I saw a post on Facebook that said men are “always worried about women taking money from them that they don’t even have.”

That hit me sideways. Because in my own past, I had an ex who would push back whenever I asked her to pay her share of the bills. What she didn’t see—or maybe didn’t want to see—was that I was already covering about 60% of our household expenses. I literally didn’t have money, because she was benefiting from the fact that I wanted to take care of her and because it was socially expected of me.

And that’s the bigger point: women often don’t take seriously what men are saying about financial stress or feeling taken advantage of, because by and large, they’re not depended on in the same way. Whether in toxic or non-toxic relationships, men are usually expected to shoulder the majority of financial responsibility.

The numbers back it up—rarely is a relationship truly 50/50 financially, even when both partners are working. If it’s not split down the middle, the man is almost always the one carrying most or all of the load.

Then you zoom out:

In divorce, if assets aren’t cleanly separate, men are far more likely to be the ones paying alimony or losing the house.

With kids—whether planned or not—men are overwhelmingly the ones who end up paying child support.

So when men talk about prenups, or express fear of being financially exploited, it’s not paranoia, bitterness, or selfishness. It’s reality. And brushing that off as “men being worried about money they don’t even have” is dismissive, tone-deaf, and shows no awareness of the obligations men are expected to shoulder.