Real Life Stories - Entries for August 2011

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When we married my wife and I held to the traditional values of the man / woman, husband / wife relationship. I was the strong and macho man she had been looking for in a life mate, and she was the beautiful woman that I fell in love with. In retrospect, I suppose even then I should have suspected something when we agreed to change the marriage vows to exclude the part about the wife vowing to love, honor and obey the husband. We joke about that to this day. But neither of us really gave it any significance other than what we thought was an outdated vow of professing our love and devotion to one another as husband and wife.

Although I was self-employed at the time, and had my own bank account, I agreed shortly after we married to close my account and just be added to hers to simplify our family finances. I have to admit that a part of me resented the fact that my name came second on the account, but eventually I came to accept it. It was no big deal to either one of us.

After a few years of self-employment as a contractor, I eventually took a job as a teacher. Meanwhile, my wife was advancing in her career, steadily moving up, getting promotions and even then earning more than I did so early in our marriage. I can’t say that it didn’t bother me, but never enough to cause any disharmony in our relationship. I would justify it by thinking how cool it was that my wife made more money than I did, and I still get to do all the stuff I want to do.