To think women who earn more than their partners secretly resent them?

[DeepNewt]

No matter what they say.

No. He is a paramedic. I am an NHS manager. I know full well which of us works harder and is of more use to society. And it's not the one who earns the most.
Peoples salary doesn't reflect their usefulness.

Although without his support or encouragement I would not have pursued my career as far as I did. And resent is possibly the wrong word for it. I think it was more a case of the pressure I felt to work hard to maintain our lifestyle. Having been through the school gate experience with a lot of SAHMs I was often astonished at how ungrateful they were at times and how resentful they could be when husbands said no to a new car or holiday.
DH never pressured me to “keep up with the Jones’s “ in fact he was usually the one who pulled the purse strings. When he gave up work to be a SAHP for a couple of years there was a lot of judgement, which I found very hypocritical.

I get why that line came across as patronising, that wasn’t my intention. I don’t think women are incapable of honesty and I’m not suggesting they’re lying outright.

What I meant was that sometimes, the things we feel in relationships, like resentment, pressure or imbalance, aren’t always consciously acknowledged or easy to articulate. You can say you’re fine but still feel something’s off. That’s not about dishonesty, that’s about how complex emotions are and social conditioning can be.

My post was about starting a conversation on something that might exist under the surface, not assuming every woman in that situation feels one way or another.

I don’t.

It’s patronising bullshit, relying on the assumption that women are weaker and enjoy their weaknesses. Fuck that.

Sure, but women can understand that – so just ask in a better way.

I certainly don't. I'm the higher earner. I'm married but I'm also a self sufficient independent woman.
Frankly, I dont need a man to keep me

No I think it works really well for us. I’m more traditionally academic than DH but also more highly strung/prone to anxiety (long history of mental illness!). Without him helping keep me on an even keel emotionally, I think I would struggle a LOT more career wise. I like having him be relatively “available” - he never has a sudden work crisis or needs to randomly work late or anything like that. And I like that our kids don’t see traditional gender roles- I do the driving and the finances, he does the cooking, we both share childcare and each have a day with our youngest during the week.

Plus when we met he had this whole sexy bartender thing going on with his leather jacket and cigarettes, you don’t really get that vibe so much from accountants 😂

I never have.

@DeepNewt can I ask what age you and your friendship group are?
This is the kind of thing I would hear my 68 year old mum say. Also reference to 'women's jobs'.
It drives my sister and mad.
I can't imagine anyone of my generation ( late 40s seeing it this way).

No, I don’t resent my DH for earning less. He earns enough, and I appreciate that I am the more ambitious of one two of us.

No… but… I have always earnt more than my partners by some stretch. And as much as I want to say it doesn’t matter, sometimes it does. And it’s hard to admit it. There is latent sexism I want to purge and that is my work. We work togther as a team but there are moments when I will admit I have wished I wasn’t the breadwinner/ higher earner. I want a certain lifestyle and my current and precious partner don’t care and I don’t go for men who do. But I am a contradiction.

Unfashionable comment but I do think this still holds true even for millennials (can’t talk for gen z)

I just personally find myself most compatible with men who are ambitious and generous - that often aligns with higher earnings

But if you earn less, does that mean you're not ambitious and generous then? And how do you then align with people who are?

I earn considerably more than my other half, I also probably do more than 50% of things round the house but that's because I work less hours, have more flexibility and wfh full time so no commute. I don't resent him.

‘I like it when men pay for my stuff and I can chill out’

But do you want to earn less? 😂

I feel like all this might be on a scale of relative salaries.

I don't think this is true, no. What is there to resent? It's extremely unlikely you're going to end up with a partner who earns exactly what you do anyway, so someone always has to earn more. Currently I earn about 20k more than DH. He used to earn 30k more than me. Neither of us has resented it either way - I can't understand why you would unless they were being a dick about family money/not contributing fairly.

I’m not saying every woman feels this way

To think women who earn more than their partners secretly resent them? DeepNewt · Today 17:06. No matter what they say

Make your mind up...

Nope, I don't. Never have, never will. What a bizarre post.

I never resented my DH. Even now I don’t resent him when his FT wage at the highest he has ever earned is still less than my monthly pension income.

I say bollocks to the OP’s dated regressive ‘theory’. In our over 30 years together we have each worked/earned more at various times and of course it has not altered the love, care and respect we feel for each other - we are a team. How superficial and shallow the OP’s relationships must be. I earn more now, which suits me as I spend a shit ton more on my outrageously expensive hobby.
You can’t put a price on true love.

So you like men who buy you stuff and you'd like to think we're all as shallow as you.

Epic fail.

Too generosity isn’t an absolute. Would Elon Musk be generous giving OP $1m when he has hundreds of billions? Or is a partner doing overtime at the factory for a year to buy you a new mountain bike generous?

Generous doesn’t have to mean high price tag, but it does have to mean effort and sacrifice imho.

I don't see why they would? Maybe if they felt the bills etc were not being fairly spilt but that is another issue.