My Wife Earns More Than Me And That Is Perfectly Fine With Me
The society used to say that a man must be able to feed his family. Fortunately, the times when only the man makes money are long gone. But still many take it for granted that the man has to earn more money than the woman. We must finally say goodbye to this idea.
My wife and I met twenty-four years ago in a club. At that time, I was still a student. My wife had already been working as a civil servant for a few years.
So she earned more money than me from the beginning. I had three jobs to make money besides my studies, but I couldn’t even come close to her salary. That never bothered her, though.
Some of my wife’s old friends asked her if it didn’t bother her that I earned so little. They said I was financially dependent on her. Very few people understood that our relationship was about love and not money.
We both found the fixation on money strange. Why did everyone worry more about which of us earned more than about whether we were happy together?
When we moved in together half a year later and got married another half year later, she was the one who paid the most. But even then, I paid half the rent.
We decided quite quickly to pool our bank accounts. All money went into a common pot, and we could both dispose of it freely.
Over the years, my wife’s salary increased regularly. She took further training, specialized in her job, and took on more responsibility in her career.
During this time, I finished my studies, found a job, and worked in this job for fourteen years without getting a single raise.
During this time, I started to write my first book. I didn’t want to sit on my small salary forever, and most of all, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my working life in some office.
My wife was always right behind me. She never said a word about how I could contribute less to our livelihood than she did. On the other hand, I never had an inferiority complex about it. We were both very relaxed about the situation.
Someone always earns more than the other in a relationship. In our case, it was and is my wife. If it were the other way around, I wouldn’t expect her to be particularly grateful or submissive. So why should this be the case when the man earns less?
Over the years, the income from my books has been growing. What at first was just pocket money eventually became an income that, in some months, exceeded that of an entire family.
For a few months, I earned much more than my wife with my job and my books combined. Although I had to finance my book publications and pay taxes, I was able to give her some expensive gifts.
I financed a trip to London and bought her a wickedly expensive handbag that we could never have afforded otherwise. The month before that, I had earned 8600 € with my books. The salary for my job was on top of that.
I decided to quit my job and only write. But before that, I talked about it with my wife. I told her that it was a risk. These fat months wouldn’t last forever. There would undoubtedly be times when my income would plummet.
She agreed anyway. Even more: She urged me to make my dream come true and to take the step into self-employment.
Again, friends and colleagues of my wife were worried. My friends also warned me. I would then be entirely dependent on my wife, they said.
I am sure that nobody would have had a problem with it if our roles had been reversed. As emancipated as our society may be, the old clichés are still firmly anchored in the minds of even young people.
Today, my income is not that high anymore. I contribute as little to our joint income as I did then. But this has only been the case for a few months now and will probably not continue forever. The next wave of success will come, and then I will earn more than my wife for a while.
In recent years my income has always been either extremely high or extremely low. The success in writing comes and goes in waves.
We have never calculated who brings how much money into the household budget, and we will not do so in the future. Should I one day earn much more than my wife, nothing would change in our relationship.
Gender stereotypes should not influence how we live together. We should not let ourselves be pressed into roles that society wants to force on us, and we should live our individual life plans without feelings of guilt.
If a man earns less money than his wife, he is still a real man — or no, that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter — if one partner earns less than the other, he/she is still a full-fledged human being.
Do not judge a partnership by who pays the most. Judge them by how respectfully and lovingly the partners treat each other. These are the things that really count. Gender is not.
René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.
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