Being The Breadwinner Won't Save You

So, by now you've probably heard

that Grammy-winning rap icon Megan Thee Stallion ended her relationship with NBA star Klay

Thompson after posting in her Instagram story,

"Quote, cheating had me around your whole family, playing house, got cold feet,

holding you down through all your horrible mood swings

and treatment towards me during your basketball season.

Now you don't know if you can be monogamous."

These revelations of Thompson's cheating

and poor treatment of one of hip-hop's biggest stars inspired a wave of online

discourse,

a lot of which fell into a familiar rhetorical pattern of, "Well,

if this beautiful, fabulous, and successful, wealthy woman can't keep her man in line,

then what hope do the rest of us have?"

The idea being that if you're hot enough, or rich enough, or beloved enough,

that you can protect yourself from infidelity or a partner's poor treatment.

However unintended, the implication is that a woman is responsible for her partner's infidelity.

That if she had just self-optimized her looks, or her career,

or her life enough, she would never could never be mistreated.

But there's a reason there's no shortage of beautiful,

wealthy women who've experienced similar mistreatment.

Lily Allen, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey.

In her documentary 5'2, Lady Gaga says, "I sold 30 million and lost Luke.

I did a movie and lost Taylor.

It's like a turnover."

And for many ambitious women, this is all too relatable.

We may not be selling millions of records, but the pattern is clear.

Women's successes do not protect them from the bad behavior of their male partners.

And recently, more research has emerged showing

that it can even increase the chances of it.

I'm Stephanie O'Connell, author of The Ambition Penalty,

How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up and Then pushes Them Down,

which documents the ways women's ambitions, particularly their public and professional ambitions,

get weaponized against them.

Not only in the workplace, but in the home, too.

While researching the book, I spoke to women whose parents, partners,

and peers found ways, big and small, subtle and not so subtle,

to undermine their aspirations and punish them for their wins.

Particularly, if not especially, in their heterosexual romantic relationships.

I heard from women whose boyfriends would consistently pick fights with them the day

before big school exams

or important presentations,

or who would sulk

and withdraw whenever those women were presented with a big opportunity

or personal win.

I heard from women who spent years stepping up to support their partners' careers,

only to have their boyfriends

or their spouses undercut

or sabotage them whenever they needed support in return.

Refusing to watch their own children, for example,

so that these women could also partake in big professional opportunities

that required things like evening commitments

or overnight travel.

I spoke to women whose partners would intentionally create chaos, either emotionally or physically,

around the house just before these women went in for big job interviews

or evaluations,

or other high-stakes moments.

And the men they were partnered with going out of their way to undermine

those women's professional opportunities,

in addition to punishing these women

when they succeeded anyway in spite of their partners' pushback every step of the

way.

And it turns out this isn't just anecdotal.

For example, a 2021 analysis found

that women who were the financial breadwinners in their heterosexual relationships were 35% more

likely to experience physical violence

and 20% more likely to experience emotional abuse from their male partners.

This pattern held across age and income and cultural and educational background,

but was not present when the roles were reversed.

That is, when men earned more money.

There was also no change in the incidence of abuse

as long as her income relative to

that of her male partner remained below his,

less than half of the household income.

So, it didn't actually matter how much money these women made

as long as it was less than the men they were partnered with.

These findings are evidence of what the researchers call male backlash,

a way men attempt to reinstate their feeling of power

and dominance over the home

or the relationship when they feel

that that dominance or power has been threatened.

In this case, when women become the primary earners in the relationship.

Now, other studies show similar patterns

when women's incomes or public

and professional status surpasses

that of their male partners,

those men become increasingly likely to respond to this supposed threat to their masculinity

in unhealthy and unproductive ways.

From higher rates of sexual infidelity to reduced contributions to household labor,

in addition to the increased incidence of emotional abuse and physical violence.

All of which unsurprisingly correlates with lower relationship satisfaction in these relationships

and a higher risk of separation.

But in the age-old tradition of blaming women for the problem,

a common response to these findings is

that these women must somehow be just career obsessed in ways

that make them totally selfish

and horrible to their male partners.

Again, suggesting that it is women who are the problem,

that they deserve to be neglected or cheated on or abused for their successes.

But contrary to our popular cultural myth

that women who out-earn their partners in heterosexual relationships are cold

and mean or suddenly become totally self-centered,

research finds that these women take on even greater shares of household

and caretaking labor as their incomes outpace their male partners.

Which some researchers hypothesize indicates

that women are well aware of these stereotypes of successful cutthroat career women

as selfish and actively go out of their way to counteract those stereotypes,

even as that leaves them with a totally unsustainable workload between their paid

and unpaid labor that their male peers don't even come close to matching.

But even more than that, the research finds that as women gain status,

they experience not only greater personal well-being, but greater relationship satisfaction as well.

Plus, higher socioeconomic status is also associated with happier marriages

and less chance of divorce,

which is not surprising.

If you can reduce your economic stressors,

that's one less potential stressor for the household and the relationship.

And as the data consistently show,

these boosts in both well-being

and relationship satisfaction are well-documented right up until the point

that a woman's income

or status surpasses that of her male partner.

And only then do we see in the data these greater incidents of male

backlash and relationship instability.

Meaning that women's earning power

or public success or personal ambition in

and of itself is not a problem.

In fact, the data show us just how much these things benefit women

and their relationships.

The problem is the idea that men should always have more of them.

So, rather than doubling down on patriarchal gender norms

that demonize women's public

and professional ambitions,

the research shows we should actually be a lot more concerned about reinforcing the

patriarchal ideals that insist

that a man's role is to exert financial power,

while women are expected to give up their autonomy and power and submit.

Now, a series of studies published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology makes clear

that this is not just a matter of money.

The researchers found that across all forms of achievement, personal, social, and intellectual,

men were more likely to interpret their partner's success as their own failure.

And subconsciously, these men would feel worse about themselves

when their partner succeeded compared to

when she failed.

They also lost confidence when their wives got any wins,

even when they were not in direct competition with their partners.

And when the women succeeded at something the men failed at,

men's self-esteem took an even bigger hit,

which in turn diminished their relationship satisfaction.

So, what I want to take a minute to point out here is

that this is not an anomaly.

This is a statistically significant pattern.

And while that doesn't mean

that all heterosexual men are responding in these ways to successful women,

it does point to the extent to

which heterosexual relationships are still very much underpinned

and shaped by very patriarchal ideals.

Where man is the head of the household is often still the expectation,

even if it's not explicitly spoken or acknowledged.

And even among men who explicitly claim that they don't buy into these ideals,

these patriarchal beliefs and expectations still wind up revealing themselves in the ways in

which many of these men are still weaponizing women's ambitions

and successes against them,

putting many women who really want to preserve the peace

and the stability of their relationship under ongoing pressure to shrink their successes

or deny their needs

or suppress their wants

or to let go of their ambitions altogether.

Of course, when we hear these stories of men cheating on their superstar girlfriends

or that one friend's husband who belittled her silly little dreams

or that other girlfriend whose boyfriend threw a fit

and yelled at her

when she successfully negotiated a raise at work for herself,

an actual story that I report in my book, it's really easy to think,

"Whoa, that is so bad.

That is definitely not my relationship."

And maybe it's not,

but one of the things

that researching my book made very clear was just how much patterns of inequality

throughout heterosexual relationships were much more indicative of the norm rather than the exception.

Even if the backlash

and undermining of women's ambitions isn't

as explicit as abuse

or infidelity,

I consistently found that the pattern of pushback was far greater than the pattern

of support.

But because inequality is so normalized in heterosexual partnership,

while women's capacity to withstand it is celebrated

as a sign of their care

and commitment,

these patterns are often dismissed or downplayed.

Like, my partner might not do his fair share

and support me in the ways

that I support him,

and sometimes he shuts down instead of celebrating my successes,

but that's just because he's stressed out

or because he has a lot on his plate right now,

or whatever.

Insert any excuse that applies to anyone, anywhere, anytime,

including all women dealing with this here.

And that's why I love the data,

because the data really help expose

that these inequities are not personal

and they're not unique.

They are common features of heterosexual relationships as they currently stand.

Where the same patriarchal power structures

that privilege and perpetuate men's power outside the home play out within the home.

As men are often conditioned to feel entitled to women's time

and energy and labor.

While women still get the message

that men's comfort and satisfaction is their primary responsibility to maintain at nearly any

cost to themselves.

And under these expectations and practices,

the goal is not to secure a better

or stronger or more resilient marriage

or relationship.

It's to secure men's dominance and control,

even if we don't necessarily perceive it that way.

Even among those who claim to hold progressive or egalitarian values,

the data consistently show men actively avoiding the unpaid labor

that enables the women they're partnered with to pursue their professional

and public ambitions in the same way they get to.

Or sabotaging their partner's success using the threat of backlash

or abandonment or even abuse

as a way of undermining their partner's personal achievements.

Women who expect partnership wind up experiencing this unexpected power struggle

and then internalizing it

as something wrong with themselves instead of something wrong with a relationship built to

incentivize men's dominance and women's submission.

And women are constantly reminded that relationships take work and take sacrifice,

unwittingly giving up more

and more of whatever else they might want in the name of a relationship

that offers little to no meaningful compromise in return.

For women who've heard these kinds of stories

and seen these kinds of relationships

and thought to themselves,

that will never be me or I would never accept or allow that,

only to find themselves in eerily similar circumstances,

the disillusionment and shame can be paralyzing,

particularly when those women have been fully pushed into giving up their professional lives,

their community outside of the home, and their economic autonomy.

But recognizing that the personal backlash that comes out of these systems,

whether it's a chronically grumpy, unhelpful, unfaithful, or even abusive partner,

is not indicative of women's personal failings,

but rather a feature of heterosexual relationships defined by patriarchal norms,

can offer women a valuable opportunity to let go of the paralyzing shame too

many feel because of it.

Understanding heterosexual relationships not as manifestations of personal preferences or individual circumstances,

but rather as an institution shaped by common cultural norms and social expectations,

can offer all of us a chance to step away from positioning the inequality

in the home as a personal battle,

me versus you or man versus woman or partner versus partner,

and to acknowledge the shared constraints

and pressures put on all of our relationships under patriarchal norms,

expectations, and ideals.

For men, it's an opportunity to interrogate how patriarchal relationship expectations can undermine their

own well-being as well

as the well-being of their partners

and children.

For women, it's a chance to let go of chronic self-blame

and internalizing responsibility for every relationship problem.

And for all of us,

it's a way to differentiate what's best for our relationship

as an institution built to preserve men's power

and privileges,

and what's best for our relationship

as a support system for the needs

and ambitions of everyone in it.

In spite of the obvious benefits,

shifting the true expectations

and norms of a relationship from patriarchal to partnership is not

as easy as it should be.

Because we can't do it on our own.

And as much as we might like to believe differently,

we can't just will our partners into respecting our time, our energy, our labor,

and our ambitions without them actually wanting to.

So, if despite our best efforts,

we find ourselves in relationships with significant others unwilling to prioritize our ambitions within

them,

what we can do instead is challenge the common wisdom of prioritizing romantic relationships

that come at the expense of our own satisfaction.

And on that point, we can look back to Megan Thee Stallion,

who followed up her Instagram story sharing the news of Thompson's mistreatment with a

formal statement to TMZ stating,

"I've made the decision to end my relationship with Clay.

Trust, fidelity, and respect are non-negotiable for me in a relationship,

and when those values are compromised, there's no real path forward.

I'm taking this time to prioritize myself and move ahead with peace and clarity."

End quote.

Iconic as ever.

I'm Stephanie O'Connell, author of The Ambition Penalty:

How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up and Then pushes them down.

Thank you for tuning in.