Your on-line psychologist Arthur VafinMen and women create families, ideally, out of love. But even an ideal relationship can develop cracks that can lead a family to disintegration. One of these cracks is a man’s anxiety regarding his wife’s success at work. How does an ordinary, average family arise? He and she often occupy the same social strata, i.e. are at the same level in society. Some find their soulmate from their work environment, others from a similar environment. For example, an aspiring lawyer will most likely marry a colleague. It is not necessary that his companion will be a woman lawyer; the possibility that his wife will be a notary is also possible. It is possible that a lawyer will also marry a representative of such professions as a teacher, doctor, PR specialist, or journalist. However, all representatives of these professions will not occupy top positions in their field. I repeat that we are talking about the most general things and cases from our lives; we are not considering such atypical moments as the marriage of a young janitor to a foreign pop star. We are looking at more widespread cases in which someone, perhaps, recognizes himself. So, a man is faced with the problem that his beloved wife began to rapidly grow in terms of career, but he remains in the same place. What to do? First of all, you need to figure out what prompted the man to worry about his wife’s career growth? Was it envy? Or is it just a feeling of failure? Or is it an insult? “A man in such a situation finds himself in a whole whirlpool of difficult emotions. This may be acute shame associated with the experience of failure and inadequacy. Humiliation, because it seems to the man that friends and relatives have stopped respecting him and are looking down on him. Envy and jealousy of the wife's success, anger at her - since her advancement becomes the cause of all these difficult experiences. Despair that turns into depression - if attempts to change something do not bring results. So-so cocktail,” psychologist and Gestalt therapist Elizaveta Zubova comments on this problem. It may also happen that the wife herself puts pressure on her husband, not on purpose, unconsciously, emphasizing her current situation. “If a wife supports shame and humiliation in her husband, blames him for his failures, the relationship begins to slowly boil,” says Elizaveta Zubova. – They accumulate caustic envy on the part of the husband and strong resentment on the part of the wife. After all, she expected something completely different from her husband. If a wife accepts her husband in his failure, helps him see the bright side, talks about the moments that the husband was successful in, there is a chance to maintain a good relationship. This requires patience and love. But it is on these qualities that family life is built. You can’t go anywhere without them.” It should be emphasized that career growth is not always associated with income growth. So a man’s depression can arise not because he earns less, but precisely because of his status. What is status in the modern world? Status is a certain position at the level of the social hierarchy. And if a person close to you becomes taller than you, if you are confused by such things, comparing yourself with others, then you will experience a feeling of discomfort. Modern man is a hierarchical person. Such is the world of modern human relations. It is impossible to be autonomous from the hierarchy if we are talking about a person who enters a public space, for example, to work. A person also has his personal, his psychology, as well as his family, which the hierarchy may not penetrate. It often penetrates. If you jump out of bed in the morning and start checking your work email, it means you are dependent on work, on hierarchy. It's the same when you fall asleep and think about work. History repeats itself when your wife goes to success, but you don’t, when she grows in her career, but you don’t. There is another explanation - intimate, but also captured by the hierarchy. As philosopher and legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon notes, “male desire arises from the arousal of eroticized hierarchy, that is, difference in