The heart yearns for love, no doubt. But the heart also yearns for chocolate chip cookies at midnight, sleeping in until noon on weekdays, and luxury travel. The heart is notorious for wanting things that are inaccessible, unhealthy, or fleeting desires. Love is another one of those things.
Love is not a lost object to be searched for or a task to be checked off a to-do list. It is just one of the many beautiful experiences that make life more comfortable, like expensive cars and a home with a swimming pool. “Love is a many splendored things,” but every heart doesn’t have easy access to it. It turns out that love and marriage are partially determined by income level but with some twists.
For the Love of Money
High earnings work in men’s favor. Compared to low-income men, high-income men are more likely to get married, stay married, and have children. If wealthy men divorce, they are also more likely to remarry and have more children, according to a 2021 study (Hopcroft). Contrarily, high-income women are less likely to marry and have children than low-income women. High-income women are also more likely to be divorced than low-income women.
Before your single mind starts racing to despair, let me remind you that high-income women marry just not as frequently. High income doesn’t work in women’s favor when it comes to marriage. There are various assumptions about this social plight of high-income women. The point of this article is to release marriage as a goal rather than trying to find solutions to get high-income women hitched.
Women have been defined by their marital status for too long because that was their primary access to wealth. Much has changed in this century, and women are changing the world. Women’s achievement is notable in politics, sports, journalism, entertainment, and most other fields.
When Women Walked In
A woman does not need a partner to make her whole. She never did. She needed a man to be fed, clothed, and housed for centuries. Now that we have broken that tradition, we must break the burden of expectation of coupling. A woman is responsible for finding and using her passion for bringing healing/peace/joy into the world. Humanity needs the gifts that women are expressing.
Being a wife or mother is a beautiful experience, but so is being a governor, a film producer, a vice president, or the best athlete in the world. No womanhood is lost because a woman doesn’t get married or have children. If we want women to keep being incredible in the world, we must release them from the psychological burden of creating family ties.
We must stop turning women’s attention toward love as a goal. Shift the conversation to honor a woman’s right to want something other than a partner. Ask single women when they expect to change jobs, where they are planning to travel next, or what is the last investment they made. Engage single women in conversations that honor their independence instead of society’s expectation.
I have been happily married for 31 years and greatly appreciate lifelong commitments. I consider myself one of the lucky ones in love after three decades. I made compromises that some women aren’t interested in making, such as coming out of the workplace and homeschooling our children.
Our daughter is 29, the age I was when I married. She is not in a serious relationship. She would like to be, but it’s not a priority for her. She is climbing the corporate ladder with her friends and still spending Christmases with her parents. As parents, we rally around her when she job searches, runs marathons, or does anything else to enhance her life.
My daughter already makes more money than me but considerably less than her father, who never interrupted his career. Her life is far more exciting than my life was at her age. I don’t try to convince her that love and marriage are more joyful than how she currently lives.
