Boyfriend (33M) wants to control what I (28F) do with my personal "fun money" once we're married. Red flag, or normal?

Since I would like to get married in the next few years and start a family, I understand I need to stop nexting men who displease me and work on actually solving problems with my partner when they crop up.

I’ve been dating “Jack” for about six months, and he’s made it very clear that he wants to build a life and have a family with me. Although we don’t have the same “love language”, I do feel appreciated and cared for by him. We have a lot of common interests and I know he’d make a great dad.

He has a lot of amazing points, including the fact that although he is older and more established than me, due to our disparate career choices (he does non-profit work while I now work in a high-paying field), he will never out-earn me. My ex-fiancee made about 90k to my 25k (this was when I did non-profit work), and as the overwhelming majority of “our” money was actually “his” money, he made pretty much 100% of the decisions that involved money. I was allowed to choose what we ate for dinner, that was pretty much it. This was of course the fair and logical choice, as it of course was not my place to dictate what someone else did with their money, but it still enraged me and did not make for a good future partnership, so I left him and my low-paying dream job for a higher paying field so that in future relationships I would have equal decision-making power. Point being, it is of paramount importance to me that I am equally respected and viewed as equally competent by my partner. And I’m just not sure that that’s how Jack sees me.

A good example of this arose last night, and I’m looking for perspective on whether or not this is actually a red flag, or me just being unreasonably needled.

I am the eldest of three siblings, all spaced three years apart. My sister, the youngest, is about to graduate from my alma mater this spring, which is 1000 miles away from the city where our family lives. She, like me, is set up to make a solid income. Our brother has been the “failure to launch” kid and is barely scraping by making around minimum wage at a grocery store. To make a long story short, it’s highly unlikely that he will be able to afford the plane ticket/1000 mile drive down to her graduation in May, let alone the hotel room and time off from work. It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that he be there. He frequently bails on family things because his long-time girlfriend would rather not do them, and he chooses to not go anywhere without her (no abuse there, it’s just his preference). He showed up four hours late to Christmas “morning” this year because his girlfriend decided she’d rather not switch off holidays anymore and just spend all of them with her family, which enraged all of us, but our sister to the absolute max. If he doesn’t come to our sister’s graduation this spring, it will undoubtedly open up a relationship-altering rift between the two of them.

Obviously I’ve offered to pay for his plane ticket and hotel room, plus that of his girlfriend, because again, he doesn’t drive across town without her, much less take off 3-4 days from their shared work to travel 1000 miles. While this certainly isn’t a negligible expense, it isn’t going to break the bank by any means, and overall, it’s more than worth it for me to pay this money to see our sister happy and help preserve her relationship with our brother.

This came up in conversation with Jack, and it really pissed him off. He gave me a long lecture about enabling my brother and how out of line that is. Of course I know that I’m enabling him, but like I said, to me, that’s worth ensuring that our sister is feeling happy and supported on her big day. I explained that you don’t just cut out a family member because they don’t make “enough” money; that my mom pays for my aunt to join us on family trips she can’t afford, because having her there is more important than being “right” and not “enabling” her choice to be an artist instead of a lawyer.

He told me: “In the future, this is NOT going to happen. You’re not going to be allowed to use our money to enable your brother just because you hate conflict”. This really made me see red. Who is he to declare what I can use MY money for?? I told him that this is part of being the eldest of a set, you take care of the younger ones. He has just a brother and says my stance here is “unfathomably silly”.

We’ve already discussed that if/when we get married, we won’t fully join our finances into one big common pot, we’ll both contribute a proportional share of our income to the family pot and have some leftover for our individual savings/fun money. (Like I make 70% of the household income so I contribute 70% of my income to the household pot and retain the rest as personal money.) I reminded him of this and said it wouldn’t be up to him to dictate what I did with my own money. He mumbled something along the lines of “it will when it’s stupid” but wouldn’t repeat it when prompted.

I feel like his suggestion that he will be able to control my personal finances when we’re married is a massive red flag, especially as I will be the breadwinner by a large margin. Am I overreacting here?

Tl;dr: Boyfriend want to dictate what I do with my personal "fun" money when we're married, even though I'll be the breadwinner. Am I overreacting to think this is a huge red flag?

Submitted January 28, 2019 at 10:35AM by snittermansconfusion http://bit.ly/2Ba1ZuX