the wife of a friend of mine works for the united nations and every few years the whole family is moving to a different post in a different country. because of the way the visa works in most countries, the husband can't automatically find a job in the new place, and so after they moved last time, after having a job in the previous country he felt exactly that kind of uselessness because he could not contribute. he eventually found a purpose in running his own startup online.

myself i used to earn a lot less than my wife, but i never felt useless as i see my purpose in contributing to society and i could always do that by working with FOSS. it is my work and my purpose, even if it doesn't pay.

While we should be cautious, this also agrees with the lived experience of almost every married couple I know.

I don't think this is true of all women. But I and several of my friends have noticed that as our income level changed the level of support and tolerance from our wives changed noticeably.

When I'm making more money or receive a promotion my wife is noticeably more supportive and tolerant of me. Despite me being much happier and more agreeable at the low income jobs, my low income jobs still pay more than her job, and only caused a very small change to QoL (due to my large savings). I can only imagine what it's like if I made less than her or we had to actually start sacrificing due to lower pay.

And of my friends where the wife is noticeably more successful than the husband there is always quite a bit of stress from the wife who is constantly pushing him to be more successful. Not to mention the amount of crap these wives get for their less successful husbands, which is quite substantial.