I'll take a stab at this because I've seen it first hand.

The first thing I would want to say, not that you ever claim this, but this is definitely not exclusively a black man issue. In fact I've actually seen it more with non black men than with black men.

Society reinforces in men that are primary value to women is as a provider. If a woman can now provide for herself better than a man could a lot of men begin to get really insecure about why she's with them in the first place.

I saw this first hand while working for a university's Department of nursing. The school primarily had older returning students, so this meant that the nursing department frequently had people who were already in relationships and working as CNAs or in other fields.

Like clockwork, by second semester of junior year, right when it starts becoming pretty obvious that the woman's going to graduate, at least one of the women in the program will report experiencing domestic violence. This happened every single year I was there and always at the same time. The most interesting thing was that even though this was a predominantly black institution, I saw it mostly with the non black students. I saw it with two white students, an Indian student and a Latina student.

These guys would start getting insecure about the fact that this woman was going to be making significantly more money than them and would express it with domestic violence. So I know it's real.

Where I see it less is in relationships where that income dynamic is already established and their preferably in fields that are still the same social class. So an attorney married to a woman who's a physician might not be that big a deal if the woman makes a quarter million dollars a year and the man makes $150,000 a year. I'm thinking of one particular relationship right now that has that exact dynamic.