Reply to How to not be jealous of women who married rich?

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[quote=Anonymous]Marrying well goes both ways.  He has to also hope to be on the receiving end of her respect.  Without that, it is an imbalanced marriage with skewed power in the direction of the breadwinner.  Usually the woman in such a relationship brings social and financial capital to the marriage to balance out his breadwinning position.

During my divorce I met with attorneys who told me that contrary to what I may think, there are plenty of upper class WASPy marriages that feature domestic abuse, long term infidelity,.. all the usual suspects.  These couples won't get a divorce for various reasons - shame, to protect finances, for the sake of the children,... also the usual excuses.  In college I knew a couple of prep school products who's fathers were in long term extramarital affairs and the entire nuclear family knew it.

Despite that experience in college I still envied the girls who seemed to marry successful men.  It is only 10+ years into imbalanced marriages that the cracks appear.  I was in such an imbalanced marriage but thankfully I have a professional degree and was able to reignite the career after being SAHM.  Not many women are able to it I'm afraid.
It would have been a balanced marriage if my ex was supportive of my career but he expected to replicate his parent's marriage where the mother did not work and the father paid no heed to childrearing nor anything domestic.  To everybody outside, ours looked like a successful arrangement.  But financially it was setup to fail.  Ex doesn't have a good grasp of finances and is deeply secretive about money so .... I had to get out to secure financial stability for me and the kids.  His father also belittled and browbeat his wife regularly so this began happening to me too.  To everybody outside however, the ILs are the example of a successful long term marriage.  
I admit I was beguiled by their marriage like much of their set and imagined I could live that too.
Well, I've done it and it was the most expensive investment in attorney fees for me to pull myself out of.

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