The Roles Within Affluence

This is a tough one to figure out and I doubt there’s much good research on it — and any research that did exist would probably be funneled through many half-truths — but I think we can try to play with some themes here.

So, by way of introduction, for a while I was pretty involved with this group called F3 Nation. I probably will get back up with it in a bit. I was doing my local newsletter for a while, where it seemed like 8 guys in every 10 liked it, and two of 10 didn’t. I did some stuff wrong in the process of doing this newsletter, without question. I messed up a bunch. But whenever someone would come to me with negative “feedback,” I’d ask for specifics, and they couldn’t usually give me any. A lot of times I’d hear the vague/generic of “you mention our wives.” I actually never mentioned a wife by name minus two times, and would usually do stuff like this:

Ideally on a Parker-Tarrant Hero combo I’d put Mardi with Felix, not Bradshaw, but fate aligns in weird ways. I don’t even have a lot to say here. Just a good guy, can move distances, nice to speak with, I once name-dropped him in a meeting with Chancellor Boschini and we each simultaneously pretended we were friends with him, once offered me TCU basketball tickets that I couldn’t take, I see one of his good friends Pooh Bear at church all the time, where I’ve actually given communion wearing a F3 shirt (odd and also one time I did that it had marinara on it to boot), etc, etc. I don’t think you could find a single person in this world who would have a bad thing to say about Mardi. Hero.

I walked around a zoo event once with a first-grade teacher at FWCD who I had just met (random night, multiple couples eating finger foods, you know the drill) and she kept talking about some mom over there. I was half paying attention to this conversation and focusing on fried Mac and cheese balls, ya know, but after about 10 minutes I realized it was Mardi’s wife. That was a cool connection. Power couples. Heroes.

I don’t think that’s a “bad reference” to someone’s wife. She’s not even named and there’s no photo. But guys would get uppity about it. And then over time, this happened:

Nice.

Now, again, I’d say this is somewhat to largely warranted. Here’s another example before I get into the core point of this post. Guys started to seemingly get the most triggered by the emails when I wrote one entitled “Once she gets that third kid, you’re a relic.” (Saucy title.) Here’s that section:

One time at a workout, believe at TCU, heard someone say an equivalent of the subject line of this email: “Once she gets that third kid, it’s over.” What was actually said was a bit more gross, and yes, it involved sex, which has now been mentioned three times in this newsletter. I am literally on a roll right now. Non-F3 member Coleman W, who has been mentioned in these newsletters now more than Cinco, once told me “After that second kid, man, you don’t appear on the Instagram for like a decade.” (I mean, maybe you do on Father’s Day, but like, that post has to be there, ya know?) Maybe Halloween too. Maybe.

Whew, YES, I am on a roll. OK, so back to this multi-kids issue.

Obviously you got a bunch of kids, you got a bunch of responsibilities, and life ain’t easy as is. I got no kids, cry about that probably every 2.5 weeks give or take, and my life ain’t easy even with a blissful existence of no responsibilities and a lot of skipped Roundhouse tabs. But with three? Five? That definitely ain’t easy, especially if they’re all young.

Here’s what I can kinda sorta loosely tell you: F3 is helpful with all this stuff, because it helps a dude mentally, it helps a dude start his day earlier, it makes a dude look better, it gives a dude more friends and acquaintances, it gives a dude an opportunity to end every morning workout in a prayer, it gives a dude a network of other dudes to bounce date night ideas off of, it gives a dude a lunch series (Tuesdays 12p) where they can discuss life stuff, it gives a dude a book club where they can discuss bigger issues, etc.

It just makes a dude more whole, and if you’re more whole, your spouse is better off, and if your spouse is better off and you’re better off, your kids are better off, and maybe you’ll make a few more Instagram appearances now and again.

The whole game can be shifted. Come through.

Now, are there weird parts of that? Yes. But in the end I do think it “lifts people up.” Look at the last few paragraphs.

But these guys seemed very triggered by mere allusions to their wife. So, it got me thinking. Should be noted most of, but hardly all, these guys are pretty affluent.

Today, my friend sent me an essay on incel culture and various forms of feminism, including this:

I don’t know exactly what “complementarian feminism” is, but I dunno if I need to.

I started thinking about various things in parallel, and I came to this: do affluent males have a different expectation for their wives?

Here’s where I landed:

• Would they want their wife to be hotter conventionally, because they view themselves as alpha and need to present that to the world?
• Would they expect this sexual attitude above? (“Called to help her husband”)
• Not want them to ever be mentioned in other forums, as if they’re almost akin to a property line that cannot be crossed lest a shotgun come out?
• Would they expect the lass to do more on the home front?

Now, would this be different in less-affluent families, or relatively the same? There is research on what happens when people enter relationships at different monetary levels, but there isn’t much about the “expectations” of a marriage if you have more assets vs. you’re week-to-week, day-to-day. I would still logically assume most guys “expect” sex, and “expect” some form of female ownership of childcare, but I wonder where the differences might lie beyond that.

Anyone have any takes?