Hacker News Reader

Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I wanted to ask your opinion since you're in a similar state to me. For my first marriage I felt like my wife was with me and part of building my career. So I felt no pause whatsoever about our differing pay scale. Now that I've been divorced 6-ish years differential income is one of my biggest hurdles. I feel like virtually any long term relationship I'm in will mean significantly subsidizing someone. From an economic standpoint there's so very few options where we're on an even footing. And frankly, women who make the same as me are likely going to be looking for mates who make even more. It's made it very difficult to find a relationship I feel is equitable and/or equally beneficial to us both. I've tried to "get over it" but haven't been able to. Women are fine, but women + the state is terrifying to me. Now I have a daughter to protect my assets for. Have you struggled with any of the same things?

View on HN

Well it sounds like you were traumatized by the experience a bit. Me too! But do I struggle with it still? I'd say yes and no. Shit I hate mobile. Hang on I'll move to a real keyboard, BRB

OK. When I met my current wife, who is much more supportive than the first one, I didn't even have a bank account and was living paycheck to paycheck, and literally cashing them at the check-cash place. She also was just scraping by, as a student. So that put us on a more even footing economically I guess. We're also neither one, especially materialistic in the first place. So I think that allowed us to not put money concerns first & foremost in our evaluation of each other. Which I would say might be a prerequisite or at least a help, for that mysterious and random-ass thing called love to take hold.

(On the other hand we probably both could tell that both of us were smart & discerning enough to know how to get money and what to do, and not do, with it if we had it. And we were probably both giving off innumerable small cues that we each came from the same socioeconomic class, which might be more important than anybody wants to admit, especially after the previous paragraph.)

Anyway we just went with it. Over time I continued on my technical path until I was making decent money, while she continued on her non-technical one and basically... isn't. So now, strictly speaking, I'm "subsidizing" her. So am I struggling with it? Kind of. But she helps me too in a lot of ways that are both practical and intangible. I dunno at some point you have to make the decision to be generous. If you find someone you can trust, that is a lot easier. But then again trusting is kind of up to you too. I mean there's a certain level of basic trustworthiness needed on their end obviously, but you do sort of have to decide to trust someone. Or don't, but it sounds like you do want to. Anyway bottom line, you can't live your life in fear of what might happen, that's too shitty!

So I guess the TL;DR from all this nonsense is: find someone from your own socioeconomic class but otherwise ignore money. Make sure you share important values, and establish trust. Don't let money fears make you lonely.

Final note: Those who want money from you, that's all they can get from you is money. Which at the end of the day is not much.

Non-US here. How is it that you are subsidizing here? Don't you share expenses?

Not OP but sharing expenses is not the same as splitting them down the middle. If one person makes $30k and the other makes $200k you're really not going to be able to split expenses unless the $200k person takes a major cut to their standard of living.

Her income is highly irregular and fairly scant, so my income is paying most of the expenses.

> I feel like virtually any long term relationship I'm in will mean significantly subsidizing someone.

I'm not divorced, but I had similar questions before my own marriage. In the end we moved forward on a more traditional basis, where we both acknowledge that we bring different things to the table, and we're OK with that (i.e. "equitable" as in "fair", but not "equitable" as in "equal").

In the unfortunate event that you get divorced you will find that only one of you will be expected to continue to provide value to the other.

I'm aware; it was probably the most dangerous decision I've made thus far in my life.

>women who make the same as me are likely going to be looking for mates who make even more

I'm wondering why you make that assumption? I'm asking as a woman who earns more than her husband. This hasn't matched my experience AT ALL from talking to other women either.

As a male in his early thirties, who have been to several OKCupid dates, I can tell you that you are in a minority because you seem not to care much about your partner's earning power. Among the women I've met in those dates, at least 1 out of 3 will start conversation to find out how much I make in the first two or three dates; almost all of them will ask that question by the fifth date. I already wrote in my profile that I'm a programmer, so they could guess I make a decent amount of money. Still, they seem to be interested in finding out more about my income.

I, on the other hand, start to become very self-conscious about my income level and wonder whether it is too low sometimes. I also have a close friend whose girlfriend broke up with him after dating for >5 years because he was just a mere accountant (making just about 70k at the time) and she, after grad school, got a six-figure job as a risk analyst at a big bank. She said to him that she wanted a more ambitious man who can support her and make sure they can afford a nice house with a yard and a nice car. That's the reality most men have to deal with.

I had a very similar problem with an abusive ex-. She tried to bully me into starting a business in an area I was (am) totally unsuited for (when I was too young to be doing anything like that anyway), as well as studying for a career that she felt would earn "enough" money, all while helping herself to my bank account. She also spent up big on several occasions, and then came crying to me when the debt collectors came knocking. I was young and naive, so I think you can see how that ended up.

She eventually left me because I wasn't trying hard enough to please her; I was studying from 8am to 5pm, then working until 9pm, and she wanted me to stop eating lunch for several months so I could smother her with roses. I suggested that she should go fk herself because I was working 13 hours a day plus catching up on study at weekends while she did four hours on a Sunday if she felt like it, so she wandered off with .. well, a pile of my furniture and equipment, plus a few grand from my bank account and my one (emergencies only) credit card, as well as my overdraft, all of which took me a few years to pay back.

I sure that not all women are like this, and I wonder if the masculine version of this is the trophy wife. Most of the women I've known have been the opposite. Maybe you could adjust your profile in some way to discourage that sort of approach?

Maybe I should amend my advice to include a warning not to look for someone who's looking for someone. Thinking about criteria and whatnot, trying to control or assert rationality on the process never leads to anyplace good, in my experience.

> She said to him that she wanted a more ambitious man

Most likely that was not the only reason why she dumped him. May be she wanted to have children and he was against it. May be he was not intellectually challenging enough.

Women tend not to like to admit it, but the reality is that marrying a rich man is a common "career" ambition for many women globally.

Heterosexual men do not have that same option.

As for why an already wealthy woman would likely choose an even wealther man: I'm not sure how prevalent this is. If this does happen, I think it's an effect of the culture where men are expected to be the "provider", pay for everything, etc.

Men are expected to pay more for everything even in modern, progressive/feminist countries like Sweden. Last time I lived in Sweden, my girfriend at the time — well educated and quite progressive — expected me to pay more than my fair share even though she earned more than me. This is something you must do as a "gentleman".

Come to think of it, I had a girlfriend in California and she was the same.

Thinking more about it, dozens of examples are flooding into memory of wealthier women expecting me to pay more.

>Heterosexual men do not have that same option.

Not true, I know a bunch of men who dropped out of the workforce due to laziness once they got married and had kids.

Yes, this can happen. It doesn't invalidate my point though.

I am not accusing women of laziness, which is what you seem to be reading into this.

In the general case, societal expectation is that the man provides. It is an accepted and common "career option" for a woman (especially a good looking one) to simply meet a wealthy man.

The same is not true in reverse.

Admittedly I've never met a potentially dateable person that makes what I make. So I'm extrapolating from the rest of the data set. The stats say nearly 40% of households have women being the primary breadwinner. I personally do not know any of those 40% of households. Every single friend, extended family, etc. the woman has married up financially. I've personally heard at least a half dozen women make a derogatory comment about men they went on a date with because he made less money than them. Perhaps it's just my generation and this is really old news for younger people, but the culture does not seem to have caught up to rationality in my experience.

I presume that a big part of these 40% are single or single-parent households.

I'd wager (a little) that if you only consider (heterosexual) couples, then you will have mostly men making more money...

Not saying that that's good or bad...

Well your personal experience doesn't at all match mine. Family, friends, coworkers, most of them are fairly 50/50 on which partner earns more. I don't know exact earnings, of course, but I have a fairly good idea - I know job titles, experience level, and places of employment. In my experience women looking to marry "into money" are very, very rare and people don't respect them very much. I'm in my mid-30s and live on the East Coast.

I knew going into the dating world that I would probably make more than most of my potential partners due to just numbers, I was unlikely to meet someone who I got along with that makes more than me because I make more money than most people. Since I already have/had all the money I need that didn't bother me in the least, either way I was looking for human companionship not a bank account.

I ended up marrying someone who has a good career but still earns less than I do.

This is one of those areas where anecdata is misleading.

http://www.firstmet.com/dating-blog/online-dating-money-fact...

And this stays true after finding someone:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...

https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-inside-job/2008/05/...

Both the second and the third link paint a much more balanced picture than I think you imply.

They both make the important point that there is no F to M wealth gap resentment in partnerships where the man takes on additional domestic responsibilities that are traditionally reserved for women. That makes intuitive sense both practically (bandwidth) and symbolically (fairness/partnership). The HBR/Herald thing goes into detail.

And the US News article points out the status quo has already grown to 20% female breadwinner households. If it wasn't a successful model, it probably wouldn't be growing in share.

Hypergamy exists virtually across all cultures. Women date up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com