When I first met my husband, he was a successful musician, good looking, and working in a trendy agency in Soho, central London, making soundtracks for films and TV.
He had previously lived in New York and seemed impossibly glamorous. There was also a ten-year age difference between us, which added to his allure.
I’d recently left uni, and was in awe of his worldliness. Tim seemed so much more grown up than the boys I was hanging out with.
Early on, however, I noticed that his ego was surprisingly fragile. He would lose his temper over relatively minor criticisms. He was a weird mix of arrogance and insecurity and I felt he constantly needed reassurance from me.
In the beginning I was happy to give it because I was genuinely in love with him, but now I reflect on it, he rarely gave me the attention I deserved. In fact, he acted as if I was lucky to be with him.
In hindsight, I should have run for the hills. Quite a few of my friends disliked him because they thought he was full of himself, but there were good bits to our relationship, too. We had a great sex life – for the first few years – and we liked a lot of the same books and films.
Not long after meeting him, I got my first job, working in advertising as a junior account manager.
Jennifer Sampson realised she was doing everything as well as working full-time. Despite the fact that her husband was working half days, he barely pulled his weight about the house or looked after their child (posed by models)
My salary was enough to cover the rent for a studio flat, but I also took out credit cards to buy Christmas and birthday gifts, and generally lived beyond my means.
It didn’t seem to matter, though, because Tim’s career was going well, or seemed to be, and I was working my way up the corporate ladder. Tim teased me about how boring my job was.
Frankly, I’d rather have been doing something more creative like him but I needed to pay the rent so didn’t have much choice. By then, I was already paying most of the bills. Tim, it turned out, had run up quite a lot of debt on credit cards himself . . .
Last week, reading reviews of the new hit movie The Roses, starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, I felt a shudder of recognition.
It’s a film about the implosion of a marriage when she starts to out-perform and out-earn him. Indeed, his work takes a nosedive, just as she becomes famous for hers.
The Roses is a dark comedy, complete with slapstick violence, but it’s also a portrait of an unconventional status gap within a relationship that rings horribly true.
In our case, no one was famous – but he certainly struggled with my increasing success. When we met up with friends I felt as if I had to underplay my achievements because he’d often sulk if I talked about them.
He’d go silent when I got a promotion and whenever I talked about work over dinner, he would just switch off and try not to yawn.
Still, I was undeniably doing well, and after six years I was promoted to director. At this point Tim was living with me. I was paying the majority of our expenses because my salary was much bigger than his, but this – wildly unfairly, I now realise – seemed only to irritate him further.
The Roses, starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, a film about the implosion of a marriage when she starts to out-perform and out-earn him, reminded Jennifer Sampson of her own relationship with her husband
The more successful I became, the more petulant he was. He liked it if I flattered him with compliments about his music, but he rarely acknowledged the effort I was putting in to both my work and our home.
If I invited him to work drinks, he either sat in the corner, not engaging with anyone, or got really drunk and said mean things. ‘Your work colleagues are so dull,’ he’d say afterwards. ‘Christ, I’m glad I don’t have to work with those idiots.’
I had to grit my teeth increasingly often. The way he belittled my career began to grate seriously. He had this one narrative that he returned to time and time again, where he was ‘creative’ and I was ‘boring’.
I was clearly doing better than him, professionally – at the height of my career in advertising, I was making £150,000 a year while he never brought in more than £40,000 – and this idea that his work was inherently more ‘authentic’ than mine seemed to make him feel better about the power imbalance.
I bought a flat, but we didn’t talk about him coming on to the mortgage. My parents, thank goodness, had always urged me to keep finances separate from my partner, and to be as independent as I could.
Then Tim’s work began to slide. Again, if I’m honest, his attitude was beginning to affect it. He was arguing with his boss and there weren’t enough projects coming in.
He was also getting older, and his skills weren’t as up to speed as those of his younger colleagues.
Our sex life stalled. I was tired, but I’d also lost some respect for him. He spent a lot of time in bed, either sleeping or watching music documentaries on his iPad.
Often, at the end of the day, we didn’t talk at all, but I was so busy at work that I tried to ignore our relationship and how toxic it felt at times.
Eventually, when I returned from yet another important, stressful client meeting (I was travelling every week), I confronted him. Why was he so sullen all the time?
When Tim lost his job, Jennifer felt sorry for him. ‘Why not take a bit of time out, and see what you want to do next?’ she said, and the dynamic shifted even more. I felt like his mother rather than his partner
‘I’ve been made redundant, that’s why,’ he confessed. He stormed off and locked himself in the bathroom. It turned out he’d been laid off more than three months earlier and was living off his savings.
We talked and I felt sorry for him. He looked so lost, like a small, needy child. ‘Why not take a bit of time out, and see what you want to do next?’ I said, and the dynamic shifted even more. I felt like his mother rather than his partner.
I wonder how many women would put up with what happened next.
For two whole years, Tim was out of work. I’d describe him to other people as a ‘successful composer’, then the conversation would turn awkward when he couldn’t come up with any recent projects.
He did the odd freelance job here and there, but I continued to pay the bills. Had he not noticed that we wouldn’t actually be surviving without my ‘boring’ job?
I started to get chronic headaches, partly because I was working so hard, but also because I was repressing all the negative emotions that came bubbling up as a result of his joblessness and the state of our relationship.
Absurdly, I thought that having kids would bring us closer. I had one round of fertility treatment (paid for by me) but it didn’t work. We tried four more times, and on the fifth we were successful.
Once our son was born, Tim did get a job – working in a restaurant as a chef, which he’d done before I met him – but he hated it, and told me often.
After a year of maternity leave, I went back to work for four days a week, and it was full-on. Now a managing partner, I was constantly running from one task to another.
I’d work a full day, pick up my son from the childminder, grab food at the supermarket and rush home.
I was doing everything. Despite the fact Tim was working half days, he barely pulled his weight about the house at all. Meanwhile, my own work would often bleed into the evenings when our son was in bed, and even into the weekends.
We made some friends who also had children, but almost all the dads were the main earners and it felt awkward when we hung out together and the men chatted about their jobs. Tim would stand to one side and sulk.
The women had ‘hobbies’ or were full-time mums. I felt entirely alone, too, and would end up downing a few too many proseccos as the night wore on.
After more fertility treatment (bringing the total I spent on it up to about £60,000, of which £15,000 went on credit cards) we now had two small boys. I loved them to death, but obviously they made my life harder.
There I was, supporting the family, working long hours and being a mum – it was a heavy load. Oh, how envious I was of friends with husbands in good jobs.
With my foot stuck on the accelerator in all aspects of my life, it perhaps wasn’t surprising that the show eventually came off the road.
First, I was made redundant in a round of cuts and immediately had to take another job I didn’t like as much to keep paying the mortgage and bills.
Then, burned out and endlessly anxious, I began to suffer heart palpitations and ended up in A&E, where the doctor recommended I get myself signed off from work.
The wheels had come off yet, even at this point, there didn’t seem to be an acknowledgement from Tim that I was supporting the entire family while also doing most of the domestic load.
Back at home, I had a massive meltdown and ended up screaming at him. This was entirely out of character for me and he looked amazed as I ran around the house, spitting out insults.
I told him he was a waste of space, that none of my needs was being met, that I was exhausted and that I wanted us to separate.
At this point, I honestly felt I would be better off going it alone. It felt as if I’d been a single mum for years – but without any of the benefits of being able to hand over the kids for a weekend and go dating!
Tim was shocked. That night, at 3am, he nuzzled up to me and I noticed he was crying.
‘Please don’t end it,’ he whispered. ‘I promise to work on things and make it more equal.’
We still weren’t having sex because I’d come to resent him so much, and couldn’t seem to keep my head free of negative thoughts about our relationship. The issue of money plagued us and still the buck always stopped with me – not him.
I switched jobs, but disliked that one, too. I went freelance, but we needed more than I could make that way, so back into an office I reluctantly went.
Tim didn’t earn enough to pay the bills, so my time was never my own – it belonged to the family.
The boys were now eight and six and, though I earned well, the cost of uniforms and after-school activities still kept me awake at night. I started writing a book, inspired by my own experiences of ‘doing it all’ and, to my astonishment, got a publishing deal.
Tim wasn’t impressed. In fact I remember distinctly his withering look because, at the time, I had felt so intensely disappointed by it.
‘It sounds like you’re just trying to be creative now,’ he said, patronisingly. I wanted to wring his neck.
You will be amazed to hear that we are still together, and perhaps even angry at me for not leaving.
Why have I stayed? The thing is, our relationship isn’t 100 per cent rubbish. We still laugh together. We love our boys. We cuddle. He’s just very competitive when it comes to work, and he hasn’t been able to translate that competitiveness into his own successful career. The industry he loves is extremely hard to be successful in.
Melissa Hogenboom, who wrote a book called Breadwinners, about the power imbalances when a woman is the chief earner, says: ‘Female breadwinners still do more housework and childcare than their lower earning male partners, which can lead to resentment and stress’
Are we plodding on for the sake of the children? There’s something in that. I do feel bitter. Sometimes I feel as if I have three children, but one of them is ten years older than me.
Whenever I threaten to end the relationship, Tim will make more of an effort around the house or contribute to the outgoings, but it’s only ever temporary. He tells me he’d have nowhere to go if we broke up as he doesn’t earn enough to rent a small flat in London, which is true – and then I feel guilty.
‘You’re not responsible for him, he’s an adult,’ a close friend said when I offloaded on her one day, feeling overwhelmed at the thought of always carrying this additional person.
She’s right, and yet after 30 years together, I can’t just cut him loose. Can I? He’s a grown man and yet still acts very much like a child.
I spoke to author Melissa Hogenboom, who wrote a book called Breadwinners, about the power imbalances when a woman is the chief earner. She said: ‘Female breadwinners still do more housework and childcare than their lower earning male partners, which can lead to resentment and stress.
‘If she’s earning the most and still picking up most of the childcare and the mental load at home, it’s not a recipe for a happy union.’
The unsurprising flipside is that when men do more housework and childcare – their fair share, in other words – the relationship is much happier and a couple’s sex life is often much stronger.
‘If the dishes are done, the meals are planned, the kids’ camp is booked, then there’s more breathing room for fun,’ writes Melissa in her book.
I would like to say that we have a more equal relationship now, but it’s not really true.
I pay the majority of the bills. I am tired and drained most days and wake up wondering how I got myself into this mess.
Life’s too short to bury yourself in a bad relationship, says my friend. But my tragedy is, it’s also too busy to change it.
- Jennifer Sampson is a pseudonym. Names and identifying details have been changed.