Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Wage Gap Relationships

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

We’ve talked about age gap relationships on the pod before... but what about wage gap relationships? For this week's extra episode we read this piece by Elle Hunt for The Guardian and asked you all at home if you had ever been in a relationship with a sizeable gap in personal wealth and earnings. As it turned out- many of you had. For some, a daydream turned total nightmare, for others a non-issue solved by communication and compatibility. We discuss the realities of mismatched earnings, the way it presents across gender divides and whether looking for a man in finance is the solution or a potentially very expensive mistake...Thank you so much for your thoughts, comments and personal stories on this topic. We love love love being In Conversation with you all. Please do give us a follow on your podcast player app and perhaps a lovely review- we want to keep making this podcast with you forever & that helps make that happen!Catch you Friday,O,R,B xoxoxLinks / Further readingUtopia For Realists by Rutger Bregman Are You In A Wage Gap Relationship? by Charley Ross Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pele in his yellow and green strip and Cameroon in their iconic onesie. What are you talking about? Football shirts. Okay, tell me why I should give a shit. I'm Jack. And I'm Kim. And in this Forever Better podcast by Puma, I'm taking Kim into my world so together we can uncover everything days to know

about football shirts, about the history, the fandom, the environmental impact. Don't forget the fashion. And the fashion. This is Who Gives a Shirt? Listen on your favourite podcast app or watch on Puma's YouTube. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe, but this time, why not look a little further? To Dubai, a city that everyone talks about

and has absolutely everything you could want from a vacation destination. From world-class hotels, record-breaking skyscrapers, and epic desert adventures, to museums that showcase the future, not just the past. Choose from 14 flights per week between Canada and Dubai, Book on emirates.ca today. I'm Beth. I'm Richerra.

And I'm anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. This is our midweek episode designed to lift you out of your content slump and get you through to Friday. Remember, if you want to take part in these extra episodes, just follow us on Instagram at Everything is Content Pod. That's where we decide on topics and ask for your opinions. So we've talked about age gap relationships before. about wage gap relationships. This week, we asked all of you at home if you had ever been in a relationship with a sizable gap in personal wealth and earnings, and as it turned out, many

of you had. And there were a lot of positive stories and examples where with work and acknowledgement and patience, you can keep it from coming between you, which is lovely to hear, but there were also a lot of cautionary tales as well, which we will get into. And in a piece for The Guardian from 2024, L. Hunt explores the issue further and finds that, although to many people, it might seem like a dream to meet and marry someone super wealthy. The reality can be far from smooth sailing. She discusses the fact that marrying rich can be the only way a lot of people can reasonably hope to change their personal circumstances in this current economic climate and the limitations of that, how some of these relationships fail because

of an inability to communicate openly about cash and what it can look like and feel like in a heterosexual relationship when the woman's wealth outstrips her male partners. I wanted to start by asking you both, I guess, what you made of Elle's piece, but also the messages we got, which were really candid and honest, and I think in some cases were really painful and difficult to read. Did any messages or parts of the piece stand out and either surprise you or confirm your own beliefs about wage gap relationships in the modern world? I think because I've never really had a significant wage gap relationship, apart from maybe one where I was in a corporate-esque job and the person I was dating was living more of like an artist's life and we were just on very

different salaries. Apart from that, which was quite tricky in it, I think it kind of would rub up against things we wanted to do, the dates that we wanted to have. And it just became this awkward thing because our communication just sucked. Apart from that, I think I still have the like pretty woman idea in my mind of regardless of gender. Just it can be this really nice thing and if money is not a big thing for you, it can flow easily. It's this energy and this fun thing that can make your life really great and enjoyable and people can have a good time from it. But I think reading some of the messages in particular, it dismantled that dream a bit and it made it feel more realistic to me, which is money, sadly, is a huge factor in life and it can be a huge wedge and it can be

a huge source of insecurity personally, obviously financially, but even personally on a personal level. If you have a partner who's earning much more than you, it can become a source of fear, tension, frustration, upset. And so I think this kind of maybe possibly naive, hopeful idea of people having big gaps in their, you know, wages. And it never being a problem, it just being this nice way to bring somebody into a much more luxurious lifestyle. It kind of dismantled that idea for me a bit. I often do have her partners who've earned more than me. I seem to go out with men, the work in the finance sector. And so their income is higher than mine, even though I've had some actually very good years, my salary is very lumpy and inconsistent.

That being said, I always worry when younger women are like find a rich man because of my own experience, which is my mum stopped working when she had me at 36 and then couldn't get back into nursing without doing more courses. So she hasn't worked. When I say she doesn't work, she hasn't done a job that earns her money, but she works for the whole family basically like full time. And that has created for her a sense of dependence on my dad, which I think is extremely difficult, especially because my dad's money is sometimes also. quite precarious. And I watched that growing up and that really instilled this idea in me that I need to have my own. And even when I've had partners who've had money, I found it really important to feel that I could stand on my own feet, that I would be independent. My mom really instilled it into me that you need to have the ability to like be able to leave, basically.

You want to be able to feel that in any relationship, if that person disappeared, if their financial situations changed, you would have enough to kind of stand on your own two feet. And I think that's not a narrative that's put out frequently enough, sometimes from these kind of like relationship coaches who are slightly charlatanee. And there was a bit actually from one of the couples in the piece, Paul and Esme, where Paul earns more than Esme, but Esme is set to inherit a huge sum of money. And Paul says, that's crucial and actually really important because financially she is independent.

She doesn't need me. He said, if you think even about our parents' generation, it would be common for the woman to put up with mistakes of the husband simply because of financial needs. And I think we're seeing a lot of kind of glamour washing of this from Trad Wife content. I saw another tweet recently where a guy said, I retired my wife so she can be a stay-at-home mom and the timeline went absolutely nuts. They were like, you haven't retired your wife.

You confined her to the house to do unpaid labor for your child, a job which if you hired someone is very well played to be like a full-time nanny. So I think we've actually gone backwards a little bit in this conversation because of the cost of living crisis, because of the truth of the fact that it takes money to make money. If you come from a privileged background, you're much more likely to end up with more wealth. If you're someone that doesn't have a lot of money,

it doesn't aren't set on a career path to make a lot of money. In this exact moment, it's actually really hard to make it big, especially in the UK. And so I think that this piece was really good and cemented kind of ideas that I had. Same as you, though, Richerra,

there does, I still do get that feeling of, oh, if you could have someone, you know, just soften the blow a bit when it comes to cash, that'll be really helpful. But the truth of it is always that I think you feel that inequality very keenly in the majority of scenarios. I think this would be a good time to read out one of our cautionary tales that echoes that and the need for a plan at the very least. So Ruby said, and this situation where she was on

12 to 20K and her boyfriend was on 120K, she says, looked like a great life from the outside with friends commenting on how lucky I was. A fancy flat, nice holidays, driving his car whenever I wanted. It was great until the relationship went south. He changed for the worse and I was suddenly very trapped. Quickly realising whilst his salary offered us a great lifestyle, my own money wasn't even enough to pay for a room in shared housing in our city. I moved with family until I was able to up my salary and I'm now totally independent, but I physically cringe when I sense friends seeking out a wealthy man to lean upon, or with someone where they couldn't survive without his salary, but it can be trapping and cause you not to aim high in your career, etc. Let alone if the relationship

turns, as mine did. Please, please, please, if you land a rich man, great, but I beg of you, don't give up your exit strategy. I really love this. It points out two things, which is one, what we've said. It is to not have your own money, no matter your current situation, can be very frightening. Even if you are with a good man that you are with for the rest of your life and does love you and support you, it still puts you in a situation where you are. There is precarity there. And I understand women who are like just never, ever allow yourself to be in a situation where you are not, where you cannot at the drop of a hat, leave and be safe if you do leave. And the second point which I found quite interesting, I hadn't thought, is in some cases where you can almost rest on your laurels.

If you do have ambitions, I think they can be softened almost by a great whack of money. I often think this, like if I won the lottery, my brain would probably atrophy. I would, the drive that I have, the ambition I have, I think actually would suffer. And I do wonder what about her point now and what you both think, whether it can, as she says, cause you not to aim high in your own career. If you sort of do go, okay, well, I guess the fire has got. It's an interesting point. I just, you know what, I have no experience of that at all. So I couldn't even say because I've had the same thought process that you described a no new witch is I have to have the power to leave and financial control of my life because of just the ongoing stories of people that I've known growing up or even just, I guess, societally or across pop culture of being trapped and just not being able to make choices. based on that. And even from a cultural point of view, a lot of the relationships that I've seen growing up culturally have been quite traditional with gender roles. So I've really pushed back

in my own as much as I wanted to and also just felt this need to have control and power where I can if something goes wrong. And that has been really important to me. So I don't know to answer your question, Beth, about this idea of if you were in a relationship where somebody earns much more than you if that would have a knock on effect on stagnating or maybe even just like mentally making you feel less like you cared as much about building a career. I definitely think it could happen if you suddenly feel like actually maybe it depends on how you think. I think also because we're career driven in a way where our career isn't necessarily just about earning money. It's also about pursuing our passions that we feel like we've got something to do to say to create. I guess if

you're someone who just works literally just to earn your income like I have a friend who has never really been investing her job and it really kind of plagues her because she's like I don't really there's no work I can find where the work is valuable to me it's literally just I'm turning up I'm clocking in and I'm earning that income and I think I can imagine in that situation where your work is literally nothing to you except for a paycheck at the end of the month which I think is extremely relatable to a lot of people that of course when that is taken away you might then feel that isn't something that I want to spend my time doing I do also think the other side of the coin which is not to paint all men in this light but there is an element of control when

the wage gap is falling on the man earning more money and the woman not like the guy who said I retired my wife. I think that it still exists in a patriarchal society where men do enjoy the idea and even to go back to our sugar babies conversation that we had, I do think that sometimes the idea of a man earning more money, they can sometimes enjoy the idea of a woman being slightly dependent on them and that might encourage a woman to relax into that role as well. But we had a really interesting message in the reverse from Georgia, which said, I, 31, recently ended things with my partner, 36, of three years for a number of reasons. One being that I didn't feel financially secure.

I'm freelance and a lot more money than him and he hadn't settled in a career. Him often being financially dependent on me made me anxious. If I ever lost work, I know the same just wouldn't be able to be reciprocated. He was incapable of planning ahead financially and had no savings. In my 20s, it never mattered to me that I was always the higher earner. I've always strived to work so hard, so I never have to depend on anyone else after growing up broke. But now I have to think about the possibility of future kids or only. a flat a total pipe dream long relate babes i want to be in a relationship where even if our salary

isn't equal i can feel secure that my partner thinks about planning for the future even if it's saving as little as 25 pounds a month so i think that's a really interesting dynamic in where the person who is becoming reliant on the higher earner the higher earner feels resentful and maybe that isn't a story that we hear as much because previously it was often men out-earning women and as I said that fits into a pre-doctrined dynamic that we're very used to. But I think more and more, certainly in my own life and anecdotally, it is actually often women that are earning more than men. And I think because women take on the mental load of that future planning, especially when it comes to kids, that forward-thinkingness, perhaps it does feel harder to, and maybe it feels less

secure. I wonder what the psychology is, how it impacts men and women different, depending on who is the one earning more money. I think men can feel insecure when their partners earn more money. And I think women can feel insecure when they earn more money because of the reasons that she just outlined. And I thought that was quite interesting. On that note, we had such an interesting message from another person in that scenario. He wanted to be anonymous. They said, I, a woman, earn twice slash three times what my fiancé a man earns. I've had a clearer career trajectory.

And he is now retraining to change careers. So the earning split is likely to stay that way for a while. It's actually come with a lot of benefits. He's taught me to let go more with work and develop a better work-life balance, made me a lot happier. We've always split bills and housework pretty much 50-50 at his request, which means I've had more disposable income, but I do spend this on the odd takeaway weekend away for us. The only challenge I see is we want kids, and I might feel under pressure to go back to work sooner, but I would like us to ideally do shared parental leave anyway to get into the pattern

of sharing childcare. He's pretty comfortable in himself, so we've never had any major issues with power dynamics of me earning more. I wonder if that's partly because we're the opposite way round to the usual patriarchal dynamic. I really fucking loved hearing that point of view and it makes me happy that people are not carrying over the kind of wider patriarchal bullshit into their relationships and it can work and I know obviously every story will be different but that really made me happy and it's a nice point of hope and optimism that you can create the dynamics that you want in your relationship and it doesn't have to be a given. A woman financially earning far more than her male partner

has to carry over the, you know, the patriarchal assumptions of, well, I'm the man, I'm the breadwinner. We can just create a different way for ourselves. We are so far removed from hopefully our parents' generation that we can just create new norms in our relationships moving forward. So I love that message. So did I actually. It was, I think it just reveals that there are some immovable things that you need for this not to come between you. And I think one is communication about it. And it is, you have to, in the first instance, be comfortable as a woman that you are not, I guess, subsidising a man that you don't feel the type of way about it,

that you talk about it. And also, if you are a man in this dynamic, that you are comfortable, that you reckon with whatever patriarchal ideal says, you are failing if you don't make the most money. And it's these happy relationship stories. I really like them. And we have another message from EE who said,

I female 34, I'm on 100K. And my boyfriend, male 34, is on 40K. We treat our salary as 140K, which I know would send certain people into fucking orbit to hear because it is a lot of women, especially as their view, that it's very clear cut. Your money is your money and this is what we fought for. Don't be fucking stupid. But actually, what works works.

And this is a 34-year-old woman. She's an adult woman. She has made, she's making 100K. I think we can assume this is someone with a head screwed on who's making a decision. To have this more financially egalitarian relationship, in the reverse, I think we would celebrate it because in a partnership, it is. It's the betterment of a partnership. It is, I really love hearing about people that actually are just building.

and adjust the person who earns more pays a greater share. I think it just removes that stress and that shame and that I guess we can't do this because you can't afford it. I understand why women would look at this with concern. But I get it in theory and I think I'm seeing the celebration for it and I just, it's a new way of doing things. It's nice to see in our DMs. We did get a lot of messages in the reverse

where men had basically squandered a relationship because they couldn't get on board with it. Well, on that, we had a message from Beth that said, I earned significantly more than my ex, and he found the wage gap emasculating. He started behaving quite passive-aggressive and making comments about how much I earned. I even changed the amount of money we were paying towards bills, so we paid in ratio to our earnings. She goes on to say that sadly it didn't resolve the problem, as he made lots of comments about it and would judge how she spent her money, safe to say the relationship didn't work out.

She said, I still think wage gap relationships can work, but maybe both parties need to be feminist, liberal thinkers. My ex had old school values. And I think that is at the crux of it still really is only in our recent history that women, and have had the ability to earn money and earn good money. And as much as men are growing and changing with the times, I think the way that men have been socialised and I hope this is changing, but those values are still deeply rooted and deeply embedded. And I think that that can cause massive ruptures within relationships.

And so I think that it does have to come from a place of wisdom, wisdom about being financially literate, which I have not been in the past and I'm still not the best at. And actually it's one of my biggest things that I find really first. about myself. I'm not always the best at managing my money. But also when it comes to choosing your partner and being really wise about whether or not they are being fair in their kind of assessment of whether or not you sharing your salary is good. I am one of those people that felt a bit nervous from that message saying, you know, I own 100K, he ends 40K, we split it. That I think

worries me. But interestingly, I wouldn't feel, I would feel more protective or more understanding if it was the other way around where a guy said, I on 100K, she earns 40K. I wouldn't feel that way. But I think it is because of all of the stories that we hear about financial abuse against women, how much harder it is for women to continuing to earn money, especially if they do have children, sometimes that is 10 years out of the workplace. I mean, with childcare being so expensive now people are making the decision between going back to work or staying at home, some families can't even afford to, like, the decision about whether or not you have childcare and go back into work, sometimes isn't about whether or not the women wants to work. It's like,

can we even afford to have childcare on two people's salaries or do we actually have to have one of us staying at home doing that unpaid. It's extremely complicated and it's not linear when it comes to how women make their money without even factoring in the wage gap. So I think that it's a really complicated topic and it's something that we need to get more comfortable in talking about because we're not good at talking about finances and I think within relationships it can get even more difficult and you can want to be really kind and to say this is all fine. But it's a bit like the conversation around pre-nups which comes up every now and then and people get quite, I don't necessarily know how I feel about it but the truth is that within relationships they might end and I think

that's the insight that I've always had is that you know you've got to make decisions based on the fact that this might not last forever rather than the fact that it will and that might change your perspective on how you divvy out those finances we had one message from a woman who is dating someone earning quite a bit less and she says quote I clearly like him a lot but one of the reasons I can't really see a future with him long term is because of finances and I just I think it's so to assume or to say, well, you obviously don't love him or that's a very shallow thing. Because there kind of has to be a plan. Like I don't judge anyone who has a deal, one of their deal breakers as is not, doesn't have the finances together or doesn't have enough earning potential

so that she may live a life where she has children and lives comfortably and happily, especially if she has lived in poverty together. And I just think it makes me very angry ultimately about this kind of global economic crisis and this profoundly unequal society where people are so primed to earn less and work very hard that their love lives are coming under scrutiny. They don't really, they aren't really free to plan a life and love who they love because ultimately they do want, and we all want to live comfortably enough, be able to raise our children with enough.

And it just, yeah, I think it's just such a depressing aspect of what we're seeing and kind of on a global scale. It really reminds me of the materialists. And I think it was a point that you made during our chat about it, Anoni, where Dakota Johnson's character and Chris Pine's character are arguing. And it's not that they're arguing over money. It's just that money is so sparse in their relationship and in Chris Pine's life, that everything is a source of tension because everything is driven from the lack of money.

And so even something as kind of stressful, to be honest, as trying to find parking at the best of times becomes this even bigger, even more disruptive event because of the lack of money and trying to find somewhere that is reasonably priced in the centre of New York. And I completely agree with you.

It's just really heartbreaking to be in a world where to live freely is not even a given and to kind of have money be the driving force of so many discussions is becoming increasing fold for so many people. It just, you know, on a nice rom-com level,

it would be so nice if money wasn't a problem and you could make choices based on love. But I don't judge anyone for not being able to do that because of the world that we do live in where these conversations sadly do happen. Your life is hugely impacted by the amount of money or lack of money that you have. And I don't judge a single person for wanting to build a life where they can remove themselves from the stresses of all of that. It just is a fact of this insanely capitalist horrendously not working society that we live in where people don't earn fair amounts of money for the work that they put into their jobs and the prices of everything are skyrocketing constantly. So it's, I don't know, it's a sad topic, but I also, I think it's a very realistic topic. I quote this all the time, which is such a funny thing to do, but it's

one of my favourite things ever said on TV, which is Gabrielle Salis in Desperate Housewives says, money can't buy you happiness is just something that we tell poor people to stop them from writing. And it's entirely true. And on that point, my parents have kind of, my dad lost a job when I was younger and my parents, all of their issues always come back down to money. Like every argument, every stress, this idea that money can't buy you happiness is just patently untrue and it's becoming even more starkly obvious as we enter into like the biggest disparity in wealth ever growing, it seems in this country. And I brought this up before as well, but Rutka Breckman, who's like a modern day philosopher

wrote this book called Utopia for Realist and he talks about how, and this was years ago, so this will have changed now. But there is a threshold for happiness, which is like, I can't remember if it was 70,000 pounds per, like household or per individual is actually the amount of money that you needed to earn at that point. That could have been, that book might have been out in like 2018. In order to afford you enough that you can pay your rent by what you want in the supermarket without like checking the price of the tomatoes and maybe go on one family holiday a year, pay all of your bills and that you've got a bit of a buffer cash left over. And the idea was that anything really

beyond that where you're buying really expensive luxury items to start going on two to three holidays a year. Like it doesn't actually increase your levels of happiness. In some cases it can actually make you unhappier, but there is a level of money that does just give you that buffer, give you that safety net, make you feel like every single day you wake up, you're not just stressing about money. And I think that that is a really crucial element and to go back to what I said right at the top where I feel worried about women who are seeking out richer partners. I also totally understand that impulse. Currently now, it's like a freelancer where my salary hasn't been as great as it has been the past few years. It's really impacted my mental health. It really,

struggling financially I think is one of the biggest like precasts to depression and I think it's something that people like don't really talk about it's such a massive heavy load to carry so again it's like I understand how people get to this point and but I think that perhaps the payoffs aren't as clean cut or as simple it's not like anything you can't just magic it away it has to be but then there isn't an easier answer either so actually for the women that do decide to marry rich man if they don't have great high earning potential go for it if that's if that's your way out but it sometimes is actually a way to get trapped rather than a way out. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We love being in conversation with you all. Please do give us a follow on Instagram and TikTok at Everything is ContentPod. And please, if you haven't already, please, please, please give us a review. We would love it. We'll see you as always on Friday.

Bye. Bye. We know you love the thought of a vacation to Europe, but this time, why not look a little further? To Dubai, a city that everyone talks about and has absolutely everything you could want from a vacation destination. From world-class hotels, record-breaking skyscrapers, and epic desert adventures, to museums that showcase the future, not just the past.

Choose from 14 flights per week between Canada and Dubai. Book on emirates.ca today. Pele in his yellow and green strip and Cameroon in their iconic onesie. What are you talking about? Football shirts. Okay, tell me why I should give a shit. I'm Jack. And I'm Kim.

And in this Forever Better podcast by Puma, I'm taking Kim into my world so together we can uncover everything there is to know about football shirts, about the history, the fandom, the environmental impact, Don't forget the fashion and the fashion. This is Who Gives a Shirt? Listen on your favourite podcast app or watch on Puma's YouTube.