I think it would be pretty annoying to be married to someone crying/oversharing on social media, or just glued to their phone that much.
I’ve definitely seen the whole insecure man thing play out before, but I think it’s also possible that he just didn’t want to be married to an “influencer” anymore because they are fairly insufferable.
I agree with this. Yes, the insecure man thing can be a real factor but I also suspect many spouses would be sensitive to competing with a a phone that takes a lot of their partner’s attention, feeds their ego, etc.
The bigger factor is not “insecure men” (Matty Healy is a god to millions of women around the world and is drowning in vagina), it’s that when women out-earn or out-status their male partners they begin to lose desire for them. This is well known and well understood.
Is it though? Sure, it happens, but we don’t have any data on how annoying it is to to close to someone who is both an influencer and also histrionic to some degree.
Plenty of men who sleep with lots of women are deeply insecure. Matt Healy’s quote is so wild to me. Being insecure because your girlfriend or wife is successful isn’t a healthy perspective to have in a relationship. And if your relationship is built on each other’s financial success or status it’s bound to fail.
This is a pretty misogynistic take. Yes, there is a certain group of people that are definitely insufferable influencers. But, Jen (and other grown stable women) definitely don’t belong in that category. Her internet fame was the side gig. She was successful before it. And 1 video of her crying over the trauma that is divorce, doesn’t make her an over sharer that is glued to her phone. Most internet wives/moms share 1-2 videos a day of planned content and that’s it. She has a full-time job, she has children that are not shared, she had a whole marriage that wasn’t really shared. Immediately assuming it was her fault and that she drank the influencer koolaid is just as damaging as a husband who can’t handle being the side character and breaking vows because of it. You are also asking her to shrink with this comment.
The main character in question in this article came across my Facebook feed a few months ago. I found her post (cannot remember what it was about now) so insufferable that I blocked her immediately. I would assume that having so many people validate one’s every thought and word on social media could really make a person believe that every word that speak is gospel and every thing they do is amazing and I’d find it a huge turn off to be married to someone with an ego like that.
I also find it disgusting when men keep getting blamed for everything that goes wrong in a relationship.
I think men are incredibly frustrating for many many women to have relationships with, I don’t even think that’s a debate, but I think the assumptions being made about this man are unfair.
But aren't many many women frustrating for men to have relationships with as well? I don't understand the need to make this gendered. People are bad at being in relationship with other people..
There are clear, often socialized, gender differences in the way men and women communicate in relationships. They frustrate eachother in different ways, sure. But it’s pretty gendered.
I don't know. Maybe my experience is skewed because a lot of the ways my girlfriends' husbands frustrate them are the ways I frustrate my husband... And then I have to turn myself in when they're all bitching about it 😅
Last I saw she said she was lonely so I didn’t get it. Did she cheat on him?
I don’t know if the reason their marriage is struggling is because of her success. Maybe she overshares and wants sympathy from strangers instead of him. Or maybe he is insecure. Who knows? It’s all speculation at this point.
I think influencers convince themselves the online world is real. Can you imagine always thinking “this would make a great piece of content”. Ugh. That would get old being married to someone like that.
But who knows? Men can be petty. I have had several online businesses over the years and it caused problems in my marriage. Not because I became famous. Lolol no. But because of the time commitment and also my husband sabotaged everything I did. He’s now my ex husband. So maybe your logic holds true.
It does make you sit back and ponder what’s really worth it. Is the success and sometimes fame worth all this? What do we lose in our real lives by using our online world as a replacement for friends and family? I feel like we’ve lost so much to fake BS. I’d like to get back to a society that uses the internet less but don’t think that’ll happen. Loneliness is the real killer. And all of this social media BS is such a lie.
Yeah, who really knows. He could be a total bastard who has been cheating on her, he could be threatened, he could be any number of things, but I think automatically assuming or jumping to the conclusion that he’s bothered by her success when she’s an influencer is ignoring the type of people who end up “influencers” and what it would be like to try to have a relationship with them. Her crying like this and airing their private business is telling, imo. Can you imagine logging on and crying to an audience of strangers in that scenario?
I agree. Mr Andromache is my no. 1 fan and cheerleader, but if I became an ‘influencer’ there would be an issue. The term ‘irreconcilable differences’ would loom large, and with reason.
Yeah I think this is closer to the Truth. I was an “influencer” when I met my (now) husband and decided to leave the lifestyle behind for many reasons, but the biggest being that it just didn’t feel appropriate anymore. I didn’t want to overshare anymore and I also didn’t want to use him as a fake prop for content.
That was a smart choice. Lots of influencers end up losing themselves, not even just their relationships! I have heard a few say they don’t know who they are outside of “content,” and the “brand.”
Thank you for sharing this take. I'm not so one-dimensional that I always presume the man is the one with problems, and I've long taken issue with the self-centered mindset of influencers. It really is a problem that so many people cannot live in the real world without putting a camera in front of their face.
Mining your own personal life for content is bound to cause problems with the people you’re in relationship with. I couldn’t stand even having a friend “creating content” AROUND me, let alone my partner doing it for a job. I’m glad I’m not the only one who is not automatically assuming the spouse is threatened by her success.
Not all of these people do, though, and they still have problems. For example, lots of Jen's content is talking about being an L&D nurse or just telling funny stories, not giving everyone an insider view to her life.
I think doing that is going to subtly (or overtly) change the way you interact with those people as you think about how it's going to play in the screen. And change the way those people interact with you. Privacy and intimacy are key components of any relationship.
Yes, people who make their money through social media in this way will be conditioned to start to view all of their social interactions/their lives in general, as marketable moments. Especially if they are not careful.
At the end of the day being an influencer is a job. So if someone has reasonable hours and can separate professional from private life I don’t see why being an influencer is any different than being a sales rep who stares into their laptop screen.
Obviously, it depends on the content they are creating and I think it can vary widely. A lifestyle influencer would be fairly insufferable.
The data show that this backlash isn't triggered by absolute income, status or success, but relative income, status, etc. So it doesn't matter how much women make or how successful they are, the patterns of backlash (from withdrawal to infidelity to abuse against them) only show up when women have more of it than the men they are partnered with. In fact, women's income going up improves both their wellbeing and their relationship satisfaction. But again, only to the point where it exceeds a male partners. I dedicated a whole section of my book to the data, but it's a very clear and troubling pattern that exposes that the problem isn't women's success (or their relationship choices) but the ways in which men (statistically speaking) still respond to successful women
You’re making a causal claim that the data do not establish.
The studies show that some relationship outcomes worsen when a woman out-earns her partner. They do not prove that men are reacting negatively to female success itself.
In fact, there is a substantial body of research showing that women, on average, place greater weight on a partner’s earnings, status, and economic prospects than men do (Buss, 1989; Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Research has also found that male unemployment and declining earnings are associated with lower relationship stability and higher rates of separation and divorce (Charles & Stephens, 2004). Other research has found that women report lower relationship satisfaction when their male partners fail to meet traditional provider expectations, suggesting that female mate preferences may play a role in these outcomes as well (Bertrand, Kamenica, & Pan, 2015).
More importantly, citation matters. Showing a correlation between female breadwinning and relationship strain is not the same thing as demonstrating the mechanism behind it. To support your conclusion, you’d need evidence that male resentment is the primary causal factor rather than changing mate preferences, shifting relationship dynamics, selection effects, work demands, or mismatched expectations.
The pattern may be real. Your explanation for the pattern remains a hypothesis, not a proven fact. Ironically, you’re assuming male psychology is driving the outcome while largely ignoring decades of research showing that women themselves tend to place significant value on a partner’s status, earnings, and economic prospects.
No disrespect but this is really hackish behavior; legitimate authors can discuss topics they broach in greater detail in published works in a manner that aids sales of their media. You saying “abuse” absent context or citation and then hocking your book is really indicative of the quality of feminist scholarships and thinking.
A. She told you where to find her citations/ evidence.
B. You choosing to ignore that and then jumping to insults and use of “typical of feminist thinking” (a conclusion without evidence) is just you being an a-hole misogynist, looking for a fight.
I like your comment and I am intrigued to learn more. What is your hypothesis? Could it be that men want to be the center of attention in the women's life, rather than showing off to his peers? And is it the same for women too, when her husband starts working overtime
As a woman's success rises above her male partner's, there is a possibility that she will feel dissatisfied (possibly only subconsciously) because the status of the man is important to the woman and now he is "beneath" her. Which is, I think, one of the possibilities you're alluding to here.
So, success does not change women? Especially when they can see they are doing better then their men? They are still equally satisfied with their man? Men just react badly? And how do you prove that their reaction is just being "threatened." Isn't that just bootlegging a feminist dogma? Statistically speaking, all feminists need to believe this.
Men are constantly told -- especially by women -- that they are inferior if they are outearned by their partners or fail to meet some arbitrary capitalist benchmark of success (a benchmark that is increasingly out of reach for most men). Is it any wonder that some men, who otherwise would be happy their partners are thriving, react negatively?
This was what came to mind for me. I think, if there was no stigma around men earning less and being less successful, which there still very much is, then this would be far less of an issue. Of *course* their hackles will go up if all of a sudden their wife is the primary breadwinner. I bet the only time this isn't true is when the marriage was already on rock solid ground. If the man knows he is deeply loved and respected by his wife regardless of the income situation, if the wife knows her husband wants to see her flourish, then I get this doesn't go poorly. But marriages that good are kinda rare, as Jaime pointed out.
Baloney. Men love to provide. But to provide for someone who does not want or need it, who would love to have a man whose status makes them feel even safer and more important. This is what the issue is about.
Most women won’t even consider a relationship with a man who makes less, and a decade of marriage doesn’t change the equation, nor does the reason for the relative change.
Thank you for your excellent comment. I’m curious, what does the data say about women’s reaction to earning more than their partners? In other words, is their “statistically speaking” an effect on women’s well being when they earn more than their partners. Based only on personal anecdotal observation, I’ve noticed that sometimes women can develop resentment if they earn more than their partners. “He should be earning more…why am I carrying the load….why isn’t he more successful?”
I am so lucky to have a husband who would love for me to be the main character and would only resent me trying to share the spotlight, because then he would be partially in a spotlight. 😆
Again, nobody is alleging that you don't love and desire your husband. The data and the science, however, suggests that him losing status is possibly the single biggest predictor of divorce.
With Jamie Wright, Kristen Howerton and Jen Hatmaker, it also sounded like they were all casualties of the tremendously young marriages that are encouraged within Christian evangelical subculture. I think Jamie Wright was married at 18 or something like that, and I think the other two ladies were married by 21 or 22 at the very latest. That is young!!
It was!!! And all of their fame was made worse by the fact that they were in a very patriarchal subculture where they were certainly not allowed to be the main characters.
I agree with this. And as someone who grew up in the evangelical church there was so much pressure for men to be the head of household and women to defer to their husbands. A lifetime of that messaging is hard to overcome
I just read Jen married at 20. Lines up well with your comment. Most people should not marry the person they’re dating at 20. I know I’m glad I didn’t!
Yes! Obviously, I’m not an expert on marriage, but I didn’t get married until my mid 30s, but I was shocked at how easy marriage was after a lifetime of hearing people say it was hard. I grew up Evangelical Christian, and most of my friends were married by 24. I think being just a little older helps, you don’t necessarily have to be as old as I was, but you’re just more mature!!
"For one of them, it was as simple as realizing that many people wanted to read their work and found them smart, which raised their self-esteem and made their marriage less sustainable." Yes. I think it has less to do with "success" and more to do with this right here, the self-esteem part. This was certainly true in my failed marriage. The more secure I became in myself, the worse things got. If this is really happening for Jen, I feel for her. The journey ahead is rough, but man, the relief and release and empowerment that follows is insane, and like you said, transformative.
What does hubris have to do with my comment or this article? If you are implying that influencers or women who have gained confidence over a duration of time are actually arrogant and overconfident and that has led to the demise of their long term relationships, then I fear you have missed the point and perhaps are not well-acquainted with the average heterosexual relationship as experienced by women.
And I have indeed found a better relationship, in fact nearly all my relationships improved when my marriage collapsed.
“In fact nearly all of my relationships improved when my marriage collapsed”. Yes, that right there.
Much more energy to focus on the other positive relationships.
Interesting how the troll asks if you’ve found a better marriage, as if that is the goal.
I myself have found a better partner who has enough confidence that we can both be successful and who, like me, doesn’t need a contract to feel like we’re a team.
I'm not going to say that this post doesn't have a point, but also, maybe, being married to an "influencer" sucks. If my husband turned into a prominent "influencer" that resulted in me and my family losing all of our privacy, I'd check out, as well. Not because I want to be the main character but because I don't want to be a character at all.
I say this having been married for 31 years and having been the more successful and the primary breadwinner for all 31 one of them.
The fact that your husband has stuck by you puts the whole premise of this article into doubt. The idea that men as just threatened by the Strong, Independent Woman (tm). Conversely, the success of your marriage, then, is due to far more important factors than anything related solely to success or income. That's something else that this article does not want to cognize.
...someone being a female breadwinner in a marriage that has not ended puts the whole premise of my article into doubt? You know we have data on this, right?
I think it is the old correlation/causation problem. In your feminist rendering, the man is always the problem, his resentment and threatened-ness. But digging deeper. How did the woman change vis a vis her man, on the basis of her new success? Could a personal change in her have affected the emotional architecture of the relationship? Could personal dissatisfaction with her lagging man come out in subtle ways? Could she have let him know that she was ashamed of him? Could she have been dreaming of a better man, better equipped to assist her in her climbing status. All of this is possible, indeed, very probable, especially as women initiate the vast majority of divorces, and this on the basis of their feeling. And, how easy it is to say that he "withdrew". You could say that is what is happening when you are walking out a door, but it would not be true of the person left behind. The relative position would have changed. But why? And if you were looking for a reason to cover leaving an imperfect, but valid relationship, why not sieze on some sort of unfalsifiable emotional description. And maybe even cry crocodile tears to cement emotional solidarity with an audience. I really do think all of this is just as plausible as the premises trumpeted here. Ooo. One last thing. Why are all the women, pre-success, depicted as persons with "low self-esteem?" Success is usually premised on good self-esteem, not its cause. So, might we really be talking here about the frisson of self-importance? Women love self-importance, every bit as much as men, I am moved to say. And as I have said here in these threads, hubris loves to cover its own tracks.
I'm definitely not saying that my being a breadwinner in a marriage that hasn't ended puts the whole premise of the article in doubt, and I hope that you didn't take it that way. Just that it informs my personal perspective.
Can any partner realistically compete with the constant dopamine hit tsunami flooding an influencer?
Moreover, could any influencer find the same focus and attention in nurturing their relationship with their partners and children as compared to ongoing curation of the platform?
I wonder what the children of influencers have to say about the quality of their relationship as compared to the state previous to platform capture?
I also think that being in the public eye means that a partner's bad behavior can be seen and called out from an outside perspective instead of being hidden behind closed doors. Community can prevent us from normalizing hurtful patterns.
I don’t spend enough time on Substack to have realized that, Oh, look, there are trolls here, too. Good to know.
This article caught my attention because I had actually witnessed one of those teary Instagram stories a few years back, and thought at the time how interesting it is that one can feel so very devastated for and invested in someone you’ve never even met.
TL;DR - it's not about the spouses success, it's about no longer being the main character in each others lives. (And each having some success in their own arenas).
It's easy, I think, to interpret it this way - it might even be correct in in most cases, but, in my neck-of-the-woods/bubble it's a little more nuanced (as it usually is). I believe two thing have to happen at the same time, presuming that these are marriages initially based on love and mutual respect: in order to be a successful influencer you need to work hard and post a lot. This will take some attention away from the husband - and jealuousy might ensue - so yes, the jealousy is there, but it is more about the lack of attention, than about being "Taylor Swift's husband". Second - the wife's success is only a problem when the husband is not successful in his own carreer, among his peer-group and friends. I am not saying that this makes it better.
When we marry we sort of make a deal that our better half will be the main character in our lives (at least until we have kids.) If either spouse brakes the "contract" we tend to get resentful. In my immediate family I have examples of this: my daughter-in-law is (by Norwegian standards) a successful "food-influencer" - insta, booksales, speaking tours etc, while her husband (my son) is having success at what he does, she makes more than him, and she bought their first apartment with money from her booksales while he finished his degree and had no money. They've been together for a little over ten years, have two boys and a new house - she still outearns him (by a lot), but they are still the main characters in each others lives.
My brother in law got divorced when building his company. He spent a lot of time away from home, and his wife and sons were "demoted" from main characters to supporting actors.
I was a successful influencer for 10 years with over 1 million users back in the mid 2010s,(not including followers, likes, subscribers). My husband absolutely resented all the attention I received. Last year, I had my first book published. He seems to resent that too.
Well this is freaky because Jaime is one of longest, bestest friends and I just randomly clicked on your article because I too was drawn to the title because I too am worried about Jen Hamilton. 💔 So whatever cosmic algorithmic magic just happened here, I need it to happen again. Off to subscribe to you!
Okay i thought her name was spelled like Jaime and then when I googled it I thought it was wrong! Dang it!!!
Please tell Jaime that as a former evangelical mom who got divorced two years ago, she has been such a role model for me ❤️ I used to read the very worst missionary blog when i was newly married!
Jaime would love to know that her wisdom connected to likeminded people in a random social media bubble where she isn’t even present (although I keep telling her to get a Substack). She wouldn’t call it wisdom, but I’m calling it that because she’s so wise.
This narrative that it’s the man who makes it a problem just doesn’t hold up when women initiate like 70% of divorces. Even your initial example used passive language to avoid saying who filed.
She’s spending her social time glued to a screen, and now she finds herself looking down at him and imagining trading up. Simple as
SPOT ON. My ex let me have an extra $5k from our shared checking account for handling all the divorce stuff. Honestly, can’t complain because then I knew it 1) got done, and 2) was done correctly. AND I got an extra $5k.
But yeah - I’m still doing most of the paperwork for our children 😒
I don’t know dude, moms are the ones who do the “life admin” for their families. They register for school, fill out medical forms, etc. Makes sense they would also file divorce paper work since their husband keeps saying he’ll “get around to it, stop nagging me.”
It would put the woman at fault for the thing she decided to do.
If were talking about a higher order of ‘fault’, I still have no reason at all to blame the husband because even less information was actually offered about his behavior: she just went from noticing a pattern to accusing men of behavior without even showing that behavior in her example.
It’s a classic journalism trick, but you can see through it pretty easy
I think it would be pretty annoying to be married to someone crying/oversharing on social media, or just glued to their phone that much.
I’ve definitely seen the whole insecure man thing play out before, but I think it’s also possible that he just didn’t want to be married to an “influencer” anymore because they are fairly insufferable.
I agree with this. Yes, the insecure man thing can be a real factor but I also suspect many spouses would be sensitive to competing with a a phone that takes a lot of their partner’s attention, feeds their ego, etc.
The bigger factor is not “insecure men” (Matty Healy is a god to millions of women around the world and is drowning in vagina), it’s that when women out-earn or out-status their male partners they begin to lose desire for them. This is well known and well understood.
Is it though? Sure, it happens, but we don’t have any data on how annoying it is to to close to someone who is both an influencer and also histrionic to some degree.
Plenty of men who sleep with lots of women are deeply insecure. Matt Healy’s quote is so wild to me. Being insecure because your girlfriend or wife is successful isn’t a healthy perspective to have in a relationship. And if your relationship is built on each other’s financial success or status it’s bound to fail.
This is a pretty misogynistic take. Yes, there is a certain group of people that are definitely insufferable influencers. But, Jen (and other grown stable women) definitely don’t belong in that category. Her internet fame was the side gig. She was successful before it. And 1 video of her crying over the trauma that is divorce, doesn’t make her an over sharer that is glued to her phone. Most internet wives/moms share 1-2 videos a day of planned content and that’s it. She has a full-time job, she has children that are not shared, she had a whole marriage that wasn’t really shared. Immediately assuming it was her fault and that she drank the influencer koolaid is just as damaging as a husband who can’t handle being the side character and breaking vows because of it. You are also asking her to shrink with this comment.
It has nothing to do with woman-hating.
The main character in question in this article came across my Facebook feed a few months ago. I found her post (cannot remember what it was about now) so insufferable that I blocked her immediately. I would assume that having so many people validate one’s every thought and word on social media could really make a person believe that every word that speak is gospel and every thing they do is amazing and I’d find it a huge turn off to be married to someone with an ego like that.
I also find it disgusting when men keep getting blamed for everything that goes wrong in a relationship.
I think men are incredibly frustrating for many many women to have relationships with, I don’t even think that’s a debate, but I think the assumptions being made about this man are unfair.
Which is why lesbians have the lowest divor… ooh.
But aren't many many women frustrating for men to have relationships with as well? I don't understand the need to make this gendered. People are bad at being in relationship with other people..
kinda silly imo to act like women as a trend don't have better relational skills than men.
There are clear, often socialized, gender differences in the way men and women communicate in relationships. They frustrate eachother in different ways, sure. But it’s pretty gendered.
I don't know. Maybe my experience is skewed because a lot of the ways my girlfriends' husbands frustrate them are the ways I frustrate my husband... And then I have to turn myself in when they're all bitching about it 😅
I understand. May I recommend this piece 😂
https://eurydicelives.substack.com/p/no-diva-you-are-not-similar-to-this?r=28a8wr&utm_medium=ios
Last I saw she said she was lonely so I didn’t get it. Did she cheat on him?
I don’t know if the reason their marriage is struggling is because of her success. Maybe she overshares and wants sympathy from strangers instead of him. Or maybe he is insecure. Who knows? It’s all speculation at this point.
I think influencers convince themselves the online world is real. Can you imagine always thinking “this would make a great piece of content”. Ugh. That would get old being married to someone like that.
But who knows? Men can be petty. I have had several online businesses over the years and it caused problems in my marriage. Not because I became famous. Lolol no. But because of the time commitment and also my husband sabotaged everything I did. He’s now my ex husband. So maybe your logic holds true.
It does make you sit back and ponder what’s really worth it. Is the success and sometimes fame worth all this? What do we lose in our real lives by using our online world as a replacement for friends and family? I feel like we’ve lost so much to fake BS. I’d like to get back to a society that uses the internet less but don’t think that’ll happen. Loneliness is the real killer. And all of this social media BS is such a lie.
Yeah, who really knows. He could be a total bastard who has been cheating on her, he could be threatened, he could be any number of things, but I think automatically assuming or jumping to the conclusion that he’s bothered by her success when she’s an influencer is ignoring the type of people who end up “influencers” and what it would be like to try to have a relationship with them. Her crying like this and airing their private business is telling, imo. Can you imagine logging on and crying to an audience of strangers in that scenario?
Is anything private or sacred?
Word. Can’t say I’ve never been guilty of that. Hopefully she gets therapy or finds real friends to talk to.
Well looks like she announced they separated. She did it before? Maybe the marriage is just troubled.
I agree. Mr Andromache is my no. 1 fan and cheerleader, but if I became an ‘influencer’ there would be an issue. The term ‘irreconcilable differences’ would loom large, and with reason.
It's a job, people tend to be focused on those.
It’s not really the same as having an actual job
it very much can be. takes a ton of work and makes money.
Yeah I think this is closer to the Truth. I was an “influencer” when I met my (now) husband and decided to leave the lifestyle behind for many reasons, but the biggest being that it just didn’t feel appropriate anymore. I didn’t want to overshare anymore and I also didn’t want to use him as a fake prop for content.
That was a smart choice. Lots of influencers end up losing themselves, not even just their relationships! I have heard a few say they don’t know who they are outside of “content,” and the “brand.”
Thank you for sharing this take. I'm not so one-dimensional that I always presume the man is the one with problems, and I've long taken issue with the self-centered mindset of influencers. It really is a problem that so many people cannot live in the real world without putting a camera in front of their face.
Mining your own personal life for content is bound to cause problems with the people you’re in relationship with. I couldn’t stand even having a friend “creating content” AROUND me, let alone my partner doing it for a job. I’m glad I’m not the only one who is not automatically assuming the spouse is threatened by her success.
Not all of these people do, though, and they still have problems. For example, lots of Jen's content is talking about being an L&D nurse or just telling funny stories, not giving everyone an insider view to her life.
The fact that she’s online crying and sharing her personal business like that is a massive red flag.
I think doing that is going to subtly (or overtly) change the way you interact with those people as you think about how it's going to play in the screen. And change the way those people interact with you. Privacy and intimacy are key components of any relationship.
Yes, people who make their money through social media in this way will be conditioned to start to view all of their social interactions/their lives in general, as marketable moments. Especially if they are not careful.
At the end of the day being an influencer is a job. So if someone has reasonable hours and can separate professional from private life I don’t see why being an influencer is any different than being a sales rep who stares into their laptop screen.
Obviously, it depends on the content they are creating and I think it can vary widely. A lifestyle influencer would be fairly insufferable.
The data show that this backlash isn't triggered by absolute income, status or success, but relative income, status, etc. So it doesn't matter how much women make or how successful they are, the patterns of backlash (from withdrawal to infidelity to abuse against them) only show up when women have more of it than the men they are partnered with. In fact, women's income going up improves both their wellbeing and their relationship satisfaction. But again, only to the point where it exceeds a male partners. I dedicated a whole section of my book to the data, but it's a very clear and troubling pattern that exposes that the problem isn't women's success (or their relationship choices) but the ways in which men (statistically speaking) still respond to successful women
Stefanie, i have got to read your book. Also, hi! Big fan of your work!!!
heyyyy! (and if you want to skip to the relationship stuff, it’s part IV :) )
You’re making a causal claim that the data do not establish.
The studies show that some relationship outcomes worsen when a woman out-earns her partner. They do not prove that men are reacting negatively to female success itself.
In fact, there is a substantial body of research showing that women, on average, place greater weight on a partner’s earnings, status, and economic prospects than men do (Buss, 1989; Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Research has also found that male unemployment and declining earnings are associated with lower relationship stability and higher rates of separation and divorce (Charles & Stephens, 2004). Other research has found that women report lower relationship satisfaction when their male partners fail to meet traditional provider expectations, suggesting that female mate preferences may play a role in these outcomes as well (Bertrand, Kamenica, & Pan, 2015).
More importantly, citation matters. Showing a correlation between female breadwinning and relationship strain is not the same thing as demonstrating the mechanism behind it. To support your conclusion, you’d need evidence that male resentment is the primary causal factor rather than changing mate preferences, shifting relationship dynamics, selection effects, work demands, or mismatched expectations.
The pattern may be real. Your explanation for the pattern remains a hypothesis, not a proven fact. Ironically, you’re assuming male psychology is driving the outcome while largely ignoring decades of research showing that women themselves tend to place significant value on a partner’s status, earnings, and economic prospects.
abusing successful women (just one example) feels like solid evidence, but recommend actually reading the book for deets
No disrespect but this is really hackish behavior; legitimate authors can discuss topics they broach in greater detail in published works in a manner that aids sales of their media. You saying “abuse” absent context or citation and then hocking your book is really indicative of the quality of feminist scholarships and thinking.
“You saying “abuse” absent context or citation and then hocking your book is really indicative of the quality of feminist scholarships and thinking.”
is it, though? Or is that just a conclusion you’ve leapt to without any actual evidence.
The only person in this entire subthread to present a citation or evidence would be me, so, yeah. I feel pretty comfortable with my statement.
A. She told you where to find her citations/ evidence.
B. You choosing to ignore that and then jumping to insults and use of “typical of feminist thinking” (a conclusion without evidence) is just you being an a-hole misogynist, looking for a fight.
Glad I could break that down for you. Bye.
I like your comment and I am intrigued to learn more. What is your hypothesis? Could it be that men want to be the center of attention in the women's life, rather than showing off to his peers? And is it the same for women too, when her husband starts working overtime
As a woman's success rises above her male partner's, there is a possibility that she will feel dissatisfied (possibly only subconsciously) because the status of the man is important to the woman and now he is "beneath" her. Which is, I think, one of the possibilities you're alluding to here.
This is the data I was looking for. Thanks
So, success does not change women? Especially when they can see they are doing better then their men? They are still equally satisfied with their man? Men just react badly? And how do you prove that their reaction is just being "threatened." Isn't that just bootlegging a feminist dogma? Statistically speaking, all feminists need to believe this.
Men are constantly told -- especially by women -- that they are inferior if they are outearned by their partners or fail to meet some arbitrary capitalist benchmark of success (a benchmark that is increasingly out of reach for most men). Is it any wonder that some men, who otherwise would be happy their partners are thriving, react negatively?
This is more nuanced than a "men suck" problem.
This was what came to mind for me. I think, if there was no stigma around men earning less and being less successful, which there still very much is, then this would be far less of an issue. Of *course* their hackles will go up if all of a sudden their wife is the primary breadwinner. I bet the only time this isn't true is when the marriage was already on rock solid ground. If the man knows he is deeply loved and respected by his wife regardless of the income situation, if the wife knows her husband wants to see her flourish, then I get this doesn't go poorly. But marriages that good are kinda rare, as Jaime pointed out.
Baloney. Men love to provide. But to provide for someone who does not want or need it, who would love to have a man whose status makes them feel even safer and more important. This is what the issue is about.
Most women won’t even consider a relationship with a man who makes less, and a decade of marriage doesn’t change the equation, nor does the reason for the relative change.
Thank you for your excellent comment. I’m curious, what does the data say about women’s reaction to earning more than their partners? In other words, is their “statistically speaking” an effect on women’s well being when they earn more than their partners. Based only on personal anecdotal observation, I’ve noticed that sometimes women can develop resentment if they earn more than their partners. “He should be earning more…why am I carrying the load….why isn’t he more successful?”
the book is called the ambition penalty
I am so lucky to have a husband who would love for me to be the main character and would only resent me trying to share the spotlight, because then he would be partially in a spotlight. 😆
The minute you become the main character you will absolutely be at great risk of losing desire for him.
Not at all. He’s friggin’ awesome. Just hermit-like. 😂
I know you're a special snowflake and not like anyone else, but yes, you would be at risk of losing desire.
I hardly think it’s special to be married to someone you actually like. But maybe I’m wrong. 🤷🏻♀️
Again, nobody is alleging that you don't love and desire your husband. The data and the science, however, suggests that him losing status is possibly the single biggest predictor of divorce.
Poet Maggie Smith’s gorgeous memoir touches upon this phenomenon related to her own divorce.
Yes, I was looking through the comments to make sure somebody brought this book up! It deals with these issues extensively.
With Jamie Wright, Kristen Howerton and Jen Hatmaker, it also sounded like they were all casualties of the tremendously young marriages that are encouraged within Christian evangelical subculture. I think Jamie Wright was married at 18 or something like that, and I think the other two ladies were married by 21 or 22 at the very latest. That is young!!
It was!!! And all of their fame was made worse by the fact that they were in a very patriarchal subculture where they were certainly not allowed to be the main characters.
I agree with this. And as someone who grew up in the evangelical church there was so much pressure for men to be the head of household and women to defer to their husbands. A lifetime of that messaging is hard to overcome
Why would income and success change the idea that women need to recognize men as the Head of their household?
I just read Jen married at 20. Lines up well with your comment. Most people should not marry the person they’re dating at 20. I know I’m glad I didn’t!
Yes! Obviously, I’m not an expert on marriage, but I didn’t get married until my mid 30s, but I was shocked at how easy marriage was after a lifetime of hearing people say it was hard. I grew up Evangelical Christian, and most of my friends were married by 24. I think being just a little older helps, you don’t necessarily have to be as old as I was, but you’re just more mature!!
Definitely agree. I married at 28 and got divorced at 39, but I settled for him and never should have married him in the first place.
"For one of them, it was as simple as realizing that many people wanted to read their work and found them smart, which raised their self-esteem and made their marriage less sustainable." Yes. I think it has less to do with "success" and more to do with this right here, the self-esteem part. This was certainly true in my failed marriage. The more secure I became in myself, the worse things got. If this is really happening for Jen, I feel for her. The journey ahead is rough, but man, the relief and release and empowerment that follows is insane, and like you said, transformative.
Hmm. Hubris can certainly hide its own tracks and push off the responsibility onto another. So, have you found a better marriage? I'd be curious.
What does hubris have to do with my comment or this article? If you are implying that influencers or women who have gained confidence over a duration of time are actually arrogant and overconfident and that has led to the demise of their long term relationships, then I fear you have missed the point and perhaps are not well-acquainted with the average heterosexual relationship as experienced by women.
And I have indeed found a better relationship, in fact nearly all my relationships improved when my marriage collapsed.
“In fact nearly all of my relationships improved when my marriage collapsed”. Yes, that right there.
Much more energy to focus on the other positive relationships.
Interesting how the troll asks if you’ve found a better marriage, as if that is the goal.
I myself have found a better partner who has enough confidence that we can both be successful and who, like me, doesn’t need a contract to feel like we’re a team.
What are you saying? I hope it’s not that what would be self-esteem in a man would be hubris in a woman.
No, hubris is equal opportunity.
So my question remains. What are you implying in your vague, non-specific comment?
I'm not going to say that this post doesn't have a point, but also, maybe, being married to an "influencer" sucks. If my husband turned into a prominent "influencer" that resulted in me and my family losing all of our privacy, I'd check out, as well. Not because I want to be the main character but because I don't want to be a character at all.
I say this having been married for 31 years and having been the more successful and the primary breadwinner for all 31 one of them.
The fact that your husband has stuck by you puts the whole premise of this article into doubt. The idea that men as just threatened by the Strong, Independent Woman (tm). Conversely, the success of your marriage, then, is due to far more important factors than anything related solely to success or income. That's something else that this article does not want to cognize.
...someone being a female breadwinner in a marriage that has not ended puts the whole premise of my article into doubt? You know we have data on this, right?
I think it is the old correlation/causation problem. In your feminist rendering, the man is always the problem, his resentment and threatened-ness. But digging deeper. How did the woman change vis a vis her man, on the basis of her new success? Could a personal change in her have affected the emotional architecture of the relationship? Could personal dissatisfaction with her lagging man come out in subtle ways? Could she have let him know that she was ashamed of him? Could she have been dreaming of a better man, better equipped to assist her in her climbing status. All of this is possible, indeed, very probable, especially as women initiate the vast majority of divorces, and this on the basis of their feeling. And, how easy it is to say that he "withdrew". You could say that is what is happening when you are walking out a door, but it would not be true of the person left behind. The relative position would have changed. But why? And if you were looking for a reason to cover leaving an imperfect, but valid relationship, why not sieze on some sort of unfalsifiable emotional description. And maybe even cry crocodile tears to cement emotional solidarity with an audience. I really do think all of this is just as plausible as the premises trumpeted here. Ooo. One last thing. Why are all the women, pre-success, depicted as persons with "low self-esteem?" Success is usually premised on good self-esteem, not its cause. So, might we really be talking here about the frisson of self-importance? Women love self-importance, every bit as much as men, I am moved to say. And as I have said here in these threads, hubris loves to cover its own tracks.
I'm definitely not saying that my being a breadwinner in a marriage that hasn't ended puts the whole premise of the article in doubt, and I hope that you didn't take it that way. Just that it informs my personal perspective.
Yeah, I don't think that my personal experience is sufficient to draw this conclusion. But whatever.
LOL what? Anecdotal evidence from one person does not make data incorrect.
Can any partner realistically compete with the constant dopamine hit tsunami flooding an influencer?
Moreover, could any influencer find the same focus and attention in nurturing their relationship with their partners and children as compared to ongoing curation of the platform?
I wonder what the children of influencers have to say about the quality of their relationship as compared to the state previous to platform capture?
Bingo
I also think that being in the public eye means that a partner's bad behavior can be seen and called out from an outside perspective instead of being hidden behind closed doors. Community can prevent us from normalizing hurtful patterns.
This comment section does not pass the vibe check. Lots of misogyny out here.
It did NOT (but i’m right, so 🤷♀️)
I don’t spend enough time on Substack to have realized that, Oh, look, there are trolls here, too. Good to know.
This article caught my attention because I had actually witnessed one of those teary Instagram stories a few years back, and thought at the time how interesting it is that one can feel so very devastated for and invested in someone you’ve never even met.
Really enjoyed this, I think your reflections about the gendered expectations are so true
TL;DR - it's not about the spouses success, it's about no longer being the main character in each others lives. (And each having some success in their own arenas).
It's easy, I think, to interpret it this way - it might even be correct in in most cases, but, in my neck-of-the-woods/bubble it's a little more nuanced (as it usually is). I believe two thing have to happen at the same time, presuming that these are marriages initially based on love and mutual respect: in order to be a successful influencer you need to work hard and post a lot. This will take some attention away from the husband - and jealuousy might ensue - so yes, the jealousy is there, but it is more about the lack of attention, than about being "Taylor Swift's husband". Second - the wife's success is only a problem when the husband is not successful in his own carreer, among his peer-group and friends. I am not saying that this makes it better.
When we marry we sort of make a deal that our better half will be the main character in our lives (at least until we have kids.) If either spouse brakes the "contract" we tend to get resentful. In my immediate family I have examples of this: my daughter-in-law is (by Norwegian standards) a successful "food-influencer" - insta, booksales, speaking tours etc, while her husband (my son) is having success at what he does, she makes more than him, and she bought their first apartment with money from her booksales while he finished his degree and had no money. They've been together for a little over ten years, have two boys and a new house - she still outearns him (by a lot), but they are still the main characters in each others lives.
My brother in law got divorced when building his company. He spent a lot of time away from home, and his wife and sons were "demoted" from main characters to supporting actors.
I was a successful influencer for 10 years with over 1 million users back in the mid 2010s,(not including followers, likes, subscribers). My husband absolutely resented all the attention I received. Last year, I had my first book published. He seems to resent that too.
I'm so sorry 💔 hate to say it, but imagine how much more successful we could be with partners who actually SUPPORT our work!
Well this is freaky because Jaime is one of longest, bestest friends and I just randomly clicked on your article because I too was drawn to the title because I too am worried about Jen Hamilton. 💔 So whatever cosmic algorithmic magic just happened here, I need it to happen again. Off to subscribe to you!
Okay i thought her name was spelled like Jaime and then when I googled it I thought it was wrong! Dang it!!!
Please tell Jaime that as a former evangelical mom who got divorced two years ago, she has been such a role model for me ❤️ I used to read the very worst missionary blog when i was newly married!
Jaime would love to know that her wisdom connected to likeminded people in a random social media bubble where she isn’t even present (although I keep telling her to get a Substack). She wouldn’t call it wisdom, but I’m calling it that because she’s so wise.
This narrative that it’s the man who makes it a problem just doesn’t hold up when women initiate like 70% of divorces. Even your initial example used passive language to avoid saying who filed.
She’s spending her social time glued to a screen, and now she finds herself looking down at him and imagining trading up. Simple as
women file divorce paperwork 70% of the time, which is not the same thing. men are too lazy to do paperwork.
“Men are too lazy to do paperwork.”
SPOT ON. My ex let me have an extra $5k from our shared checking account for handling all the divorce stuff. Honestly, can’t complain because then I knew it 1) got done, and 2) was done correctly. AND I got an extra $5k.
But yeah - I’m still doing most of the paperwork for our children 😒
‘How dare you hit my car with my body’
lol, I mean maybe they are just too lazy to file for divorce.
I mean who would want to be married to *this* kind of thing anyways?
I don’t know dude, moms are the ones who do the “life admin” for their families. They register for school, fill out medical forms, etc. Makes sense they would also file divorce paper work since their husband keeps saying he’ll “get around to it, stop nagging me.”
Why does initiating a divorce mean the women is at fault? Maybe she had enough of that shit and divorce was the last effort?
It would put the woman at fault for the thing she decided to do.
If were talking about a higher order of ‘fault’, I still have no reason at all to blame the husband because even less information was actually offered about his behavior: she just went from noticing a pattern to accusing men of behavior without even showing that behavior in her example.
It’s a classic journalism trick, but you can see through it pretty easy
Ok that’s bullshit.
I enjoy your writing on so many levels. You express clear, nuanced opinions so well. Enjoy much success, Emily.