I (39F) need advice to help my husband (43M) navigate the information diet my family is on (2-75, M/F)

A bit of background:

My husband grew up in a upper middle class household with love and support. His parents raised he and his siblings to feel valued, to have empathy and care for others, and to be independent and successful adults. We are close to all of his family. I hit the in-law jackpot.

I wasn't exactly raised by wolves, but that was .. not my experience. My mom is great, if a very different person than me, but the rest of my family is either people that I care about due to family connections, racists old bigots, grifters, whiners and various ne'er do wells. Because of this, my entire biological family is on some sort of information diet. My credit has been locked since before it was cool (SIL has a tendency towards identity theft), I have no social media (so I won't be bombarded by Mommy blogs/FOX news rants/requests to purchase MLM garbage), and no one except for my mom has any idea about our finances.

Here's where it gets tricky: I tend to downplay finances around my family, because I don't want to be bragging: Certain members of my family assume that Husband is the primary breadwinner (because I have a vagina, and therefore cannot be), and I allow that to happen. Certain members of my family assume that we are struggling because we don't own a car, and I allow that to happen. We live in a condo that I bought before we got married, and some of my family members think we rent, or that this is his condo that I moved into, and I allow that to happen. I travel a lot for work, and I usually tell family that our vacation travels are add ons to work, or that I got a great deal, or we have "travel points" or something. I don't want to get hit up for cash because my brother lost his job again for stealing or showing up to work high, or my sister in law spent the rent money on crappy leggings. I have never and will never "lend" any of these people a dime. That is my line in the sand. I made this decision when I was 16 and my 24 year old brother stole my cash for an AP exam because his car needed vanity detailing (really).

Well, we're about to go on a fantastic adventure- 2 weeks in Asia. Husband and I have been planning and saving for years for this trip, and he is understandably excited. However, we leave right after Thanksgiving, and I've asked him not to discuss this, or to downplay it to a work trip that he's "tagging along" on, as opposed to giving out all the details that we will to our family and friends, which he thought was weird, but ok. My mom was at our house last night, and in our conversation, husband found out more about what I do and don't tell my family, and this caused a bit of a blow up after she left. I "came clean" about the my "lies" to my family. He always knew that we see my family less often, that I am more private around them and he knows about how toxic they are, but he feels that lying to them is still wrong. I argue that I've never told an outright lie, just allowed them to assume the stupid sexist shit they believe to be true. My mom lies to my dad, my siblings lie to their spouses and kids, but we have never lied to each other, and I never will. I have, however, been protecting myself since I was a kid. I'm just not sure how to help him understand that I do this stuff for my own safety and sanity, and someone who doesn't have this experience just doesn't understand. I need some help to get him on 'my side" on this.

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TL;DR- my family is crap, husband thinks that honesty is the best policy, I'm fairly certain that honesty will get my credit stolen.

Submitted October 30, 2018 at 10:03AM by throwawayhelp232342 https://ift.tt/2Rne4Ti