Fucking A dude, I only work 20-30 hours a week and easily out earn the GF, but she sometimes brings up the fact that my job is cushy and flexible while hers is rigid and requires her to be on a schedule. Bitch I didn't tell you to be a teacher, just because I made better decisions than you doesn't mean I need to make up the work differential.
Just had a straw poll around my office. Of the 10 guys who sit around me - all on low six figure incomes, everyone of us agrees that our job is not bad compared to most and much better than other jobs we've had in the last 5 years. Every single one of us would swap to be a house husband in a fucking heart beat if we had a spouse who was out earning us by the margin. Most of us would have some kind of project inside of a year to keep us busy - but we'd all be doing it in a very half arsed fashion from home. And I really can't express how enranging it is when people don't get that IT is a fucking exhausting job. Gah.
This. It's also partly why I drink as much as I do. I agree with Scootah and Nett, I would be a house husband in a split second if my SO made 4 or 5 times what I do. I love to cook and BBQ, so I think I would actually like that a lot. I also would not quit working completely. I have a couple of ideas for websites. Probably wouldn't make any money, but would at least get me out of bed each day.
For the most part, I am a house husband. There, I said it. I've lived with my girlfriend, in the house that she bought, for the past 3 years. I've had many jobs, but she is the bread winner. By far. She's a veterinarian. I'm in the process of being a firefighter. I don't know what she makes, but a firefighter here makes $30K. I will never make nearly the same amount of money she does and I'm OK with that. But dont assume that being a house husband is all butterflies and giggles. There is still some weird underlying bullshit that goes along with it. She is a woman, and they have a need, or want, or whatever, to feel like they are being taken care of. On the other hand, most of her friends are also DVMs and are smart, hot and single. Their main problem with finding boyfriends is that these dudes are intimidated by their intelligence and income. So, thats a thinker.
It's interesting how well my job relates to my hobby of racing. Racing is mentally exhausting; you have to concentrate incredibly hard for a long, extended period of time, while dealing with adrenaline rushes, etc. Most of our local club races are 25 minutes long, and the vast majority of racers crawl out of their car after the race mentally exhausted. I'm out of shape, but for years I've been mentally focusing and concentrating for long periods of time. I can hop out of a car after a 90 minute stint still feeling fresh. When we endure a 46 hour day when we race at the 24 hours of Daytona, most people are fucking wiped, but years of all-nighters and daily hard concentration have helped me immensely. Sure, I'm tired, but I'm still making sharp and quick decisions. (They didn't make me the team manager because of my looks). But after a day of that, when you shut down, you really shut down. Comatose.
And all that "underlying BS", and the "kept man/woman", I think is really about control. People are afraid that they are, have, or will be controlled. Money is by far the easiest and most common means of exerting that control, aside from having a pussy. When you have no money of your own, and no options, that will put you in a fucked up headspace. Even if you're not in that position of being controlled, you can still have that fear of being controlled. Which can also be part of trust issues.
Okay, drunken PIMPTRESS wants to contribute. I work damn hard, as many women do. I never expect someone to take care of me, I don't understand all of these little rules or control issues. If I want to go do something, I expect to pay for it. I don't care what kind of job you have, it's a job and stressful. When I was breaking horses, which is my ultimate passion and joy, it still kicked my ass mentally. It seems couples who just split everything evenly have it down. Who gives a shit if one makes more than the other? I don't understand how that can be an issue. You want to pay, cool, thanks Babe.
The problem comes when the earning capabilities of the two aren't that close. Think of a bartender making $40k a year, vs an exec making $500k a year. What if the exec wants to go to a nice restaurant and drop $600 on a nice meal? Should they not because the bartender can't pay half?
If I don't make enough to cover that, then we discuss it. Hey, you want to eat there with me? You know I can't swing that, so ..... I have no issue if you want to pay. I'll pay you back in other ways.... I am fucking charming.
Did we already have the repayment in sexual favor discussion in this thread? Cause I swurr Im much more apt to shell out love if she doles out the Beejs....
I'm amazed at those of you TiBettes who are saying that you will offer to pay, but then either think less of the person for accepting or think it indicates that he isn't interested. Nothing disingenuous about that... I'm generally in favor of splitting as a philosophical point (and, well, a financial one), but have no problem paying on the first date because it can be awkward doing the whole let's-investigate-our-respective-gender-politics thing on a first date. But it is sort of eyebrow raising to me if a girl doesn't at least offer. It strikes me as not quite selfish, but sort of...unthoughtful. And probably lowers the probability of us getting along. I suppose I'm going to stand out. My instinctive answer is no. And you could change 4x my salary to several million...and it wouldn't change my answer. I'm, for the near future at least, making enough to live reasonably comfortably. Or at least, as comfortably as one can as a 22 year old in New York. Going from comfortable to super rich would be fan-fucking-tastic, don't get me wrong. But would it outweigh the downsides? Probably not. If it were a situation like Frank described, then I would in a second. Or if I could, say, replace the job with being a "professional student" (this is what I would probably do if I won the lottery tomorrow). But if it is a househusband kind of thing? No. I don't have any hobbies like Nett's racing that I could basically treat as a job that doesn't pay. My hobbies are generally more of the "casual interest" sort. I would not be able to deal with not having a means of providing myself with a sense of personal accomplishment and use of my talents. The idea of sitting around the apartment/house every day doing basically nothing? Sure, for a few weeks it's fantastic. But as a vocation? No. For no amount of money. I don't know whether being a father would be enough to provide me with a sense of doing something worthwhile, since I'm 21 and know fuck all about parenthood. Perhaps in the case of being a stay at home father, I could do it.
I find it interesting that you think that you'd do nothing. And I think that's how too many stay-at-home wives think of it as well. Like I said earlier, I'd spend a ton of time working on my car, woodworking, coding, playing music, etc. All of that stuff would give me huge personal satisfaction, and yet I wouldn't make a dime off of it. If there was a family involved, that alone would take a ton of work to keep up. What I find off-putting is the idea that a stay-at-home wife/partner would do nothing, and then expect the other, working, bread-winning partner to share in the house work, cooking, etc. Guess what? If I'm off making the cash, and you chose to not work, then the laundry better be done, and the groceries in the fridge. That's not being a dick, or controlling, that's being in a partnership where both pull their equal weight.
Well, I say this because it would reflect my current hobbies and interests. There's nothing that I'm involved in right now that I would be jumping into as a 30-hour-a-week sort of project. Could I find one after the fact? Perhaps. But given my current habits, it isn't immediately obvious what that would be, and I'm wary of the potential for that to drift into a Betty-Draper style life. One can only drink beer so many hours of the day. If there was something like your startup or racing team, it might change my answer (hence the professional student thing). Also, I think suggesting that you're going to add what amounts to a de facto job is sort of against the spirit of the question. The sort of dudes who get themselves a kept woman tend to pretty much say that her job is assorted housewivery. The fact that I hate housework might also be relevant. I think I might trade a weekly kick in the balls to avoid laundry and dish washing. I do these sort of things because I enjoy living in a nicely maintained place...but I LOATHE them. And cooking is sort of a pragmatic thing for me. I like food as much as the next guy, but cooking as such does nothing for me. The typical expected stay-at-home activities are all things I very much dislike doing. There's also an element of "know thyself." I know that I often have a tendency to procrastination and laziness if I don't have an agenda of what I should be doing. I sometimes do better and end up happier/more productive if I can knowingly box myself in somewhat with responsibilities. Sort of a commitment device.
Cynical as it is, this is kind of where I am right now. Automatically paying for things in the past has only left me feeling like a shmuck, probably because it was with girls who expected that kind of thing and took it as a perfunctory gesture, so to speak. So nowadays I ask myself "How good do I feel about this?" Otherwise I'm probably letting myself get played out of habit. And yeah, the girl offering to pay is generally a good sign. As far as being a house husband, while I know fuck all about marriage, I do know that my life goes to shit without structure and something to strive for. On the other hand, I can easily see how people stuck in a stressful job that's not their passion would deal well with the same thing I would struggle with.
That's also the same kind of issue that some "housewives" have; they don't want to work, but also don't want to do the domestic shit. And they don't have anything of substance to keep them meaningfully busy during the day. Welcome to Soap Operas, Oprah, Maury, Judge Judy, drinking problems, and an overdeveloped sense of self-entitlement. My ex had a bit of an issue like that for a while, and we talked about it, and she ended up volunteering down at the mental health ward. (Sometimes she was the help, sometimes she was the patient). That made a HUGE difference to her self esteem, and made her a much happier person.
My cousin's roommate's Aunt is Judge Judy. Which means I basically know her, right? My cousin (who has met her) says she's just as blunt in real life, but in a nicer way.
Let's see if you're still singing that tune in 5 years college boy. This. Keeping a household isn't bull shit work, I would take a lot of pride in keeping the house in as kick ass condition as possible, I'd also be a bad ass cook. That's one thing that always boggled my mind, stay at home moms than can't cook for shit. 90% of of parenting is subjective, your cooking ability is pretty much the only thing you could get a tangible grade on and you don't even try? Bitch get in the kitchen and learn how to cook.
Where can I find this woman? I'm not sure I could ever give up earning something. I'd give up my day job in a heartbeat and just run my storage business, tinker with cars, and have a massive garden but I don't think I'd be comfortable earning nothing. Also I'm not comfortable being an idler, just hanging about expending resources without replenishing them. It goes against my nature.