3 questions to ask yourself if your partner's career success is making you jealous

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• A partner's career success can trigger jealousy, which can feel confusing. 
• A clinical psychologist shared the questions you should ask yourself if you're feeling envious.
• Dr. Rebekah Shallcross said to consider if there are larger issues at play.

So your partner got a promotion. But now the confetti has settled and the champagne bottle is empty, something doesn't feel right as they start their new job. You're jealous, and you want to know what you can do about it.

Firstly, you're not alone in being in a relationship which isn't equally matched when it comes to careers. Although the number of women who earn the same or significantly more than their husband has tripled in the past five decades, only 29% of partners in the US have equal salaries, according to a 2023 analysis by the Pew Research Center. In other couples, one partner is either the breadwinner or earning over 60% of their combined income.

What's more, women's success in the workforce has eroded the traditional role of men as breadwinners in heterosexual relationships. As The Cut recently reported, this can cause jealousy and tension, as couples are forced to rethink gendered expectations and their role in their partnership.

Business Insider asked Dr. Rebekah Shallcross, a clinical psychologist and founder of the Feminist Therapy Center, which specializes in therapy informed by awareness of the social implications of the patriarchy, the questions to consider if you're feeling jealous of your partner's career success.

What is the feeling trying to tell you?

If you can acknowledge a feeling, you can try to figure out what that feeling is telling you, Shallcross said. It might highlight a deeper issue of feeling of helplessness in changing your situation if you don't like your own job, or might be a symptom of an issue in your relationship.

"It's unlikely that you have a very happy, healthy relationship and then someone gets a promotion and then things suddenly fall apart. It's likely that exacerbates what is already going on in the relationship," Shallcross said. "If you've got a new situation that your life is in or a new context, then that might throw issues that are already there into more clear perspective."

If you've been socialized as a man, the jealousy could also be down to social pressures, she said. Men are expected to "earn lots of money and be macho or strong, and there's nothing wrong with these things. But when we can't live up to this very narrowly defined way of defining masculinity, that can lead to feelings of not being good enough," she said. "And although it's not the success of your partner that's the problem, it can feel personally wounding."

What do you and your partner bring to your relationship?

Sometimes a feeling of jealousy can arise because one partner's changed situation upsets the balance of what each of you bring to the relationship, Shallcross said. Of course, value in a relationship doesn't just come in the form of money, she stressed, because it can come from other things such as household labor, time spent together, and emotional support.

"But when people earn more money, it can often lead to an unequal division of unpaid labor. And that can lead to lots of resentment if you aren't speaking about your emotions, which can lead to a relationship breakdown," she said.

So, ask yourself how you value what each of you bring to the relationship, and whether this career development negatively affects the balance you had previously.

Can you compromise with your partner?

Think about the issues that your partner's career success has highlighted, and try to figure out a solution with your partner. But if your partner "isn't willing to have conversations or work towards meeting you in the middle with mutual respect," Shallcross said that would suggest that "maybe this relationship is no longer serving someone in it."

She said that you shouldn't have to feel like you're in an awful place to walk away from a relationship — you just have to realize that it isn't what you want.

"You don't need to cling on to things that don't serve you," she said.

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