Reply to Long-term unemployment; Mild case of affluenza/Keeping up with the Jonses-itis

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Reply to "Long-term unemployment; Mild case of affluenza/Keeping up with the Jonses-itis"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you want her to stop focusing so much on what other people are doing, making, buying, etc., you might consider also not doing that yourself. Why are you guys spending so much time worrying about what other people have, eat, make? Focus on your own family. How are you contributing to the household, other than income? What sorts of things do you guys do together for fun? If she thinks fresh fish is where it's at, go get some damn fish. It's not THAT expensive.

Is it possible that your wife is concerned that you are unemployed and not likely to be employed any time soon because she wants to have a baby? If I had babies on the brain (as I did at your age), I would've been freaked out by having an unemployed husband because it would have been hard to have been the only one with a paycheck. She might have aspirations of staying home with kids and may not see that as possible at the moment, due to you not having a job.[/quote]

OP here - She's pretty well grounded, and we see eye-to-eye about spending. We buy the discount frozen fish together and it isn't a problem. [b]I think there is an osmosis factor of seeing so much gratuitous spending around here, and feeling inferior because of it. I know it hits me sometimes.[/b]

We were planning on having a baby, so this came at a real inopportune moment.[/quote]

Hi! :Waves:

You are me when I moved here some years ago. My income has been fine (arguably much more than fine) but the DC area really warped the fuckpiss out of my world view. DCUM doesn't help at all when people openly complain that $500K isn't quite enough or that $5M in retirement is peanuts. People here put on airs more than anywhere I've ever lived before, and its often focused on the external display of wealth or at least the insinuation of it. It permeates the culture here in some weird way unlike it does in the south or even the west coast (absent perhaps beverly hills or malibu, etc). You see it, you hear it, people talk of it. I was just at a work meeting recently where someone explained that they convinced someone to come to their (private) "club" by using the excuse that they "hadn't met their quarterly minimums anyway, so why not". Its comments like that - intentional or not - that give DC the impression that everyone seems to be rich and doing well. Its ostentatious in a different way than the west coast in that its more insidious. My only advice is that eventually you get used to it, and learn that people bullshit the fuck out of their situation constantly. 
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