To think you should never cohabit with a man unless he’s paying the majority of the bills?

[ThisSereneSnail]

Split finances = split energy.

That’s just life in an equal relationship - why make up ridiculous names for it.
We’re both capable of looking in the fridge and seeing we’re low on butter and adding it the shopping list. If there is an appointment, it goes on the joint calendar.
Both parties are 100% responsible for checking in with each other to check they are ok. I’ve no plans of waiting on DH hand and foot when he’s had a bad day but any loving relationship will give each other any extra hug before they leave the house the next day.

Your relationship sounds like it has a lot of difficulties. You have made up a lot of names for normal life in a relationship.

If I’m showing up emotionally, practically, and often doing more of the invisible labour that keeps a household running, I don’t think it’s wild to expect financial leadership in return.

I’m not saying financial contribution replaces emotional effort or that one person should get a free pass from caring just because they earn well.

So you expect the person financially contributing to you taking on twice the mental and emotional load to also take on their share of the mental and emotional load? So why exactly are you expecting financial leadership for?

I'm more convinced than ever that you don't actually know what you are saying let alone that you believe it.

I understand the curiosity but I’m not here to lay out my full personal life for approval - the point of this thread was to explore dynamics, not defend my relationship timeline. That said, the arrangement works for us because we chose it intentionally. It’s not about ticking boxes like marriage or children, it’s about alignment in values and mutual respect. Everyone’s path looks different and that’s okay.

Does your DH not nurture - really just means look after - you?

Marriage and children are incredibly difficult. Relationships are difficult. People change. Divorce is common. Welcome to adult life .
Interesting to be asked to reflect on masculine and feminine energies . Interesting but a bit retro or even regressive.
What I do know is that as a woman or a man it is best to be self sufficient, to have a plan b and to be prepared to show up for yourself - with whatever energies you can find. You may need to provide the full range of everything for yourself at some point
Personally, it would be a cold day in hell before I submitted to being financially dependent on someone else.

That’s fair - I appreciate the tone and honesty. And I agree that bringing money to the table alone isn’t enough. For me, financial leadership is one piece of a wider picture that includes emotional presence, shared values and active contribution in different areas. The issues in the examples you’ve mentioned often isn’t the model itself, but that one partner stops showing up - financially, emotionally, or practically. That’s not partnership, that’s imbalance. What I’m describing isn’t about passivity or submission - it’s about consciously choosing roles that feel aligned and complementary. It won’t work for everyone, but I’ve found when it does, it can be deeply fulfilling.

I knew you wouldn't answer, but consider this; your DP pays for everything, letting you off the hook, until he finds a newer model and leaves you in the financial lurch. Good luck with that. 😂

@OP First of all, you need to read some history. The idea that men = always rich and powerful/women = always weak and poor but somehow emotionally soft-but-still worthy is simply not true. Have you not read Ancient Greek drama? Or Ancient Roman histories? Or Chaucer (written over 600 years ago) for example? Or the many, many excellent studies by scholars in many parts of Europe and the USA, that show women's work as vital to household economies and indeed to international diplomacy, WHATEVER the "patriarchal" legal/moral/religious framework of the time. For heaven's sake, if you're going lecture people on the supposed glories of the past, just try to get your facts right.

Secondly, the brilliant Dr Johnson - by no means a feminist - saw through your argument almost 300 years ago:
"Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Why do you care about my opinion of men? Are you their guardian?

Too vague. Personally I question your real relationship experience as I don’t think someone genuinely ‘exploring’ dynamics would be so closed about their own actual relationship status.

I wouldn’t say your thread was even about exploring dynamics it was about saying all men in a relationship should bear the financial burden.

So you want a man to pay you for doing the house work and 'mental load' because that's what it amounts to .
Any partnership should be worked out for what that particular couple want and works best for them , be that one goes out to work the other stays at home or they both work .

How would your proposal work of both were male or both female?

Um. . . I was asking a reasonable question based on what you chose to post. If you don't want to answer, fine.

<Backs slowly away.>

The op has been asked a few times about how their view that paying is masculine, relates to same sex relationships but they have failed to engage with those posts.

possibly their algorithm doesn’t compute

I'm going to put my neck on the line and suggest that the OP is not aware of these works but has watched lots of tiktok.
Happy to be corrected OP.

Indeed, unnecessarily coy. There would have been no issue with her saying "Two years, no DC", "30 years, 1 adult DC" or whatever. I suspect the answer is no DP and no DC - she's holding out for Andrew Tate because "standards and self-respect" are so important to her. 🙄

Just want to say I hope all the ladies out there will remember to show up and do an emotional check-in with their other halves tonight. Before checking what's in the fridge and being present for the correct alignment of values in the best gendered relationship dynamics.

No bullshit in that at all.

I understand what your point is and about not having to harden yourself eg be masculine energy at the detriment of your creative feminine energy.

i think that there is something to be said for being financially remunerated for the traditionally female skill set so to speak, as part of the current battleground if you like is that women are doing that labour (statistically speaking) and on the whole also financially contributing to the household. So the balance feels bad, resentment grows etc.

However, the issue I have is that there are examples of this dynamic eg SAHM and financial partner but the way it plays out for some of them feels a bit off. The SAHM feels disempowered to spend money on herself and does nights coz the paid labour is seen as more important than her silent labour.

i don’t know if your vision equates to a good reality within the limitations of our current patriarchal society. Esp with the rates of male violence. I think lack of financial protection for women is a fast track for abuse from some men.
@ThisSereneSnail what do you think the way around that is?

What’s the rules if it’s 2 men?

Same sex relationships don’t fit the op’s “masculine” definition of providing so they have not responded to the many questions on that

I totally agree with your point that if a man and a woman are both putting into a relationship equally in finances, but the woman is carrying most of the mental load, then that creates an imbalance. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t aim to split the mental load more equally rather than split the financial contribution unequally in order to create a better balance.

The main problem I see with traditional roles of the man as financial provider and the woman as the homemaker, is that some men will view the woman as someone who’s services they are essentially paying for rather than an equal. There is also the issue of the man building a career meaning he has part of his life that is just for him outside the home and relationship, whereas the woman does not.

All too often you see the same story told on here. A woman will sacrifice her career and independent life for the good of the family unit, only to find herself years down the line trapped in a situation she wants to leave but can’t due to lack of financial independence, or abandoned because he’s gone off and she’s now struggling on her own.

Long term a lot of men lose respect for women who don’t have their own career outside of the home. They might have wanted a traditional wife to start with, but years later when the intelligent independent women they fell in love with has become the dependent household drudge, the intelligent independent woman at the office starts looking very attractive.

Of course everyone situation is different, and everyone’s situation can change over time too. I was completely financially dependent on my husband when our children were young, but it was never intended as a long term situation. He would have been happy to be the one to stay home with the kids too, it just made more sense for me to do it because of the way things were at the time.

If you really want to be with a man who will provide for you financially while you make a different contribution to the relationship then that’s fine, assuming he’s also happy with it, but for your own security make sure you get married. There is a massive risk involved. From what I’ve seen, men who want to be the financial provider, want to exert control over the woman. Men who want an equal partnership generally want the woman to have job satisfaction outside of the home. It’s not about who brings in the most money, it’s about both having something for yourself outside of the home and relationship.

Out of interest, how old are you?

So you keep contradicting yourself; and now you’ve basically admitted that you want a man to meet your ‘vibe’ emotionally but you still want him to pay the bills??? You can’t sell emotional support, in a loving and well rounded relationship both of you ‘show up’ equally and you shouldn’t expect the man go the extra mile and pay for you to bring emotional stability when you expect his for free…this, simply put, is called taking the piss and you’ll be ever so lonely, I feel sad for you and also I feel like you don’t actually really know what you want because you keep changing the goal posts!
Just be honest here and say you don’t want to pay for anything, and please don’t come across with the air of superiority that you currently have over other women…who incidentally all sound like they’ve got lovely relationships!

Op I think you would like to believe that there is some sort of silent minority that agree with you but I’m afraid the reality is that there isn’t . Now I don’t deny that loads of women would only actively date wealthy men and acknowledge it. They don’t try and pretend it’s actually quite equal in terms of emotional energy versus financial energy . Basically if you’re a gold
digger just own it.

initiating conversations to reconnect

Does anyone else have a vision of the OP drifting around in lightweight linens, calmly "initiating reconnecting conversations" while deadheading the roses?

@ThisSereneSnail men still go AWOL from such relationships, with great frequency. Usually the sort of men who have the resources to totally screw you over in the settlement

I can just imagine the look on DH’s face if I said I wanted to initiate reconnecting conversations 🤣. He’d wonder if I’d had too many cocktails 🍸

I don't know if my energy is too masculine or too thinly spread or not balanced enough but you're using far too many syllables for a Bank Holiday weekend.