Many of my clients are high achieving and high earning people. While males in this situation consider it an obvious benefit on the dating market to be perceived as having a high powered job and disposable income, my female clients in this situation often fear that it will be held against them. While maybe this was true in prior generations, in my practice, I do not see any evidence for this idea at all.
Men are not idiots, despite the current media portrayal of them as bumbling fools. They want someone who is compatible with them, and who is easy to be with. This is the exact same thing women like. When a high earning man (like many men in my practice) meets a high earning woman, he doesn’t think, “What a ball busting b%^&” or anything else that would be more fitting in an episode of Mad Men. He usually thinks, “That’s great, someone who deeply understands me, including the work aspect of my identity.”
It is also easier in many ways to be with someone who is high-earning. Sure, a high earner may have a difficult schedule, but they also have resources to deal with it. Men are usually much less averse than women to hiring help, but for a woman to rise through the ranks in her career, she generally has to have already made peace with hiring help to cover childcare and other home management tasks. Unless people are insane and completely blind to privilege, it is a fairly obvious maxim that money helps make life easier. Certainly, money can’t make up for other deficits, and it “can’t buy you love” as the song says, but neither gender is blind to the fact that two people earning money yields more money than one person making money, and money can buy things that are helpful.
The idea that men have such fragile egos that they would forgo the positives of a woman who understands their focus on work and who also can pay her own way just so that they can somehow be the “bigger” partner is a relic. In fact, I see the opposite in my practice. Most of the men I see who are married to high earning or high achieving women are very attracted to their wives’ ability to succeed at work. They brag about it to friends, family, and even to me as their therapist. They enjoy being with a smart, confident woman who has a strong work ethic and takes care of her family. Who wouldn’t?
So when women tell me that men are turned off by their success and their income, and even use this as a reason they don’t push harder at work, what are they referring to? Often, they are using “my income” or “my success” as a proxy variable for one of two things:
- “My narcissism”
- “My anxiety”
In the first case, the woman is someone who brags about her income, achievements, and material possessions in a way that is off putting when it’s done by men or by women. My high achieving male clients who talk about themselves as a legend in their own time do just as poorly on the dating market, unless they are only searching for women who want them for their money (and then they complain about gold-diggers).
In the second case, which I see more often, many Type A high earning and high achieving women are massively anxious. But, because they have been so successful at academics and in their career, they have never identified as clinically anxious. Once they get past a couple of dates with a man, or even on the first date, their need to control their environment (in the way they do at work and at home) becomes very unappealing to their date. To save face, and/or because they literally have no idea what else could be going on, these women blame their lack of dating success on their ambition, which is actually a straw man.
In the case of dating post-divorce, men are older and wiser, and even more aware of the importance of compatibility for successful relationships. They want someone who is a best friend, which is easier if you understand one another’s achievement orientation, as well as someone who is openly loving and affectionate. But in actuality, the latter is most salient.
Most of the divorced men that I see were unhappy and frustrated for years in their prior marriages. As women initiate divorce 69% of the time, they have usually been the dumpee rather than the dumper. They yearn for someone who gives them physical and emotional attention and affection in a way that they did not get from their wives for years leading up to the divorce. A compatriot who “gets” their career and has one of her own is icing on the cake, but affection is the main need.
What about cases where the woman out-earns the man, even by a sizable margin? This is becoming more and more common, and it is also nothing that makes men run away with their tail between their legs. Again, men are not stupid. Who wouldn’t want someone who is loving and supportive and also impressive in their career and financially secure? Women who complain about income disparity leading to conflict are frequently using this as a straw man in the same way that men do when they say their wife only sees them as an ATM. In reality, conflict about a woman making more money usually comes up only when:
- The woman acts like a jerk about it, or
- That’s usually it.
Just as in the gender inverse scenario, an income disparity is only a problem when the higher-earning partner says things like, “Since I make the money, I get to choose [insert every major decision here]” or “When you earn as much as me then you’ll have a say” or “Must be nice to stop working at 5pm, guess I would do that if I didn’t want to take those vacations you love.” Anyone of any gender can be a jerk about money, usually because in their upbringing they saw one parent financially bully the other.
Are there exceptions to this, you may ask? Are there some men that really do fear and resent a woman who makes a lot of money or who has a rockstar career? Certainly. But it is the very small exception to the rule, not the rule. (Just as there are women who resent their husband’s careers, by the way.) If a man does act anxious, rude, or insecure about your income or career, first look at yourself to see if you’ve been acting like a jerk in the ways delineated above, and if you have been, then try and modify your behavior to be more humble and open (same advice I give to men).
But if a deep dive shows that you do not think that you walk on water because of your career, and that you don’t try to micromanage everything, then consider it a wonderful stroke of luck that this man showed his deep financial/career insecurity before marriage, and end the relationship.
Think deeply about this post if you have been using this idea as a reason not to trust men or to fully embrace dating or relationships. There is no dearth of men who think of a woman’s success as attractive and even sexy. And till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Female Breadwinners Are On The Rise, People!