If you’re a woman and married someone from a lower socioeconomic class
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Anonymous
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I'm halfway to being the male half of this; I married a woman who came from an upper middle class to upper class background and I was solidly MC (actual middle America middle class not DCUM middle class). I do make a bit more than she does now, but neither of us make much money.
It's worked great for us, but that's down to similar values around money. Neither one of us prioritize the lifestyle that she had growing up, so there's no resentment about how much money anyone makes. If she wanted private schools and fancy vacations and jewelry, it might be a different story. |
Anonymous
I think the SES piece and the income piece are two pieces of the pie, but I think these are other pieces, and if these two pieces are bigger, the pie still taste good. |
Anonymous
| I did. educationally not a huge difference (he actually has more education and a postgrad. But his upbringing didn't set him up for the level of ambition i think i expected or even that he wanted to have. If you are good at medicine in his town, you become a nurse, not a dr. He fundamentally lacks the understanding perhaps or the ability to truly hustle. It is a problem. I also find it hard to really click with his childhood friends and family bc they are not really interested in culture or news or pushing themselves to do anything really impactful or interesting and i feel like a fish out of water AND huge a****** pretty much 100% of the time. |
Anonymous
Woman, have never heard this. |
Anonymous
| I was raised UMC and would prefer someone UMC from a lifestyle perspective but even though I have a graduate degree, I am not sufficiently ambitious to remain UMC on my efforts alone. I either need to really luck out a find someone who values breeding over accomplishment and ambition, or will end up marrying down. |
Anonymous
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This is my situation. It wasn’t a problem until recently, when we had a kid. I thought we had a shared vision for our family life, but it turns out we don’t. As the breadwinner, I feel like my husband is coasting on my extra income and savings. He feels no need to work harder to help the family earn enough for things like occasional restaurant meals and vacations, which were a normal part of how I grew up. He didn’t grow up with those things and doesn’t think they are necessary.
After the initial transition from maternity leave to being a working mom, I’ve come realize that vacations are necessary! Life can be a grind with a young kid and little escapes help maintain my sanity - no joke. Not sure where we will end up, but both of us have been feeling less satisfied in our relationship since we had a baby. |
Anonymous
| Per the pp above I feel like dh just hides behind the option of doing nothing. I’m especially frustrated bc we talked about this so much when we were dating and dh had a plan to get an mba (which he did) and then had a career plan and just at some point abandoned it and decided I was the breadwinner and fails to understand why they might make me so frustrated. I am currently working on moving to a much lower COL area that will mean I can step back and he will have to commute longer and we will have much less money, but I might finally stop resenting him and feeling like I’m on the verge of a full mental breakdown. |
Anonymous
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I did. DH and I met in college and I grew up much more wealthy than he did (my father was a partner in a large law firm) and also inherited money when my maternal grandfather died. When we got married neither of us was making much (I had just finished grad school, he was a PhD student). While he continued in grad school I substantially out earned him and for the first years after grad school (post-doc and early career) I continued to out earn him. We now have similar incomes, but only in the past few years.
We’ve now been together over 20 years and have two elementary school children. Life is busy and the balance can be hard but most of the time it’s not about finances. My family’s interests and priorities are different so we don’t always blend well, but we don’t see our families often. There are times I think it would have been nice to marry wealthier and maintain the lifestyle I grew up with, but we do fine and my husband is much more available to me and my children than my dad was to my family growing up. |
Anonymous
+1 This is what I said to a friend who had a very underemployed boyfriend. She was trying to figure out if it mattered because she earned enough money for them to live on at a middle class level. WHY he's from a lower social class matters, maybe more than the social class itself. If his family of origin was working class or whatever but he's an ambitious hard worker who earns good money as an adult -- great. Or does she have the middle/UMC life/background and career while he's CURRENTLY as an adult living a working class life? The latter will lead to conflicts, 100%. Been there. |
Anonymous
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Some people who grew up poor will do anything and everything to avoid raising their kids like that, so they work really hard at school, get really good jobs, etc. Some people who grew up poor are fine repeating that in their own lives. So you could pick two people from the same lower socioeconomic class and have two different results. Because of that, I don't think you can use that as a single factor to determine whether or not a marriage will work out.
I think what matters more is: - Do you have a shared vision for what you want for your family? (Where you live, how often and where you travel, what kind of schools you want your kids to go to, plans for retirement, etc.) - Do you have an agreement about how you will divide things outside of work if one of you substantially out-earns the other? (Are you ok with your husband being a SAHD, is he willing to do more childcare if you're working longer hours, etc.) - Do your families get along and, if not, how will you handle that? (Not only do both sets of parents get along, but how does each set of parents view the son or daughter-in-law - is there respect there, or is it jealously/suspicion) - Do you agree on spending habits? (Not only on big things like houses and cars, but also little things like eating out, beauty treatments, etc.) - Do you both have similar drive? (In all things, not just work, but socially, physically, intellectually, spiritually if that's important to you) There are more things, but you get the idea. I certainly think it's worth thinking through the possible pitfalls of marrying someone from a lower socioeconomic class who is going to earn less than you, but I would say the same thing about marrying someone in a higher socioeconomic class who is going to earn more than you, or even someone from the same socioeconomic class who is going to earn the same amount as you. There are a lot of areas in which you should be compatible with your spouse, and I think you're missing the forest for the trees if you're only focusing on those two. |
Anonymous
This sounds equal to me. It's not all about money; some of it is social capital. |
Anonymous
I am married to a broke musician and a former college athlete. My DH is extremely good looking and he teaches piano for a living. If I divorce him, I am sure he will have no problem finding someone else with a lot more $$$ than I do. My DH has so many options that I do not have. |
Anonymous
That's the problem. With spouse's family, there is no aspiration. Just sports, drinking, working on the house, hunting, and fishing. And anyone with an education or wants to move is a threat. "Oh, you think you're better, don't you"? |
Anonymous
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The responses here are all over the place. OP needs to define terms better. By SES, does that mean income, education, social standing, or what? And do they mean that the spouse came from a family with a different SES, or that the spouse is currently at a different SES level as an adult?
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Anonymous
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I guess I did. I had two professional working parents, he had a sahm and a dad without a college degree who worked at the same company he started at when he was 18. I grew up with expected vacations, his first plane ride was when he met me. I had college paid for, he had hefty student loans. My high school summers were advanced classes and travel, his were working to pay for car insurance.
We met in college though, getting the exact same major/degree from the same school, and had nearly identical first jobs out of college. Now, 20 years later he makes 3x what I do (I have switched careers, he kept to the original field). Life is good. We have the same value system, the same goals, and are both responsible, reliable people. Neither of us will ever make tons of money but combined we are comfortable and enjoy the life we have together. |