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!

My DH has a high earning DW. He met me in the pub, I’m 8 years younger than him.

At the time he was also a high earner, very similar level to me then. Although he’d just got divorced and his high earnings were a relatively new thing.

Since then he retrained a bit so while mine increased he went the other way. For a year or 2 I earned 5x what he did.

Now things are evening out again as he has started a new job and I’m on around 2.5x his.

To answer the question in more detail. We’re lucky in that no one is micromanaging our time and we work from home a lot so that helps with school runs etc. I often work to US hours in the evening. When he was retraining he did 90% of school & nursery runs. We have a cleaner for 6h a week and a gardener once a fortnight, I also send the ironing out. Everything else is pretty 50:50.

Everyone would accuse me of being on my phone too much.

DCs are 8 and 2

NCforthis how did your friend become a billionaire?

I just get deeply depressed by the relentless posts on MN about Men's careers outstripping their wives and the wife taking a backseat but providing childcare and keeping the home fires burning to allow important man to focus on his important job while everything gets done for him. Yuck!

In general, despite being a SAHM to a high earner, I agree with you. However often people’s lives are more nuanced than that.
DH and I were both high earners working in financial services, I was (am?) certainly the more ambitious. To the world I look like someone who stayed at home after having children to allow DH to advance his career. In reality, I suffered a horrific personal tragedy whilst working, and the intensely competitive nature of my work meant that I took a grand total of 8 days off work before feeling pressured to go back. I proceeded to completely burn myself out over the next year, never dealt with the tragedy and had a breakdown. At this point we decided something needed to change and moved abroad, DH in the same industry while I retrained and did low stress part time work. We returned to the UK and decided to start a family 6 years ago, and I haven’t worked since bar some freelance work. DH has advanced through the ranks speedily but almost inadvertently. He’s not hugely ambitious but is very very good at what he does. He would happily take a step back in his career for me to return to mine, and this will happen at some point soon. He also does his share of housework and childcare, and adores spending time with his children.

Sorry to hear all that soy .

My dh sounds a bit like yours. He has a good job, but it isn’t mega bucks. He is very bright, (a first class degree with an integrated Masters from a really good uni, singled out by his company as a rising star from first year at university etc). But he isn’t that ambitious. I’m glad he isn’t, as it means we get to see him. We can afford for me to be home with the children, (in fact it would actually cost us more in childcare at the moment than I could realistically earn), but he isn’t going to reach burnout levels of stress, I don’t think.

I am (was) probably more ambitious and more OTT at work than he is. I’d have worked any hours people told me to if I’d thought it would further my career. It’s probably a good thing I’m not the one earning the money as I don’t think it was necessarily healthy.

A few posters have said that they started in a similar sector to their DH, but his sector earns more. Why didn't you move into the sector that pays more, given that you knew about it from your DH? All things being equal, I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to earn more when it's possible.

I don't mean to be goady, I just feel there must be reasons. I didn't enjoy the highest paid sector for my role for example because of the particularly long hours and the rude culture, but I'm paid decently elsewhere, per hour it could be more, and I'm well aware that sector is an outlier.

Make your own money, its far more satisfying than living off some other control freak.

In response to the post above. I worked my socks off from 21 to 34. Had DS who was poorly as a baby so gave up work. It was what I wanted to do. I had 7 years off as a sahm and I loved it. Every minute of it and it was an absolute privilege.

I didn't so much as facilitate dh's career but us, team family. Team family took into account the whole package and dh and I have always been equal. There were times when I did everything at home and he was away for three wèeks. But overall our loads have been similar. When he has worked a 16 hour day, I have worked 8 and picked uo the slack at home. Unlike many on mnet I like home stuff and childcare.

We are beginning to look towards retirement now and slowing down. I didn't plan to meet dh; I don't think you can.

orangeballon

Sadly it isn’t that simple.

For one, my dh isn’t a control freak, but even if he was, I do not have the skills or experience, cv or references to get a job that would go anywhere near covering our bills. If I had a way to magic up a job that had the same hours as dh’s and paid the same, I would probably do it wouldn’t I? If I had my time again I’d probably do some things differently and yes, in some ways I do blame the patriarchy for the huge disparity between dh’s earnings and what I could earn and the insecure position this leaves me in. But it is the way it is and I have to make the most of it really and look on the bright side a bit.

Even now I have a little more time as dc1 is about to start school and we have some “spare” cash I could use to retrain, I find it impossible to find something that would actually result in a decent job. I’d really have to re-do my entire education, which is too much to undertake when we have children to raise and pay for.

So, strangers on the internet loftily declaring “one must make one’s own money” are actually not helpful.

I guess though that if anyone who hasn’t got married and had dcs yet reads that they may find it helpful. And probably that’s who you were aiming it at wasn’t it? The op. .

Met through friends when we were in our 20’s. Dh was doing professional exams at the time so I knew he was very driven. He now has a very high earning job and I have what a lot of people consider to be a very well paid job 50k+. Im going back to work part time after this mat leave because as some people have already said it’s great to have someone earning a lot but with that comes sacrifices such as time away from home. Someone need to be there for the kids and we don’t agree with having a nanny full time.

Do we fit into the "high earning husband" bracket? Probably. DH earns about £150k a year. I earn a tenth of that, working for myself part time.

We met at Uni and after graduating neither of us walked into six figure salary jobs. It's been a case of working the way up over 20 years, moving house from one end of hte country to another and seizing opportunities. Along the way we had a couple of kids, I was a SAHM for a bit, now work part time for myself, volunteer and do the house stuff.

It sounds terribly snobbish but if your circle of friends, family and acquaintances is people on minimum wage jobs and not much in terms of education, you're hardly going to meet someone earning huge sums. Or if you're like my cousin, who will not contemplate moving more than 5 miles from the house she grew up in and has been working in the same job for the last 35 years.

windygallows. By saying that the SAHM life choices are depressing you are (IMO) contributing to the patriarchal and capitalist myth that only high paying roles outside the home are worthwhile or of value.

I did all the ‘wife work’ and the bulk of the child care to ‘enable’ my husband to progress well in his career and earn good money whilst my former career stalled. As far as I’m concerned that was less of a sacrifice than it was a privilege. Of course there were boring bits but I was fully aware that many, many people who would like to be SAHP can’t afford to be SAHM and I was grateful that I (mostly) could be.

Once DC were grown, I had the additional privilege of being able to afford to retrain in something socially useful that I find incredibly satisfying without having to worry, as many of my fellow students did about how I was going to make this training pay off. I am now able to donate my professional services to agencies and charities working with young people and refugees that benefit from my skills. Another massive privilege. I have enough spare cash and free time to pursue hobbies and interests and also travel.

That might sound depressing to you, but to me it is empowering. We made choices in life based around our mutual skills, abilities, preferences and opportunities and have ended up in a place that makes us both happy.

Marriage and parenthood are partnerships. Our roles and contributions don’t have to be identical to be equal.

Or maybe you think that women just aren’t as good at these jobs as men and that’s why they are underrepresented in senior roles

I hope you stretched before you made that leap @soulrunner

£100,000 would not give you a comfortable lifestyle in London for example. In the class of "high earners", it really isn't that much money.

So by that token, £100k a year would give you an uncomfortable lifestyle? What absolute fucking bollocks. Talk about having your head in the clouds.

I've been poor, now I'm not. Guess which one is uncomfortable?

So by that token, £100k a year would give you an uncomfortable lifestyle?

I don't think that's the necessary conclusion Ted bent. We live in London. We're not flashy. Our mortgage (on what is actually a pretty small place, that we'll need to "trade up" at some point) is nearly £2k p/m. Then there are all the usual bills before you think about holidays etc. So if that poster's "comfortable" includes nightly meals out and shopping at Harrods... no, it won't happen.

I’m in London on about 120k.

It obviously depends how you define comfortable. We have a pretty nice lifestyle but wouldn’t spend 10k on a holiday, for example, and would struggle to do private school. We do have decent savings and I don’t worry when food shopping at all. I dunno.

Oh and we’re only just London (zone 6) so have a 4 bed house. Would have to be a small flat in zone 1 I guess.

I do think that, as a whole, men tend to be more ambitious career wise. Whether that is innate biology or because of the society we live in, I don’t know.

But I think that it is true that living the dream for many men means earning a lot of money. While for many women it is having a lovely life as a SAHM.

I dunno, that set up has largely worked for us. It has taken mumsnet to make me realise how vulnerable I made myself by pretty much giving up my career, though fortunately DH has never considered me less than his equal. In retrospect I might have been afraid to go down that route.

But I’m also frequently horrified to read about the difficult stressy lives some people lead juggling children with two full time jobs. I guess there is no perfect way.

That's a bit if a broad generalisation!

Most women don't want to be a sahp !

I didn’t say most women, I said many women.

Still a huge generalisation which isn't true.

Can one point out here that it is possible to be a low earner but not be lazy and unambitious: not all career paths reward ambitions financially. And that this might explain how some high/low earning couples might still have a lot in common. One of the happiest marriages I have seen was that of a CEO and a librarian/archivist. Common interest in hard work, culture, travelling, both very bright and driven, just that the brightness of one of them brought in fat pay packets and that of the other didn't. Plenty to talk about in the evenings though.

On MN it is often assumed (and I don't mean the OP, who was obviously speaking from her own experience) that there is nothing between wealthy and no ambitions.

Can one point out here that it is possible to be a low earner but not be lazy and unambitious

Very true! My OH and I are both extremely driven and ambitious. If either of us want something, I have no doubt that we will get it. It's just that what we want does not involve spending 10 hours a day in an office so that we can have loads of cash and drive pointlessly expensive cars, etc.

My DH earns 10 times what I earn. I work 2 days a week, 1 child and currently pregnant. He would not be able to work without me doing the part time hours I’m doing.

We met online 8 years ago. We live in a nice area in the SE and hope to send our children to private school. We are comfortable and go on nice holidays. DH works very long hours and we have very little family support. Is it worth it? I’m going to say no. I’d rather move to a smaller house and see my DH more and let the kids have a Daddy.

@ queenscot

@Sarahlou63 yes they're lazy as hell and like to dress down but they do prefer attractive woman who take care of themselves.

Huh??? That's the opposite of what I said. My OH works ridiculous hours during the week then comes home and does all the heavy work on the farm. And I'm not attractive and don't take care of myself but I can hold an intelligent conversation and I'm a DG in the kitchen