Very tired of my (42M) girlfriend (40F) trying to 'compare' our struggles growing up anytime I bring up how I grew up. I was raised in 1980s-1990s russia, and she comes from an american suburb.

(sorry for bad english, not because i am bad at english, but i am slightly drunk and dont want to put effort into english)

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Before we start, I moved here from russia in 2004, met her in 2005. Amazing woman, love her with all my heart, we have an amazing relationship. We do not believe in marriage for various reasons. Thats all I will say about that topic, but if it makes viewers feel better, just imagine us as wife and husband.

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I am so, so tired of my girlfriend constantly trying to 'compare' our struggles, especially in front of other people. She grew up relatively poor by american standards, and I respect her issues growing up, I never want to downplay them or say that they had no effect on her. I never mean to come off that way, because I know lots of people who still have issues with money and it affects them a lot even if they aren't in extreme poverty. I mean me and her still have money issues trying to raise our kids (9m, 7f) and I understand the frustration, its terrible, its stressful, its awful. Right now, even before covid, we had financial stresses relatively similar to what she had growing up from what I understand. It is not as if my poverty growing up makes me suddenly think these issues are nothing, I hate that perspective, as if people who have been through real hardship will just ignore 'first world problems', because no, I get upset at them the same as any other person in America.

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But I grew up in a situation so radically different. We had men with guns hold us up in our apartments about half a dozen times, we had no windows, we struggled for food constantly, we had gangs come to demand money, we had shoot outs near our apartment, we had blackouts of no electricity, we had dirty water, we had horrible healthcare (although american healthcare... jeez!!), we lived in fear constantly. Constantly. I had a great childhood, I loved it, it was the 1990s fell that my life turned to fear and horror and pain. I know I said that financial hardship here is hard, and it is, but again, there is a difference between the kind of hardship we face here and the level of true fear and terror and poverty we faced in Russia. To even try to compare what she had growing up to what I had is just ridiculous. What she had growing up sucked, and I understand why hated it, but its just such different levels of pain.

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Recently, when me and my brother were talking about our childhood, she kept on bringing up her childhood as some sort of "yeah! I went through issues!" and I honestly wanted to hug her because I felt bad and I love her but I also kind of wanted to be like jeez, please, please stop. And this isn't the only time, it feels like whenever the topic of 'what it was like in russia' comes up, she feels the need to chime in with her own "yeah, i was also poor" kind of thing, and it very much bugs me, because it really is so radically different. It does bug me, as much as I want to say it doesn't, it really does.

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How do I get this through to her without hurting her feelings? how do I tell her that our experiences aren't really comparable?

TL;DR - - My girlfriend constantly tries to compare our level of poverty and hardship growing up, and it frustrates me because we had very different upbringings.

Submitted December 02, 2020 at 09:12PM by jumjhhghquy https://ift.tt/37tSd6v