Posted on 01/15/2007 7:16:36 PM PST by Lorianne
Decadent stay-at-home wives who take their rich husbands for a ride have finally been rumbled, says Tara Winter Wilson
Once upon a time, there was a truth, universally acknowledged, that a man with a powerful job and a beautiful house must be in want of a wife – preferably of the trophy variety. Domesticated, docile yet dazzling, she was the perfect finishing touch.
Not any more. According to research to be published in the journal Labour Economics, the earnings gap between married couples is narrowing. While in the 1980s it was the case that the higher a professional man's salary the fewer paid hours his wife would put in, men today are more likely to want a dynamic high-flier, an equal who wows him as much in the boardroom as in the bedroom.
Poisonous: 'It is like a perversion of the evolution theory: they have evolved into creatures whose function is simply to get the most for doing the least,’ says one husband A victory for feminism? Sadly not. The reason for this change, sisters, is nothing to be proud of.
Rich men, I believe, have finally cottoned on to the sinister side of the stay-at-home wife: unless you marry an equal who's going to pay her own way, you will end up with a lazy, indulgent, over-pampered slug. For the transition from trophy wife to toxic wife is as fast as the end result is furious.
I should know: many men of my age and acquaintance have become deeply bitter and disappointed about how their wives have changed since they hung up their working wardrobes. I am talking about university-educated women (often Oxbridge graduates) who do a couple of years work in the City before harnessing themselves to a milch cow and "having it all".
Apparently there's a new take on "having it all" – and it's not what the majority of us understood it to mean. Back in the 1970s, it meant effortlessly maintaining a beautiful home, entertaining in grand style, raising perfect children, keeping the husband sweet and having some sort of career in order to create financial independence.
"Superwoman" was the phrase coined for these energetic pioneers; "trophy wives" for the less energetic ones. Today it's a whole new ball game.
"It is like a perversion of the evolution theory: they have evolved into creatures whose function is simply to get the most for doing the least," whispered an exhausted husband to me recently. "I wouldn't mind providing her with so much if she just did something for me occasionally. She's never even once cooked me a meal."
"She doesn't know the definition of sacrifice," said another angry husband. "Relationships are meant to be about compromise, but she is more about selfishness. I bend and adapt to her needs, yet all she gives me are ultimatums."
"Can't you just divorce?" I asked.
"Are you kidding?" he replied. "I'd lose everything I've worked for, including my children, and I'd be paying her an indecent amount of money for life."
"There's another reason these husbands don't divorce," added a sympathetic onlooker. "They don't want to admit to failure – they don't want to be ungallant. There's an unspoken nobility or gentlemanly understanding that divorce is something they don't do."
Indeed, "something they don't do" is a mantra that extends to practically every area of toxic wifedom. Once an intelligent, educated woman who could hold her own in any dinner-party conversation, the toxic wife will do nothing of the sort.
"They not only become utterly vacant, they never throw dinner parties or entertain anyone outside of their small, closeted circle of other vacant wives," said irate husband number one.
"None of us can understand this: they become obsessed with perfection, grooming, with all aspects of their personal appearance… in a word, they become boring."
"Vain, boring, indulgent and lazy," adds yet another voice to the growing army of fed-up husbands. "I have to take the children out of the house every Sunday morning and wander around with them trying to find things to do because my wife must have a lie-in. I'm only allowed back in the house after 11am. Sunday is the nanny's day off, you see."
"My wife," chipped in husband number two, "gives over the whole of the weekend to pursuing what she calls 'me time'. She goes to retreats, yoga mini-breaks, a spa, a health farm, even art classes… all of which I pay for, of course. What do I get back in return? Nothing."
So today's concept of a wife "having it all", simply put, means never doing anything personally if she can pay someone else to do it for her. And if she can't find someone else, her husband must do it.
"To be frank," said another unfortunate husband, "I was conned. And I'm by no means the only one. There's a pattern of behaviour that these wives all adopt."
There are five tell-tale signs, apparently. First, she gives up work, ostensibly to care for the brood, only to have the children packed off to either boarding school or intensive (ie, lots of extra-curricular activities) private day schools.
Secondly, she suddenly wants to move somewhere more rural/suburban that suits her idea of family life, yet location-wise is horrendous for her exhausted, ever-commuting husband.
Thirdly, she demands wall-to-wall help, which nearly always includes an abused Filipina who works 12-14 hours a day, six days a week.
Fourthly, she refuses to fulfil in any way the traditional contract of the non-working spouse in terms of doing anything for her husband (such as cooking), while, fifthly, she expects her husband to fulfil the traditional but anachronistic male role in the household (such as paying all the bills).
Here is a typical day outlined by one husband of a toxic wife.
5.30am: Husband leaves for London. 7.45am: Filipina brings wife tea in bed. 8am: Nanny takes children to school. 8.30am: Breakfast, suduko and the papers. 9.30am-4pm: God knows; possibly gym, spa, shopping, boozy lunch with friends, nap or massage. 4pm: Nanny collects children from school. 5.30pm: Nanny gives children tea and goes home. 7pm: Filipina gives children bath. 7.30pm: Wife disappears off to book group. 9pm: Husband returns and roots around for an M&S ready-meal. 10.30pm: Wife returns. Bed. 10.35pm: Sex? In your dreams.
If the above timetable seems hideously parasitic, it is, and so is the woman behind it. The other day I nervously accepted an invitation for lunch with an old school friend. I felt daunted because, several years ago, she married a rich banker and I'd been dumped from her circle.
"Sorry I'm late," I said on arriving at her mansion. "Got stuck in traffic so bad it gave me road rage."
"Road rage?" replied Olivia, her eyes swivelling down to my shoes and up to my hair in a split, judgmental second. "Well, I'm suffering from maid rage. I mean, come and look…"
She led me into her kitchen, three times the size of my flat, and slid open a drawer. "How shoddy is that?" She was holding up a fork.
"What's wrong with it?" I asked, peering at it politely.
"Just look! It has a disgusting piece of encrusted mashed potato on it. I mean, it's so shoddy! She can't even unload a dishwasher. I'm really going to have to sack her. And guess what else I discovered this morning? When I opened the towel cupboard after my bath, I noticed that she'd stacked the pink towels amongst the white ones. Can you believe it?"
What made this conversation so scary was the fact that the terrified Filipina was in the room with us, hunched over a table slicing up bits of duck and foie gras for our lunch. "Juanita!" snapped Olivia. "This is your last chance. Do you understand me? You'll be back in Manila within the week… I couldn't possibly recommend you to anyone. Understand?"
"Yes Madam," she sniffed with a tremulous sob.
"And stop dripping your revolting bodily fluids over our lunch. Throw that away and start again. "
Horrified by her manner and the distressing scene, I asked her for a tour of her home. She had just moved into one of those massive houses in Chelsea Square. Rich folk tolerate people like me (ie, broke ones) only because we make them feel better about themselves.
"Would love to, darling," she drawled, "but first how about a drinkie-poo? Juanita! Open the champagne chilling in the wine fridge and bring it upstairs to the south drawing-room."
"Yes Madam," replied the poor slave.
"I won't have any, thanks," I said. "I'm driving and have to pick my children up from school."
"You mean you don't have a nanny to do it?" Olivia's eyes glared with horror. "I have the most delightful Norland one. Although the uniform is brown and ghastly, they are so well trained. She's downstairs in the basement doing my ironing at the moment…"
This was now utterly surreal. I had no idea that real people lived like this. Yet, minute by agonising minute, it got worse. I tried a bit of light humour.
"Well, let's hope she's not weeping tears on to your party dresses, eh?"
"What?" snapped Olivia.
"Well, then you'd ask her to redo the whole lot again, wouldn't you?"
"Possibly," she replied. "But a little moisture is no bad thing when ironing out the creases…"
Was she exhibiting a dry wit? I didn't know. In her pre-toxic wife days, she was amusing and droll. Now we were different beings living in parallel universes. She showed me lavish room after lavish room, and at one point I heard some strange shuffling coming from one of her closets. Maybe her life is not so perfect after all, I thought; maybe she has rats.
As we sat down to lunch in the "informal" dining-room adjacent to the kitchen in an open-plan L-shape, I noticed that Juanita was eating a rather more humble repast slightly around the corner; although I couldn't see all of her, I could detect an elbow jutting out from time to time.
"She won't be joining us then?"
"Are you mad?" cried Olivia. "Why would I want to even see my servants?"
As if on cue, a wizened little Filipino man appeared, bowing and scraping. "Madam, I have finished all the shoes. I will go now, thank you madam." He hurried out.
"See you on Thursday as normal, Pedro," she replied, barely glancing at him.
"Where did he spring from?" I asked. After all, I'd just endured an exhaustive survey of her house, and there had been no sign of Pedro.
"Oh, he's our shoe polisher. He comes twice a week. He works in a cupboard – probably why you didn't notice him." No rats after all.
Here was an educated woman who spent her days rotting her brain with alcohol, and bossing an army of staff.
"Olivia," I said, "don't you miss your old job, your financial independence? Isn't all this a bit decadent?"
"Forget the work ethic," she laughed. "Why on earth would I want to struggle, feel tired and look old before my time?"
I left, more agitated than when I arrived. Forget road rage; I was suffering from toxic-wife rage. Driving to collect my children, the outside world felt like a haven of normality and peace. How I pitied these rich and successful men who had naively hoped for a domestic goddess, only to end up with a diva.
Wake up, toxic wives, the game is over. Your milch cows have seen the light of day. You are toxic, you are trouble and you are about to become extinct.
I agree.. BUT we all know they don't listen.. the school of hard knocks unfortunately is the way that too many of us go
Not yet. Have fun with your friends and trust God. He wants what's best for you even if right now things seem lame.
My husband probably felt the same way you did when he was 25 - out of school, a good job, ready to settle down. He didn't know he had to wait because I was 19 and was still working through college!
In the city (NYC) you still have to be careful about the first and second generation of immigrants. You need to see if their family roots are more important to them than the idealogy they read in Cosmo or Vogue.
If they have a subscription to either of those (among others) they are not family oriented.
Having said that, those have been the ones I've dated incidentally. Accident?
I guess my track record says otherwise. But it's not like I was even trying for them.
With the women in their 20s today, you don't want to "be" with them.
Just go in and get out. They have way too many needs for you to be with them.
Trust me, they are not on the whole very together. Just have "fun" with them.
Most times, they'll have moved on to more dudes before you realize it.
Amusing, but unbelievable.
Good advice. I wish I could, but they already broke it off once and now they bought a home together. S'okay, I'll make sure I leave only life insurance and only for her.
It's DollyCali's single ping list, but I'm told I'm accepted in because [fill in the blank] and so I thought you belong, also!
Thanks!
Hopefully I won't ruin your reputation.
;-)
Oh, fam! Do I have a rep???
Why, of course, dahling!
It's fab!
If the man gets the children then of course the woman has to pay maintenance in Britain most women are entitled to maintenance unless they have the children and then it is clear that the money is for the children only and as they get older often paid direct to the child.
I think you and others here are being very unfair to working mothers most I know do so to actually make ends meet.
With house prices and other expenses it is very hard to get a mortgage on a single salary especially if the man is self employed.
Most women I know have to juggle a job, keeping home and being the one that has to negotiate with their employer if the school rings and the children need picking up.
A lot of these women would rather work part time or not work at all but reality is that they have to.
In Britain mainly the property and any other assets are divided 50 50 or if the women has a lower income and or less chance of working full time about 40 60 in her favour but rarely does the man have to pay any money to her unless he is very very wealthy.
Hmmm, that's interesting. I was married to Luca, a small-time Florentine pharmacist, and I made him furious. Didn't mean to, but I did.
Yes, "Ve too soon grow old unt too late schmardt!"
The article is interesting in a way, but I think it's interesting primarily because it's short on facts and long on conjecture. As I see it, there are only three or four facts in the whole thing. The primary fact is that a magazine is going to publish a study saying that more people are married to spouses making about what they make. Secondary facts are a couple of anecdotal stories of men who are unhappy with their non-career wives and an account of one woman who is spoiled and mistreats everyone around her. Outside of those small bits of information, there's very little of substance.
The writer makes the assertion that husbands and wives being closer in their incomes is an indication that both parties desire that situation, but the writer offers no real evidence of this assertion. Did the study take a sample of men and find that they wanted women who were making as much money as they were? The writer claims that she knows many men who wish that their wives had careers and were making money, but her personal experience is not the same as a real study. I'm reminded of the story of the New York socialite who responded to Richard Nixon's 49-state victory 1972 by saying something to the effect of "I can't see how he won. I don't know anyone who voted for him." The fact that one rich liberal doesn't know anyone who voted for President Nixon doesn't change the fact that he was much more popular among the American people than George McGovern was.
Here's another explanation for the decreasing disparity between husbands' and wives' incomes. People in the lower socioeconomic groups can't afford to live on one salary anymore. While their income tax rate isn't that high, overall taxes still take a big bite from their income. Everything is expensive these days, and one salary can't cover all of the expenses even when people try to be frugal. At the next step up, people could live on one income, but they'd have to live very, very carefully. Instead of living that restricted life, they both seek jobs and try to make enough money to have more and better things. In higher socioeconomic groups, they could live comfortably enough on one income, but they couldn't "keep up with the Jones." Keeping up with the Joneses becomes important to many people, so they both keep their jobs.
Here's a third explanation. As community institutions like the church and other groups become less a part of our lives, we tend to meet most of our friends at work among our colleagues. Generally, the social groups at work involve like hanging out with like. Laborers hang out with laborers. Middle management hangs out with middle management. Technical people hang out with technical people. Because our friends tend to be people who do what we do, they tend to have similar incomes. When chemistry develops and people marry, they are marrying someone who has a similar income. They both continue to work for all the reasons that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
I don't claim that I have evidence supporting either of these explanations, but the writer doesn't have evidence supporting her explanation of the data either.
Personally, I think the writer is making the typical feminist mistake. She's trying to pretend that men are attracted to women for the same reasons that women are attracted to men. While I realize that Rush Limbaugh is halfway joking when he says that feminism exists because ugly women are trying to get better status in society, I think there is a truth under there somewhere. I think many feminists have come out on the losing side of getting attention for the normal things that men find attractive and are trying to spin things to put themselves in a better position. We may live in a world where men need wives who can have a career and contribute financially, but that's never going to be what makes a man's heart go pitter pat. Women who refuse to learn that truth are bound to be frustrated.
A separate point that is vitally important is that selfish people make lousy partners. Women who work simply because they are selfish will be just as lousy as women who stay home because they are selfish. Likewise, men who want their wives to work because they are selfish will be just as lousy as men who want their wives to stay home because they are selfish. If a person gets himself or herself stuck with a selfish partner, he or she is going to have a bad time. You make the point about the value of Christian faith in keeping either partner from being selfish. While I don't think that active practice of the Christian faith is the only antidote to selfishness, I agree that it works for many people.
Bill
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.