To ask those who have high earning partners......

[Hollypies]

I’m shocked by the amount of women on MN with very high earning DP/DHs and I wonder, how did you meet and what is your life like? I can appreciate this is a little nosey, but after years of dating/being in relationships with men who are very low earners and with no ambitions in terms of their career....I’m very curious. I’ve always assumed that highly successful men/women usually mix with their own kind and meet an equally high earning spouse through their work or social circle... but thought it’d be interesting to ask!

Met/been with DH since school so we’ve been poor students together, saved and bought houses together and graduated, progressed careers together.

I decided in my early 20s to change the direction of my career to nursing when it became apparent that DHs earning potential was always going to be 4-5x mine, to enable me to “follow” him about. We’ve moved all over the place, including abroad and once I had DC 4 years ago a became a SAHM.

There’s no way DH could do his job and have a family without me at home. He often has to go abroad for several days at a few hours notice so this way childcare doesn’t come into it.

There are pros and cons of course. We’re financially comfortable and live in a lovely house in a lovely village, but I’m very much a “corporate wife” in the sense that I don’t really factor him in Monday-Friday. If he comes home for tea/bath/bedtime with the kids it’s happy days. But often he doesn’t. He doesn’t really take holiday, he has to work on holidays too. He works long hours in general so I do 99.9% of all the childcare including all night feeds/wake ups. We do have a cleaner once a week though and DH does he fair share of housework (laundry, cooking, putting bins out etc) when he is home.

We are not super rich though like some of the London city corporate types you read about on MN!

Define “high earning”

Have you just joined MN to ask this or NC?

I took high earning to mean 6 figure salary plus ???

We aren’t super high earning but well above average. But we weren’t when we met. Dh was in uni and I was finished uni and about to start a PhD. We worked hard and built our careers after we met. I think it wasn’t what attracted us to each other (that was more shared interests and values), but certainly neither of us would have tolerated someone with no ambition and drive. If he didn’t have an interesting career he was passionate about, I’m sure I would have gotten bored with him or fed up eventually. The fact he earns good money because of it is secondary really. I’m sure he’d say the same about me. But we met in a bar having after work drinks with mutual friends, so pretty ordinary really. We have similar backgrounds (social class, education, etc) though so that certainly helps.

We earn nearly 100k between us?

Art Gallery, private viewing. I went along with a family member who is well know in the art circle in London.
Life no different to any SAHM cause I do everything (related to kids and cooking) but clean, detest it. So I have someone to clean the house 6 hours on a Monday for a thorough clean and then 2 hours on Wednesday and then another 2 hours on a Friday. This covers most of the extra things like ironing, washing etc as well. Have a regular babysitter so I can have one day off during the week to do stuff I can’t usually do with the kids as they are still quite little.

We've been together since we were 17

Both worked at Halfords as a Saturday job

So I suppose we were mixing with our own kind and equally earning...in theory

Wouldn't the high earning women of MN be a more interesting topic?

Oh ive assumed high earning to mean what I personally think it means

Can you clarify OP

This is not what you asked, but I earn approx £120k plus bonus, DP earns £40k. We met at Uni.

My DH has a high earning partner - he met me at university.

I’ve always assumed that highly successful men/women usually mix with their own kind

I'm sure that in general you've assumed right. It's unlikely that a low earner with no ambition would have the same interests and life goals as an ambitious high earner and they'd have very little in common.

What's your definition of high earning?

DH earns twice my wage but he's 11 years older than me and I'm on track to progress at a similar pace. We earn good wages but work in the public sector so we're never going to earn mega, mega bucks!

We met at work and have almost identical qualifications.... similar degree, same masters and PhD. Interestingly, DH was privately educated and attended a RG uni for his ug degree where as I went to an awful school in one of the most deprived areas of the UK and attended a middling non RG uni.

The problem with the term high earning is that £50k in say wales may be high earning but not in London. You need to tell us what high earning is to you OP

I live in London and high earning to me would be 120+ basically how much I think a household needs to live reasonably comfortably

You should have put "very high earning" or an actual figure in your thread title.

We're both self-employed (part time); I'm the high earner in our relationship, so I can answer the reverse. Even though it didn't seem to occur to you that women can earn more, which is quite strange and might be something for you to think about. If your goal is money then try earning it yourself and you have more chance of keeping it.

We met in a cheesy club, dancing. I'd been online dating and meeting no end of frogs. We're neither of us perfect, but we're right for each other. We both had to make changes and sacrifices to be together, which made us stronger. I don't care that he's a lower earner and it's irrelevant to our relationship.

The salary discrepancy does mean that he has sometimes needed to prioritise my work over whatever else he might want to do, e.g. looking after DS in a specific location so that I can breastfeed between meetings, because it's worth the money for us to organise our lives around a particular small piece of work. We have agreed that his career becomes the family priority in a year or so, but that's because it's what he wants not because I want him to bring in more money.

My DH is high earning. When we met 20+ years ago, he earned a little more than I did, we were both graduates in professional jobs. I worked in a technical area, his was more commercial. He now earns more than 10 times what I do - my career stalled initially because of children and now because of ill-health. The most high earning people I know have stay-at-home spouses, there's a pretty even mix of men and women among them.

My husband is a high earner, but I earn more than him most years, so probably not who you are looking to post here. We met at after work drinks in our 20s.

Wouldn't the high earning women of MN be a more interesting topic?

Yes, it would I think. But I don’t know if she specified men, did she? I think she said partners, so either.

I'm sure that in general you've assumed right. It's unlikely that a low earner with no ambition would have the same interests and life goals as an ambitious high earner and they'd have very little in common.

I don’t know... I’ve noticed a lot of couples where there’s a bit of a disparity. Most of my couple friends actually. One half of the couple is always a good bit more successful than the other. None of them is SUPER successful though, (like earning hundred of thousands). I’m clearly mixing with the wrong crowd .

The only people I know personally who earn £150k+ happen to all be older men (early sixties) with wives who stay at home.

Oh and where did they meet; I only know for one couple where one is high earning. They met at work when he was training. He was a junior doctor, she was a nurse.

I know plenty of high earning women. I can tell you how they met their partners if you like - watching mutual friends playing sport, speed dating, online dating or through a relation. In regards to speed and online dating it's mutual interests that bring couples together like sport.

I was very high earning - opted out of the rat race at the age of 43. Met OH a couple of years later, I'm now happy housewife and mother of 28 various animals and OH happily earns more than enough to support us all.

But I don’t know if she specified men, did she? I think she said partners, so either.

Actually OP said “...women on MN with very high earning DP/DHs..” so it very much reads as though OP is talking about women who have high earning male partners.

As some PPs have implied, the premise is offensive.

My DP earns 500 million a week but I wouldn't class us as high earning because our mortgage eats up 93% of his income. But anyway in answer to your question, I met him in mumsnet dreamland. It's a wonderful place.