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Alpha Women and Beta Men


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I'm in the second month of a 3 month trial separation and will be going back to my childhood home tomorrow.

 

It will be tough to know how much to disclose to extended family and the friends who are outside of my core group (core group knows the full story).

 

I came across this article about Alpha Women and Beta Men. I felt validated to see I'm not alone in disliking the gender role reversal I'm facing in my M. I feel like forwarding the link to the people I'm seeing to say ... "this sums it up pretty well."

 

The exception is that my H has been the one to withhold sex (in the article it is the women who do) and there are addiction issues with my H. I also dislike the alpha/beta terms and the women featured have such a sense of entitlement, but the core dynamic of the power imbalance made sense.

 

Any others resonate with this story?

 

Alpha Women, Beta Men - When wives are the family breadwinners

Edited by starglider
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The story doesn't sum up your situation well at all-- but someone should, because your situation is becoming more common and it is also an unworkable one.

 

Breadwinner/caregiver does not mean "alpha." When a woman is competent, she is not "alpha"-- even if she's with someone who has more or less dropped the ball on life. In fact, the power imbalance with an alcoholic, depressed, or (help me find a kinder term than this someone?) drug-addicted person, is a painful power imbalance, and the non-addict, functioning woman is hardly an "alpha" there.

 

The article makes too much of the idea that a normal, non-power-hungry, female person might want to provide for herself and her child whether or not her husband can, and that she might even develop feelings for someone who is neither well-off nor emotionally a success. How is that idea at all confounding? It seems pretty natural, not some relegated to the "alphas" in relationships. In my experience in fact, people who don't have their act together are a lot more "controlling" (without necessarily trying to be) than people who do. A depressed or non-functioning person is crazy-making. Mark my words: If your ex comes out of the fog he's in, or if (on the other hand) you two truly sever ties, you will realize within one year, how not-in-control of your and your kid's life you were. Finances do not equal power, in an interpersonal relationship.

 

But yes, again, it's important that someone wrote an article trying to sum up situations of power imbalance and female breadwinners. OP, maybe you should write a better one.

Edited by jakrbbt
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Thanks for your astute reading of the article and great observations of how this glosses over the problems of a relationship with a (more or less) "together" person and a low-functioning person.

 

Yes, I think there are more similar stories to mine out there these days that aren't being reflected in modern culture, articles, media.

 

One fascinating trend I've seen first hand with friends could make a good book and here it is ...

 

I have a lot of female friends who had mothers with mental illness (narcissistic, borderline personality disorder, etc) and the daughters grew up as nice, even-keeled, high-functioning/high-achieving people who then married men who stopped working. Some of the husbands had warning signs (drank too much etc) but many were on a great trajectory ... one had a PhD in physics, one sold a dot.com company for several million, one was a successful music composer for film, another was a tv new producer. The women became the ones who kept the home-life together working harder and harder while the men faded into the background of the family in terms of work, keeping up the home, community life, and childcare.

 

The men became lazy, depressed duds who complain that their wives were controlling and justify their behavior with a "happy wife means happy life" excuse even though no one is happy in the power imbalance.

 

I don't know if it is the model of codependency or what, but I think it is a fascinating story that high-achieving daughters of mothers-with-mental-illness marry men who stop working. Is it something about the women's early role of caregiver that the men spotted early on, or something the women are doing wrong in terms of over-committing and taking on too much responsibility. Probably both ... and more.

 

Maybe I can score a book deal out of this one. I already have 12 women I can interview for it.

Edited by starglider
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