Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 10:28     Subject: Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Downsides of marrying someone whose family is from wealth and privilege is realizing that America is not at all the meritocracy I thought it was growing up MC, at public schools, etc. The smugness and extreme bubble of the wealthy in DC was eye opening: the social slipstream they exist in because of layers of intergenerational wealth and connections is astounding. How they often break rules or feel the rules don’t apply to them. The self assuredness that comes from knowing there is always a safety net for financial security, or a “back channel” for weaving around barriers most unconnected people would find in their way. The way they justify their lavish lifestyles to themselves, or are often not at all shocked at the corruption, cheating and unfair practices they participate in but don’t really acknowledge. Plus, classist and racist viewpoints and seeing lower class people as just tools toward their ends. Sorry that sounds harsh but it’s been my experience!


+1000 except for me this realization came when I went to HYS for law school and realized that that was how the world worked for very wealthy and privileged people. Until that point I had the delusional belief that the world was mostly meritocratic. It was also one of the reasons I didn’t settle down in NYC - that was just not the world I wanted to be a part of.


I don't dispute anything you say except for the fact that you don't have to be "part of that world" in NYC. There are 8 million people here--the idea that there's only one way to live is silly.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 10:26     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:No major ramifications for us, but I did expose my husband to thing that he would never had experienced if he had married someone in his neighborhood/town.

- reading for pleasure, or even really reading after HS. His parents were busy working all the time, multiple shifts, and they didn't grow up with books in the house. He was fascinated with my reading habits, but now after 20 years of marriage he is a casual reader. He understands getting lost in a story.
- theatre: plays and musicals. He would go with me, but think both the costs of going were exorbitant. Our daughter is a musical fanatic, so he keeps up with songs and will take her to shows
- buying our first home was tough. We qualified for a much larger purchase price, but he couldn't get over spending a "half million" on a home. He would never say 500 thousand. He always translated it to a million.
- food prices. There are a few places he will just concede are better tasting, but he will mention the insanity of paying $20 for a hamburger, when you can get one off of the dollar menu. This has gotten a little better as time has gone on, though if his parents are visiting we just do not let them see menu prices if we go out. He will order and we bring it home, or just have it brought to the table.
- He's having a huge amount of sticker shock at college tuition. It's a lot, but we can afford to pay for our kid's tuition, so I'm insisting on doing so.
- He grew up being charged by his parents for anything outside of shelter/food (from about 14-18). At 18 they had to pay rent to live at home. I really had to put my foot down that we aren't charging our teen and college aged kids for things. We can afford to let them live with us "rent free" while they are actively working and on college breaks. It's not like we are giving them new cars, and fancy electronics, or taking them on shopping trips.


Interesting. My husband grew up LMC and MC and he has much of the same metal hang ups around money. He doesn’t understand that yes, things cost that much. You cannot get a decent home in this area for 300k no matter how much you lament it. Yes, a decent home will cost “a million dollars”. He cannot comprehend paying more for organic foods or caring about certain brands of clothes. He steps out of the house even today in sneakers, jeans and a T shirt. He finds button downs to be restrictive and boring.

It’s funny because his younger sister who grew up in the same house, married rich and has transitioned seamlessly into her UC life as the wife of a banker. She loves spending money and the more expensive something is, the better.

My husband balks at spending $250 for a hotel room and she only stays at hotels no less than 1k a night. Growing up they’d stay at Holiday Inns.

Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 09:48     Subject: Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:What have been some downsides to marrying outside your social class?

I grew up UC/UMC and my dh grew up MC/LMC. There are some cultural differences that become annoying such as the following:

- He thinks everything is expensive and does not have reasonable ideas about cost and quality. He will always go for the cheapest thing
- Horrible taste in food. He will buy these frozen prepared foods from Wegmans and think it is healthy
- Dresses in graphic T-shirts and jeans and a baseball cap. ALL THE TIME!
- Has a chip on his shoulder about "rich people" and higher education



Social class? Are you from 1800's England? There is no social class and certainly no one is better than others for being lucky to have more opportunities. If someone thinks it makes them better, you don't want to be that person or their delusion of grandeur.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 09:01     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:His family was always jealous of our money and believed it much more than we really had. As if just being upper middle class made you extremely wealthy when in reality it isn't that different from middle class. I think this played a large part in our marriage's downfall although on the most prevalent issue.

He ended up abusing my money with no repercussions from his family. Took out credit cards without telling me and ran us into debt. Once the sister was saying she was really busy with his mom and I offered to help and she showed me all the projects she wanted me to fund. She lived in the home at no expense to take care of the parents. Also asked me to fund a trip overseas. I had meant maybe I can get my husband to call more and send care packages.

The bigger issues were that he couldn't relate to any of my friends. He loved the lifestyle and thought our friends were nice but couldn't converse well and make any really strong friends. He also just had a lot of bad habits that I didn't pick up on during the courtship and his mind started to deteriorate as he grew older. Maybe this could happen to anyone but eventually found out he had a lot of mental health issues. So the biggest issue I've found is that a lot of poorer people have mental health issues which makes marriage difficult. This also happened to another friend of mine and I've now seen how many adopted children from poorer families have mental health issues so these seems to be a recurring trend during my lifetime.


This actually isn’t the case. Mental health problems are distributed fairly evenly among the classes.


There is no way they are evenly distributed. I'll have to do some sleuthing to prove but just common sense and general reading and history has proved this wrong. Maybe some people don't have the means to get help but there is no way that upper middle class people have the same amount and intensity of mental health problems as the lower classes.


This isn’t true at all. Studies also show that upper middle class kids are far more likely to do drugs than poor and working class kids. You’re experiencing cognitive dissonance which is why it’s Hard for you to believe.

I also believe you’re a troll.


Not a troll. And basic real estate proves that poor neighborhoods have more crime and are more unsafe. Not desirable.


Hahaha, take a look at the SAT testing accommodations, eating disorders, gender stuff, etc - going by those metrics, it's the rich neighborhoods where all the mental illnesses are brewing.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 08:51     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:All of the lower MC/poor white trash drama that will pop up years later. Affairs, addictions, divorced, abuse. His dude of the family and his home town was rampant with it. He got out, went to a top university, looked and played the part when i met him, but at midlife resorted to the drinking and cheating and entitled BS he learned growing up. The woman he had the affair with was just as Jerry Springer and also wrapped in a package above her standing.


What?
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 08:46     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:No major ramifications for us, but I did expose my husband to thing that he would never had experienced if he had married someone in his neighborhood/town.

- reading for pleasure, or even really reading after HS. His parents were busy working all the time, multiple shifts, and they didn't grow up with books in the house. He was fascinated with my reading habits, but now after 20 years of marriage he is a casual reader. He understands getting lost in a story.
- theatre: plays and musicals. He would go with me, but think both the costs of going were exorbitant. Our daughter is a musical fanatic, so he keeps up with songs and will take her to shows
- buying our first home was tough. We qualified for a much larger purchase price, but he couldn't get over spending a "half million" on a home. He would never say 500 thousand. He always translated it to a million.
- food prices. There are a few places he will just concede are better tasting, but he will mention the insanity of paying $20 for a hamburger, when you can get one off of the dollar menu. This has gotten a little better as time has gone on, though if his parents are visiting we just do not let them see menu prices if we go out. He will order and we bring it home, or just have it brought to the table.
- He's having a huge amount of sticker shock at college tuition. It's a lot, but we can afford to pay for our kid's tuition, so I'm insisting on doing so.
- He grew up being charged by his parents for anything outside of shelter/food (from about 14-18). At 18 they had to pay rent to live at home. I really had to put my foot down that we aren't charging our teen and college aged kids for things. We can afford to let them live with us "rent free" while they are actively working and on college breaks. It's not like we are giving them new cars, and fancy electronics, or taking them on shopping trips.


I guess I grew up in a similar family (minus reading and theatre part, those were always part of my life) , and it is really interesting to me how you chose to frame it. My parents actually told me something along the lines of "life costs money, you have to contribute", and I always view it as a contribution rather than being charged. And, of course, once I started contributing, I was a part of the family financial decision making.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 08:46     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:To add on I had a friend who flunked out of school freshman year partying. She wanted to go back to a college and finish her degree and the upper middle class parents cut off the funds and said she had to pay back the funds from the funded year and take classes at home and do well before they would pay again. She ended up graduating from college and now has a job and has a family while the lower income family gave up on their son attending college after freshman year and never encouraged him to take a class again. He finally has a steady job as a Target employee 10 years after just sitting at home doing nothing or having various jobs that always lasted less than a year. He has no family in his mid 30s and is a Target worker living at home without a lot of prospects. During that 10 year time the lower class family went on a lot of vacations with the money they had saved for college. For the lower class family college was optional. For the upper middle class family they weren’t going to enable but were going to work through whatever they could to have their daughter graduate.


I’m the pp who posted about my DH and yes, almost the same story with my DH who is UMC. They weren’t going to enable and cut him off after he got kicked out of UVA for disciplinary reasons and made him pay them back . So he worked his way through nova and then did guarantee transfer to another state school. Once they figured out he was serious, they helped him out with tuition but made him work for room and board. Since they helped him out he graduated debt free.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 08:35     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
To add on I had a friend who flunked out of school freshman year partying. She wanted to go back to a college and finish her degree and the upper middle class parents cut off the funds and said she had to pay back the funds from the funded year and take classes at home and do well before they would pay again. She ended up graduating from college and now has a job and has a family while the lower income family gave up on their son attending college after freshman year and never encouraged him to take a class again. He finally has a steady job as a Target employee 10 years after just sitting at home doing nothing or having various jobs that always lasted less than a year. He has no family in his mid 30s and is a Target worker living at home without a lot of prospects. During that 10 year time the lower class family went on a lot of vacations with the money they had saved for college. For the lower class family college was optional. For the upper middle class family they weren’t going to enable but were going to work through whatever they could to have their daughter graduate.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 08:34     Subject: Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
We’re both bland umc kids though my DH was a slacker in school so his parents cut him off and he had to work his way through community college before transferring back to his 4 year school.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 08:00     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:His family was always jealous of our money and believed it much more than we really had. As if just being upper middle class made you extremely wealthy when in reality it isn't that different from middle class. I think this played a large part in our marriage's downfall although on the most prevalent issue.

He ended up abusing my money with no repercussions from his family. Took out credit cards without telling me and ran us into debt. Once the sister was saying she was really busy with his mom and I offered to help and she showed me all the projects she wanted me to fund. She lived in the home at no expense to take care of the parents. Also asked me to fund a trip overseas. I had meant maybe I can get my husband to call more and send care packages.

The bigger issues were that he couldn't relate to any of my friends. He loved the lifestyle and thought our friends were nice but couldn't converse well and make any really strong friends. He also just had a lot of bad habits that I didn't pick up on during the courtship and his mind started to deteriorate as he grew older. Maybe this could happen to anyone but eventually found out he had a lot of mental health issues. So the biggest issue I've found is that a lot of poorer people have mental health issues which makes marriage difficult. This also happened to another friend of mine and I've now seen how many adopted children from poorer families have mental health issues so these seems to be a recurring trend during my lifetime.


This actually isn’t the case. Mental health problems are distributed fairly evenly among the classes.


There is no way they are evenly distributed. I'll have to do some sleuthing to prove but just common sense and general reading and history has proved this wrong. Maybe some people don't have the means to get help but there is no way that upper middle class people have the same amount and intensity of mental health problems as the lower classes.


This isn’t true at all. Studies also show that upper middle class kids are far more likely to do drugs than poor and working class kids. You’re experiencing cognitive dissonance which is why it’s Hard for you to believe.

I also believe you’re a troll.


Not a troll. And basic real estate proves that poor neighborhoods have more crime and are more unsafe. Not desirable.


I was responding to the part on poor people more likely to have mental illness. Thats a lie. And it's clear you have a deep hatred for poor people.



I don’t have a deep seated hatred for the poor. I married someone poorer than me and it didn’t work out well. Over the 20 years I got to meet about 100 people in their circle and they were all the same. A lot of talk about how they swindled some freebie here and there. A lack of interest in working through conflict. Lots of Trump people who like the idea of getting rich without getting along or having standards. A lot of blaming other people for any ill in their life. Once the sister blamed a priest for turning her son away from the church. He got into college and failed out and it was the fault of the college not him. While the rich may blame the poor on their addictions and crime (and btw addiction is a sign of mental health issues) the lower class spend a lot of time hating the rich. Constant victim mentality. I don’t know anything about super rich people or super poor people. I was comparing upper middle class families where someone if they work hard all their life has a senior position in a company but not an owner or ceo to that of a family that grew up lower middle class not poor working as laborers or cashiers and the like.
Anonymous
Post 02/20/2022 00:41     Subject: Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:I grew up super poor (welfare, food stamps, homeless) and eventually married someone who comes from a wealthy family.

It's worked out fine. I think they've been a bit shocked at some things I've said and my ethics, and solutions to problems, but overall they are very sweet and kind to me and my kids, and DH is in love with me.


Can you give an example? Do you care less about ethics than your relatives do?
Anonymous
Post 02/19/2022 23:56     Subject: Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Me: UC. DH: UMC but after a nasty divorce with his parents, LC

-Food
-Teaching him about passports
-Traveling (he had never left his state and I have been all around the world with my family)
-Understanding how to invest in future opportunities for our children now ( summer program, equestrian and archery camps, clinics and competitions, enrichment experiences)
-Traveling experiences for family
-Clothes
Anonymous
Post 02/19/2022 23:32     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:His family was always jealous of our money and believed it much more than we really had. As if just being upper middle class made you extremely wealthy when in reality it isn't that different from middle class. I think this played a large part in our marriage's downfall although on the most prevalent issue.

He ended up abusing my money with no repercussions from his family. Took out credit cards without telling me and ran us into debt. Once the sister was saying she was really busy with his mom and I offered to help and she showed me all the projects she wanted me to fund. She lived in the home at no expense to take care of the parents. Also asked me to fund a trip overseas. I had meant maybe I can get my husband to call more and send care packages.

The bigger issues were that he couldn't relate to any of my friends. He loved the lifestyle and thought our friends were nice but couldn't converse well and make any really strong friends. He also just had a lot of bad habits that I didn't pick up on during the courtship and his mind started to deteriorate as he grew older. Maybe this could happen to anyone but eventually found out he had a lot of mental health issues. So the biggest issue I've found is that a lot of poorer people have mental health issues which makes marriage difficult. This also happened to another friend of mine and I've now seen how many adopted children from poorer families have mental health issues so these seems to be a recurring trend during my lifetime.


This actually isn’t the case. Mental health problems are distributed fairly evenly among the classes.


There is no way they are evenly distributed. I'll have to do some sleuthing to prove but just common sense and general reading and history has proved this wrong. Maybe some people don't have the means to get help but there is no way that upper middle class people have the same amount and intensity of mental health problems as the lower classes.


This isn’t true at all. Studies also show that upper middle class kids are far more likely to do drugs than poor and working class kids. You’re experiencing cognitive dissonance which is why it’s Hard for you to believe.

I also believe you’re a troll.


Not a troll. And basic real estate proves that poor neighborhoods have more crime and are more unsafe. Not desirable.


I was responding to the part on poor people more likely to have mental illness. Thats a lie. And it's clear you have a deep hatred for poor people.



The rich need reasons to justify their place above the poor. Whether it's race, good neighborhoods, addiction, class, etc. Fortunately or unfortunately, the rain falls on the just and unjust and human nature is consistent across income bands.
Anonymous
Post 02/19/2022 23:31     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:His family was always jealous of our money and believed it much more than we really had. As if just being upper middle class made you extremely wealthy when in reality it isn't that different from middle class. I think this played a large part in our marriage's downfall although on the most prevalent issue.

He ended up abusing my money with no repercussions from his family. Took out credit cards without telling me and ran us into debt. Once the sister was saying she was really busy with his mom and I offered to help and she showed me all the projects she wanted me to fund. She lived in the home at no expense to take care of the parents. Also asked me to fund a trip overseas. I had meant maybe I can get my husband to call more and send care packages.

The bigger issues were that he couldn't relate to any of my friends. He loved the lifestyle and thought our friends were nice but couldn't converse well and make any really strong friends. He also just had a lot of bad habits that I didn't pick up on during the courtship and his mind started to deteriorate as he grew older. Maybe this could happen to anyone but eventually found out he had a lot of mental health issues. So the biggest issue I've found is that a lot of poorer people have mental health issues which makes marriage difficult. This also happened to another friend of mine and I've now seen how many adopted children from poorer families have mental health issues so these seems to be a recurring trend during my lifetime.


This actually isn’t the case. Mental health problems are distributed fairly evenly among the classes.


There is no way they are evenly distributed. I'll have to do some sleuthing to prove but just common sense and general reading and history has proved this wrong. Maybe some people don't have the means to get help but there is no way that upper middle class people have the same amount and intensity of mental health problems as the lower classes.


This isn’t true at all. Studies also show that upper middle class kids are far more likely to do drugs than poor and working class kids. You’re experiencing cognitive dissonance which is why it’s Hard for you to believe.

I also believe you’re a troll.


Not a troll. And basic real estate proves that poor neighborhoods have more crime and are more unsafe. Not desirable.


This is just ignorant. I suppose you're absolutely clueless to the why of it all as well.
Anonymous
Post 02/19/2022 23:25     Subject: Re:Ramifications of marrying outside of your social class
Anonymous wrote:Read the UK study in-depth.

The authors are using the study to advocate for increased funding (yes, in a county with universal health care) for the poor because the poor lack access to health care options that are present for the rich.

In every country, the rich are healthier because they have access to better health care, better food, fewer environmental toxins, etc. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/science/rich-people-longer-life-study.html

The rich often go to jail less, even for the same crimes.

This fact does not explain how the posters can blame many of their complaints on the fact their husbands did not grow up with money. Let us speak plainly.

The posters believe they are superior to their spouses because they came from a higher economic background. As another poster said, this is Downton Abbey played out in NoVA.

So we get "Lord Whatnot had a little too much brandy" while the footman "drank himself silly with gin."


+1