Student Question
Hello Master, I met this man who is still working on his PhD. From my perspective, he seemed to have great prospects ahead of him — a future annual salary of over a million, willing to hand over his paycheck to his future wife, cook for her, and take her home.
But he told me that doing his PhD left him no opportunities to meet women. That immediately felt off to me. Shanghai has more women than men, his university is no exception, and there are plenty of social mixers on any college campus.
Still, I agreed to meet him in person.
After we met, there were no gifts, no flowers. Then he told me he comes from an impoverished county — and instead of ever taking me home or cooking for me, not once, it was actually me feeding him.
Yet he has a paid internship where he lectures. His phone is the latest iPhone. His own life is perfectly comfortable.
He’s already in the second semester of his third PhD year. The job market right now is brutal. Top private equity firms only want pure mathematics PhDs — recruiters told him straight out that the best he can realistically hope for is a few hundred thousand a year, with relocation support. His specialization isn’t elite-tier; the market is already saturated. The truth is, he can barely keep his own head above water.
I’m not the only woman he’s done this to. His victims are mostly from middle-class families — pretty, romantically-minded girls. None of them work in finance, so none of them had any way to fact-check his industry claims. They just let him perform.
This man operates ruthlessly, and he’s practiced at it. Before him, I’d already dealt with a string of unreliable men and was at a low point. I thought I’d finally found someone decent. It turns out there were multiple women he deceived.
Master, how do I avoid falling into this kind of situation again?
Master Chi’s Response
I want to say this to women: try to develop relationships from within your existing social circle. After all, academic credentials can be bought on Xianyu (China’s secondhand marketplace) these days.
A lot of young women carry what I’d call a degree filter — the moment they see impressive academic credentials, they develop feelings and lose their basic judgment. And this particular man, as you described, has a very polished script. He can lie without his eyes so much as flickering. That kind of person is easy prey for impressionable young women.
He’s a con man. Many young women fall for him — not because they were after his performance of status, but because they haven’t yet developed enough social experience to recognize the darker side of human nature.
People who are more socially seasoned can sense when something is wrong. They cut their losses early and won’t even agree to meet in person.
This is why developing a relationship with someone your circle already knows is the safer path. There’s a baseline of trust, and the odds of being deceived drop considerably.
The other thing is this: stop giving so much weight to useless halos.
You saw his high education and high income and felt drawn to him — yet his attitude toward you was poor, his character and conduct clearly lacking. That should have been enough to turn you off completely.
Women shouldn’t be so dazzled by displays of strength. It makes you easy to manipulate. Too many people encounter someone with academic credentials, a high income, or a prestigious-sounding career and completely lose their footing — their judgment collapses.
Don’t let a shiny surface become a thick filter that conceals what’s really underneath: character, values, and personality.
Approach with a grounded, clear mind. Make the effort to genuinely understand who a person actually is. That’s how you avoid choosing wrong and being taken advantage of.