dater, or get successful now, leave serious dating on the back burner, and attempt to find love at a potentially less personally fulfilling time in their life.

As men, many of us love the idea of growing with a woman, i.e. “starting from the bottom”. For us, it’s an unmistakable act of loyalty, appreciation, faith, and love to witness a woman stick by us before we become anything of note. This is why we collectively latch onto stories about athletes, entertainers, and other influential men who have been with their woman through their broke days. For example, take this comment from Cory Hardrict about meeting his wife Tia Mowry:

“I had odd jobs. I worked at K-Mart, graveyard shift, security. That’s when I was just grinding man. I met my wife during them days. She was with me. She was just coming out of Sister, Sister, but they had everything man and I didn’t have anything. I had a studio apartment, sleeping in the corner, no furniture for almost two years. I think it was what my wife saw in me. She saw an honest man who had a dream. I just had a vision, man.”

Yet women unmistakably know that for every Cory Hardrict, there’s fifty-leven musty dudes who have absolutely no inclination to better themselves. Some men want a love story like Tia and Cory’s, while some just want to use the idea of Tia and Cory’s love for their own self-interested, manipulative purposes. Because of this ugly truth, women who work hard as hell to attain what they have in life want a man who is willing to work equally hard, so they avoid “unsuccessful” men.

This creates women’s own single, successful man relationship conundrum: does she go about the business of attempting to evaluate a man’s inner most character traits like motivation, authenticity, and being a self-starter to determine if he’s truly worthy of invested time and emotion? Or does she skip over that stage to find herself a man who is already successful and interested in a serious relationship (which will probably be harder to find)?

The answer to those conundrums will undoubtedly rest at the feet of personal choice and individual desire, but there is one thing that must be added to this conversation in order to bring about some measure of helpful insight. At some point, both men and women need to wholly evaluate our conceptualizations of success for ourselves, and then communicate that to the people we want to date.