Letters to the Editor
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He does not sound "filthy" despite being rich
I’ll admit to a prejudice – I think many people from monied backgrounds suffer from a certain level of social cluelessness. They do not understand that decisions they make, or things they do, seemingly without thought, are not possible for other people. A short piece of personal history here – I come from a career diplomatic family, but not a wealthy one, and I was an adult before my parents started being handed a mansion with servants to live in, and grew up 8-20 with them on a series of headquarters assignments, horrified at unpayable bills and mortgages, and knew there was no fortune to be left to me. Funny that, I was a rich/not-very-poor boy often surrounded by the rich. Odder yet were those from much wealthier backgrounds than me, who resented me because they thought I was rich, or at least richer than them. Given that this group had no idea what my family did when I was growing up (his dad is “some sort of civil servant”), in darned trousers, without vast stores of cash, and as kids do, rubbed in my ‘relative’ poverty I regret to say I took some schadenfreude at their resentment. The diplomatic kids though that have a tough time are the ones who were kids when their parent was sent to an embassy (careers service, i.e., not-US.) They did grow up as rich kids, big house, servants, private international schools, go on holidays with rich classmates – but you know they graduate, or daddy or mammy retires, and suddenly they are ordinary people – and a lot handle it badly, really badly . . .
The thing is, there are different types of rich people and different types of poor people. Think of it as like the Rooseveldts and the Bushes – by the time a member of either family occupied the White House, both families had been wealthy so long that no living member would remember when the family had nothing. The Rooseveldts, Teddy, cousin Franklin, and cousin Eleanor were rich, seriously rich – but they turned out to be decent people with a real empathy for the ordinary man, the poor and the disadvantaged. Need I say how different that is from the 3-4 whole generations of the Bush family to have held public office (who incidentally made it their bound objective to roll-back what the Rooseveldts had done in acts of class-treason.)
It sounds to me like boyfriend can be a tad clueless at times – but he seems a decent sort. He also reminds me of something that has been forgotten, not flaunting it. In countries like France, Ireland and a few other I have lived in, making wealth obvious was until recently seriously frowned on, in France because it could cause blood revolution (and indeed had) and in Ireland because so many people until the 1990s were simply broke, rubbing their nose in it was bad manners.
For all the people who want to criticise the boyfriend/fiancée – seems that he is a decent guy, who does not see the need to flaunt his wealth. How beat up is his car – is it actually unsafe, or is it just a nondescript average car on which everything important works. Is his apartment tolerable, or in a building crawling with druggies and roaches – if its clean, big enough for his needs, and safe, why should he rent or buy a big f*ck-*ff place?
Perhaps you need to see his attitude to money as an admirable quality, that he sees no benefit in flaunting it, that he is quiet about it, and tries, sometimes unsuccessfully to be discreet about it.
I am now, well not rich, but pretty well off. My wife and I between us earn a multi-six figure income – and we spend it, mostly on a tribe of builders renovating houses. But we don’t flaunt it – if nothing else it would piss-off the clients that pay for my income. Indeed, I have a horror of 'bling,' I won’t wear anything gold or gold plated, even my wedding ring is white gold and looks like stainless. I know what it is like to be broke though, a paycheck away from being out of my apartment.
Finally, you need to think about something, if you and your siblings went to good schools, got good educations, have good jobs, chances are you will, even off your own efforts be well off, even by the standards of your childhood-rich; that’s what happened to me. Will you resent yourself? So your boyfriend is from wealthy background – seems he is a good guy despite it.