Did you marry up or down?

[Anonymous]

I married down. My family is pretty upper class with my father serving at high levels of government. My dh's family is pretty lower middle class. They are completely broke.

[Anonymous]

Financially, I guess I married up. I come from an abusive, alcoholic, probably typical white trash family. I saw cars repoed, moved in the middle of the night. I left home at 17 and spent more than one night sleeping on park benches.

DH comes from a very high middle class family who would have nevery really had worry about money.

That being said, as far as tenacity, support, kindness, humor, zest for life, commitment to finding a way to make things work - he married way up. He never had to battle real life growing up. When it happened, he was lucky to have me. I fought through and paid my own college education, etc. so what we've been through is easy.

[Anonymous]

Married equal and built ourselves "up" together.

[Anonymous]

Down.

He's a great guy, we live near my family, and sadly both his parents are deceased. So he has kind of been "pulled up" if there's a way to put it, and he had definitely "made good" before I met him with a good degree and job. It isn't an issue in day-to-day life but sometimes it does become very apparent that we grew up very differently (different perspectives, different experiences that one of us doesn't realize is the "norm" - like free lunch - etc).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Married equal and built ourselves "up" together.

+1

[Anonymous]

Up in family lineage and money but not up in IQ.

[Anonymous]

Down financially and intellectually. Up emotionally.

[Anonymous]

Let's just say my husband married up.

[Anonymous]

Both, in different dimensions of measurement, so roughly equal.

[Anonymous]

Down taking into account his family background. The same if you take my background and his current status. Up if you take both our current statuses. This is dealing with money.

For intellect: a little bit up.
Emotional: equivalent.
Looks: equivalent.

[Anonymous]

Down, by every measure. I would have responded differently if it had been a happy marriage because I (quite naively, I guess) didn't see the power (financial, cultural, family) differences as relevant. Still, very confused as to why it ended up mattering so very much.

My husband married up and got really angry about it. Soiled the marriage. Just wrecked it.

[Anonymous]

Married equal. I'm upper middle class, DH is upper middle class.

- We both had college paid for but took out loans for law school.
- Both grew up in affluent suburbs
- We have the same tastes

[Anonymous]

I married up, financially (my family was very comfortable, but not extravagent- parents were both teachers; his is upper middle class). Education, class, and looks, etc., we are about equal.

[Anonymous]

Do ppl really think this way???!

Why label ppl for past things which they are not responsible for....who controls what situation they are born into, and what's the point of talking about it?! Smh

[Anonymous]

It's an odd question, very old-fashioned way of looking at things, sort of the way my grandmother looked at marriages and evaluated them. Strange that it surfaces here and now.

I wonder if OP is trying to figure out how others deal with differences in background within marriages. My DH came from a lower middle class background, and I come from an upper middle class background. Neither of our families had money, but my relatives are wealthy, and DH's relatives are impecunious drunken brawlers.

It has definitely caused stress within our marriage, if that's your question, OP? But we've been married a long time and have long since worked these things out.

The sad part is that my in-laws are still resentful of me. Whenever we're around each other, they say passive-aggressive nasty things to me. I love to eat at nice restaurants, love to cook. Whenever we take them out to a nice restaurant, MIL always says something about how she loves Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Last time we had her over for dinner, she raved about how much she loves Fritos and Doritos, and how much DH used to eat them when he was young. "But there are no Doritos in THIS house," she said. That's the tip of the iceburg, but you get the idea.

In the end, I just gave up, and we no longer see them regularly. That's a loss for our kids, who have no other grandparents, but the stress of dealing with all that class resentment (not on my part), was wearing me down, so DH agreed that we don't have to see them, except for short visits when I can tolerate them. He's used to their BS, but I really can't take it.

Nothing I can do about their resentment, but it's something I wish I didn't have to deal with. There are times when I wish DH and I were from the same background, but if that were the case, my MIL would find something else to find fault with. I think she didn't want anyone to marry her son, that's the bottom line.

Rant over.