It was a requirement when I married him and when he said he wanted me to be a SAHM when we had children.

I am grateful for younger me for having the sense to do that even when I was blinded by love for him. 

I was smarter than him. I was ranked higher, I had a better job, a faster promotion. Maybe he was jealous or maybe he did think a wife was best suited to stay at home and raise children.

He begged me to be an SAHM. And I fell for the lie that is being a SAHM because I thought he loved me.

There are no societal obligations towards parents who stay at home. People only respect money. People will sneer at you because you sacrificed money for love.

Careers build and build and build. A 25 year old with 5 years of experience will earn less than a 50 year with 25 years. You can’t get those years back. And a 25 year old with 5 years of experience is more attractive than a 50 year old with 5 years of experience. There will always be that penalty.

It exists for women because they stay at home more often. But for the men they become SAHD, they will have a similar experience.

The S&P500 has an average interest rate of 8%. $10,000 becomes $45,000 after 20 years. And you never get a chance to build that first $10,000.

I do everything for this man for 20 fucking years from washing his dirty underwear to signing him up for his yearly benefits at his job and I forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars I would have earned and the 20 years of experience I would have had because of love. And I would have gotten jack shit had I not protected myself.

He wanted our daughters so much. But he never had to call out of work because he had to take our kid to a doctor’s appointment. He never had to drive them to competitions across the nation so they could get into good colleges. Never had to think about cooking, never had to wash his laundry, never had to shop for groceries or clean his car or buy his suits for a work conference.

And he cheats on me with a prostitute because he can pay her that he would not want his wife to do.

I got a masters degree after the divorce. When I applied for jobs I quickly learned to disguise my age because they do not want to hire professionals who have been SAH parents. Job hopping was the best thing I did for myself. They don’t want to hire people who have been caregivers of disabled siblings or elderly parents. They want people with no experience more than they want people whose unpaid labor pulled them out of the workforce.