What Sex And The City Teaches Us About Love And Money

In this modern age of feminism and equal rights at work you think we would all celebrate when a woman succeeds in her career.

But what happens when she makes more money than her male partner?

In that iconic show, Sex and the City, Miranda was a successful lawyer who had trouble getting a date. Then when she finally met a nice man to have an actual relationship with there were endless problems because she made more money than he did. Steve was clearly upset that she was able to buy things for him and felt like a charity case, while she just thought she was being nice. They only managed to start to make it work when he became a small business owner and had a bigger bank account!

So what’s going on here? Although they didn’t quite get into this on the show, I think the main problems for anyone in this situation would be resentment and sex.

If the woman contributes more than the man she will likely come to resent him. This is because he is spending “her” money instead of using his own. Obviously this resentment will do a number on their sex life. If she doesn’t like him why on earth would she want to have sex with him?  Granted, this may all be subconscious, but it still has the same effect.

Not to mention he won’t feel like a “real man” because he is unable to provide for his woman.

Why does this happen? We generally don’t hear any complaints if a man makes more money than his female partner. Do men really need to be the ones with more financial power in the relationship?

I think the answer, sadly, might be, “kinda”.

Maybe not more power, but at least on equal footing with the woman.

So here’s the most important question of all: is this innate or have we just learned to be this way?

It all goes back to the hunter-gatherer societies early humans lived in. In evolutionary terms, men who were the best hunters were seen as the best mates and the best able to care for any potential offspring. This meant those men were the most successful, and those women who could secure these men as mates would have the best chance of their offspring surviving to adulthood.

This pattern seems to play out in our current societies with men needing to make more money than women, and those who can’t being seen as not “real men”, who are capable of securing mates and ensuring survival of offspring. We might not think of it in these terms, but thats where it comes from.

This model was the dominant one for such a long time that we seem to be having trouble moving away from that and being comfortable with the idea of the woman being wealthier than the man.

I hope this is able to change, because there are no logical reasons that a relationship can’t work if the woman makes more money than the man. And don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are many couples who have made this work, but in general we still want the man to be more successful than the woman.

Will a new generation of stay-at-home dads be able to change this? Or are we destined to always have men on top (financially that is)?