What If the Woman Earns More?

When a wife carries the family financially for years, she stops being happy. There is always a concrete reason behind a man's financial passivity.

What if the woman earns more than the man?

Money is one of the most common causes of conflict in a relationship.

Situations vary. Every family has its own arrangement and its own seasons. I am speaking from my own observations and my own subjective experience. If things work differently in your relationship and you are happy, don’t worry about it.

In many families the wife’s income is higher than the husband’s. And I am not talking here about a situation where both work in tech and she makes $7,000 while he makes $5,000. That may be unpleasant for a man, but it is unlikely to end in divorce. I am talking about situations where their combined income does not cover the family’s basic needs.

For a woman to be happy next to a man, he has to combine four roles in himself: protector, friend, lover, provider. If one of those roles is limping, difficulties will start. It is like puncturing one of the car’s four tyres. Driving becomes hard.

When a normal man loves a woman, he will want to take care of her financially. If he earns substantially less than she does, it can be hard for him to respect himself. Men rarely talk about this openly, but alone with themselves they feel humiliated and disappointed in who they are.

It can also be hard for a woman to respect a man who earns substantially less than she does.

If the situation lasts a couple of months after a job loss or a rough patch in business, everything can be fine. But if it drags on for years, a woman may gradually start losing faith in her man. The more duties and responsibility a wife takes on, the less happy she becomes.

There is even a category of men who are perfectly content with this and quietly settle in and relax.

For a woman, that kind of financial stress is an enemy. It takes away her femininity and her peace of mind. When a wife spends most of her thinking on how to provide for the family and where to earn a bit more, it is very hard — almost impossible — for her to be a happy wife and mother.

A man’s financial ambition can be on pause for two main reasons:

1. He has some subconscious conflict around money.
2. He resents his wife for something and is punishing her through his passivity and weakness.

In either case, there is no point simply waiting and hoping that at some moment his attitude will change, he will switch on and start actively providing for the family.

I know many women who spent whole decades of their lives in the role of family “provider,” and for them it was an absolute nightmare.

There is ALWAYS A CONCRETE REASON why a man is not driven to earn money.

Sometimes it is a subconscious belief that “money is evil.” Sometimes he absorbed a model in childhood, watching his mother, that “a woman takes all of a man’s money” — his father’s money, in that case. Sometimes a man does not know how to reward himself for his work, so any financial success is devalued for him: every bit of money goes to necessities and there is no room in it for pleasure.

The reasons vary enormously; in consultations I have dug up dozens of them, if not hundreds. But once the reason is found and the man understands what was holding him back and why, he gains freedom on the subject and can start developing actively as a provider.

In the next year he may earn more than in the previous three or five.

Our psychology is 80% of success, and strategy is only 20%.

So if you are a woman in a situation where you are the family’s number one earner and the one thinking about money, do not simply try to carry it all and make peace with reality. Start looking for the reason your man’s financial ambition is on pause.

I understand this is not fair and not right. I understand it should not be this way and that ideally he should be taking care of you, not you digging around in his inner conflicts. But reality often differs from how things “were supposed to be,” and so we need to roll up our sleeves and start solving problems rather than hiding from them or looking for justice.

Is it a normal situation for you if a man earns less than you do? Or is it a problem?