I was lis­ten­ing to NPR on the way into work this morn­ing — pri­mar­ily because my $%*@! Zune keeps act­ing up. (Breathe) Any­way, I tuned in near the begin­ning of a piece about the bur­geon­ing new par­a­digm of women mak­ing more money than their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, and the atten­dant issues with this real­ity. Per­haps in tan­dem, there is also an arti­cle in today’s New York Times on the same topic.

As I lis­tened the piece, and sub­se­quently read the Times arti­cle, I started to think about how this is such a non-issue for me. Of course, I had to think if I could say for sure that I felt this way because, to date, I have always made more money than my sig­nif­i­cant other and/or spouse. I didn’t have to travel far to reach the answer. No…I hon­estly don’t care.

What came next were some thoughts about the dif­fer­ent sides of this issue. My knee-jerk reac­tion was think­ing that a lot of these guys belly aching about feel­ing emas­cu­lated need to get over them­selves. I have long since tired of the centuries-old edict that a man must make more — read “pro­vide” — than his sig­nif­i­cant other. (Of course I couldn’t help but take a men­tal side­bar to pon­der about how gay male cou­ples han­dle this dilemma.) How­ever, being a man, and spend­ing a good amount of time over the years around other men, I can under­stand the pres­sure to be the provider.

On the flip side of the gen­der coin, though, I’ve heard more than my share of women add the “he must make more than me” caveat when describ­ing an ideal mate, or sup­ply­ing the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for why they had to pass on a decent prospec­tive mate. Fur­ther, I’ve known and heard a sub­stan­tial num­ber of women, of all races, bemoan that they are hav­ing a hard time find­ing a mate because “there are no good men out there.” That is often code for, “that fool works at Target.”

Let me be hon­est and real here. While I am sure many peo­ple have legit­i­mate life expe­ri­ences that make them ret­i­cent to 1) attempt to date a more economically-successful woman; or 2) date a man who earns less; I think there’s some­thing else at play here. I think at the root of this is a sim­ple mat­ter of con­trol. Let me attempt to break this down, from my per­spec­tive, based on gen­der lines.

Men
Lis­ten to the NPR piece. Read the NY Times arti­cle. Have an hon­est talk with male friends and they will tell you that they don’t want a woman try­ing to boss them around. They don’t want to feel emas­cu­lated. I fear that a lot of this is merely pro­jec­tion. We, as men, have been brought up to feel that we need to lead and pro­vide. Even our par­ents would rein­force this con­struct. “Man up!” “Be a man!” The upside of this con­stant admon­ish­ment is that a lot of men are very aggres­sive, in terms of their careers. We are dogged by the lit­tle voice that urges us to make that money. Climb that lad­der. Make that money. Get a higher posi­tion. Make that money. Though many of us want to shout “Stop the world! I want to get off!” we keep toil­ing away try­ing to make…that…money.

I have more a few friends who got tripped up, on their own accord, pur­su­ing the women they loved because they felt their finances were not in order. What the…? Now, in fair­ness, I think it’s respon­si­ble to think about your finan­cial con­di­tion, gen­er­ally. Fur­ther, if you’re plan­ning to have kids in the near future, it’s a smart to engage in some finan­cial plan­ning. That’s not really what gets me to head-scratching. It’s the whole­sale notion that they can­not enter into a rela­tion­ship until they have all their “ducks in a row.” Some of this can be chalked up to com­mit­ment issues, but most of the time it’s because we have been pounded since a young age to make that money. No man is sup­posed to have a woman tak­ing care of him. Right?

Women
Now, my female friends escape some cul­pa­bil­ity in this funky dynamic in which we found our­selves. Women were right there as the boys were taught to be providers. I would con­jec­ture that that notion of man as provider gets rein­forced into a woman’s psy­che just as much as it does into ours. What’s par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing is the dual­ity, if I can call it that, of expec­ta­tions from women who aggres­sively pur­sue their careers. By dual­ity, I mean, the same women who (right­fully) expect to advance and be paid accord­ingly, have an expec­ta­tion that their sig­nif­i­cant other or spouse will/should out earn them. I get the idea of want­ing some­one who “com­ple­ments” you, but enough all ready with income lit­mus tests. Oth­er­wise, the notion of some­one com­ple­ment­ing you is reduced to one thing…make that money!

Again, I feel strongly that an issue of con­trol is at play, because gen­er­ally the per­son who makes the larger salary tends to con­trol the rela­tion­ship dynamic. The per­son who makes less tends to be some­what beholden to the larger salary earner–be it the man or the woman. Sure, sure…we can all pull out exam­ples of egal­i­tar­ian rela­tion­ships; but, be hon­est, how many rela­tion­ships can you point to where the per­son who makes less money is the more dom­i­nant per­son when it comes to finan­cial decisions?

There was a guy in the NPR piece who shared that he didn’t feel he could inter­ject in con­ver­sa­tions about money because he earned less than his wife. I heard two things in that. One, he ceded con­trol to his wife because he believes in the “(s)he who has the money has the power.” Fur­ther, between the lines, I could hear regret and resent­ment that he didn’t hold that posi­tion or role in the family.

I hear women say, “he can’t han­dle it,” refer­ring to their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers hav­ing issues with them being the larger wage earner. I won’t attempt to waive that away, because there’s plenty of truth in that state­ment; how­ever, there’s a back story here. There are some women who make more than their mate, and like a lot of men, will con­stantly remind their part­ner of that fact–whether in implicit or explicit ways. Irre­spec­tive of how much sugar was coated on the state­ment, being reminded that you’re the lesser because your pay­check is small is a bit­ter pill to swallow.

I didn’t write this piece to tear any­one down or to stir the pot. I am sim­ply releas­ing some­thing that I actu­ally think about often. As my wife gains noto­ri­ety and her income increases (make that money baby!), I am fully pre­pared to sup­port her and do every­thing I can to see that she meets exceeds her goals. I couldn’t care less if she makes ten times more than me, because I didn’t marry her for money. Add to that, my dream is to go full-time with my pho­tog­ra­phy and writ­ing, which will, at least ini­tially, pro­duce less income than I cur­rently make. My wife is all on board for that. There is no threat to my mas­culin­ity. She holds no design to reign over me. Maybe I’m just a new age kind of guy, but my man­hood is not defined by the ratio of my income to that of my wife’s. In fact, I’ve got issues with this whole “man­hood” par­a­digm and gen­der roles, gen­er­ally, but I’ll write about that in another piece.

What do you think about this issue? I would love if I could get some real can­did com­ments and con­ver­sa­tion about this topic.