By Diana Appleyard
"Darling, I'm just off to clear the dead wood from the drive," my husband said cheerfully last week.
"Make sure you don't end up on the bonfire, too," I quipped.
The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted them. My husband, Ross, turned slowly to look at me. "Was that some kind of a joke?" he said, icily. I laughed nervously. "Of course it was," I said. Only it wasn't just a joke. And both of us knew it.
Since we moved to Scotland three years ago, I have become the main breadwinner, working flat-out as a writer, while Ross has set up a company making corporate and charity films. In the current climate, with marketing budgets being slashed, his work is scarce, so he's concentrating on setting up our sideline - developing some holiday cottages - and doing odd jobs around the house.
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It's valuable work but it brings in hardly any money and every morning I wake with the tense feeling that keeping our family afloat is down to me. With one daughter at private school, another at university and a huge mortgage, I'm climbing a mountain every day.
Bearing this burden is making me shrewish, unpleasant and a pedant about everything my husband does. All the classic signs, apparently, of "Madonna Syndrome" - an over-achieving breadwinner wife constantly sniping at a husband who isn't matching her earning power.
At the height of their marital troubles, Guy Ritchie said of Madonna: "That one's never satisfied." The remark encapsulates the problem - women who find themselves in the driving seat, financially, are making life hell for their husbands and partners.
Recent figures show a quarter of women in the UK are now the sole breadwinner and it's anticipated that by 2010, two in three women will earn more than their partner.
Many celebrity couples have found themselves caught in the Madonna Syndrome - and it has sounded the death knell for their relationship. Katie Price told Peter Andre he was "just a sad singer no one cared about until you met me".
Kate Moss called Jefferson Hack, her daughter's father, "the babysitter". He was a successful magazine editor, but could not touch her in the earnings stakes.
In the UK today, the number of men becoming househusbands has increased by 83 percent since 1993.
Two out of 10 women questioned for a recent survey admitted they "bitterly resented" being the breadwinner and didn't think their partner pulled his weight.
You could argue that the tables have simply turned, that for centuries men have had to carry the financial burden while women were bringing up their children. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, it was unusual for middle-class women to have a full-time job.
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