My wife made more then me (over twice as much) when I was in grad school. Not since. What’s important is that we both do what we like, and that we have enough. We have only shared bank accounts.
I’d love it if she sold her latest book for a boodle and made more than me.
I agree that the perceived status of the other job is probably more important than the money involved.
LOL. Then explain your statement. Where did the OP say that his coworkers’ wives were SAHMs?
I hope the future Mrs. Foxtrot makes more than I do. My career path doesn’t exactly make one rich.
We are close in salary, but he makes more. My job has more “prestige” or “clout” than his (plus, a rank!). I don’t think it bothers him at all, in fact, he seems really proud about it most of the time.
It sounds as though your guy has a typical macho dude job. If I were a soldier/cop/firefighter and my wife made a ton more money than me in an office/white collar job, I would take it as a personal honor. It would actually make me feel like *more *of a man.
I think there’s a matrix we’re honing in on here, where $ is on one axis and “cool factor” is on the other.
I heard once that a woman wants in a man one who is: 2 years older, 2 inches taller, and $20,000 richer.
(Please dont throw things.)
I am 2 years older, 4 inches taller, and <math time> about $30k/year richer. However, when you subtract the child support for my kids from my first marriage (I’m divorced), and add the Social Security for hers (she is a widow and my stepson is legally a survivor), we are almost exactly equal.
But I do the vast bulk of the laundry and dishes, and absolutely drop the hammer in the bedroom, so hopefully those things make up for any minor deviations from The Formula. 
My wife makes more than me, and will for probably most of the next decade. I made more than her for the last seven years or so. It’s not that huge a deal for either of us as long as we’ve got what we need. I do occasionally have male friends who look at me incredulously when I say what my wife does… but as often as not it’s “If I were in that situation, I’d be a professional stay at home dad!!” as much as “It’s cool that you’re comfortable with your wife making more than you”.
(She’s a MD; I worked while she was in med school, still made a good bit more while she was in residency, now I’m getting a MBA and will get a boost once I complete it. She’s in one of the lowest paying medical professions (family practice), so if my career goes as “planned”, I’ll probably pass her at some point… but neither of us worry about it that much. Admittedly, it’s a lot easier to take that attitude when even the worst case scenario pays the bills and then some.)
I wonder what role conceptions of “it’s my/her/our money” divisions play in this kind of conflict?
This is an odd question, because different men and women have different tastes, and want different things in a partner. You can draw conclusions about the average behavior of large groups of men and women, but that isn’t all that good a guide to the behavior or desires of a particular individual.
Speaking just for myself, yes, I would personally care. In terms of my personal life I’m a strong believer in traditional gender roles, it’s important to me be the primary breadwinner / higher status partner, and so I wouldn’t really be interested in seriously dating someone at an equal income/education level, etc… Let alone someone who made more than me. Some men would be fine with it though.
There’s no female in our relationship, but I’d be thrilled if my partner made more than me. Especially if he made enough that I didn’t have to work at all.
Last year I made a bit more than my husband, but he has a way cooler job than me, so that probably balances it out!
In all honesty, it doesn’t bother us. When we met, I was working and he was still a student so I was the main income earner. Then over time he caught up with and then overtook me. Now with a change in career, it’s become more equal.
I do recall, when we told his parents that we were moving in together (he was still living with his parents when we became a couple) that his mother took me to one side and warned me that I would totally resent the fact that I was earning more than him, because that was how she felt with her husband (who was made redundant from his high-level marketing job in the nineties and never recovered). However, I’ve never felt that way, we are a team and we each bring different things to the relationship.
Through most of our marriage, I made more than my husband - initially because he was in school, later because I’d had the head start in my career. Shortly before I retired, our earnings were almost equal.
I didn’t much care. It might have bothered me if he didn’t work and just bought lots of stuff (kinda like the non-working wife of one of his friends.) But he was always working, always looking for the next opportunity, always advancing. I know on some level, it bothered him that he brought less money into the bank - he still had an old-school mindset. But he was a full partner in the household - the fact that he’d scrub the bathrooms was worth more to me than the paycheck differential!! 
The one problem that can arise is the issue of alimony in case of divorce. When my gf’s (now ex) husband wanted a divorce, initially he just wanted to walk away. His attorney pointed out that he was entitled to alimony. He ended up accepting a cash settlement, but it was weird.
Surprisingly enough, they are, or were when I was in the market in the US. A lot of first dates weren’t shorter because hey, grad student, food…
I suspect many of them were, as the OP said, playing a role, trying to sound macho-macho-man without realizing that line is from the Village People. It was all part of the opening gambit, but not of any game I was interested in playing.
That’s funny: I thought the stereotype was that after marriage women looked down on their husbands - and were more likely to leave them - if they earned more than their husbands and that before marriage women look for men that earn more than they do.
You know, it never occurred to me that I might have this backwards but I see your point. I can imagine some women rationalizing their attitude like this:
Say the woman is like my wife- Has a Master’s degree, paid for school all by herself, worked her ass off in school, works hard at her high paying prestigious career. She wants to eventually buy a home and start a family. She meets a man only marginally employed, who gets by but kind of coasts along.
This woman might feel the man lacks the ambition to work toward long-term goals. If she was crazy or naive enough to marry him, I could see her feel resentment toward having a spouse who is not driven in the same way.
Maybe that was part of the point. they might be trying to screen you out (‘you’ meaning generically, people with non traditional ideas about gender rolles, etc.).
Neither my son nor SIL seems to mind. My son is very well paid, but his wife is a doctor and she earns about twice what she does. And she has no expenses since she works exclusively at a hospital that also pays her malpractice insurance. My daughter and her husband are both editors. She has the title of “Supervising copy editor” for an important academic publisher, which means that she manages the office, hires–and occasionally fires–the copy editing staff. Her husband worked for a major textbook publisher. He managed a small imprint (that had once been an indie) and quit when he was ordered to fire 4 of his six reports since their jobs were being outsourced to India. From Indie to India. Now he is doing free-lance editing.
They are both happy to have a better lifestyle than they could manage alone and neither feels threatened by a successful wife.
You made a little bit of coffee come out my nose:D. Do you have an older brother?
I’ve worked since I was 14, and met the man to whom I’m married at 17 in high school. We were friends first, and didn’t actually marry until I was 30. (good thing, it was best to be single in the 70’s) He’s a year younger, 4 inches taller, and when we married I was in grad school and he was making 90k working on the Slope. He’s got a degree in education, but is fundamentally an artist. Since he was injured fairly young, he’s not held a conventional job since- but is still, even post stroke, working all the time. We have many many nice things he’s built or made, (and so do his customers from prior to the stroke). I sometimes got/get a bit huffy when the dollars are tight, but we decided early on that nurse practitioner married to builder/maker/artist would work. I do think that he has felt guilty about not having the big income he did in the 80s, being of the boomer generation we are. Not enough to do the dishes though, hence the coffee snorting:rolleyes: