There are lots of silly notions of the past that slowly fade away as we march ever onward together in a tide of progressiveness.
Even our conservative members are less conservative than they once were. It's a natural trajectory for our communities to become more progressive, more open, more accepting of the changes that are ultimately good for us, even if some question their validity in the beginning.
Men don't get a lot of credit for being the sensitive sex, but when it comes to breadwinning, we're a fetal position of testosterone-filled tears and knee hugging in the bathroom. We want to make more money than our better halves, and if we don't, we immediately feel emasculated because for thousands of years it has been up to men to provide for the family, and we just can't possibly still be men if our wives are paid more.
It doesn't make me very proud of my brothers in arms to see how we handle the issue of women earning reasonable livings. Relationships are rarely the easiest thing we have to deal with and as with most parts of life, money plays a big role in the relationship with our significant other.
I like to think the issue about women earning more than men is one that is dying out. When we see reports showing marriages in which the woman earns more experience less happiness and more strife, I like to think the studies are still heavily weighted to one side because of these old timey beliefs dying hard in our Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers. There can't possibly be young men growing up intimidated by successful women. The march forward is a slow but hopefully steady and uninterrupted journey.
To be fair to men everywhere, and without pointing any fingers directly at the ladies out there, it has been found that women also have deep-rooted beliefs in how relationships work, who should earn more and what needs to happen around the house if women find themselves in well-paying positions. Women who earn more than their husbands are also sure to do more housework in order to balance the scales and ease the mind of their threatened husbands.
High-earning single women play down their success when courting gentlemen or just completely skip all that nonsense and try to find a mate who does earn more, thus ensuring she won't have to deal with the shattered and tormented ego of a man-child.
This really doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would exist in our modern world. The small boxes that we use to store our gender roles are supposed to have been filed away into storage a long time ago.
As a guy who is in a relationship with a woman who wins way more bread than I do, it's incomprehensible to think anybody could be threatened or uncomfortable with that dynamic. According to the rules of the past, my manhood is supposed to have been taken, but it still all feels like it's right there in the same place it has always been, unharmed and intact.
I will roll my eyes when I hear my sister or girlfriend talking about how difficult things still are for women and what sort of expectations they are still required to meet. But then I hear about my fellow dudes just not being able to cope with the idea that a woman could make more money than him, and I think, "OK, you ladies still have to jump through a lot of unnecessary hoops. We still make you coddle us and stroke our gentle egos."
Our masculinity is an unquestionably frail thing, that much is clear, but as we move forward, as we continue taking baby steps toward a more reasonable world, we men may just begin to toughen up a little.
