If you are really posh...

[quickque]

How do you view people that aren't?

A genuine question. I can't help but feel as if some of my husbands friends / colleagues think that he's married 'down'....

Maybe a generalisation but I mostly get this impression from his female friends.

The truly posh- like the rest of us, are a spectrum. Plenty of people with absolutely no side, some utter monsters.

If you are brought up with certain codes and standards of behaviour and speech and so on, you will pass passive judgement on others. We all do. But nicer people see past these matters to things that they do have in common and don't take it too seriously. Only climbers or the truly unpleasant would do so.

I used to work with very, very wealthy high earners in an old profession (think 7 figure bonuses in a good year) most of whom came from private schools and generations in the same profession. My experience is that the ones who were incredibly good at their job, really worked at it and outperformed the market were utterly lovely and took everyone at face value and didn’t give a toss about background. For example, I can think of one who owns a string of racehorses and always takes his former PA to Ascot. The ones who were lazy, winging it,bullshitting and whose performance tracked or was slightly below the market were unspeakable snobbish arseholes who treated their “lessers” like shit. Basically, the posh people who have nothing to prove don’t care, the posh people with a chip on their shoulder will “other” people to bolster their own insecurities.

My standing advice in such circles is always watch how someone speaks to the receptionist when they arrive. Tells you an awful lot.

I think there is still a them / us feeling. Our own. Tribal behavior.

The travellers are the same.

It would be a bit awkward having a spouse who isnt from your own class.

I had the interesting experience of being considered posh in my home country but in London, I was perceived to be and treated as a working class person. Took the corners off me I tell you. Posh people in the uk saw right through me !! and I ended up being friendly with some people who would have written me off if we'd met in my country.

So I feel classless now. Exempt from classification. I see people for who they are. That's maturity. I was immature and prejudiced in my youth before Id lived and learned.

Probably a common experience for women of all classes.

I wonder if anybody from an aristocratic background posts here! Or do they find muggles thoughts and discussions unhelpful?

I feel the same, @mrscampbellblackagain. The idea that ‘old money’ is somehow more respectable than newly acquired wealth is laughable, especially when you consider how a lot of the old wealthy families made their fortunes.

many "old money" have managed to keep in the family and inherited the background and values that go with them.
SOME new money produce kids you see on "rich kids of instagram"...

The Beckham have done amazingly well, and are good enough to be invited to several royal weddings, but were not famous for their taste, style, or their children achievement. Say what you want, but the fact that Victoria managed to go from WAG to "posh" stylist is an achievement. They seem just slightly too generous and not pushing their own kids to work as hard as they have.

@quickque

How do you view people that aren't?

A genuine question. I can't help but feel as if some of my husbands friends / colleagues think that he's married 'down'....

Maybe a generalisation but I mostly get this impression from his female friends.

If they were properly posh, they would never dream of looking down on anyone, and if they ever did, they would certainly not let it show.

I can think of fewer things that matter less about a person's integrity or value than which 'drawer' they happen to come from. The British fixation with social class is something I only started to notice in early adulthood, and even when I did see it have never ever comprehended it. In America and on the continent it leaves people scratching their heads, and I see it as definitely one of the negative points about living on these islands.

Best advice is to give the finger to boring old convention and social expectation. What other people think of you is none of your business, and once you stop caring it feels very liberating.

@quickque

Thank you! It could be my own insecurities o guess!

I do think those genuinely posh types l8ke to MARRY their own class.

Obviously they can afford to be equally charming and friendly to everybody so long as they only marry in.

They can be as nice as pie to you but not see you as friend material or wife material. And I get that even from my own background, much more humble than aristocratic!!

The people who are judgey are the ones who don’t have that much money, they’re just the silly pretentious Hyacinth Bucket type ones. People who properly are well off don’t usually care. I worked in a high end shoe shop years ago, and the people who came in and spent extortionate amounts of money were those who came in just before closing in old dishevelled clothes.

Op you are married now, so the situation unless you get divorced is something you will have to learn to deal with.

I personally imagine you to be correct in thinking they are judging you, I suppose they must be in some ways - and I doubt the posts on here are reassuring to you, that they are all so kind and welcoming really it must be ringing a rather hollow tune.

My best advice? Have your own friends that you can be real with, and you are able to share your life with with authenticity Have your own life/career/aspirations, do not hang your self esteem and achievements on your husband's salary/careerr. Choose to spend as little time as possible with this crowd, limit it to maybe once or twice a year and field out the unfriendly ones altogether.

Agree where your children will be schooled, and how they will be parented before you are pregnant, he may have some very fixed ideas about boarding schools at seven years old, and you may have dreams of homeschooling in the countryside with wild animals for company.

You are married to the man, not his circle of friends (hopefully). So he can meet up with his chums etc, you don't have to do everything together.

I don't think you will change what they think of you, but you can limit how much exposure you have to it in a heartbeat. You can remain confident in yourself, your abilities and your roots.
Don't change who you are, or pretend to be something you are not. At best you will look fake, at worst you will lose your self identity altogether.

It's no good asking people if they are 'really posh' - really posh people often seem to assume they're middle class even if they live in a stately home!

I have clients who are incredibly 'posh', and ones at the opposite end of the spectrum. I find the posh people to be very kind and considerate, and not appear to look down on me. This is the same for the ones on the opposite end of the spectrum. The middlish class wanna be posh ones, can be the most demanding and snobby. They just don't have the breeding!

@IncandescentSilver that is true, the hatred of new houses is very british. There arent enough period houses for the middle classes here in Dublin so moving in to a brand new build house in Rathgar (eg) is not looked down on as poor taste here. People name drop architects here. It is just so different because of the housing stock available.

They may be lovely to everybody but would they marry somebody from an ordinary background?
I'm going to wager... NO
Unless they are playing in to the black sheep role.

It will be down to insecurities, looking down on others always is. Whether it's yours or their insecurities is difficult to tell without being there.

Which do you think it is?

I live in a place that has a lot of posh people, old money but also plenty of new money as well. It's also a place where many people will only befriend you if they think they can gain something from that friendship. And I'm not talking about support, respect, friendship. More things like invitations to nice restaurants, summer houses, freebies from your business, connections with other high value people etc.

I don’t think that seriously posh people actually don’t know that they are posh, use that when in their company and you will be fine

Just my tuppence, I know two very posh, old money, titled aristocracy families. They drive old cars - usually volvos or land rovers and don't wear obviously designer clothes, smart and good quality, yes but not ostentatious labels. I've just finished working at an IT company where some of the staff had come from not very much but had done very well for themselves - they all had to have brand new Porsches and Range Rovers and wore Gucci trainers. They also used what car someone drove as a measure to judge someone.

I often wondered how the people at the IT company would judge the titled aristocracy, if they bumped into them, not knowing their background.

I'm middle class, ok for money, parents are comfortable. I've had help buying property and know that I don't need to worry about money. I don't drive a flash car or wear designer clothes either, a lot of my money goes into my house and pension. My 10 year old, reliable Audi (that I own outright) was looked down on at the IT company and I think I was too. The culture there was to buy designer clothes and expensive cars on finance and credit to fit in, so we had a problem with a lot of younger members of staff getting hideously into debt to try and fit in. I think it's a mindset, I'm not posh but I'm not going to bankrupt myself buying unnecessarily expensive cars and clothes.

@Eyewhisker

There is a weird English thing that the truly posh people are the world’s nicest people and never look down on others, whereas it’s the ones who made their own money you have to look out for.

I have never found this to be true. At university, I was surrounded by the posh set, and they never mixed outside their set. A few good-looking mc girls were allowed in, but it was known that they were not quite born to it. Very much a ‘doors-to-manual’ culture.

This fawning over the posh is really unedifying.

Exactly.

What seems to confuse people on Mumsnet is that the smart set are considerably more subtle about exclusion and endogamy. It's not all raised eyebrows about where you do or don't ski, or conversations about the difficulty in getting in the right restoration chaps to do a good job on the frescoes, or the difficulty in keeping the wolf from the portico -- it's very possible to be treated with perfect kindness and consideration and still simply be considerately dismissed at a fundamental level.

I deal with a lot of posh people. They can be perfectly lovely, until the moment you aren't able to do whatever unreasonable thing they are asking you to do. Then the tone changes, all the big words come out, and they speak to you like a piece of crap because you are only a [insert job title here]

They are entitled, over privileged and have no concept of the real world/struggling/what life is really like.

However, I've also met some perfectly lovely posh people who are just so kind and not at all entitled, and have an understanding of a world outside of their own.

Like all 'groups' of people, there are good and bad.

@Eyewhisker

There is a weird English thing that the truly posh people are the world’s nicest people and never look down on others, whereas it’s the ones who made their own money you have to look out for.

I have never found this to be true. At university, I was surrounded by the posh set, and they never mixed outside their set. A few good-looking mc girls were allowed in, but it was known that they were not quite born to it. Very much a ‘doors-to-manual’ culture.

This fawning over the posh is really unedifying.

Totally agree. There are snobby people in all walks of life, the upper class are definitely not an exception to this, regardless of how superficially polite they may be.

Any negative comments about those they deem to be beneath them ("doors to manual") will only be made behind closed doors, among their own kind. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I fully agree that those from old money don't tend to mix in with the general population.

it's very possible to be treated with perfect kindness and consideration and still simply be considerately dismissed at a fundamental level

This

True, Hollywoodhandshake - it’s not just the U.K., goodness knows why people think it is.
Just for starters, French people can be incredibly snobbish, and why else do Americans (some of them) talk about ‘trailer trash’ or look down on people living in ‘the projects’ (social housing)?

In my experience properly posh people don't tend to be judgemental. They would consider that bad manners for one thing. However it's natural to gravitate towards people with similar backgrounds and that might explain your feelings of being a fish out of water. It's not just posh people - on all different levels people tend to end up with partners similar to themselves in terms of background (social class, level of education, political leanings, race, religion etc.)

I also agree with PPs who've said posh does not necessarily equal rich. I would say we (me and husband) are middle- middle class and without our professions (solicitor and accountant) we'd have a lower social standing than that. However we seem to be much better off financially than our next door neighbours who I'd describe as proper posh: public school educated, horsey/artsy on-off careers but which bring in barely any money. The husbands parents bought their house and cars and pay for their child's private school fees but they have very little disposable income themselves. For example they can't afford some fairly basic guttering repairs which would stop water leaking into their ceilings! All their friends we've met are very nice but all from similar backgrounds. One of our other neighbours, who is very bluntly spoken, asked why they were sending their son to private prep whilst not fixing their roof. They seemed really astonished and said they "just couldn't" send their child to state school. It's very ingrained.

I'd love to know what posh even means.

People think Boris Johnson is "posh". Yes he may have a "posh" accent, but you read this book that's just come out about him and I challenge anyone to say his upbringing was "posh". By all accounts, he was under-privileged and neglected.

So posh is a really meaningless and poorly defined label put on people. But people will be beaten with a stick just for being deemed "posh".