By LISA HEYAMOTO
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The gossip mills have been churning for months: The Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe marriage is on the rocks. The publicly perfect pair were floundering in private, it was said.
And now Hollywood's Golden Couple in both status and hair color are about to be tarnished by a very un-golden divorce.
The rumored reason? Money. The real rumored reason? That Witherspoon makes more of it.
There were other factors, to be sure. Fame, youth and the obligatory co-star affair all are said to have come into play in the breakup of the couple's seven-year marriage.
But rumor had it that the cast of Phillippe's current film, "Flags of Our Fathers," took to calling him "Mr. Witherspoon." He was noticeably drunk when she accepted her Golden Globe for "Walk the Line." And as her career began to steadily eclipse his, talk began in earnest about how a marriage can possibly withstand a wife being more successful than her husband.
Yes, we're having this discussion.
As of 2003, one-third of married women earned more than their husbands, up from 23 percent in 1987, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But what is on one hand an encouraging fact also can be a marital time bomb. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, a higher-earning wife can often complicate a relationship in a culture that promotes women in the workplace while clinging to notions of men as providers.
"It shouldn't be a surprise and yet people are shocked, just shocked (at the statistics)," said Randi Minetor, author of "Breadwinner Wives and the Men They Marry."
