Will Making More Money Than Your Man Destroy Your Relationship?

You've got to give ladies credit: women are going at their careers hard, and it's paying off.

And I mean that literally.

According to an NPR interview with data expert Mona Chalabi, 29% of American wives earned more than their employed husbands in 2015. That's over 10% more than in 1987, when only 18% of women earned more than their husbands when both partners were working. 

(You can listen to the whole interview below.)

Unfortunately, you can't get out your #GirlBoss victory fan flags just yet though, because there's some bad news too.

In the same NPR interview, Chalabi told us about a 2013 study from the Washington University in St. Louis, which showed that women who earned more than their husbands were more likely to use anti-anxiety medications and also more likely to suffer from insomnia.

And according to a study conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a wife earning more than her husband increases the couple's likelihood of divorce by 50%.

So while women's roles are changing, it's still not clear if we are actually eating the cake or if we just have it.

So does this mean your salary will doom your marriage?

At first, you may think the obvious answer is yes, probably (according to the numbers, anyway).

And you wouldn't be alone in thinking that.

Based on their study, the researchers from Chicago hypothesized that this shift in salaries often hurts a relationship. Why? According to the researchers, because it makes men feel emasculated. Basically, their theory is that a man's ego is bruised by the thought of a lady breadwinner, which leads to problems in their marriage.

And the researchers don't stop there. In their article, they suggest that this ego-bruising also affects women. Specifically, the researchers note their (somewhat surprising) finding that women who make more than their husbands actually do more work around the house, comparatively, than women whose husbands are the breadwinners.

Based on this, the researchers concluded that:

"This suggests that a 'threatening' wife takes on a greater share of housework so as to assuage the husband’s unease with the situation. The wife, of course, may ultimately get tired of working this ‘‘second shift’’ (Hochschild and Machung 1989), which might be one of the mechanisms behind our results on divorce."

Talk about a buzzkill.

And this theory is legit?

Well, that's not exactly clear.

Your see, the problem with this theory is that, as we all know, correlation does not equal causation. In other words, while a marriage with a woman breadwinner may be statistically more likely to fail, this doesn't mean that the couple's salaries—or men's egos, for that matter—are necessary the cause of divorce.

For example, Chalabi noted in the interview that the Chicago researchers "didn't actually ask the men whether or not they feel threatened."

And according to a study by the Pew Research Center, the majority of men actually don't think a high-earning woman is a problem. Specifically, when asked asked whether they think it’s generally better for a marriage if the husband earns more money than his wife, only 28% of respondents agreed with this statement, while 63% (distributed about equally between men and women) said they disagree. This is compared to the 40% of people who agreed and 58% who disagreed in 1997.

In other words, the growing majority of people might actually feel that there's no reason a woman should earn less than her husband.

But if our salaries aren't actually the problem, what is?

Why I think your higher paycheck might not be the (whole) problem.

Thanks to an impulse purchase during my last airport layover, I've been reading the book Think Like a Freak. Recently, I finished a chapter that taught me that, sometimes, the key to solving a problem isn't finding the right answers, but is instead asking the right questions.

So that got me (freakishly) thinking: what if the researchers weren't asking all the right questions? Instead of simply asking, "Why does a woman's higher salary hurt her marriage?", maybe they should have also been asking, "In what situations would salary differences affect a marriage?" 

For example, according to this article on the gender pay gap from PayScale, a huge factor in gender pay differences is the divide in which jobs we choose—some industries are male-dominated while others are most popular with the ladies.

Specifically, jobs more popular among women (like nurses and elementary school teachers) pay less than jobs more popular among men (like software developers and project managers). So, if a woman is making more than her husband, it's not improbable that she has a job that is generally male-dominated.

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According to a study conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a wife earning more than her husband increases the couple's likelihood of divorce by 50%.

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So imagine this situation: a woman working in a male-dominated field begins developing an emotionally steeled, ultra competitive attitude (which she learns is necessary to be taken seriously by her male coworkers). This may be awesome for her career, but what about the rest of her life? For example, if she lets that attitude follow her home from the office, her relationship could definitely suffer.

Or, imagine another scenario: a husband is making less than his wife because his wife is the CEO of Exchange-O-Gram, one of the most popular smartphone apps in the world. Because Exchange-O-Gram is growing so quickly, its CEO is putting in a lot more time than 9-5. Maybe the husband misses his wife, but since he's not great at communicating, he lets his frustration fester. Eventually, this frustration turns into unrelated arguments and eventually, a one-way ticket to divorce.

Or what about this one: a woman is making more than her husband, and his ego takes a hit. Only instead of having the maturity to either discuss his feelings with his wife or change his thinking, he lets the resentment build until eventually, the relationship crumbles.

While all of these situations involve a highly paid woman, the reason the marriages fail isn't actually the money; it's because the couple has another issue—a lack of teamwork, horrible communication, or immaturity—which eventually leads to the relationship's breakdown.

But the thing is, these fundamental problems would probably cause the relationship to fail regardless of the couple's salaries.

Ok, so what's your point?

My point is not that the experts are wrong. I mean, I wouldn't walk into an operating room and tell the doctor to step aside, and I won't tell the experts how to do their job either.

No, my point is that even if their theories are right, I don't think your kick ass career needs to be a kiss of death for your relationship. I think (and hope) that if you and your partner are able to communicate and work together as a team—general good relationship practices—you can stop gender roles from destroying your marriage, even if you're the one bringing home the bacon.

Basically, what I'm saying is this: ladies, don't be afraid of the bacon. We've worked hard, so let's have this bacon and eat it too.

What do you think? Can women make more than men without it causing a problem? Or is our society still stuck in the Dark Ages?