New People Always Hate Me When They Find Out What I “Do.” It’s Not My Fault!

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Whenever my husband and I meet new couples at social gatherings, the first question is always, “And what do you do?” And everyone always judges me for my answer.

My husband and I have what one could call a “traditional” marriage: He works, and I tend the home. Since we’re child-free and I already finished college, I suppose you could call me a trophy wife, but firstly, I’m nonbinary, and secondly, that’s the rub.

On paper, not much: I read a lot, I tend to my hobbies, I attempt to bake, and I spend time with my husband. He handles all the boring life matters like bills for us and I dote on him. Making sure I want for nothing satisfies him, and being cared for so wholly pleases me. It may not be “feminist” to others, but for us it’s blissful. We contribute differently to our life together: He provides all the concrete trappings, and I provide the immaterial. He keeps our bodies nourished and warm with his marvelous cooking and our beautiful home, and I keep our minds curious and stimulated with lively discussion and cultural enrichment.

Family and friends have no compunctions about our marriage, but total strangers feel compelled to judge our relationship as “unequal” or “misogynistic” the second I say, “Oh, I don’t work.” Is there something I can say to ward such judgment off? It’s hurtful they say our relationship is unfair just because my contribution can’t be measured in money or labor.

Dear Not a Trophy,

Don’t waste any energy on what total strangers think, because no matter what choices you make in life, there will always be someone who strenuously objects to it and is happy to tell you so. I grew up in a conservative part of the country in a community where some people believe that if women work, it means they don’t care about being good mothers to their children, and have been told that as someone who has a career and child that I must be prioritizing the former over the latter. And these are people I know. Their opinion simply does not matter. It has no bearing on my decisions, and my decisions are not reflective of how I feel about their choices. That is even doubly true of people I don’t know at all.

I would suggest you take the same approach if anyone suggests your relationship is unfair because you choose not to work. If you chose what you’re doing, there’s nothing about it that is unequal, misogynistic, or toxic. Those descriptors are about coercion and a lack of consent—and you and your partner are making a conscious choice to live in a way that makes you happy.

I would caution, however, against reading too much into what it means when people ask you what you do. Many assume that people choose work that reflects their interests because it’s often true. The question can be a question about status or money. But just as often it’s a way of asking what you’re interested in enough that you’ve chosen to spend a big portion of your life doing it. It’s an indirect way of asking what makes you tick in a way that, coming from a stranger might seem a little less invasive or direct. If they just asked bluntly, “What are your interests?” that might sound a lot more intimate. You should be able to tell from the rest of the conversation which way they mean it, but err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt. If, however, it becomes clear that they are judging you based on your capitalistic value, they’re doing you a favor by giving you a screening mechanism. They’re not people you need to be friends with, or whose opinions you should value.

From: Everyone Judges Me For Being A Trophy Wife. (December 2nd, 2022).

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I would like to have a baby. My husband is an anxious person who claims he’s “just a realist” who tends to be stubborn and likes big things planned out in advance. He agreed to have a kid before we got married, but only if we could financially afford to. That’s where our opinions differ; I think we can, and he disagrees.

Together, we currently make at least $200,000 in gross income. However, we live in a city that we love with high costs and we are religious enough that my husband INSISTS that the kid needs to go to religious day school. (There is no flexibility around this requirement. Believe me, I’ve tried.) Religious day schools in our region are notoriously expensive (we’re talking five-digit numbers yearly, starting at $20,000). My husband fears that even with tuition assistance, which is common, we would end up leading a lifestyle that requires us to penny pinch, worry about money, never go on vacation, have no retirement fund (to the point of joking about committing suicide as a retirement plan), and devote every single spare dollar to tuition. Even if I say that we could afford it now, he argues that with inflation and recessions, etc., one day we may not be able to afford it. Clearly, in an ideal world, he would want a trust fund with the tuition money already saved up. Obviously, that’s not going to happen.

We’ve tried going to a financial advisor for reassurance, but they weren’t very helpful; I need hard, specific numbers relevant to our location and projections for an 18-year period, minimum. When I suggest moving to a city with a lower cost of living, he says that our salaries will drop according to the location and we will be back in the exact same boat (he thinks the current remote work trend will be disappearing within the next few years). What do I do? Who do I talk to who has an understanding of school tuition concerns? How do I get these numbers? I can’t do it myself; I’m over my head. I suspect the most helpful thing would be for my husband to take anti-anxiety medication, but that’s not going to happen, so this is the next best thing.

—35 and Not Getting Any Younger

Dear Not Getting Any Younger,

I feel a kinship with your husband. I’m also a financially anxious planner, down to searching out the price of espresso in Wien a year before I embark on a trip there. I was stressed at the grocery store today because the tofu price went up another 30 cents. So I understand he wants to be informed about the financial commitments of having a child. But part of bringing another life into this world is realizing you can’t control everything. You said your husband is religious, but he is demanding such insight about the future it’s as though he expects you to be an omnipotent being. You will not know if your hypothetical child has medical or learning needs not met by a religious day school before they are even conceived. You can’t say when future recessions will be. You can’t resolutely predict the future of remote work two decades out—or even if student loan debt will be canceled in six months. It’s important to remember that life is unpredictable, and it is impossible to plan for every eventuality.

It sounds like your husband might be helped by treatment for his anxiety, but have you considered that he might not be on the same page about wanting a kid? It reads like for every single (practical) solution you come up with for affording a kid, he comes up with a doomsday reason why it won’t work. This could be his anxiety talking—or it could be that deep down, he’s making excuses because he doesn’t want a child. Statistically, if you have a kid, you WILL make it work. It might not look like the perfect idealized version your husband wants to plan for, because life doesn’t work that way. But your combined income puts you in the top 5 percent of all American households. That means that 95 percent of American families make it work on less income than you earn. Even in high-cost-of-living Manhattan, the median household income is less than half your combined income.

While you can gather more information specific to your area (Numbeo, census QuickFacts, Forbes Cost of Living Comparison are good tools), I don’t think more data will assay your husband’s worries. Even if you made a budget spreadsheet with tabs for each of the next 18 years and calculations for annual inflation costs indexed to the CPI (which sounds like a fun Saturday night to me), I don’t think it’s really the financial concerns holding him back. It’s possible he just needs to hear it from folks he knows— perhaps a friend or leader in your religious community with kids you can talk to about how they handle tuition while balancing other financial goals.

But there’s something much bigger than budgeting going on if he’s so anxious about affording children on a $200,000 income (which most parents in the world manage to do) that he’s making “jokes” about taking his own life as a retirement plan. He may think finances are his last argument point against having a kid he doesn’t want.

If you get the impression that it’s mostly anxiety talking and he does want a kid deep down, ask him to consider the opposite: What if it goes right? What if you have enough to afford everything you need? What if a child is a beautiful addition to your family? What if you can still go on vacations AND save for retirement AND afford the school of your choice? What if he gets an annual raise equivalent to tuition at a religious school? Would he regret missing out on those experiences more than he regrets the money he hypothetically spent? The best-case scenario might not happen, but the worst-case scenarios probably won’t either. You’ll make hard choices, and you’ll adjust your budget. But you probably won’t end up living on a raft in the Pontiac River eating cat food. If he values expanding your family, he will have to realize that it will have a price—but also benefits. Every choice in life will come with trade-offs, and only some are financial.

From: My Husband Says We Can’t Afford A Kid. We Make $200,000 A Year. (December 5th, 2022).

My ex and I divorced four years ago. She got remarried to a guy with two kids six months later. It has been very difficult, especially for our daughter “Jane.”

My ex expects Jane to make all the adjustments because she is the oldest (her stepsister is a year younger than her and her stepbrother is 9). I constantly travel for work so Jane moving in with me full-time doesn’t work. When I am home, she spends as much time with me as possible. This has been a real bone of contention with her mother.

My mother can’t drive anymore. Ever since then, I have been taking care of her old car with the express intention of giving it to Jane when she turns 16. My ex agreed to the plan: Jane keeps up her grades, gets a part-time job for gas, and we split the difference in the cost of insurance. Jane turns 16 in December and has kept up her end of the bargain. My ex dropped hers.

She called me and told me she doesn’t want Jane to have the car until college. I was confused and said if money was tight, I would just cover the insurance myself. But my ex wanted to back out of our agreement and disappoint our daughter because she and her new husband can’t afford to do the same for her stepdaughter next year. The girl would be jealous and it wouldn’t be “fair.” I told my ex that maybe rather than punishing Jane, she and her husband could step up and actually parent the girl. Life isn’t fair and 15 is old enough to understand the situation. Jane getting something from my side of the family has nothing to do with her.

I told my ex I would be willing to sell the car to her when and if Jane was done with it (her college dreams are overseas), but I am still giving our daughter the car. My ex told me that either Jane has to share the car with her stepsister or they won’t allow the car at their house at all. At this point, I told my ex I hope this appeasement to please her husband was worth the lifetime of alienation she would be causing Jane. I told her I would hire someone to be in the house while I was gone so Jane could move in. My ex accused me of wanting to destroy her family. We haven’t really spoken since. Jane can tell there is tension in the air and wants to know what is going on. I have stalled because I don’t want to harm her relationship with her mom any further. They are at odds as it is. What do I do? I feel like I am sitting on a bomb rather than a birthday gift.

Give Jane the car. Your daughter’s stepsister is not your responsibility, and this won’t be the last time in her life that different resources and opportunities are available to her step-sibling. The good news is that Jane’s stepsister won’t be able to legally drive for another year, so this sharing issue is still theoretical. My meaner side was tempted to suggest that you agree to let Jane’s stepsister share the car in a year and then renege on that agreement later to give your ex a taste of her own medicine.

But, I think it’s better that you emphasize to your ex that her stepdaughter doesn’t already have an agreement to receive a car like Jane does—the more unfair thing is to break a contract she had with her daughter based on possible future jealousy.

Not to mention, no one is currently utilizing the car. It’s just sitting there. Your ex’s approach to this entire process seems to hint at Solomon: If both daughters can’t have the car, no one can. That’s simply inefficient.

In the end, if the vehicle is in your name, you have the right to give it to your daughter, even if your ex doesn’t like it. It is also worth selling your ex on the benefit of Jane having a car when she’s at her house. If your ex can’t drive, Jane’s ability to run errands or drive siblings around might have a big upside for her. It’s easier to catch flys with honey than vinegar.

From: My Ex Is Determined To Ruin My Plans For My Daughter’s Birthday Gift. (December 6th, 2022).

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