With gender stereotypes rather more fluid these days due to changing workplaces, it’s not surprising that success in business or creative areas is not necessarily going to come to the man of the household.. Recent research by psychologists suggests that many people still expect a woman to have a successful male partner, rather than a man to have a woman who is more successful than he is and that this often leads to stress within the relationships.
The studies examined how people’s self esteem is affected by the change in fortunes of their partners. In part, they argue, this can be seen playing out in high profile couples like Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas, or in the so-called ‘love curse’ of the Oscars where women who win the coveted prize often see their marriages ending or encountering difficulties shortly afterwards.
You might assume from these examples that men only feel threatened if their partner’s success comes in a field in which they both work – but the findings seem to suggest that this isn’t the case, and a large part of this comes from the different ways that men and women tend to see relationships.
It’s almost a given that men tend to be more competitive, driven by testosterone and traditional roles, whereas women will often take their cues in terms of their relationships with friends and family around them.
As romantic partners, men still tend to see themselves as separate. They see themselves as independent, capable and strong, whereas women tend to internalise the relationship as a whole as part of how they see themselves.
This can mean that a man reinterprets the thought of their partner being successful as “she is more successful than me”, and that this is therefore a failure on his part; whereas a woman will tend to think about how successful as a couple they both are when her partner is successful.
These different approaches then affect how men and women both think about their future of their romance. Women will tend to reflect on the success of their partner as being an indication of improvement and optimism about their relationship. Men on the other hand tend to dwell on their own perceived failure when they think about their partner being successful, and this then makes them more pessimistic about their relationship.
It all sounds a little bit depressing, but the researchers are at pains to point out that these reactions are usually happening at a subconscious level – and that when actively contemplated by men and women the negativity becomes far less of an issue. Reassuring perhaps to realise that all it takes to smash glass ceilings and for men to accept women’s success, is for men to ‘stop and think, and realise that it really isn’t all about them.