Dopers, I am curious to hear your experiences of couples in which one partner substantially outearned the other one over a long period of time (perhaps a year or more). I am especially interested in situations where both parties were theoretically capable of full time work–for example, neither had major health problems, or was spending lots of time at home as a caregiver.
-What were the reasons for the income imbalance? (e.g., different careers, or part time worker vs full time worker, etc.)
-What effect did the imbalance have on the relationship?
-Did the salary imbalance shift back? How long did that take? What provoked the change?
I’ll probably add more personal detail in a later post, but for now I wanted to hear the experiences of others.
Your definition applies to almost everybody I know. It’s pretty natural for people with compimentary abilities to be together. One person is likely to be a better earner than the other. I would think people earning the same amount would have the most troubles. Competition can be a relationship killer. But all of that is just guesses. I don’t nose into how much money people make. I’m just guessing based on what they do (or don’t do) for a living.
This is going to sound sexist as hell but it won’t be a first for me so I might as well be the first to bring it up. It matters a lot which one is making more money regardless of what anyone says. Even if the couple is fully OK with any disparity, that doesn’t mean that everyone else that they interact with will be. If the man makes more money, there shouldn’t be an issue because that has been the way it has been traditionally throughout history and it is completely expected. Social conventions allow for it. No one blinks an eye.
If the female is the one making more money, that is a bigger issue. Males don’t have many ways of compensating for that disparity that are socially acceptable. It also tends to shift relationship power badly in one direction - hers. In every situation I have seen like this (it isn’t that uncommon), it doesn’t play out well. The woman earns most of the money, has to be the one to carry children, and usually does many of the other traditional female roles as well such as taking care of the house, cooking, and being the social leader of family events.
There isn’t a good way around that. He can try to be a kick-ass house husband but even that presents some big role conflicts. She may say she wants you to take care of everything but what that often means is that she wants you to follow her orders so she can go make money and still have direct influence over the traditional roles.
There may be a healthy balanced solution in there somewhere but I have never seen it. I am only talking about large discrepancies in incomes here and only among couples that don’t involve an intenional cuckhold relationship.
I earn roughly double what Boy From Mars earns, and while he’s topped out salary-wise, I have the potential to earn double again. Basically this is a factor of our different careers (he in sales, me in marketing), so unless he does something like start his own business, this will be the norm.
This seems to make very little difference to the dynamics of our relationship; I pay a larger proportion of the mortgage, but the rest of our money goes into a joint account and the bills and all spending are paid from that. We have a philosophy that it’s the work we do which is important, not the money we bring into the house, and seems to work well for us so far. Otherwise, certainly he appreciates the benefits that come with my higher earning potential which offer us a better quality of life than he could perhaps generate himself - less budget watching, better holidays etc.
The only time it becomes something to consider is when I go on maternity leave (just starting a year off now for #2) - I get paid maternity leave from my work plus a Government top up, but that doesn’t cover an entire year of my salary so we do need to plan and prepare for it, plus I took a few months when I returned to work to get back to full time work. We only plan for 2 kids, but it does mean he carries more of the load for those 18 months or so; but our spending drops a lot too, so that helps.
We have very different careers. My wife works as an elementary-school teacher, at a small church school; I work in market research (at a senior level now). We’ve been married for 19 years, and I’ve consistently made 3 to 4 times what she makes. Unless she decided to switch to public (or very-well-funded private) schools, went back to school for an advanced degree, and pursued a specialization or went into administration, we’re always going to have that difference in relative salaries.
We often joke that our marriage is in karmic balance: one of us has a job which benefits humanity, and one of us has a job which pays the bills. It’s rarely, if ever, been a source of any particular friction in our marriage.
My GF quit a high-paying job in NYC to move in with me in Chicago. This was three years ago. The economy being what it is, she has found little but minimum-wage part time jobs since then.
However, it hasn’t been a problem. I make plenty, and being together we are living cheaper than I was living alone before (what with her shopping skills and our vast decrease in travel expenses). And when and if things pick up and she gets back to her full earning potential, we’ll probably just amp up our vacation budget and maybe buy a bigger home. But for now, no problem at all…
My partner and I make significantly different amounts of money, and the difference will only increase as we age. She makes more than twice as much as I do, and will almost certainly be making four times what I make in a few years.
There are difficulties. Not so much between us, but in the expectations others have of men and women.
Women are expected to “marry up.” People look oddly at a woman who doesn’t. It’s been my observation that this is especially true of other women, who seem to be harder on the woman who marries a man with less income, and less income potential, than she has.
I think it would take a strong woman (which my partner certainly is) to avoid succumbing to this kind of thinking, and to not come to resent her husband for making what would seem to be, in comparison to her income, very little money.
We’re OK, and I think we’ll stay that way, but in my 50+ years on the planet, it’s been my observation (yes, I know, limited sample set, etc.) that relationships in which the female partners earns a lot more than the male parter are going to have problems.
When it’s the other way around, no problem. We’re so conditioned, men and women, to see the male as provider that it doesn’t present any problems at all.
I made about three times the money my late husband did. No problems, either between us or from others. I was also 16 years older, so maybe people were too shocked about that to worry about the money difference. He always said he loved that I made more, as that meant we didn’t have to worry about money.
I make a lot more than my boyfriend does. I’ve dated guys who made more money, but nobody else understood me the way he does or treated me so well. His standard of living is much better because he’s with me, and he knows he has it good.
I do think that it is key for both partners to be contributing to the relationship in some fashion.
Since I am the breadwinner, we have an understanding that he is supposed to do the lion’s share of the household chores.
It is awesome to come home to find that he has vacuumed, done the laundry, picked up the clutter, etc.
This arrangement would not work if I was the breadwinner AND still had to do all the household stuff too. I have no idea why anyone would allow that to happen, unless they just had very low self esteem. A grown adult needs to pull their own weight, either with money or sweat equity.
But when we both work a 40 hour week, my view is that I don’t just get a pass on doing housework because I earn more for those 40 hours than he does. We split chores and childcare equally (e.g. this year each of us worked from home a day a week and looked after kid 1). I think that’s what I was trying to say before - each of us is valued because of the effort we contribute to the relationship (work, parenting, housework), regardless of the economic benefit it brings in.
Now, he’s from Italy and of course he’d love a housewife like his mother so that he didn’t have to do anything around the house, but that’s a cultural thing more than anything. When he’s pushed as to whether he’d like me to work or stay at home, he appreciates the benefits of me working both financially and for the impact on my self-esteem.
When we first got married my wife made 3 x what I did, but I was in grad school so it didn’t matter. When I graduated I made 3 x what she was making before we moved, and we decided that she wouldn’t work since we were going to have kids, which happened fairly quickly. Now the kids are both gone and I’m making 3 x or so what she is. But the important thing is that we are both doing stuff we like, that our quality of life would not be any better if she worked outside and made more, and that all the money is ours, not mine or hers. The non-cash rewards of here greater flexibility more than make up for the money we are giving up.
It helps that we make enough. I know of a marriage breaking up partly because at the verge of retirement she decided that he should have been more ambitious and made more money. That may be true, but 30 years in is not the time to decide it.
I have three aunts who had paying jobs throughout their marriages; one of my aunts, one of my grandmothers and my mother did not. My other grandmother was a seamstress: she would get jobs when she wanted higher income than gramps was providing at the time (he changed jobs very often). I have another aunt but her case is more complicated; she didn’t hold a job during her first marriage, got one during her divorce, kept it through the second job.
Of all of them, there was only one couple who had identical incomes, and it’s because they had the same source: a chain of boutiques owned by his family. Every adult member of the family who worked for the business got identical income, regardless of actual job and of whether they’d joined the family by birth, marriage or adoption.
My sister in law has a stable job with good benefits; my brother’s income has bounced up and down - for the last eight or so years he’s worked in construction, which means a lot of money but also that a lot of it comes under the table; he’s currently unemployed. She was raised with the notion that a goverment job is the best possible kind and kept badgering him to apply for one every time he got unemployed - until he showed her the payscale and what would he qualify for, about half what she makes. He’s been considering going back to college for a higher degree, which would have the double advantage of being higher and of being valid under the current system (his degree is of an intermediate kind which was invented half-assedly less than twenty years ago and which was granted only for some fifteen years; it isn’t even and has never been recognized in government payscales). For them, money is certainly a source of stress, but I don’t think it’s so much who makes it as how much.
I’ve seen more of the scenario Shagnasty painted upthread. Case in point: A very good female friend of mine is in sales, probably pulls in close to a six-figure salary. Her husband is an artisan and probably makes less than 15K/year. They have two sons. My friend’s salary afforded a nanny when their sons were young, remodeling their house, vacations, you name it. Their marital relationship, however, is very much the “strong woman/weak man” where SHE calls all the shots because SHE makes the bigger salary. He basically goes along because if he ever disagrees she’s all over him. People have been known to leave their house whenever they’ve gotten into an argument.
My husband and I have a similar disparity. He was the primary caretaker for my mother after he’d been laid off from his IT position – we decided this because 1) my job carried the health insurance and 2) he was much better at handling the stress of that as opposed to me, the only child. Now it’s 4 years since her passing, my husband is now one of the long-term unemployed, and I have no fucking idea what we’re going to do because my salary can no longer carry us PLUS the house PLUS everything else. And yeah, it makes me very resentful at times.
Both I and my SO have been unemployed on and off in the last few years and had to live of one or the other of our income. Hasn’t really caused any problems (well, beyond the problem of having less money). I guess I see it as one of the perks of being married, you can rely on the support of having a second salary to fall back on if you lose your job.
A lot depends on expectations going in. I have a cousin who is a doctor who is married to an accountant. They have been together since college. They knew going in that ten years on she would out earn him. No problems twenty years into the marriage, almost thirty into their relationship.
But then I know three other cases where the wife earns a lot more than the husband. All three arson serious trouble. Part of the issue seems to be that the wives are working a lot of hours and still trying to hold down the fort domestically. There seems to be huge resentment on both sides. In each case the husband earns a lot less than they could for " prima donna" reasons. For example the architect who doesn’t want to do grunt work, so will not join a firm. The industrial engineer who only wants independent consulting gigs.
When my husband and I began dating, I made twice what he did. My priority then was finding someone to date that was independent financially, regardless of what he made. He fit the bill.
Fast forward 6 years, we’re married, I make even more now and he’s been downsized out of a job. We decided that rather than have him scrambling for a job paying 1/3 of my income, he’d go back to school so now I pay all the bills and tuition besides. We share household responsibilities.
We have no problem with it, it’s our money and we make decisions together and there’s no resentments on either side. This income disparity will continue for another couple of years, and then he’ll likely get a job that will still make substantially less money than I bring in.
I don’t think anyone who knows us thinks there’s a problem, we have a great relationship and it shows. It helps immensely that I make enough money that paying all the bills isn’t a problem, of course, but the couple of times someone has questioned me about it my attitude is pretty much I could do my job and support myself and be alone, or I could do my job and support both of us and have him too, why would I ever choose the latter?
We don’t usually talk about who makes more money with other people. The only time it would be obvious is when my husband has a job that has a specific end date (he’s worked on a couple of political campaigns, so kind of a given that the job ends as of the November election). Otherwise, why does it matter which person makes more money if the bills can be paid and both people are happy with the arrangement?
My mother-in-law has it in her head that I make more money than my husband and acts like that means I make my husband consult me before doing anything. It’s a weird concept to me to think that the person who makes more gets to decide on all the spending. My husband does get a paycheck, and he should get input on how to spend it, you know?
We went thru what appears to be the common pattern - for the first four or five years, she earned two or three times more than I did. Then for the last twenty five or thirty years, that is reversed.
It wasn’t a problem then; it isn’t a problem now. There is no my money/your money, just our money. We decide how to spend our money just like we always did.
I made more than my husband for the first few years. Then his career took off and I Mommy tracked and he’s been outearning me since by more than one decent full time job.
However, from watching other people and ourselves, the impact on the relationship depends on a few things:
1 - how the income disparity came about. Its one thing to expect your doctor spouse to outearn you after medical school - or to agree that “when we have kids, you’ll stay home” - its another to have one spouse unexpected un or under employed due to the economy or their health.
2 - how much the income disparity is mutually agreed on and negotiated. I know a lot of marriages who ran into trouble when “I’ll stay home with the kids while they are in school” turned into “I really don’t want to go back to work and I’ll just volunteer at school - really I don’t have time.” The second is fine if both spouses are on board (and its darn handy to have one spouse dedicated to school/orthodontist appointments and soccer practice) - but trouble when its been unilaterally declared.
3 - how much ego and self worth are tied up into it. When a friend stayed home for a few years with his kids because his wife out earned him and he thought that was great - that was a different deal than a different friend who stayed at home and THOUGHT he should be the one providing for the family.
4 - How much the spouses value the long term contributions of each - including and beyond financial. In gender stereotypes “My husband is never around for the kids” and not valuing that his income is enabling her to be home all day or “my wife does nothing but sit around the house” not realizing that a homemade dinner is on the table every night and she clips coupons like a mad woman are paths to resentment.
He always said he loved that I made more, as that meant we didn’t have to worry about money.