<p>which M4W should I use?</p>
<p>DS, 26, BSME and MSCS. app designer. Hikes and camping, skis (a lot), bikes, wall climbing, raises chickens, rabbits and bees in shared housing with 4 girls (its the current mix and changes frequently) PNW. Savings. Needs a cougar. :)</p>
<p>Great, stupendous, exceptional Dad. :D</p>
<p>Yes, I just knew you were going to use this thread to hawk your son, longprime. If he only knew, he’d be so annoyed! Heck, he probably has an entire harem hanging out at his place, but just not telling you. Maybe we should start a matchup thread on this forum, though it might not last very long. If only we could arrange marriages.</p>
<p>Now why would CC do that?
And if CC did that, the pool of women for DS gets diluted. :)</p>
<p>I really don’t like that you wrote “marrying down”. You make it seem as if woman are marrying men that they are too good for. What’s wrong with a woman supporting the family? Does she have to marry a man that makes more money than her because that is how society is structured? Is it wrong for her to not give a dam about what kind of job her husband has because she wants to marry him for him and not his standing in society?</p>
<p>To be frank, this is completely distorted. Woman are NOT marrying down. We have more opportunities at higher paying jobs than we used to. Instead of sowing in a factory, a woman can now own and manage the factory, or be a doctor, which was something woman could not do before. Just because higher paying jobs are available to woman, doesn’t mean their standards are lowered or raised.</p>
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<p>Actually, few people I know…especially boys/men like to feel they are being “pushed” or given “ultimatums” on anything. Subtly is vital to ensure their “buy-in” of any decisions…especially serious ones like greater commitment in relationships. </p>
<p>Moreover, one reason why lots of boys/men avoid greater commitment/serious relationships may be that they’ve found independent life to be quite enjoyable and do not want to feel “boxed in” after experiencing it for a period of time. Know plenty of women who feel likewise.</p>
<p>Another is possible bad relationship experiences of theirs, their peers, and/or some family members where they perceive marriage as being a stage of life where they feel constrained not only by the responsibilities of marriage, but also family/outsider expectations which can be overwhelming to some. </p>
<p>One of those expectations…being expected to listen to a SO/spouse angrily vent/complain about various issues…especially ones self-inflicted or brought about even after being told such actions are ill-advised…sometimes for hours on end without complaint can be overwhelming to many and even cause emotional burnout. It’s a reason why I’ve opted out of continuing/extending a couple of relationships after a short while in my younger days and distanced myself from a few friends. </p>
<p>Granted, I was raised in an environment where boys/young men were discouraged by fathers and other adults from discussing and trying to grapple with serious emotionally stuff/related subjects. In light of all that, I’m still quite perplexed at how so many past GF/regular friends viewed me as a “therapist” with whom they can seek counsel/good cheer. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, I do not have the great reserves of patience to withstand/tolerate angry venting/talking about emotional stuff for hours on end without going insane as a buddy who’s real good at tolerating all that. It’s one reason why I do not feel I am anywhere near ready for the married life…or even a committed long-term relationship at this point.</p>
<p>op: “I just attended my (private, all female) high school reunion (class of early 70s) and I would say half of my peers earn more than their husbands so it’s not a recent phenomenon.”</p>
<p>Class of mid-70’s HS and well over half of females of both HS I attended and Ivy college classes have never married… The education at these is considered elite… It has been hard to feel that we are a solid community due to the highly varied and mostly non-traditional lifestyles of these women. It is heartening to see that we women have more options career-wise, but do we have as many “options” in terms of family, community, friendship?</p>
<p>I was a total odd ball among my classmates at all schools for marrying young (24 to elite college grad), but we postponed starting family till we paid off all H’s college loans and for me to pursue a very time-consuming and lucrative career. I made more than he did from the get go until I became a SAHM. During my career, I was extremely well-paid, or I should say !I earned! very high amounts compared to other women in those days, and I also got a graduate degree at night, feeling I had to do so to prove myself as a woman in my industry. Both of our earnings were used to pay off H’s college debts, so we were debt-free and a had a nice chunk in the bank when we started to have kids. We lived abroad for a period, which also prevented me from re-starting a career in the paid work-force.
We will celebrate 30 years of marriage this year, god willing (wink). Tomorrow, V-Day, is also our engagement anniversary.
I will be entertaining 45 female alums from my college at my home this week- it is sure to be a very very motley, interesting, and disjointed crew. Diversity in these classes (in career, iife-style, age, sexual preference, politics, life experience, not just race, ethnicity and SES) continues to prevail post-graduation, for sure.
I definitely felt the glass ceiling, and H’s career was moving along into management and beyond, while I was stuck in a sales position with no promotions in sight. We worked in the same industry, and it is still very very male dominated in the upper echelons, today…
I married a guy with a good heart, smarts, whom I could trust ----who had a lot of “potential” now that I look back!</p>
<p>BTW, I never say, as a SAHM, that I “do not work”… I say that I " do not work for pay", and that I “save my family a lot of money by providing this service.” I totalled it up, vs hiring outsiders to do what I do for my family, and it would cost a HUGE amount, definitely more than I could earn today. THAT is a topic for whole other thread…LOL</p>
<p>I feel that the now super-entrepreneurial, virtual workplace, self-trained, constant;y reinventing, lack of loyalty, flexible style of work was in part initiated by the fact that women, esp moms wanted many of these things, as well as by the need of companies to outsource to cut costs, and to be able to change things on a dime. </p>
<p>Basically, marrying up or down is an obsolete concept- at one moment one spouse may be “ahead” of the other, but in a few years that will reverse, and then again. The concept of a fixed hierarchy and a single set of skills being used and refined for one job is a thing of the past… The concept of a fixed family is also going by the board as it really provides no real economic use anymore. JMHO</p>
<p>Anyway, the demographics and economics of marriage are most definitely moving into new zones!!! My own D’s will have a very different terrain to deal with, so much change in just one generation!</p>
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<p>I personally would like my daughter to marry someone that brings somewhere near what she brings to the marriage. May not be earnings, assets, etc. - it could be culture, experience, wisdom, stable family, or skills.</p>
<p>When I took my 16-year-old son to the pediatrician’s office two weeks ago, I was very surprised that the number of dads in the office was much larger than the number of moms! And most of the moms who were there were accompanied by their significant others. That’s a big change since my kids were little.</p>
<p>I got the Verizon MiFi service last month. This is a device that allows me to work anywhere and it’s very convenient for taking kids to appointments. I used to look for a Starbucks or Panera Bread for free WiFi but the throughput at those places was terrible. It’s not a cheap device but it provides me with incredible schedule flexibility.</p>
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<p>Not just young men.</p>
<p>I think this was the expectation of many men of our generation, too, and that some of them are disappointed in their wives for not having succeeded in all of these areas.</p>
<p>Certainly, my own husband is disappointed in me. I downsized my career to raise children (by doing freelance work rather than holding a full-time job for many years). As a result, I earn less than I would have if I had stayed in a full-time job throughout the years when we were raising children. This is OK with me, but not with him. He sees us as people who should be equal now – empty nesters with full-time jobs – and sees me as having failed because I don’t earn in the same salary bracket that he does.</p>
<p>On the other hand, he never stayed home with a sick kid. Never helped with homework. Never ran a birthday party. Never volunteered at his kids’ schools. Never took a kid to a medical or dental appointment unless it happened to be on a Saturday. Never juggled his schedule so that he could attend school events during the day or drive a kid from school to an extracurricular activity. Never went to a parent-teacher conference. Never helped a kid move in or out of college. Etc. Those things count, too. Or at least I thought they did.</p>
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<p>[Feminomics:</a> calculating the value of ‘women’s work’ - thestar.com](<a href=“Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star”>Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star)</p>
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<p>…
[BOOK</a> and BUSINESS - BOOK and BUSINESS - GENDER AND THE G.N.P. - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/29/books/book-business-gender-and-the-gnp.html]BOOK”>http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/29/books/book-business-gender-and-the-gnp.html)</p>
<p>edit: Marian: according to this writer, they count a lot!!</p>
<p>{{{Marian}}} You sound just like one of my closest friends. I try to keep telling her she’s doing great! My friend even homeschooled her kids at various points (her son had some serious learning disabilities), and her husband never understood what a toll that took on her.</p>
<p>What you did IS important! Hang in there.</p>
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<p>Indeed. Those things not only make a difference, they make THE difference.</p>
<p>Marian – it sounds like your kids have a wonderful mom. I know they appreciated everything you did for them (whether they said so or not). </p>
<p>I did my share of volunteering at our kids school. I realized my husband wouldn’t ever feel comfortable selling baked goods with the moms, so I tried to find volunteer opportunities where he could contribute, like chaperoning the teen dance (where you needed a man to go into the boys’ bathroom to make sure they weren’t making trouble). </p>
<p>I think one thing couples should iron out up front is agreeing on (or compromising on) their standards of cleanliness (or lack thereof). Two people may not initially agree on how much of a mess (or tidiness) they need. My husband never does the laundry the way I do, but you know what? It gets done.</p>
<p>I have grad/pro degree to H’s bachelor’s degree. We chose for me to quit my better paying job so I could raise the kids. He will have a much better pension than any of the jobs I’ve held offered & it will be for his lifetime & a spousal survival lifetime smaller pension for me. We have no regrets. Because of these choices, my career path has been much more non-traditional than his. Worked for 6 years, timed out to raise the kids, worked part time for 4 years at one position and then 4 years at another position & now am in my 5th year at still another position.</p>
<p>My niece far outearns her H–both are attorneys. Not sure what they’ll do when they decide to start their family, but it should be interesting.</p>
<p>…so?</p>
<p>Both my boyfriend and I are getting bachelor’s. I will likely get a masters and hopefully a PhD. He wants to be a SAHD and I want to be a full career woman. I have no interest staying home with children and that’s his dream. The term “marrying down” is disgusting. We’re marrying each other to compliment each other and we make a darn good pair.</p>
<p>I will be collecting marriage proposals at the end of this post :)</p>
<p>I have pretty much raised my two girls single handed since Tiger mom does not have much patience to deal with children (or adults for that matter 
- solid type A personality to my laid back European attitude). That’s a few thousand piano, Kumon, SAT prep, French, dance, tutoring, art, etc classes, and K-6 * 2 school pickups and drop offs, playdates, regular dates, homeworks, school projects, doctor appointments, orthodontics, and daycare pick ups and drop offs, etc. To top that off, I keep up with the maintenance of a 6,000 sq ft house, do all the landscaping and painting, fix the cars, etc etc etc. Every once in a while one of my projects gets in trouble, massive overtime ensues for a few months, and we spend it on a nice cruise or vacation…</p>
<p>I make a bit more than she does, but we do not consider it marrying up or down… I would be very happy being a SAHD, since I have enough outside interests to keep me running. Mrs. T would probably hit the asylum after a week at home…</p>
<p>I think marriage is all about complementing each other , as our fellow poster above indicated, and not about a ‘match’. In terms of ‘match’ we would be hard pressed to find a single thing we have in common, and that’s after 30 years of being together.</p>
<p>Maybe not as many marriage proposals as you think, turbo. I have a husband who does the same thing (at least an equal share of, and does the things I don’t want to), and also has a good deal of humility…and I suspect there are many others on this board with a similar deal.</p>
<p>The operative term here is ‘equal share’… In the rare occasion Mrs. T. takes a daughter to a lesson, the teacher often thinks I finally remarried :). If we were living in a more, ehem, socially-into-the-2000’s part of the country I would be the rule and not the exception but here in Midwestern suburbia USA, I’m the rare exception. </p>
<p>Humility is a virtue. For other people :). I have made a lot more sacrifices to my career to pull this off (largely by staying in the same company for 27 years, same manager for 14) so that I can increase my share of ‘gravitas’ and get away with things… I could do the same thing the Mrs. does and job-hop every few years or every time my manager looks at me wrong, but to me, humility means knowing there’s a mortgage payment or a tuition payment coming, so, Turbo dude, swallow your pride and toil on. The Mrs. has a choice, and it’s largely on the back of the ‘steady provider’ that she can hop like a butterfly from job to job having fun while I’m off to Kumon or to the orthodontist.</p>
<p>hmm, turbo. That sounds like you are really putting forth far more than Mrs turbo, and that kind of thing can build up alot of resentment over time. Even if you are good at suppressing it. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the man or the woman, when it gets too lopsided, somebody blows.</p>