The Dating Wealth Gap Is Getting Wider

“I don’t expect someone to earn as much as I do” is something I’m hearing more and more lately from my female clients. They are women from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds who are attorneys, physicians, economists, software engineers, and business owners. They understand that the dating pool they have access to may consist of more men who earn less than them.

These clients usually have no issue being the breadwinner in a relationship. But having a relationship in which they are the financial providers flies in the face of a long history of gendered expectations when it comes to dating and finances.

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Dating in America right now includes navigating these realities: a challenging economy on the one hand and outdated gender norms, particularly when it comes to who makes more money in relationships, on the other. We are at a crossroads where women can out-earn their potential male partners, but men are oftentimes still expected to hold more financial power throughout their courtship, if not throughout their whole relationship. Coupled with a rising interest in traditional gender roles among younger daters, the dating wealth gap has felt wider and ever-present.

This, then, begs the ultimate question: Will dating ever be economically fair?

The problem is that our ideas about financial responsibility in dating need to be updated to account for our current economic demands. We can’t keep using the same criteria for partnership that generations before did when the economic needs of a family could be met by one income. We need new standards and rules, ones that recognize the growing earning power of women and reflect the economic hardships so many daters face.

The question of money bubbles up at every step of dating, from who pays for the first date to how to split the costs of a shared vacation. This tension can have real emotional consequences and impact how each person views the viability of a relationship. For instance, many female clients that I’ve spoken to have trouble finding partners who support their careers. Or if they seem to at first, the partner will have a change of heart when things get serious. Add to this relationship friction the external pressure to find “an equal,” which is often code for someone who earns about the same amount of money, many daters find themselves walking a tightrope—with nowhere to turn. Some women have also told me that their choice of date was criticized by friends who believed they could “do better” than date someone who makes less than they do.

Read More: Stop Taking First Dates So Seriously

Things get even more complicated when you consider the fact that a lot of my high-earning female clients come from immigrant or lower-income families themselves. Many women have to deal with the cultural expectation (and sometimes familial pressure) of finding a male partner who either matches their earning potential or exceeds it enough that they can have the role of financial provider in the relationship. It feels like an impossible bind, especially if making yourself open to more options by dating people of all income levels feels more limiting than expansive.

While this is still the exception—the gender pay gap is very much still a problem in the U.S., with women earning on average 84% of what men earn—more women are entering into STEM careers, and receive college degrees at a steadily higher rate than men. As a result, we are seeing more single women who are financially independent.

So where does that leave men who historically are the ones expected to provide for their partner and future family? Some are comfortable with the idea that they may share financial responsibilities equally with their partners; others have found themselves taking on the role of stay-at-home dad, or simply being okay with earning less.

But a growing number of young men, who lean more conservative, are looking to other countries to play out the cultural role of breadwinner.

There is growing interest in “passport bro” content, especially from lower-earning men of color in the U.S. The idea is that men from Western countries can travel and date in other countries where the dollar goes farther and their citizenship status may be seen as an asset to potential partners. Another objective is to date women with more traditional ideas about gender roles and money. This desire to find partnership elsewhere is a product of the belief that men cannot fully express their masculinity in relationships with women who earn more money than they do or who aspire to anything beyond the home and motherhood. It’s unclear how many men are actually engaging in passport bro behavior, but the popularity of the content on TikTok and YouTube (top accounts have half a million followers) speaks to an openness to traveling abroad and meeting a partner, instead of evaluating why being the higher earner in the relationship is so important.

Contrary to heterosexual young men, studies show that a majority of young women have experienced an ideological shift towards liberal politics. This means that on average, men and women are farther apart in their values. Women are okay with leaving gender roles in the past if it means having a partner they can rely on emotionally. In the U.S., each gender is contemplating solutions for how to have their ideal relationship, and for some, those solutions don’t appear to include each other. Some American women, for instance, are contemplating lavender marriages in which they say “I do” to a platonic friend in order to share financial burdens and have long-term companionship.

Dating has always involved financial choices, and today’s daters are faced with making these choices under increasingly polarizing, uncertain economic conditions. Gender roles have changed so much, but the fundamental way in which we think about what makes a good long-term partner along gender lines hasn’t kept pace. It’s no wonder why daters are considering unconventional solutions to the modern economic and loneliness crises.

Unfortunately, we can’t talk about dating and love without talking about money, class, and status. It’s a tale as old as time. What we can do is consider why inequality along gender lines— where it is exclusively men who must be in charge financially—is so important. Because to have truly equal partnerships, we have to reconsider our relationship to money and power, and how both can be shared.

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