hmmm123 said:
Do you really need to generalize about entire groups of people based on your own personal experience?
And who said either person in a couple needs to be the "primary earner"? Ever stop to think that classifications such as those are part of the whole problem you are addressing?
1) Don't we all do this? Not saying it's either a good or bad thing, but more that it's a general human frailty. I'm not able to walk on water, either, and I haven't attained Buddhahood yet, but I'm reasonably assured the rest of you haven't, either. Or at least that's my generalization. Based upon my own personal experience.
2) Neither person needs to be the "primary earner" all of the time. But it helps when people are able to make tradeoffs. Which two people in exactly the same career-level with exactly the same demands, are frequently not able to make. What if he has to stay put to reach partner in his law firm, but she gets matched for a residency in Florida? What if they are both students but can't get into the same med school?
What happens when you're both in a career that demands relocation, demanding hours? You can't make that tradeoff as easily. You just can't. It's easier when one person is able to drop what they're doing. Later on, partner #2 may have to drop what they're doing, as well, to help partner #1 launch. The trade-off is much harder to negotiate when neither partner is able to make any sacrifices whatsoever.
Fortunately or unfortunately, relationships are not "fair". To expect your partner to be a total equal in everything you do is almost a game of narcissism - you want your partner to be a clone of yourself. Relationships work better when partners are *complementary*, not identical.
Neither party can be both breadwinner and nurturer in a relationship at the same time, because no person can be all things at all times.
When I worked in computers, I found it difficult to date/have relationships because my expectations/needs in relationships had changed. It seems the same issue for a lot of women who work in male-dominated fields, and work like dogs, and find that their needs in a relationship have become more typically "male" needs - and they find that their male "equals" also have those "typically male needs". It just doesn't work. I was just dating men at the time, and the successful men still wanted a woman to be the nurturer. But I needed to be nurtured, too. They wanted to come home to a hot meal - and so did I! You could argue "we can hire someone to do the cooking" or "we could eat out", but it just isn't the same as getting the caring attention from your partner.
These relationships (and ones I've observed like them) were a joke - with each partner arguing over whose turn it is to be nurtured, who paid for every meal, and how much each partner owed in rent! This is ridiculous.
You can't be both the nurturer and breadwinner in a relationship at the same time. It doesn't work when both partners come home, at the same time, and make the same demands of each other for something the other party just doesn't have to give. That is what these "Wall Street Syndrome" marriages are expecting of a person, and why they so often end in divorce after a few years.
I worked in an ID clinic long enough to know that means you're single and looking (for something anyway).
