For wanting my partner to pay more of the mortgage?

YANBU OP- to an extent. I know lots of ex magic circle lawyers who have quit, started at the bottom and worked back up in things like the government legal department, local government and even teaching and 5-10 years down the line they have a much more rewarding/ sustainable life and career than in house/ smaller firm.

But I think he’s not being totally U either, I think the difference is in one of aspirations/ ambition. He wants to work long hours to pay for a certain lifestyle (London centric etc), you’d prefer a slightly better quality of life but a house outside London/ lower spends.

You honestly though need to sort this out before you marry and have kids as it’s only ever going to get worse.

I'd 100% call her bluff on this knowing that she is on £35k a year, where is she going to go? Doubt she wants to leave the south east, and if the she wants to move up north or something, would he have to move jobs etc.

Seems like all the expectation is on him to change his life/lifestyle to accommodate her decision to move to less well paid job.

Add up what extra he is spending. He either wants joint finances or not. He can't have it both ways.

If there was no commitments to the future I’d say a 50:50 split was reasonable but your getting married nows the time to talk about pooling resources . What if you have kids would he support you on mat leave ? If you chose to reduce your hours to fit round child care? He also seems a bit mean, he knows you earn a third of why he does but expects you to pay half of his lifestyle choices. It down the line he lost his job and had to take a lower paid one would you expect him to pay half? I’d think hard about it he’s a jeeper

So, how many hours are you working if you earn £35,000 but turned your nose up at £90,000 for 9-7?

Did you get offers from those firms?

They have to set expectations. It’s probably a question to ask a contact in the term rather than in an interview (especially because someone interviewing you wouldn’t know what hours an NQ does).

if I want to chuck something I want in the trolley then I should be able to

If I had got a joint mortgage with my partner based on our salaries, they had then unilaterally decided to quit this and take a much lower paid job, despite me disagreeing, then I had to pay £200 a month towards bills due to cost of living going up, then they told me I should be paying even more, I would be pissed off, if they stopped me putting things I wanted in the shopping trolley, yes I would be even more pissed off!

Time to call the wedding off and go your separate ways.

It feels silly to say that I'm finding it hard financially on a household income of £125k, but obviously the vast majority of that money is my partner's and not mine.

You do don't have a household income of 125k. Financially speaking, you are flatmates which one on 90k and the other on 35k. You need to live accordingly.

While I can see the point that the OP's fiance shouldn't be expected to subsidise her career change, it sounds like he's now also expecting her to subsidise him in the form of expensive things that he's made clear that HE wants to buy and she's happy not to. He can't have it both ways.

Separate food shops on this basis is a ridiculous idea in a long term, committed relationship but this is a good example of why anything other than proportional contributions doesn't work. You have to accept each other as you are, not the idealised versions of each other you originally met - will he be equally resentful if you change the goalposts by putting on weight for example, or suffer from some kind of chronic illness that means major lifestyle changes? Or will he expect things to always remain how they were in the beginning and refuse to be a part of any changes? As someone else pointed out, what about when you have children? How is he going to divide up finances and workload then? How are you going to organise paying for things for the children? Is he happy to step back and look after the kids with the attendant pay cut so you can go back to work, while still contributing his full 50%? Unlikely. However would you, @AnyPomegranate be happy to pick up the financial shortfall should he decide to take a much lower paying job in order to reduce his stress levels?

There are so many things wrong with this sort of arrangement but what it comes down to is a lack of genuine partnership in a relationship. I don't like to go around smugly as if my husband and I have everything absolutely perfect and all #couple goals (😡what?! There's no vomit emoji here?!), but any and all money we bring in is family money. That's it. No his or mine. No-one has any resentment. I can see there might be in the earlier days or should one be a heavier spender than the other but ultimately when you care about each other you don't want the person you love to go without. In any way. If you are planning marriage, kids and forever how long will it go on being his vs yours? 40, 50 years down the line will he still be insisting you pay 'your share'? And if your pension is smaller than his (given that women are generaly financially penalised for the career break involved in having kids) will he be happy to see you both in separate retirement homes because you can't afford the same one as him?!

There's a thread here at the moment where the OP's (also awful in many other ways) husband doesn't contribute to their joint children because he feels she wanted them more than him so he's done her a favour by having them. Obviously this is a fucking awful basis for having kids or a relationship altogether but that's another thread. The point is that you and he need to have a very, very serious discussion about these things to avoid finding yourself in this sort of hole.

Bit late to have the conversation now. But you can say you're moving out of the expensive area and ask if he's coming.

Absolutely. Paralegal, legal secretaries, legal recruitment, legal publishing, legal research or tech development, in-house roles, lecturing… all pay way more than OP is on. I’d be really annoyed - and, to be clear, 2am wouldn’t have been every night like OP is making out. She only did it for a few months! At less than one year PQ, OP could’ve easily pivoted into tax or pensions or real estate or something else with better hours (for almost exactly the same pay as she was on).

Of course it's not financial abuse.
OP made free choices to pay 50/50. She's actually paying less than that.

A good litmus test if you'd be ok if the situation was reversed

I didn't see that she quit before she was a year qualified.

It's very hard, and by the sound of it, she didn't even try. There are things you can do. Move into things like legal publishing. Lexis take in house lawyers. Move into risk and compliance. In fact in house anywhere really.

The fact is, she didn't even try. She quit before she even had a year's experience as a solicitor. Therefore, not only has she given up a career, she's given it up without giving it a go, and she doesn't have much work experience to take elsewhere.

I think if my partner said he was quitting his job and reducing his earnings that low.I don't think it would be supporting in either.Especially not that young.

I can see why he might be annoyed he would end up losing out because you've decided to drop your salary to get a job you prefer, if he did the same, you would basically be unable to afford where you live currently. If you'd agreed the move together with the finances before you changed jobs, or because you were needing to change jobs to look after a joint child, that would be different
However he is unreasonable to expect you to fork out for things that aren't needed and you can't afford and if he isn't willing to change house to make it possible for you to pay 50/50, then I would say he is being unreasonable.
You'll either need to get another job to afford to stay in the existing house, move house to somewhere more affordable so you can continue contributing 50/50, change the proportion of the payments so you're no longer paying 50/50 or you need to go your separate ways. If you can't agree on a compromise then you have no choice but to go with the last option of you can't afford to pay 50/50

If you can't afford the 50% of payments, either he'll have to pay more or you'll have to sell.
I can't imagine marrying someone so selfish tbh. It sounds like you were at the end of a very frayed rope when you made the decision to change career.
He'll also have to holiday and eat out alone and cook his own more expensive food...he's not exactly being supportive now, what will happen if you start a family?

where is she going to move to on her own on her £35K salary?

Think of this in terms other than purely money related ones.

You want to move out of London. Your partner doesn't.

He wants to have a certain lifestyle that includes eating out, nice holidays and not watching every penny. You would rather work in a more relaxed career and earn less and have a different lifestyle.

OP doesn't say, but it's possible that having an ambitious, driven partner may also have been something that her partner wanted. I'd be interested to know if this attracts OP to her partner too - or whether she would genuinely be happy if he made the same choice that she did.

It feels like you have incompatible long term aims. I'm sorry.

YABU. You chose to earn less and now you expect him to pick up the shortfall when he made it clear he wasn't on board with it.

How would that be fair? One earn 50k and one only 25k. That would leave the lower earning partner with only half the disposable income. How is that fair esp if the lower earning partner is earning less as they took on caring responsibilities for DC or so and the higher earning partner can only earn what they do because the lower earner enables them???? Ideally, it should go all into one pot. No mine and yours.

I think you need to reframe this to him @AnyPomegranate . At the moment, you are subsidising a lifestyle that he wants and that you can't afford. In other words, you are subsidising his lifestyle.

I would do some serious research into where you want to live and send him a shortlist of some possible places.

He will have to go for meals out on his own a bit more too.

Edited for typo.

It’s not at all optimistic. You’d out-earn him at Bristows, CMS, HFW, Mishcon or Withers. You’d earn far more than you’re on now as a 9-5 paralegal or legal secretary at a top firm.

You are choosing to not earn very much. He didn’t support that choice. He shouldn’t be made to be the bad guy for not paying for that choice.

Would you support him quitting his job and earning £35,000? Genuinely?