I know my sister better than I know most people. She's the only woman with a serious career -- with income and success and a spiffy title like a man -- that I've ever been close to, so I don't actually know if her husbands are extremely terrible as married well little hubbies go or not.
I was a homemaker for a long time and I've never managed to remarry after I got the ex out of my life. I do know I told some loser I had no interest in talking with him anymore when he contacted me again shortly after I applied for a professional job with the spiffy title Executive Director, so maybe it's just hard to find a good man when you're a woman making money like a man.
Because I was certain that guy would be thrilled to pieces to con me into paying his bills while he did nothing for me. I dumped him to begin with because he imagined that's what I was offering him.
As a former homemaker who supported my husband's career, I am extremely familiar with the fact that in a one-career household, the spouse being financially supported typically does a lot to facilitate the career success of their partner. This typically includes cooking, cleaning, and meeting their sexual and emotional needs, among other things.
I wasn't getting the emotional support from him I wanted and needed, so, no, I didn't care to pay his bills and also provide him FREE sex in a completely one-sided relationship where he behaved like a parasite and justified it with calling it LOVE.
So I would like my audience to give my sister the benefit of the doubt. This piece isn't intended to drag my sister.
It's not even really intended to drag her younger second husband. That's not my goal at all.
My goal is to cast light on my relationship to Hacker News and people there. My brother-in-law is the only programmer I know well personally in a non-work, social setting.
My sister's first husband was initially supportive of her career goals and she thought they were doing this real modern, women's lib thing where she got a serious career out of the deal and he got to deliver newspapers while working on his dream of becoming a famous writer.
Meanwhile, she paid off all his defaulted student loans and was only able to buy a house at all by getting him to sign away his legal rights to the house so they would issue her a loan. She never came to see me in Germany because she couldn't afford the plane tickets. She thought all his loans were paid when another one turned up.
My sister has fertility problems. She has super low hormones and a lack of temper to match. I used to tease her I got her hormones. I had terrible PMS in my youth, no problem getting pregnant and I have enough temper for the two of us.
In a word, she was extremely mousy in her youth. Her first husband's support of her career turned to insults and undermining her when she had enough career success that her self esteem and ability to stand up for herself improved.
That's when she realized she was his bitch. Like a pimp whoring women out to pay his bills, he wasn't really a supportive husband. He just liked sitting on his ass while she paid his bills.
She was already dating her younger second husband -- "trophy husband" -- during her divorce when her first husband brutally assaulted her and tried to kill her, leaving her with serious health issues negatively impacting her for years to come.
Her new boyfriend's one shining moment in his entire life was in the aftermath of the assault when he was genuinely supportive, understanding and kind to a degree that is extremely rare and essentially unheard of from the guy you are sleeping with if you get raped. That bought him a blind eye for years to come about every shitty thing he did while I shook my head and wondered why she put up with him.
Her new boyfriend was literally still living with his mother when they began dating in spite of having no student debt because his parents were wealthy and he was making a good income as a programmer. He was a nerd with limited sexual or relationship experience and after he married my sister, he ran their debts up until it was a burden to pay with both of their good salaries.
So while I knew programmers made good money as an hourly wage or salary, I had no fantasies this meant they were all rich and powerful people with a good net worth.
Jack knew other people on HN thought he was Mr. Big. I didn't think that for quite some time and it's part of why the relationship went sideways.
I thought:
I'm a divorced single mom with an entry level job I can't get promoted out of and serious medical issues preventing me from having a life. That's why I'm on Hacker News all the time.What the hell is wrong with you that you're here all the time? I know you make good money and are in better health than me.Why don't you open up the blinds and let some sunshine into your Mommy's basement or get a hobby or two and stop annoying me?
He didn't think he needed to prove himself to me. I had entered his turf and "everyone" there knew who the hell he was, so no one explained anything to me about who he was. I was supposed to just know and never mind I was not part of his world and had no idea.
I found him aggravating because he wouldn't stop talking to me which is the sort of thing men typically do when they are attracted to me but he wasn't hitting on me -- so I was all WTH? -- and he was extremely high on the leaderboard.
I didn't want friction with someone influential on the forum where I spent my time and I couldn't find a solution because I found him baffling. Meanwhile, everyone else there just thought he needed no introduction and no explanation and never gave me one word of enlightenment while I mentally compared him to my brother-in-law that no one has ever heard of.
Jack was divorced and the divorce was quite ugly. He lost the ugly custody battle and implied on his blog he was suicidal for a time.
His live-in girlfriend that Genevieve thought was his wife likely ran him down because he had money. She probably had a baby out of wedlock to try to secure her position with him without a ring or piece of paper and was pregnant again when their first child was maybe a year old or a little less.
Around that time, he announced his departure from Hacker News probably to give me space and avoid temptation. Then -- I don't remember the details but he contacted me privately, probably at Genevieve's behest, probably to try to help me.
We really talked for the first time and we talked comfortably, like old friends, for a few days. And then his girlfriend miscarried about a week after he finally got me to talk to him and I just knew he blamed me and he felt I was an evil woman and somehow him talking to me is why the baby died.
He didn't take the miscarriage as a hint from the universe that maybe churning out bastard children with a woman he wasn't willing to marry was a bad idea and perhaps he should rethink that plan. He stopped speaking to me and bulled on ahead with their plans to have a second child and she was soon pregnant again, resulting in a preemie with serious health issues that spent a long time in the hospital from what I gather.
These events were certainly a factor in his willingness to believe Genevieve's lies about me though I was not pursuing him and had given him the cold shoulder on HN for at least a year before deciding he might be okay in my book.
Unlike his girlfriend, I had serious career aspirations and I didn't see his money and power as a feature. I certainly wasn't willing to churn out bastard children to keep my claws in the wallet of a rich man unwilling to marry me.
I saw Jack's money, power and established career as a threat to my goals and something that made him a danger to my plans. I was clear he imagined I would slot in nicely to his life because I had previously been a homemaker and didn't yet have meaningful career success and then marrying him would guarantee I never got a real career.
He was a thorn in my side on Hacker News while trying to talk to me nonstop while not seeming to be hitting on me. He was a bigger headache when he stopped speaking to me without telling anyone any of the backstory about how he had the hots for me and then he decided I killed his baby by being willing to speak to him at long last.
Similarly, my ex husband always acted like I didn't sacrifice a career to support his because I didn't walk away from an established career making good money, and never mind that I walked away from a prestigious scholarship and the opportunity to attend a more prestigious college than the one I ended up at.
He had a career because BOTH of us consistently made choices that supported him having a career at the expense of me having one. It's not a choice I'm willing to make again for any reason or anyone.
I'm not real keen on marrying a younger trophy husband with less money and power than I have and career success continues to elude me. But I'm clear that men, women and all of society assume she will keep his secrets and look out for his personal needs etc etc etc AS IF they are already married and, no, he won't in any way further her career in most cases.
I had a screaming fight with my ex at one point about him bringing his friends over on the weekend and being noisy, making it impossible for me to study. I told him "I might as well drop out rather than flunk out because you are making it IMPOSSIBLE for me to succeed." And he knew I had been one of the top three students of our graduating high school class while he was not even in the top ten percent.
Men and women BOTH ROUTINELY make little decisions every single day that subtly, quietly murder her career in order to breath life into his and in many cases he gets all the credit, like he did that all by himself, and she doesn't even get financial security out of it for her future because whether they divorce or he dies ahead of her, being The Good Wife buys you AT BEST a decade of living in poverty on a fixed income after he exits your life and odds are extremely high he will exit your life.
The last stats I saw: When someone buries their spouse, ninety percent of the time, it's a woman burying her husband because women live on average six years longer than men and are typically four or more years younger than their husband.
Footnote
Stats are certainly out of date and likely before homosexual marriage became legal. Average age difference for second marriages are typically larger, with the wife more like seven years younger than her husband.
I'm not going to bother to provide citations. All of this is common knowledge and I'm certain you know it's accurate in the aggregate and if you want to argue it, it's only because you're a misogynistic asshat who doesn't want to admit what the entire planet KNOWS and refuses to do anything about:
That heteronormative culture shafts women even if they play by all the rules and do everything they are supposed to do to be good people and productive members of society entitled to the good life.