Man Doesn't 'Know How To Deal' With His Wife Becoming The Breadwinner — 'I've Been Busting My Behind For This Family'
Given the dynamics in their marriage, his reaction isn't exactly surprising.
fizkes / Shutterstock Money can be a touchy subject in marriages in general, but when it's the woman in a straight partnership bringing home the bacon, things can get even more fraught.
Such is the case for a man on Reddit whose wife has suddenly started outearning him, leaving him feeling slighted.
The man can't deal with his wife becoming the breadwinner now that she's making her own money.
According to recent studies, while female breadwinners are still in the minority, the number of such relationships is quickly growing, and it seems to be fueling quite a bit of consternation among men if certain corners of the internet are to be believed.
Count this man on Reddit among them. He wrote in a post that he and his wife "agreed on the traditional marital roles, I work and she stays at home looking after the kids."
Their two children are both under 3, which means she's spent the majority of their marriage either pregnant or taking care of their kids. But since her hobby has recently turned lucrative, it's left him struggling to cope with the new balance of things.
His wife began making a large income on social media, and he's upset now that he knows just how much money she's been making.
Social media started out as a creative outlet for his wife that "kept her sanity going" while she raised two small children. But over the past year, it has bloomed into a very lucrative income source.
"I didn’t ask her how much [she made]," he wrote. "I was just happy she was finally earning money for herself and was treating herself and us to nice new things."
fizkes / Shutterstock
He wrote that his income provides for them but doesn't allow for things like vacations or to buy a new car — something he and his wife have disagreed over. And it was this particular topic that revealed just how much his wife has been pulling down.
"Last week, she told me she was going to buy brand new Audi S3 within the next three months," he wrote. "I was very confused and asked her how, and she said she’s been earning."
His wife has made more than his yearly salary in just three months on social media.
"I knew she was making money but not as much as she did," he added. "Within three months, she saved £30k."
He's upset that his wife didn't tell him how much money she had been raking in, but when he brought it up to her, "she said I never gave her money for clothes or to do her hair or anything. And she didn’t think it’d be a big deal."
The situation has left him distraught. "I’ve been busting my [expletive] for this family," he wrote, "and now she’s earning more than my entire year's salary in months and not even having the decency to tell me."
He's happy about the extra money and what it will mean for their life and their kids, but her lack of transparency about it has left him "very angry."
According to some studies, straight couples with a female breadwinner are at much higher risk of divorce.
Couples coming to metaphorical blows over their income disparities is unfortunately extremely common, and it often spells the end of the marriage. An oft-quoted 2013 University of Chicago study found that heterosexual marriages with a female breadwinner are 50% more likely to end in divorce.
Studies have also shown that men who aren't the breadwinner are more likely to cheat on their wives as well—perhaps due to similar feelings to this man, who seems to feel deeply slighted by his wife's success.
Of course, trust and transparency are imperative to a marriage, so it's easy to understand why he'd be angry about her keeping her money a secret. But given the dynamic that seems to be at play in their marriage — one in which she's expected to just fall in line with his management of their finances — many readers felt like he was likely getting a taste of his own medicine.
"You are getting a glimpse of what it must have felt like for your wife for the last five years," one Redditor wrote. "Hopefully, you will realize that giving the breadwinner so much power in the household is problematic, whoever the primary breadwinner ends up being."
Moreover, even as his wife does her content creation job, she has still been handling all the household work — as studies have shown most female breadwinners do.
Keeping her money secret probably isn't the best way to handle the issue from a relationship standpoint. But given the dynamics at play, it's not really surprising that she decided to do with her money as she pleased and leave her husband out of it.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.