[This is a throwaway account]
Me (25 F) and my partner (28M) have been living together for four years, together for seven.
I am in grad school in a tech-related field that will likely get me a good job, and currently do an internship that pays me very little. I am almost graduated. He works in a tech-related field, earning a very good salary (more than 3x my income). Our relationship, aside from this issue, is great: we see eye-to-eye on everything, are happy together, have great discussions and love each other.
However, we can’t seem to agree on finances, to the point that it’s really hurting our relationship. Because he insists on me paying almost the same amount as him to common expenses such as rent and groceries (even though my contribution is still less than his), I nearly spend 90% of my income on common expenses and really need to save in order to buy things for myself, such as a book I like. In contrast, he pays less than half of his income on common expenses and can thus spend every month on expensive gadgets and fun things. It’s really starting to grate on me, because if he even paid a little bit more to the common expenses I would also be able to do and buy more stuff for myself.
However, every conversation we have about it results in a fight. He considers himself a libertarian and thinks it’s already very generous he pays more than me. When I tried to convince him with logical arguments to pay a percentual part of our income (“we are a community, and society also has percentual taxes”) he gets angry, defensive, and upset, telling me he feels like I’m trying to take his money from him and “his lifestyle”, or that taxes are not comparable to our situation and that “our situation is working well”, or that I would still be reliant on his income even if we went to the percentual system.
Important fact: he got this job after we had been together for several years (so it’s not like I am a golddigger), before that he had been living off his parents, including his mother who lives off a small pension, and got a job after I had been telling him this was not very adult of him.
I also get upset, because I really cannot comprehend how he can happily talk about money he spends on nice things while I don’t have money for anything. I told him, upset, that it seems harsh and cold and that if the situation were reversed, I would happily pay more of my income to let him have more to spend on himself. His response was “I don’t deal in hypotheticals”. He also claims he is doing more housework (which is true, my grad school sometimes has me make 12 hour days after which I am too tired to do anything), which he claims cancels out that I have less to spend for myself. After another fight today, he finally agreed to put only a small amount more - but he made me feel like I had to beg for it. I also told him it feels weird to me he keeps emphasizing I should be grateful.
The weird thing is: he does have future goals like “buying a house together”, but I don’t see how we can do that if he insists on each paying half, or if he doesn’t want to talk about a common financial plan.
I think personally it also has to do with him being an only child that was spoilt by his parents: he is not used to sharing anything, and commonly shared loads really feel like a burden to him. I also feel like his family did not really teach him financial responsibility, nor prioritized it. Example: before this month, even though he had 3x my income, he didn’t save and just spent it all. This is the first month in his 3 years of working he has saved.
Is there anything I can do or say to talk about this and maybe convince him? Is this a reason to decide not to focus on a longer term relationship, even though anything else is going very well and I see myself spending the rest of my life with him?
TL;DR: partner of seven years refuses to talk about finances even though I am unhappy with the financial weight each of us pulls in this relationship: he earns 3x as much as me but refuses to pay significantly more in common expenses. Talking about it results in fights and defensiveness: how to deal with it, possibly convince him? Also: maybe this is a good reason to think about not being together in the longer term?
Submitted May 26, 2020 at 12:59PM by gmuigmnhnzqdvizgje https://ift.tt/3gmxhSq
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