Thank you for your response, and my apologies if I sounded cynical or sexist. I’m just relating my experience, but maybe I need to ‘get out more’ and gain wider perspective.
You know, this thread is making me think.
My wife makes significantly more than I do. I mean, like multiples more.
We met when she was a partner-track associate at a large law firm. I was a mid-level IT person. Our offices were across the hall from each other. She’s a Harvard College/Harvard Law grad, and her career prospects were about what you’d expect.
More than a decade later, I’m still a mid-level IT drone (although not at the same firm where we met). She’s since gone on to practice with one partner, because she didn’t like the big firm life, and because the flexibility of running her own practice allows for more time with our children, of which we have three. And I applaud that decision – her income could have been even more multiples of mine than it is if she’d stuck with the biglaw life.
My wife manages all our money. I was totally on board with this, since money management is definitely not my strong point. My paychecks go into a joint account, and various things happen from there. Most of it is swept automatically into another account (which is not joint) from which autopays are made for everything from the cable bill to our mortgage. Enough is left so that I have some cash available when I need it. Nobody would ever call it an “allowance,” but it’s starting to feel like that.
She handles the credit card bills, so she’s aware of everything I spend. Again, she’s better at money management than I am, and originally I agreed to this. But it’s starting to feel weird to have to explain every minor purchase to my wife. I mean, yes, I could cut back on the Starbuck’s, sure. But I don’t like feeling like a little kid being called on the carpet for overspending his allowance.
We own a home (an apartment in New York City). My name is not on the deed. Or the mortgage. To be fair, although the sale was not complete, my wife was in the process of buying it when we got married. She would have bought it anyway. But we moved in together. And, as mentioned above, my paychecks do go towards the mortgage. But I did not contribute towards the down payment.
Housekeeping? I do more, but that’s probably because of our differing attitudes than our financial inequality. My wife is a bit of a hoarder, and has a far greater tolerance for clutter and mess than I.
Child care? We both work. We work out child care like most parents in our situation – patchwork of school, daycare and a part-time nanny.
Pre-marital assets? I don’t even know what my wife’s pre-marital assets are. I know she owns a home in another city, purchased long before we met. She rents it out. I know she has investment accounts and retirement accounts. I have no idea what the balances are.
On the other hand, my pre-marital accounts consisted of some savings, the bulk of which (like around 100K) went towards unspeakably expensive fertility treatments (which are, of course, the best investments I ever made, given that the result was our three children) and towards the refinancing of our home some years after we were married, which apparently required that she have a large cash balance in her account (the home is, as mentioned above, entirely in her name), so I just put a shitload of cash, pretty much all I had left after the fertility stuff, into her account.
I also have a couple of 401k accounts. One is pre-marital, from a job in the past, and I haven’t contributed anything to it in ages (since we were married, in fact) but I gave her control over it so she could handle the investments. She suggested it, and it seemed like a good idea. The other is current, and is, I guess, joint property, since I started that job, and thus the contributions to the 401k, about five minutes after we were married
So the reality is (and I’m just waking up to this as I read this thread) that I have nothing on my own. Literally not a penny.
And while my income is small compared to my wife’s, it’s not nothing. And the health insurance policy I have through my job provides excellent coverage for our family of five. My firm’s benefits are quite good, and the cost to me of this insurance is a small fraction of what it would cost to purchase equivalent insurance for a family of five on the open market. This, to some extent, enabled my wife to start her own law firm (which now has one partner besides my wife, and an associate).
As someone above mentioned, the OP in the original thread said:
Whether your believe they should or shouldn’t, the reality is that the one bringing in the income has all the economic power. In fact, the spouse only gets to enjoy the benefit of their lifestyle because of the working spouse.
That attitude is starting to creep into our marriage. It is assumed, without question, that my wife will make all important decisions, financial or otherwise. In the beginning this just sort of crept in. Probably mostly because my wife would declare what she thought the right decision should be in a given set of circumstances (for example, what school should a preschool-aged child attend) and I would almost always agree with her. I mean, we think alike on a lot of questions – that’s why we’re married. But she came to assume that she could decide things unchallenged, because she never was challenged. And that’s kind of my fault, I guess.
And now, it’s even being more or less explicitly stated. She has actually said that I get to live, where we live, in the kind of apartment in which we live, because of her income. I suppose that’s true, but on the other hand, I would never have chosen on my own to live in this neighborhood, in this apartment. I mean, before we were married and lived together, I had the New York City dream – a rent-stabilized, huge, beautiful two-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood l liked (and still like) better than the much more fashionable (and expensive) neighborhood where we live now. So I don’t really see it as me “getting” to live where and how we do.
And I’m realizing that I’m in the exact opposite of the traditional situation in which women often found themselves.
I have pretty much literally nothing but the clothes on my back on my own. If my wife were to kick me out tomorrow (not that I think she’s going to do that), I’d be instantly homeless. If she cut off the credit cards, I couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee.
On top of this, my wife is a very smart lawyer with a considerable amount of matrimonial law experience (in other words, I’m married to a really good divorce lawyer). Not only would I not have money to pay a lawyer if we were to get divorced, my wife would not have to pay a lawyer, since she’s got a really good lawyer for free.
Any lawyer, or feminist, would advise a woman in my position that she has to start saving her own money, have something put away to assure some degree of independence, that she should have an equal voice in all decisions, etc. I mean, my wife would say that to her clients. I’ve actually heard her describe how she advised her mother (a stay-at-home mother who never worked outside the home during her marriage) how to set up her own money, etc. Because without that, women are oppressed in marriage.
On the other hand, when the genders are reversed, it seems to be “you go, girl! Girl power!”
So I guess I better never get divorced, right?
IMO / IME you’re half right.
The last bit is spot on and is really the bottom line for the entire thread as I see it. Bravo!
IOW - It’s a problem as soon as either person decides it’s a problem. And no matter how much the other person is super-happy w the deal, it’s the one who’s least happy with the deal who sets the happiness level for the joint relationship.
As to the first part IMO / IME:
Relationships that contain embedded power struggles and competition are relationships that have the resentment, but the resenting party /parties hasn’t / haven’t quite figured that out yet. And one or both may never do so.
Very few relationships are 50/50 in everything. But that’s not the metric that’s matters. What matters is its 50/50 enough measured collectively across all things as weighted differently by each person.
Like so many folks upthread I don’t have experience with the power dynamic this OP described from that other person’s OP in another thread.
My own ~35 year marriage started out with us about age 30, each semi-established financially and career-wise. Over the years my career has disappointed financially, and hers flat fell apart financially. By dint of not having kids and a lot of hard extra paid work, we’re now rounding the final turn towards retirement with plenty. But if one believes the Happiness = Outcome - Expectations equation, we’ve balanced our books mostly via tweaking the last term.
Having suffered plenty of slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the idea that we’re anything but an inseparable team has never occurred to either of us. But that description puts the cart before the horse.
Starting from the idea that a marriage is about formalizing an arrangement between two people who are already an inseparable team, the rest is just details.
The “I’m the breadwinner, I make the rules” attitude is simply not part of “We’re a single inseparable team”.
Some of that stuff is not necessarily related to financial inequality- for example , my husband has a tendency to make unilateral decisions. The fact that he earns less than I do makes no difference. Sometimes it’s just annoying- such as when he makes plans without checking with me or offers someone a gift that we got with our Mets tickets. Sometimes it’s beyond annoying - like when he quit a job on the spot without telling me first. And yeah, I told him he was only free to do that because I earned enough that we could live without his income for a while.
He also asks me about almost every charge on the debit card - but I know him well enough to know he’s not calling me on the carpet. He’s just paranoid and wants to make sure the charges are legit. But if our income situation had been that he almost always made more than me*, I’m not sure I’d feel the same way.
- We’ve been married 33 years. For about the last 13 or so, I’ve earned more than him. For the 20 before that, it went back and forth - sometimes me, sometimes him.
Are you me? 
My wife quit her law firm job to go out on her own without discussing it with me first. And she was only free to do that because my non-trivial income, and my health insurance and other benefits, would keep us going until the money started coming in (or if it didn’t work out).
She has a tendency to make unilateral decisions. She has a huge amount of (mostly entirely merited) self-confidence, and often acts unilaterally.
Mets tickets? Hey, my wife bought Staten Island Yankees (sadly gone now) season tickets without asking me first. I would have agreed in a heartbeat, but she didn’t ask.
Funny.
well I can answer easily seeing as there were times when she was earning 100% of the income and
a) no, my ego was not bruised.
b) “as a female” and “not keeping up” make no sense to me. That just isn’t the sort of relationship we have nor the sort of language we would use.
In our periods of redundancies and job-seeking there was every chance that it could have been a long-term situation and she could have nabbed the plum job and been the wage earner long-term. We discussed how that made both of us feel and it was a very short and easy conversation to have. It would not be a problem and sure enough it turned out not to be a problem.
How longs a piece of string?
It really is different for everyone. No one half of any couple should dictate anything to the other, assuming they both contribute in their own ways to the relationship.
If only one works, but the other looks after the house and makes the dinner, the worker can’t just say ‘we’re moving next week, i’ ve got a new job’. Unless it’s a sugar daddy/mommy relationship…
When my husband and I got together we were both employed, and I thought we would be contributing to all living expenses equally, and we set up a joint checking account. That didn’t last 3 months. He had no idea about reconciling a checking account, recording withdrawals and checks, and so on. When we came perilously close to bouncing a rent check, I took over the bills, and pretty soon I was paying for all regular bills by myself. He paid for most of the groceries, and we alternated on paying for eating out. He did (and still does) all the cooking and cleaning.
The thing is, this worked out fine for me. I hate cooking and cleaning, and I was making a good salary and could afford what I was paying. Eventually we were even able to buy a house (I paid, we chose the house together, house is in both names). Now that I’m retired, I’m in clover, although I help out more around the house than I did when I was working.
As for who “makes the rules,” in our case at least that is entirely a matter of our personalities. I am easy-going and don’t have strong preferences about whether we do A or B; he always has an opinion (even if he changes his mind later) and is never wrong – at least so he says. I politely let him enjoy that fiction because what’s the point of arguing about it?
I’ve earned over 99% of the money in my marriage, which began in 1981. She hasn’t worked for pay outside the home in over 15 years, and never worked regularly or full time. I bring in the dough, the Mrs. manages it. It’s ours together. We decide on investment strategies, large purchases together. On occasion, I’ve said things like “I want it, and we can afford it” but that’s been the extent of me trying to dominate anything from my position as earner. She’s used the same line on me. We are NOT extravagant in those demands, to be sure.
As for other tasks, I work long hours, she tells me what she needs me to do at home. I do a ton of dishes, cooking, hauling garbage to the dump, keep the hot tub chemicals adjusted, and whatever she adds to that list.
She also manages the estate, which used to include two rental properties. We sold those, so she’s got more free time. She keeps busy doing meaningful things.
One thing I rarely do: Laundry. She just handles it, doesn’t ask me to do it. Fine by me, if she needs me to, she’ll ask.
I think that in any relationship where there is an undercurrent of “[insert reason], therefore what I say goes”, the reason is secondary. In that same relationship, if the person in the position of power happened to make less than their partner, there would be another reason that “what I say goes”. If necessary it would be, “I’m stronger than you and can crush your throat with my hands, therefore what I say goes”.
For my own relationship, we both have very similar earning power. Hers is a bit better outside our chosen industry due to having broader experience. For a while mine was better within our industry because I’d been doing it for longer and was able to get promotions earlier.
Currently, post COVID, she earns about three times what I do. This could become a problem long term, but only because I’m working part time and well below my potential and I’m not particularly interested in doing housework, in other words I would rightfully be accused of being lazy. When we have jobs that are commensurate with our experience, no one cares who earns more and no one tries to use any reason to dictate to the other.
Our income, from all sources, goes into our single joint account. We pay ourselves an allowance, the same amount each, that is ours to spend however we want, no questions asked. All other spending is discussed, either in terms of maximum budgets for regular spending, or go/no-go decisions for one-off big purchases.
At no point would either of us ever make a unilateral decision about any significant life events. That’s not what partners do.
I am very saddened to hear such things. I hope the situation isn’t as bad as it sounds, and that you’re satisfied to continue with this status quo. I’d like to offer a suggestion or two, but I fear it might backfire and be counterproductive. Good luck to you both.
Saintly_Loser, I would be EXTREMELY uncomfortable in your marriage and situation. I hope you and your wife can sort some things out and reach a more equitable balance.
According to Gottman, the four things that lead to the end of a relationship are criticism (ad hominem attacks rather than specific complaints), contempt (moral superiority or in any other form), defensiveness and stonewalling. You could read about this elsewhere. But taking an archaic attitude akin to a hierarchical work relationship can lead to contempt and defensiveness, if communication is otherwise weak.
I’m no expert, but I kind of feel like these are symptoms rather than underlying causes.
A person is critical when they can no longer tolerate another person’s habits or behaviors. They feel contempt when there is a significant power disparity or differing morality. Defensiveness and stonewalling are often reactions to criticism and contemp.
I think what it comes down to is what does each party “need” from the relationship, are they receiving it, and is the other person willing to give that thing? If not, then contempt and resentment starts to build up.
If you think contempt comes from power disparity, your OP could be in trouble. To avoid this, most contributions from both partners need to be mutually acknowledged and supported, and disparities should be dealt with in a way neither side feels chronically disrespected.
Yep. Mostly through the luck of consistently being in a field that is highly sought after (not why I got into it), I make several multiples what my wife makes. No contempt from either party. If she were to suddenly become a world famous author or painter (which she has the skills for and I don’t), nothing would change in that area (well, I might get a bigger swimming pool out of the deal).
She handles all finances, and when we want something individually, we usually just get it. We have an unwritten rule of “if you get it, you have to toss what it replaces” so that we don’t keep accumulating stuff, but otherwise have no rule around purchases. Out of courtesy, if we were to make large purchases such as a new oven or a new car, we typically bring it up first, but there is no rule or price boundary in place.
Basically, we’re a couple. Our money is our money. If a couple has some unbalanced power dynamic based on income, there are other things at play.
The goal is not to avoid complaining, but to avoid criticism and contempt. You can raise a specific issue, or turn it into a personal attack. As the Dope demonstrates, these are different things. Everybody disagrees with something.
It’s the avoiding contempt that’s the trick. I’ve heard people make statements like “if my wife were one of my employees, I’d fire her”. To me, that is not about resolving issues and is more about contempt that their wife isn’t properly performing their expected role.
My wife’s expected role is to be my wife. These people you are referencing seem to think that spousehood is a job. I’m still confused as to what does that have to do with who earns more? My wife’s job (teacher) is far far far more important than mine, but mine just happens to pay more. The fact that her job is more important doesn’t make her the boss in the relationship. The fact that I make more doesn’t make me the boss. Relationships shouldn’t be power dynamics, unless both parties have a desire for it to be so (no kink shaming here 
).