It Took Divorce to Make My Marriage Equal

A problem with game theory: as far as I can tell, it offers crisp results for zero-sum games, but as far as positive-sum games (which is what marriages, as well as larger assemblages, such as nations, ought to be) it turns out being a jerk is a theoretical solution. (presumably, usually people don't marry jerks, but at the national level, it's uncommon to vote with one's feet)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24481298

An east german teacher: Hans, why do you always say, 'the Russians, our socialist brothers' instead of 'our socialist friends'?

Hans: Na, ja. We choose our friends.

So, in our household, my wife makes way more money than I do. Taker her worst earning year and compare it to my best earning year (including cashing in stock options after multiple splits), and she still made at least three times what I have. That pattern hasn’t changed over twenty-plus years.

Yet, we do try very hard to equally share the burden of the household chores, and pre-COVID, we did have a house cleaner that came in every other week, and folks who came in more frequently but on a less regular schedule to help us with the bigger job of decluttering our lives.

We do have different standards of what it means to have a clean house, and hers are higher than mine, so sometimes I do get a bit exasperated being asked to help clean something that doesn’t seem dirty to me. But I try to keep in mind that the important thing is that she feels it is not clean, and therefore it needs to be cleaned. I don’t always succeed at that conceptual leap, but I do try.

Any kind of partnership doesn’t always work. But if both parties continue to be willing to try to make it work, then it usually works well enough the majority of the time.

However, in the case of the author, it seems like her husband was never willing to do his part in making the partnership work.

Same concept, different sexes. I’m the husband, and marriage was not equal. I was a second class citizen in our house, and now I won’t be.

Modern marriages can never be equal. What couple should strive for is equilibrium not equality. The author sounds immature and is as just ranting. Robbing kids of a two parent household is selfish and they shud have taken steps to make amends..