Husband Of Tradwife Abandons & ‘Evicts’ Her From Their Home — ‘I Wish I Had Made Different Decisions’
She urges other young women not to make the same mistakes that she did.
Gladskikh Tatiana / Shutterstock A former tradwife issued a warning to all young women about the reality of depending on a man for financial support after experiencing it all come crashing down
The tradwife's husband suddenly abandoned her and 'evicted' her from their home.
In Jennie Gage's since-deleted video, the 49-year-old mom-of-4 explained that her husband one day up and left her and their children for a 19-year-old escort, leaving her to fend for herself and provide for their children.
She recalled the day she realized her marriage was over when buying groceries at Trader Joe's.
"I swiped my card, and it was declined," she said. "I should have had a ton of money in that account, and it was all gone."
"My name had never been on one of our homes. My name hadn't been on our vehicles. My name wasn't on the Mercedes that I was driving at the time that our marriage ended. He was able to evict me from the condo that we were renting together," she explained.
In an essay written for Business Insider, Gage admitted that she'd become a traditional or tradwife, which is a term that has become quite popular on social media. It typically denotes a woman who believes in and practices the traditional roles of marriage and womanhood. So for Gage, she was cooking and cleaning, everything was homemade, she was taking care of the children, and fulfilling her expected "duties" as a wife.
However, due to this role, she'd lost all of her financial independence, as her husband was the one who provided money. She didn't own a single credit card and would get money from her husband, Jake, in envelopes full of cash. Once their marriage was over, he was free to leave and start a life with someone else, while Gage was left to pick up the pieces.
Irene Miller / Shutterstock
She assumed that some of her homemaking skills would transfer over to a job.
"I right away put together a resume, talked about all of the work that I had done in our family businesses, and went out and started interviewing for jobs," Gage explained. "And there was not a person in this entire world who wanted to hire a 46-year-old who had been a stay-at-home mom since she was 20."
The first and only job that Gage was able to secure after her divorce was working as an assistant in an elementary school classroom for $11 an hour for 4 hours a day. She recalled that the only reason why she was still able to pay her rent that first month was because her followers were supporting her content and she was earning money through social media.
"It just kind of [angers] me that I went into my marriage thinking that I had a 100% success rate," she added. "I didn't have an exit strategy. I didn't have any way to support myself if things went south, and here I am."
You should never fully depend financially on your partner. It's important to work on skills, have a part-time job, or have money stored away in case the unexpected happens and you have to fend for yourself. Gage pointed out that she wished someone would have told her that when she was 20, and that she shouldn't believe that a man is the only plan you need to have.
It can be daunting at first to take those initial steps of being the sole provider for yourself after living so many years under the financial support of a spouse, but it's imperative to have a backup plan, no matter what. It's easy to say that your marriage is forever, but the reality is, you can't see into the future.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.