If you’re a woman and married someone from a lower socioeconomic class

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A couple friend has a high-powered BigLaw partner woman married to musician man.

The guy is actually known in the music world and is often hired for studio sessions with famous musicians/groups.

It works because while he doesn't make a ton of $$$s, he does stay busy and he is far "cooler" than she is. She has been to the Grammy awards several times and partied with famous people...she readily admits this is all from him and she never would have been able to play in that world.

I think she views him as equal status, even though the $$$ differential is massive.

This sounds equal to me. It's not all about money; some of it is social capital.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A couple friend has a high-powered BigLaw partner woman married to musician man.

The guy is actually known in the music world and is often hired for studio sessions with famous musicians/groups.

It works because while he doesn't make a ton of $$$s, he does stay busy and he is far "cooler" than she is. She has been to the Grammy awards several times and partied with famous people...she readily admits this is all from him and she never would have been able to play in that world.

I think she views him as equal status, even though the $$$ differential is massive.

This sounds equal to me. It's not all about money; some of it is social capital.

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]

Anonymous wrote: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.

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]

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?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

I did. I was raised MC/UMC two college educated working parents, one a high level role in govt, nothing fancy but each sibling received a used first car, all went to college no student loans, we also all had PT jobs in college and summer so we weren’t silver spoon kids. He was raised LMC/MC, experienced some food insecurity growing up which I found out later with his food habits, had some students loans, and kept a clunker on the road with no kidding a wrench a rope and some duct tape. We met in college, and we’re intellectual peers. But he did not have the drive or the grit to succeed in corporate, just wasn’t raised with of that social context or know how. Whereas I figured it out. It was tough during the early years of our marriage when I was excelling and he was not. We eventually switched roles and he was a SAHD for a while which he is great at. We have it figured out now and there’s balance in the household contributions of time, energy. But I didn’t know going into the marriage that I would have to be the breadwinner, we married in our twenties/early thirties when we were still individual contributors. We worked through it but it was not easy. There’s ego, competition, a lot of trauma that needs to be worked out when the dynamics shift like that. As I said, we made it through, but we definitely would not have the lifestyle that we live it weren’t for my earnings. So, I’m the one carrying that stress.

[Anonymous]

Like many of these posts this is a racist thread. A lower socio-economic post no doubt means a white person marrying a minority. Name me one real situation wherein the socio-economic “superior” is brown / black and the “inferior” is white in this area. So basically this is the same post e g a white woman is appropriating a minority. Wake up people and flush this nonsense down the drain. We all bleed red. Learn it live it love it. We will be a better country and thus world if we dont discriminate based on color

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like many of these posts this is a racist thread. A lower socio-economic post no doubt means a white person marrying a minority. Name me one real situation wherein the socio-economic “superior” is brown / black and the “inferior” is white in this area. So basically this is the same post e g a white woman is appropriating a minority. Wake up people and flush this nonsense down the drain. We all bleed red. Learn it live it love it. We will be a better country and thus world if we dont discriminate based on color

I posted up thread, I am brown/DH is white.
I guess if you want to see racism in things, you can make up stories and always find it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like many of these posts this is a racist thread. A lower socio-economic post no doubt means a white person marrying a minority. Name me one real situation wherein the socio-economic “superior” is brown / black and the “inferior” is white in this area. So basically this is the same post e g a white woman is appropriating a minority. Wake up people and flush this nonsense down the drain. We all bleed red. Learn it live it love it. We will be a better country and thus world if we dont discriminate based on color

Whoa. I am white and married a white man. He grew up blue collar and did not go to college. I did. Please don't make assumptions about things you don't know.

[Anonymous]

I’m OP and is response to the PP claiming racism, get a grip. I’m white and I’m talking about a white man, in my specific situation. Please stop making this a racial issue, that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like many of these posts this is a racist thread. A lower socio-economic post no doubt means a white person marrying a minority. Name me one real situation wherein the socio-economic “superior” is brown / black and the “inferior” is white in this area. So basically this is the same post e g a white woman is appropriating a minority. Wake up people and flush this nonsense down the drain. We all bleed red. Learn it live it love it. We will be a better country and thus world if we dont discriminate based on color

What on earth are you talking about? All the people I can think of who married someone of lower SES than them married white guys from rural areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like many of these posts this is a racist thread. A lower socio-economic post no doubt means a white person marrying a minority. Name me one real situation wherein the socio-economic “superior” is brown / black and the “inferior” is white in this area. So basically this is the same post e g a white woman is appropriating a minority. Wake up people and flush this nonsense down the drain. We all bleed red. Learn it live it love it. We will be a better country and thus world if we dont discriminate based on color

Not that I feel like slaying trolls this morning, but I’m a PP and this statement is FALSE for me.

Look in a mirror and stop projecting.

[Anonymous]

I’m a white woman raised LMC, married to a Latin prince (an in joke - he is from South America and mixed race). His family is upper class in their county. There are a lot of issues with the UC that I’ve now seen from the inside. Some of the kids aren’t motivated to study hard and get a good job. If they aren’t going into a family business they seem a bit rudderless. But there is a big variation amount the cousins….some are doctors and doing fine. Like everything it’s hard to generalize.

All my LMC cousins have worked their butts off and improved their situations, while DH’s UC cousins, about half of them are actually pretty poor now and trying to clutch to their lifestyle but not having the money - for example not being able to send their kids to the prestigious school they went to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like many of these posts this is a racist thread. A lower socio-economic post no doubt means a white person marrying a minority. Name me one real situation wherein the socio-economic “superior” is brown / black and the “inferior” is white in this area. So basically this is the same post e g a white woman is appropriating a minority. Wake up people and flush this nonsense down the drain. We all bleed red. Learn it live it love it. We will be a better country and thus world if we dont discriminate based on color

Uh no.
I replied and I am a white person marrying a white person. Seriously need to stop seeing racism everyf-ing where

[Anonymous]

What I think is weird is I made the calculus that it would be ok based on his stated ambition and didn’t realize that your class sometimes affects your understanding or expectation of what it takes to achieve. Like I thought he’d get that it is hard regardless of class but maybe bc he had fewer role models for ambition he fundamentally doesn’t get that to rise up the ladder you need to put in evenings and weekends and make a lot of calls and meet a lot of people. Even tho he sees me do that. That confuses me and I hope our kids don’t learn passivity from him