Men whose lives are facilitated by women - how did this happen??!

[windygallows]

Now that I'm in my mid-40s I look around at my peers and am astounded that so many men my age have their lives facilitated by women: wives who don't work or who work part time who manage the household and make lunch for their DHs and do all the childcare and prop men up. It's just amazing how many men have a leg up by this support.

And they become blind to what it's like not having that support. My boss has a female PA, two female assistants, and a wife at home who looks after the household - leaving him totally supported and completely free to focus on his job. He thinks he's responsible for his success and doesn't understand why others can't mimic what he's achieved or even the time he dedicates to work.

How did we let this happen? How did we create a situation where so many middle aged men have such a leg up over women because they've been given so much support?

I've put this in Feminism because for me this is a feminist issue. If anything this situation it creates an absolute imbalance in life but also in the workplace, with men given much more freedom to dedicate to work and devoid of many domestic responsibilities that burden women.

I've also put this in Feminism because I'm trying to avoid the usual comments by women like 'We're a team' (referring to her and her DP) or comments like 'It works for us' or 'DH works hard and makes enough for both of us - should I go out to work just because you want me to.' blah blah blah I appreciate too that some women benefit from a set up where a DP/DH is 'looking after you' when you then facilitate/prop up his life in return, but I'm not quite sure it's really helping anyone in the grand scheme of things.

For context I'm in my mid40s, single with 2DCs and work FT and definitely frustrated when I see the advantages that 'facilitated men' have in the workplace and in life.

Most affairs happen at work and as more women are SAHM, chances are that men are having these affairs. Mine did.

@MostIneptThatEverStepped , I hear you. 😕

I am sorry that has happened.

But we always have to take risks in life.

We buy property, we have kids, we marry , we take chances based on our world view and attitude.
And bad things happen.
I didn't count on being a widow at 24.
If I had never married that would never have happened.

I wanted to stay home with my kids- and I took the gamble.

And it worked out fine.
Not every woman who becomes a SAHM is destined for a bad ending.

Thanks Bibidee, hope things are ok for you.
Very sorry to hear that Speakout
Absolutely right, we can't know what's round the corner. But all the more reason to protect yourself against a rainy day, as pp have said. I did nothing and reaped what I sowed.

I didn't mean to derail this fascinating thread though...OP you've coined a new MN phrase that just excellent sums up a whole wealth of wrongness!

@MostIneptThatEverStepped you haven't derailed it for me, it's a real life story. I should have concentrated on myself and my career and not on him and his selfishness and entitlement.

@MostIneptThatEverStepped My STBXH won't help me with DC, says because I have DD all the time then she's solely my responsibility; This was in response to me asking for help so I could do longer/more hours in order to pay the bills which he suddenly stopped paying for. He said he cannot help because he works full time. I'm angry 😡

I love the positivity of those who think men would share the home-load if everyone could work part-time.

Unfortunately I doubt it. Probably jaded due to my own experience, but it's more likely men would just spend more time on their stuff.

When I suggest DH who works from home (but has lots of hours free) that he should do more, he says 'but I'm not a house-husband'.

My argument that he's a husband who is IN the house (and could therefore put some f-ing laundry through once in a while) falls on deaf ears.

DH - and I'm sure many others - seem to see the mundane stuff as being beneath them. How we change that, I just don't know...

I've just cut my hours at work slightly - mainly for my own wellbeing - but also so I can be across things at home more.

I absolutely hate that I'm therefore 'facilitating' him carrying on as he is (that really is a great term Windygallows ) but it means I won't have to deal with stuff in the evenings after work like I have been.

This is such a big issue but it comes down to such tiny things!!

Bibidee he sounds like a real prize not
I just can't understand the mentality of someone that can be so selfish and vindictive, to the point of it negatively affecting their children.

My dd is nine and she states that she doesn't want DC or a husband, she may have a boyfriend that they will need to understand that she has a bakery to create. DH is pretty offended and feels I can't have been positive enough about our arrangement. I think my dd is pretty smart and must see how hard it is to keep a career going with a DH and DC. She really just wants a pet but might have a DC much later, she never wants a DH ! Although she loves her father very dearly.

Fuck yeah! I'd take a bakery over a husband any day! Girl has her head screwed on. Men come and go. Cake is forever.

mostinept not derailing at all - that’s pretty much in a nutshell what I fear. I mean I have no reason to think dh will run off with someone else, but I guess everyone thinks that.
It wasn’t your fault though - marriage and partnership is a contract - he broke it, you suffered

And that’s the problem really isn’t it? If it goes tits up, it’s not the bloke with the career who gets the shitty end of the stick.

@speakout - I'm really bemused by your attitude on this thread. On the one hand you say that you don't feel judged but on the other you say you feel patronised. At least two women have posted about how their husbands have left them high and dry and financially insecure because they made themselves horribly financially vulnerable being a facilitator. It's real, it happens an awful lot - you only have to read the Relationships board on here to know that and it's really worrying.

Women need to think about how vulnerable they are financially when they decide to take a few years out to wipe shitty arses and snotty noses and organise the decorators and the birthday presents.

I don't personally think your husband's got the crap deal at all. I would bloody love a wife to do all the wifework for me. It bores me to tears. I'm brilliant at my job but, like @householdwords, being a woman has really fucked with my career. I did all the hours and everything the men didn't but I didn't get invited to the golf days or the Twickenham box or the Oval. Because I'm a woman. And then I got pregnant. And my career petrified. I have watched my (less able) male peers soar. I don't have a facilitator behind me and I'm doubly disadvantaged because so many of the deals are made in social events where the men speak a lingua franca and the women (if they're there) are for decoration. This stuff cuts deep.

To end on a positive note, I work with a team of much (20s) younger people at the moment. The men can all type as fast as the women (and it's bloody fast). That gives me hope for the next generation.

When I was at college studying for my A-levels I had a brilliant French teacher who, along with teaching us French, shared a lot of useful pieces of advice that she had devised over her long career. The most frequently repeated of these was "Girls, above all you must strive to be financially independent of men".

I often think about this and I agree with her. But it is not enough to be financially independent. I have always been able to support myself but that doesn't mean I was able to steer my own path. When I married, my DH earned more than me..which meant that when we first had children, I took time off to look after them...which meant that when I had the chance to go part-time, I took it as it was too hard for us both to have full-time jobs and mine was worth less than his...which meant that my career has stagnated and his has gone from strength to strength (and includes a lot of overseas travelling which I facilitate). Obviously, as we are still together, I have also benefitted from his career success but there is still part of me that thinks back to those French lessons, part of me that looks around at my old male classmates who are now for the most part, earning so much more than me, although I am better qualified, and deeply regrets that I didn't take my teacher's remarks more seriously. I shouldn't have aimed only at being financially independent. Before having children I should have aimed a lot higher so that it wasn't a foregone conclusion that I would automatically step down my role. I am, if I am honest, angry at myself for not understanding this twenty years ago!

It can happen to absolutely anyone.
Nobody in a million years would have predicted that my ExH would have behaved the way he did. It came completely out of the blue. I've read many a thread on here where women have more or less said "yes but that's not going to happen to me, I know my DH and he'd never do that". Yep, i thought that too.

jiggle I said I don't feel judged in real life- only here do I hear this stuff mentioned.

I don't feel I have missed out because I don;t get invited golf days or the Twickenham box or the Oval. How dull.

Yes my OH has the short straw.
I work 15- 20 hours a week- he often works 50- 60.
I have a lot of time to myself, he has very little.
To me that's very valuable.

MostIneptThatEverStepped I can't say that won't happen- of course it could. But I don't live my life by worst case scenarios. Not my style.
I trust my instincts, do what feels right, sometimes that's not the "safe" option.
We don't all live our lives in the same way.

I don't think anyone is judging are they? Sorry to bang on but the point is that you're massively financially vulnerable. Maybe you're not but a lot of women are.

I'm delighted you have a lot of free time. I'm sure your husband could cut down his hours if he chose to though. No one is forcing him to do that job though. Is your lifestyle poised on a financial knife edge that if he doesn't bring in the money he currently earns, the whole house of cards collapses?

I'm a single parent. My mum used to look after my DS one day a week and sleep over so that I could work late that one day. I often worked later than I needed to. As a childless woman who used to work late, I can tell you for a fact that a lot of men work a lot later than they have to because they don't want to do the boring bath/story/bed routine. I'm sure many of them spin their wives the line that they had to stay late. But I know that it isn't true an awful lot of the time.

Tbf I'm not that great at interpreting stats as in looking at them objectively but it's a high enough percentage for me to want to hold on to some sort of paid work whilst bringing up children in case the marriage goes tits up!

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/18/divorce-rates-increase-first-time-decade-over-50s-untie-knot/amp/

jiggle- you seem to know a lot about my life.

A bit of homework for the wives who don't think it will happen to them. Go google the below:

'Spousal Abandonment Syndrome'

'Runaway Husbands'

'Sudden Endings'

'Tsunsmi Divorce'

'Lessons From The End of A Marriage'

They thought they were happy, no probs then D-day happened. 😕

@speakout

I trust my instincts

....So did the women mentioned in my last post.

I know very little about your life @speakout.

I'm talking about my 30+ years of working in professional firms and my observations. They may not be remotely relevant to you. But given I've worked with hundreds of men in senior roles over those 30 odd years, I'd imagine they're pertinent to a lot of women who act as facilitators to their husbands' careers.

Jiggly - agree about voluntary long working hours as a means of opting out of parenting.

A friend of my parents (mid/late 70’s) openly admits he deliberately stayed at home until the kids were in bed.

I would have divorced him for that.

I'm not most women though- I'm me.

I have had a lot of trauma in my life and I like to live things my way.

As I say, giving up my career was an easy decision to make. I loved my work, but I wanted to be a SAHM even more.
Working only 20 hours a week now keeps me sane and happy.

@speakout It's good you work. Scary though how out of the blue a marriage can end...had I known about this I'd have protected my interests more but I didn't know I was in an unhappy marriage? When you talk about accepting risks, you could argue why insure your house with contents and buildings insurance or any kind of insurance?