Several times I talked my wife out of taking a job to earn on par with me, and I don't regret it. Why financial pressure on a woman wrecks a marriage.
Before you draw any conclusions about this claim, please read the whole text to the end.
When Nastya and I started dating, she was working as a personal assistant to an executive. That job wasn’t interesting or well paid for her. She simply needed some way to support herself.
I did everything I could to help her quit that job and start looking for herself and her calling. Two weeks before our wedding, Nastya stopped working.
Our married life began. My income (thank God) was enough that we didn’t have to worry about covering the basics.
Nastya spent about 4 years actively searching for herself. She tried many different things in order to understand and feel out her calling.
Throughout all those years I gently told her that her “superpower” is the ability to emotionally embrace people and create an atmosphere of acceptance and openness.
I could see that the women who came within range of her personal wi-fi changed: they became far more self-aware and understood themselves better. Their attitude toward themselves shifted and their self-esteem evened out. I can’t call that effect anything but therapeutic.
Nastya wasn’t ready to counsel other people because of impostor syndrome. Who is going to listen to me, she thought, if I don’t have a formal psychology degree.
In 2022 she finally went to study at the Kyiv Gestalt University, and now she works with people using her “superpower”, which I am immensely glad about and very proud of. She loves the work, because it draws fully on the gifts and talents God gave her.
In the first 4 years of our married life, Nastya several times tried to go get a job so that she could earn money on par with me. Every time I talked her out of the idea.
I did it because I believe that a woman’s happiness lies in freedom from responsibility.
When a woman MUST earn a living, she has very little resource left for building a relationship with the man she loves.
She has less time and attention left for herself and her own growth. It becomes much harder for her to create the kind of atmosphere at home that a man wants to come back to. And I mean emotional comfort here, not just a good dinner, ironed shirts or a clean floor.
Two exhausted people after a hard day at work are unlikely to build a happy relationship. Keeping a home warm is work every bit as important as earning money.
Any notion of “fairness” and “partnership” inside a family I consider not merely harmful but lethal for the relationship. Imagine what would have happened if my mind had been infected with the idea that “a woman has to work too, because that’s fair”.
Nastya would most likely hate her days right now and would be very far from her real calling — helping people as a gestalt therapist. She would simply be earning money at some ordinary nine-to-six job and quietly suffering from the fact that her potential stays untapped.
So if a woman does some kind of work because she genuinely wants to, that can only be welcomed. But if stress and money problems land on her, it will be very hard for her to respect her man and build a happy marriage with him.
I understand perfectly well that many women work because they have no other option. That there is either no man beside them, or he doesn’t earn enough to cover the family’s basic needs.
That is why I create so much content for men, where I focus on the 4 important male roles in a family: protector, friend, provider and lover. I even built a whole course on the subject, and men buy the recording from us regularly.
The happy families I know are families where the man takes on the full weight of responsibility, keeps growing, earns and takes care of the woman he loves. And she, for her part, has the privilege of choosing what to do and at what intensity.
When a woman can stand behind her husband, it somehow becomes very easy for her to be happy and to fill her man with that happiness.
This is my subjective experience and observation. If everything in your relationship works the other way around and you are both content, I am genuinely glad for you.
Do you agree with the idea that a woman’s happiness lies in freedom from responsibility?
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