Letters to the Editor
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Forgive My Freudian Slip
But it is apparent here that Resentful is really angry at her own parents. Proof? She recognizes consciously that her anger is irrational, but she still cannot help herself.
This anger is displaced anger at her parents. She resents that her fiance has parents that have provided in abundance what her own parents did not. There is probably guilt too, guilt that in marrying her fiance she would be replacing her own absent parents with somebody else's.
She needs to acknowledge her anger at her own parents. Then she needs to confide this with her fiance. It wouldn't hurt to use the world "jealousy" to describe it.
I know that, given the hard road Resentful has traveled, we want to absolve her of her feelings. But she needs to acknowledge the anger as jealousy, or she will never vanquish it.
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These two need to have a longer conversation then that
I’m endlessly shocked that people who don’t seem to know a thing about each other think it’s cool to get married. Money, children, work, home – these are all things that need to be hashed out well before you even think of marriage.
I think this little list from the NYT is a good start.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/fashion/weddings/17FIELDBOX.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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This is, like, TOTALLY the same as that "Daria" episode when she dumped her boyfriend...
But I digress...
Here's proof yet again that classism runs both ways in every society...so your fi-ance (to use the Hillbilly term) got him some money? Big deal...and it's not HIS money anyway, it's the family's money. And you marrying him might cause that to disappear in an instant, and the fact that he may not care speaks volumes about his love for you and how he feels about money...or it at least it should, but you're so hung-up on the money thing, you can't see the forest amongst the trees in front of you...
Lady, get over it...just make sure he actually loves YOU for who you are, not what you represent. Part of his attraction to you may be the fact that you DON'T come from money...if that's the case, you better have a sit-down and figure out why the hell yall are getting married, because it sounds like there's a breakdown in communication here.
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Yeah, Money Changes Everything If You Let It
I find Cary's answer to be a good beginning for the LW to start clearing the air about money. It won't be the first, and probably won't be the last.
I understand that the LW has been dealt a blow to how she perceived her relationship with this man and I wonder why his background was not revealed before now. I can understand how she might feel a fool for revealing so much about herself while her boyfriend sits on the information about his background. However, one thing I know about rich folks is that they have a thing about being loved for themselves and he might have been testing her. But being part of a test without knowing about it is fun in movies, but not in real life.
So how much does a person's childhood define who we are? My MIL was brought up genuinely dirt-poor, in a log-cabin no less. When she married my FIL they were a part of the generation that took advantage of the GI bill, got a degree and became prosperous. She rarely worked. She kept the house immaculate, to the point where she saw dirt everywhere. She became a suburban Lady Macbeth, constantly scrubbing, spraying, sweeping and washing. She hired housekeepers, but none of them did the job to her satisfaction. My MIL associated poverty with dirt and filth and spent her entire life making sure not one microbe every touched her again. I'm sure she suffered obsessive-compulsive disorder but I really think it was triggered (and maintained) by her background because she never saw it as a problem.
So now we are in an era where wealth is associated with shallowness, which should not be a surprise considering TMZ and the Hollywood bunch, but in the past wealth was a way of NOT being shallow. It meant travel and education and experience. But the LW does not see it that way. She thinks her boyfriend has no gratitude for what he had. How does she know this? He has no choice but to take it for granted a bit, but that does not mean he didn't appreciate it or he wouldn't talk about it.
This might sound harsh to the LW, but the boyfriend is taking a chance on her too. Lots of guys, no matter their background, might shy away from someone with her family background, not because of the lack of money, but because of the drug addiction and neglect. Shallow and unfair, but true.
So does the LW feel like a charity case? That the boyfriend has condescended to her the whole time? Is she just rejecting him because she thinks he will snap back to rich family mode and realize that most men with money don't marry poor women with drug-addicted mothers?
So I will speak directly to the LW. LW, poverty does not necessarily make a person complex and noble. It makes many people bitter, limited and very unhappy. You know that. But you have avoided the trap so far. But lots of money can make people arrogant, myopic, and insulated. Your boyfriend has avoided that trap, in my mind, no matter how you try to paint it otherwise. I think you could make a great couple. If you choose to have kids, they will have great insights to the human condition from both of you. With or without children, you can BOTH make decisions about money, affected, not tainted, by your backgrounds.
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Never faced hardship?
The fiance is not the problem, the LW and her serious money issues are the problem. She states that she can't trust him now that she knows "he's never faced hardship". Assuming that someone who has come from money has never faced hardship tells a LOT about how the LW. Cary's right, she needs to figure out her own feelings about money for this relationship to work.
We all know that money is one of the major causes of couples fighting. For this couple it will likely come up in such issues as where to live, what kind of house to buy, how to raise the children, and who spends on what. These are all serious hot spots for fighting. The LW should definitely work through her issues before getting married.