Is Marrying Rich Your Secret Back Up Plan?

Why America's most educated generation of women is considering an alternative to career and also, do we even have the option?

Me rn. Also Rachel from Season 1 White Lotus.

Which New York City dream is more delusional? That you’ll find a generous millionaire attractive and that they’ll find you suitable for marriage, or that you’ll be able to independently afford the life you want after 30 on the salary that your fulfilling, cool-girl job provides? As jobs in my industry become more and more scarce, as I spend the weekends re-watching Season 1 of White Lotus and Season 2 of the Jinx, and as I look back on a decade of my own romantic experiences with men of all economic backgrounds, I’ve found myself questioning for the millionth time whether the last of my 20’s are best spent pursuing a better job with killer benefits or abs & a Hampton house connect if I really want to stay in New York in my 30’s. I’m certainly not alone in this.

“Behind every non-nepo with a cool media job is a spouse with a boring finance one.”  

This is the conclusion my friend and I came to after discovering that yet another one of our media industry mutuals was somehow able to afford a child, an apartment, and an education suitable for said child, in New York City despite making $75,000 a year as a full time journalist. My friend’s a writer, I’ve always been on the video production side of things, but for both of us, the people we worked with were always the same. They all went to NYU or higher. Their parents all did the same 4 things for work (doctor, lawyer, finance, corporate super villain), OR they were fucking someone with money and connects. It’s a pattern that’s impossible to ignore once you spot it.

The economic realities of metropolitan life forged a long unspoken caste system in New York: The children of the rich, the children of the working poor, and the children of the working poor who are maybe rich passing enough (educated, styled, and culturally aware of dumb bullshit that only rich people’s kids have time to care about) to marry their way into the upper-middle class. I can’t rely on parents to pay for college or to help me buy a house, but I am the type of person who could maybe marry someone who could. And as I approach the end of my 20’s, I feel the window to solidify my place in that middle class closing. And as well-paying work gets harder to come by, many of us feel forced to choose between a partnership of emotional support or material support.

For me personally, the fantasy of trophy wife life is as equally informed by self-esteem issues as it is by societal ones. The way that incels hate women is the same way I hate my career. So obsessed with the unrequited love of it that I crave it’s final demise so I don’t have to yearn anymore. As financial circumstances become more bleak both personally and in the media industry at large, I sooth myself by imagining, not the next gig or career success, but by picturing a two-income home with a man who at least doubles my salary. I know I shouldn’t plan for it, but after a year of strikes, layoffs, and the shuttering of media companies that started my career, there are days when court mandated child support and alimony feels more reliable than the job market. I can learn to love and then longterm ignore almost anyone, I can’t however, keep up with the demands of AI, SEO, and whatever else is designed to be smarter than me forever. 

Here’s my question though, is the trophy wife life path actually achievable? It’s an established truth that the rich and educated tend to marry other rich, educated folks. Amongst those who inherit generational wealth (which please keep in mind is the majority as only 27% of wealthy Americans are self made) 73% of male heirs are likely to partner others with the same level of wealth if not higher. That number is even higher if you’re hoping to marry a woman. But that’s just old-money right? What about the nouveau boys? Studies on marriage patterns amongst the wealthy tend to categorize men of means together, not really clarifying who got their wealth from dad and who’s self-made. But, general numbers tell us that most high-earning men, regardless of background tend to marry other women who work in similar fields (a rich-ass software engineer is going to marry a rich-ass software engineer) or at the very least, women with a similar education. This means that if you’re like me (public school educated, working a job that doesn’t make a ton) you’re more likely to end up with another struggling documentarian than a hedge fund bro. But even so…it’s hard to keep the mind from wandering. However, there is one big problem with marrying rich that I feel like no one talks about and I’m pretty sure it’s the main fact of life that’s keeping me broke.

Anyone who finds themselves resonating with the question of whether or not to “marry up,” as an adult, more than likely was shaped by moments of financial and temporal scarcity growing up. I love my parents and was granted more opportunities than many people, but so many of those opportunities came from credit card debt, overtime shifts that left me with the responsibility of raising my little sister on my own, and just a general feeling of guilt and unworthiness for the sacrifices the adults in my life made. To grow up so closely identifying with the feeling of lack, is an experience that shapes how you communicate, not just in the workplace, but in relationships as well. The problem with wealthy men is that most of them grew up that way, which means you’re likely entering a relationship with a partner who will never understand the root of your fears which makes it more difficult for them to understand virtually every decision that you make.

Most of the men I’ve dated long-term were broke. However dysfunctional our relationships were, at least it was a dysfunction that we had a mutual understanding of. But the relationships I formed with upper middle class men always came with a disconnect built in. If you’ve seen the movie “It Follows,” Jay’s relationship with her fuck-buddy in that movie feels like the closet thing I can compare it to. It’s trying to explain that you’re being hunted by a monster to a partner who can’t see it. To them, your paranoia comes out of no where. Your competitiveness, your need to have everything confirmed prematurely, your hostility in a resource shortage, it all comes off as cruelty or insanity instead of what it really is: a logically heightened reaction to illogical structural inequities that have morphed your psyche over time. This feeling that you and everyone you love was born screwed over and that you may be destined to go out that way too if you’re not vigilant. It’s a phobia that can be unlearned, but it takes a crazy amount of patience and time to do it.

I worked with and almost fell in love with a man who told me that it was customary in his country to pay 6 months of rent upfront before moving in somewhere. He made $50k a year but his parents were the kind of professionals who could afford a mortgage in the most expensive neighborhood in his country and probably in mine too. At the time of our entanglement, I was sleeping on the couch of my father’s studio apartment that I shared with my sister. We were both extremely mentally unwell, I was suicidal and abusing uppers and alcohol, she has serious OCD and was abusing weed. It was hell and I didn’t hide that from him. That same man and I were dealing with legal contracts contracts for a project I had written. Eventually I had the sense to get my own attorney who flagged that the contract my almost-lover was trying to get me to sign would fuck me out of half of my royalties forever. (He claimed he didn’t realize this.) These royalties were for something that was written exclusively by me and based on my life story. Needless to say, I was livid and heartbroken. But when I confronted my almost lover about it…