The troubling reasons why divorce rates go up when women earn more

Kim Dhatt, a 34-year-old recruitment specialist, was in a relationship with her ex-partner for four years. When they first got together, he earned slightly more than she did, and the difference didn’t bother either of them. After a series of promotions over 18 months, her salary tripled — and then he couldn’t deal, Dhatt says.

Her partner’s self-worth was tied directly to his income, and it eroded as her salary grew, Dhatt tells me. He insisted on splitting costs 50-50, leaving her with a disposable income that she wanted to spend on nice things but felt like she couldn’t. When she proposed booking a luxury vacation for the two of them, for example, he insisted they go on a cheaper trip and divide the cost. She felt like she was compromising. They argued often, and resentment curdled.

Dhatt’s financial success soon exposed a tension that many couples face today: What happens when she earns more than him?

“I’d worked hard to achieve my income level, and I was not reaping the benefits of it,” Dhatt says. “When our relationship finally ended, he told me as he left that I have nothing to worry about because of my salary,” she adds, which to her revealed how money was “a bigger factor” in their relationship than he’d previously admitted.

Divorce rates in heterosexual couples rise significantly when a woman is more professionally successful than the man, be that in terms of fame or, more commonly, money. Perhaps even more strikingly, studies also show that the marriages most likely to endure are those that most closely fit the traditional pattern of male breadwinner and female homemaker. A 2023 report from the Institute for Family Studies found that couples in which husbands earn more than their wives have the lowest chance of divorce, and that when a man earns upwards of $38,000-a-year more than his wife, the chances of divorce are lowest. The wider the traditional wage gap, it would seem, the stronger the marriage.

Despite recent leaps in progress toward gender equality both in the home and in the workplace, marital inequality might be the last vexing barrier to our ongoing quest for true gender parity.

No doubt one of today’s highest profile wage-gap relationships with a female breadwinner is Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. The pop megastar’s estimated net worth, about $1.6 billion, is about 30 times the NFL tight end’s estimated $52 million.

The wider the traditional wage gap, it would seem, the stronger the marriage.

When the pair announced their engagement in August, Lyz Lenz, a New York Times bestselling author of a memoir about her own divorce, cut through the internet’s euphoria by offering some sobering stats and reflections on her own experience.

“The image they are projecting to us is that a successful woman has found a supportive partner, one who eagerly fawns over her new album cover while interviewing her for his own podcast,” she wrote on her Substack. “This reality is far from reality for most American women.”

Lenz noted that women who succeed as Swift has “are often punished for it” and that she herself has been forced to pay the price of being professionally and economically ambitious. “Every time I succeed, there’s a downside. The hate mail gets worse. The man I am dating backs away. A tabloid publishes a scathing story about me,” she writes. “I’m so, so tired.”

The data corroborates the vibe. A 2013 University of Chicago study of 4,000 married couples in the US found that as soon as a woman out-earns her husband, both are 6% less likely to report a “very happy” marriage. They’re also 8% more likely to report marital troubles and 6 percent more likely to discuss separating. A Swedish study from 2016 found that a married woman is twice as likely as a man to be divorced three years after being promoted to CEO. A similar pattern follows in the public sector: Women who are elected to positions like mayor or parliamentarian double the chances of their marriages falling apart.

A study of 4,000 married couples found that as soon as a woman out-earns her husband, both are 6% less likely to report a “very happy” marriage.

There are darker findings too. A 2023 study from Australia, for example, found that women who earn more than their male partners are also significantly more likely to be physically and emotionally abused by that partner. “When women’s income exceeds that of their partners,” the authors write, “the violation of a gender norm creates a strong negative effect.”

Scant research is available on the correlation between divorce rates and income inequality in same-sex marriages, but one paper from 2014 found that in those couples bigger earnings gaps also translate to a higher likelihood of a break-up.

More than a dozen women I spoke to for this story told me that money significantly shaped their relationship or marriage. Many men told me the same. And of the women who earned more than their male spouses, the majority said that this had a detrimental impact on their relationship. Several said that it was “the elephant in the room” — something that complicated their relationship but that their male partners didn’t want to talk about explicitly.

Sukhy Desangh, a 41-year old management consultant, tells me she was earning more than five times what her ex-fiancé earned. “I realized I was just bank-rolling him,” she says. He was humiliated by her being the primary earner in their household, she says. “When we were out for dinner with friends and family, he would message me to say, ‘Give me your credit card and I’ll pay with it.'”

Several other women said that their partners felt “emasculated” by being out-earned. Two women who asked not to be named said that they felt like their ex-husbands became depressed as a result of not being the primary financial provider. The depression, the women said, turned to bitterness and anger, and ultimately led to the breakdown of the marriages.

When we were out for dinner with friends and family, he would message me to say, ‘Give me your credit card and I’ll pay with it.'”Sukhy Desangh, management consultant

“Money wasn’t the only reason me and my ex broke up,” says Ali, a 34-year old who works in financial services, “but it was a topic of conversation and there were many times he said he wouldn’t be able to be with someone long-term who earns more than him. And I was making significantly more than him.”

Why have marriages not caught up to the reality of the labor market? Women now hold more managerial positions than ever, and they bring home the bulk of household income in more families than ever. The US gender pay gap, while still stuck at about 82 cents on the dollar, is close to the narrowest it’s ever been. What is holding marriages back?

Dené Logan, a marriage and family therapist based in Los Angeles, says that for one, gender norms are set in childhood. “Men are handed a very specific template early in life: protect, provide, procreate — and their worth is tied to it,” she says. With that mindset deeply ingrained, Logan adds, when a woman in a heterosexual marriage is financially and professionally successful, it can “trigger resentment” within the man — whether he knows it or not.

Because of these long-standing constructs, men’s sense of mission and meaning is still frequently tied up in work and money. “And without a sense of mission or meaning, many men can feel diminished and even threatened,” Logan says.

Muriel Wilkins, an executive coach and CEO of a leadership advisory firm, agrees. “What’s really happening here is a clash between progress and old expectations,” she says. “Beliefs don’t change as fast as paychecks do.”

“Cultural norms are very sticky,” says Ramit Sethi, a bestselling author and podcast host. “We see stickiness,” he says, in the “amount of time spent on household chores, emotional labor, and money in relationships.” For example, he notes, even though women in urban cities out-earn men in their 20s, dating norms about who picks up the check have been glacially slow to change.

Beliefs don’t change as fast as paychecks do.Muriel Wilkins, executive coach

Many of the women I spoke to also said that fault lines in marriages and relationships that were initially caused by money were exacerbated by the fact that men who weren’t getting paid as much were also not shouldering as much of the unpaid labor in the home. A Pew study from 2023 found that women in the US still consistently pick up more household chores and caregiving responsibilities. That’s true in marriages in which the man outearns the woman, but also in those in which both spouses earn roughly the same amount, and even when the wife is the primary earner. The only marriages in which husbands devoted more time to caregiving than their wives were those in which the wife was the sole household earner. In those situations, wives and husbands spent roughly the same amount of time per week on household chores.

“It felt like a double whammy,” one woman says of her husband, who was laid off shortly after they got married. “He wasn’t working, which made him angry and resentful, but then he refused to do almost anything around the house while I was earning for the both of us. And that made me angry and resentful,” she says. “If that’s not a recipe for disaster, then I don’t know what is.”

There are, of course, exceptions to the female breadwinner trend.

Brian Tan and his wife, who live in New York, have been married for two years and in a relationship for eight. They started their careers earning the same salary at the same financial services firm. After that, he switched employers and took a job which paid about double her salary. But since then, he’s started working for a children’s hospital and she’s moved into tech. She now earns between 70 and 80% more than him, Tan says, and it’s not an issue in their marriage.

He says there are several reasons her outearning him doesn’t bother him. “The first is that I view it as one big pool of money. The second is that this is a pendulum that swings both ways — there was a period where I made more, then we made the same amount, then she makes more now,” says Tan. “A third reason is that I’m truly proud of her, and to be genuinely proud of someone, all feelings of jealousy disappear from one’s mindset; I want her to feel fulfilled and intellectually stimulated, and the fact that she gets paid a lot while doing her job is a win-win for me.”

One woman based in the UK who asked not to be named tells me that she has four sisters. “We all earn more than our husbands — all six figures,” she says. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but we are all married.” The key to success, she said, is being open and communicating, especially when conflicts arise.

Natasha, a 37-year old marketing executive, says that her family is very traditional in terms of gender norms. By earning double what her husband earns, she sometimes feels like she’s simultaneously living both outside of traditional gender norms and inside of them — “a sort of double existence that can feel stressful,” she says. But crucially, she’s been happily married to her husband for seven years — they just had a baby. The pay differential doesn’t bother him, she says. “I think that’s evidence of his maturity and confidence.”

Another woman told me that when she first met the man who became her husband, she was earning “a thousand times” more than him. They’ve now been together for a decade, and she’s still earning about 40 percent more than him. “It’s never ever been a problem,” she said. And he agrees: “Unless it’s a problem for my wife, I’m secure enough in myself and in our relationship for it to not even be a consideration.”

William Conrad and his girlfriend Levi Coralynn, who are both in their 20s, have garnered an enormous social media following — he has about 1.3 million TikTok followers, she about 2.3 million— for publicly and performatively living out an atypical heterosexual relationship. Coralynn, a content creator, is the primary earner, while Conrad seemingly takes care of the bulk of the domestic work.

Muriel Wilkins said that she does think things will eventually change, especially as Gen Zers like Conrad and Coralynn are questioning and pushing back against outdated norms. But it will take time, she said, and progress will only materialize if individual couples are prepared to confront these outdated norms head-on.

“Couples have to talk openly about expectations — who does what, what success means, what partnership really looks like — rather than just falling back on the old scripts,” she says. “They need to redefine what success looks like in their marriage. Together, they can stop asking, ‘Who’s the breadwinner?’ and start asking, ‘How do we win together?'”

Dené Logan put it more bluntly: “Your husband is not the patriarchy.” In other words, frustration over inequality in marriage often has roots beyond the individual relationship. And recognizing that distinction is key to avoiding misplaced resentment.

Progress won’t come from paychecks alone. It will come, says Wilkins, “when we stop treating money as the measure of power in a marriage, and start seeing partnership as a balance of respect, care, and shared responsibility.” Equality doesn’t necessarily mean sameness, says Logan, it means rewriting the story of marriage for a new era.

Josie Cox is a journalist who has worked for publications like Reuters, The Independent, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of the book, “Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality.”