My (39F) husband (41M) grew up in Ukraine and was very poor. We are going through a lot of problems financially right now and he seems to constantly put me down for freaking out about it because he went through a lot worse in his life.

I am not asking for financial advice, which I know is probably going to happen regardless in the comments.

My husband grew up dirt poor in the USSR, then Ukraine. He moved here in the late 90s. He was a kind, amazing person and we right away fell for each other. He still is those things, and we are still in love, but we have had a lot of financial difficulties lately.

It was sort of a compound of problems which happened. For one, the rent on our apartment went up by quite a bit, then we had to pay for our daughter to go to rehab, we had to have a super expensive repairs to both the house and the car in the past 3 months, then ALSO our son went off to college recently. Even worse, our dog might need ACL surgery, adding onto the constant flurry of financial burdens. We have had to cut back on nearly everything.

We have been strained for money, a lot, for the past 3-4 months. I have been kind of freaking out because this is only going to get worse with our sons college charging us large amounts, and our rent rising. There is also the stress of our daughter in rehab now. She was addicted to weed, which isn't deadly or anything, but she absolutely did need to go rehab, she was the one who requested for help. But my husband? He sort of downplays everything, and constantly brings up that nothing we experience here is comparable to what he went through in Ukraine. He always brings up that even though we cant afford nice things as much anymore, at least we don't have people killing each other in the streets and no running water and poverty everywhere and not able to afford food or medicine. I kind of feel like he feels a bit smug because he has been through so much horror in his life that this feels like nothing to him, but to me its a big deal. I wouldn't quite say he 'shoves it in my face' how bad his past was compared to this, but... kind of subtly he does.

And like, I get it. The struggle period we are going through is likely not nearly as bad as his childhood. Him and his brother were kidnapped in 1995 and held at gunpoint for 3 days. He went through food shortages and his family had to wait for hours just for bread in the 1990s. Their apartment door was broken, and they had to live without a door for 6 months because they couldn't afford a new one. I've heard it all from him and his brothers and his parents and all of them. It was horrible, and it was probably a lot more horrible than what we are going through now.

But it is still frustrating, because I know some part of him is being smug about this, as if I am so sheltered that this would seem like a big deal. I know he is right, but that doesn't make my frustrations any lesser. I have told him this before, to stop acting smug and pretentious because he has been through way worse, and he sort of laughs and says sorry... then does it again.

I do love my husband a lot, but he can sort of not take things seriously a lot of the time. He can be smug and arrogant sometimes. But typically to other people, not me.

what should I do?

TL;DR - - my husband doesnt seem to be taking our recent problems seriously because he has been through worse before in his life.

Submitted March 28, 2019 at 06:44PM by polrtnrejyt https://ift.tt/2WuQRkG