The stigma, sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant, undermines relationships between high-earning women and the husbands or boyfriends who are secondary earners or “househusbands,” and it is playing havoc with the dating game, Ms. Mundy told me.

She met high-achieving women who, afraid to put men off, devise strategies to play down their affluence. One woman carries small bills to pay for tips, drinks, parking and other dating expenses rather than whipping out her high-limit credit card.

“Some of these women had learned the hard way that when they went to bars, they were better off lying about what they did — saying that they were a cosmetologist or music teacher rather than a software consultant or lawyer,” Ms. Mundy said.

Faced with a shrinking pool of men on their level, some young women are settling and marrying “down,” but others will jump on planes for “dating excursions” to cities like New York, San Francisco and Boston where the male market is more promising.

What is to come out of this new world? “I think women are going to have to abandon the traditional 50-50 everything-must-be-equal feminist mind-set,” Ms. Mundy said, “and learn to value husbands and partners who are becoming more domesticated and supportive.”

A feminist leader, Siobhan (Sam) Bennett, president of the nonpartisan Women’s Campaign Fund, does not see conflicts for high-earning women in dating, marriage and domestic life. On the contrary, she told me, “I see great opportunity that these high-value women will ask and gain the flexibility they need to have marriages and families — their lives will probably look different than what we’ve seen — but they will work for them.”

The writer Kate Bolick, culture editor of the lifestyle magazine Veranda, sees a grimmer picture.

“As women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind,” she said in an article, “What, Me Marry?,” in the November issue of The Atlantic. “We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of the party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up — and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.”