There’s a version of my life that looks like a joke someone told at brunch.
Young wife. Older, wildly successful husband. Closet full of designer labels. No job to speak of, unless you count looking good at charity galas and knowing when to nod at the right hedge fund jargon over dinner. A walking, talking Real Housewife audition tape—minus the Botox (for now).
And if you just skim the surface—if you see me on the arm of a man in a Brioni suit at a fundraiser for some hospital wing neither of us have ever set foot in—it probably confirms every assumption you’ve already made about who I am and what I gave up to get here.
But the thing is: you’d be wrong. And also, sort of right.
I love him. That’s the part people never believe, like it has to be one or the other—either I’m in love, or I’m in it for the lifestyle. But it’s both. I fell in love with a man who happened to be rich. Not rich like “he has a boat,” but rich like “he has someone who manages his boats.” And yes, of course that was part of the draw. I won’t insult your intelligence or mine by pretending I didn’t notice. But I also won’t pretend that the love isn’t real. It is. Deeply so. That’s what makes it all complicated.
Before him, I was making less than $30k a year trying to write for dying newspapers, watching the ink bleed out of my career while I split rent with a friend and rationed shampoo. I wanted to make it on my own. I really did. But wanting and surviving aren’t always compatible. Now? Now I don’t think about money. At all. I couldn’t tell you what a bottle of La Mer costs because I’ve never had to. That kind of ease rewires your brain. It makes you soft in places you used to be sharp. And yeah, I kind of like it.
But here’s the thing no one tells you about being a “kept woman”—you never quite feel like you own anything. My shoes? Bought with his money. My car? A gift. Even the things I chose myself feel like they exist in some weird gray zone, like I live in a museum curated for me, but not by me. It’s a beautiful life. It just doesn’t always feel like mine.
I know how it sounds. I know you’re probably judging me a little. Or a lot. That’s fine. I judge me too, some days. I got the fairytale ending a lot of people secretly want—and then realized it came with footnotes. Like the quiet fear that if this marriage ever cracks, I won’t be standing on solid ground. Just a soft, well-decorated floor that disappears the second the credit card gets turned off.
I’m not stupid. I know the lawyers will eat me alive if it ever gets messy. His friends are powerful. His ex-friends are worse. And I’ve talked to enough ex-wives to know how that story ends. It’s not always tragic. It’s just… unkind.
So yes, I stay. But not like a hostage. More like someone who knows the world outside is colder than she remembered—and who’s still figuring out if comfort is the same as happiness.
Sometimes I wonder if this life is a costume I put on every day, and if I’ve worn it long enough that I’ve forgotten what I looked like before. But then he touches my hand or kisses my shoulder when he thinks I’m not paying attention, and I remember. There’s love here. Real love. It’s just dressed in silk and doubt.
Being a trophy wife isn’t what people think. It’s not all shopping and yoga and mimosa-fueled brunches. Sometimes it’s a meditation in compromise. Sometimes it’s a mirror that shows you every version of yourself you’ve tried not to become. But sometimes—when it’s quiet and you’re not trying to prove anything—it’s just being loved, and full, and warm.
And honestly? There are worse things.