My wife and I are having less sex ever since she started earning more than me.
Last year, she got a well-deserved promotion which we both celebrated as it will help our family finances – we have a hefty mortgage and two teenage girls at private school. I’ve been in the same job for many years with standard hours but am no longer the main bread winner. Obviously, her role is now more demanding and she works longer hours so she is often more tired in the evenings. But otherwise, she looks completely energised and fits in time at the gym and I’m so attracted to her. But I don’t initiate sex as often as I used to as I feel different about her somehow and then feel guilty about this change in my feelings. She must have noticed as we used to have sex at least five times a week – although she hasn’t said anything, probably because she’s so wrapped up in her work. But I’d like your advice before it becomes a serious issue.
Money psychotherapist Vicky Reynal suggests the shift in power dynamic may have disorientated the couple
M.M. London
Money psychotherapist Vicky Reynal replies: It sounds like you have identified a potential emotional link between financial disparity and intimacy issues: you feel differently about your wife somehow. Let’s explore that.
First of all, this isn’t uncommon. For many heterosexual couples these days, the woman earning more than the man can affect the couple’s sex life.
Lack of time and stress are not at the core of what is happening even if they often get used as excuses. It’s actually about the shift in the power dynamic and the fact that it ‘disorientates’ the couple, or even changes their perception of each other.
Remember the old expression, ‘who wears the pants in the relationship’? Many of us grew up in families with traditional gender roles: the man earned the higher salary and held most of the power.
Even if our rational mind doesn’t subscribe to a relationship dynamic structured this way – you might on paper have no issue with your wife earning more than you – at some level this is clashing with the model we grew up with, a model that is familiar.
For many people money plus power equals ‘pants’ so a dynamic in which the woman earns more than the man can create an unconscious change of perception in either partner in which she might lose ‘femininity’ and he might lose ‘masculinity’.
People struggle to recognise this in themselves because many of us want to think of ourselves as being ‘modern’ and having adapted to the new social and cultural norms. There might be shame in acknowledging that a part of us still holds on to antiquated beliefs about gender and I wonder if this is what your guilty feelings are about.
Could the difference that you feel be about your wife having lost ‘femininity’ as a result of earning more? It may also have to do with your feelings about yourself: many men feel less potent or masculine as a result of losing the main bread winner status. Yet this is a hard thing to accept so we ‘project’ these feelings on to our partner. Then instead of owning up to how emasculating this new dynamic feels to you, you imagine that your wife is thinking of you as less desirable and attractive, and that makes you uncomfortable, and might even stop you from initiating sex.
We live in a society that believes relationships should be equal, power should be balanced, yet the emotional imprint left by our past relationships has taught us the contrary (the man is a breadwinner, which makes him powerful and attractive). All this creates an inner conflict that is unsettling.
It isn’t easy to step away from these often unconscious ideas. So what could help? Firstly, try to understand what happened in your perception of your wife or of yourself that might have made you more withdrawn sexually.
Was it about masculinity or femininity? Then, how can you reconnect with all the other aspects of your wife that made her ‘feminine’ and attractive or, how can you connect with those aspects of you that make you feel potent?
Your feelings by definition won’t be rational: you might at some level even feel angry or betrayed by the fact that she is going ‘against’ what you are used to and comfortable with, and as preposterous as this sounds, if you acknowledged and allow some room for these emotions, they might then lose their power over you.
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