I'm so much poorer than my partner :(

[Jessiejines]

We've been together for 5 years and we moved in together last year and since we've bought a house together, it's really highlighted to me how poor I am compared to him.

Partner earns around £80,000 a year. I earn around £20,000.

Christmas is coming up and I'm stressing about affording presents, whereas he's not bothered. I've asked him whether we can have a limit on how much we spend on each other this year (around £80-100) as I can't afford the usual £300 we spent before buying a house. He said he still wants to spend around that much but it's stressing me out because I'm trying to budget for Christmas but after paying my share of the mortgage and then buying some presents ready for Christmas, I'm finding I'm living paycheck to paycheck.

This time of year always stresses me out. I love Christmas but I hate the expectation of spending loads :(

He's planning about 3 holidays next year and I just can't afford this but he keeps telling me I can. I tell him the average person is would not go on 3 holidays so we don't need to.

I feel I can't save money as everything seems to be about spending money but now we have a mortgage, I can't just throw money about everywhere.

It's all keeping me up at night :(

I've read it, it's fine.

@Jessiejines

I’m going to write this as if you were my child. (You are young enough to be or maybe I should say that I’m old enough to be your mum!)

This man that you live with, he doesn’t sound very nice. You’ve put a deposit down, you pay more than your fair share of the bills and yet, he persists in saying that you are living off him and that you wouldn’t have been able to afford a house without him. Maybe right now you wouldn’t be able to afford a house on your own but circumstances change. Sometimes very quickly!

When you’re very young (and to me, very young is under about 35!) it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and everything is love and all is hunky dory. But it doesn’t seem like you’re madly in love and everything is hunky dory! It seems like you are in a relationship where the person who should be propping you up and making you feel good, is actually doing the opposite!

You say that you stay awake at night worrying and the undertone of your subsequent posts (and I may have misread them) are that you feel that you might be being silly to worry about this but you’re not! You have a partner who makes you feel bad about yourself and your finances and this is impacting your self worth and your self confidence. I worry that if you stay with this man, your sense of self will become so eroded and your self confidence will become so diminished, that you will not be able to leave because you will feel that you aren’t worth anything and that you don’t deserve better!

You really do deserve better, I promise you! One of my sons was in a bad situation in his mid-20’s. I remember sitting up with him at 3am and talking to him about his situation and that I felt he should leave. But I love her (or him in your case). It is a familiar refrain that all parents (and friends) hear, time after time after time.

Yes, I don’t doubt that you love this man, just as I didn’t doubt that my son loved his partner but as I always say, if love was enough, there would be no divorces! Because you can love someone but they can be entirely wrong for you. You can love someone and still be in a bad situation. You can love someone and be unable to live with them. Just because you love someone, doesn’t mean that you should be with them!

I would like you to read this and take this, not so much as advice, as only you can decide what and who is ultimately right for you, but rather as an older, maybe wiser, persons reading of your situation and as a starting point for some self reflection.

I don’t have a dog in this race, as they say, and thus it doesn’t directly affect me if you decide that this man is worth taking a risk on! When I say directly affect it’s because the decisions that one woman makes actually does affect all of womanhood. Because we hear all the time about women in bad situations and then we, as mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, have to reflect on the messages that our daughters, sisters, nieces, are receiving when they hear of other women in bad situations and then think that maybe the situation they are in, isn’t that bad after all!

I’m writing this from the female perspective because this is after all, mumsnet but everything I’ve written is as valid for men who are in bad situations.

I hope that this helps you in some small way when you reflect on not only the situation that you are in now, but also what you want in the future and what type of partnership you want to be in.

I will close by saying that women (and men) often think they can change their partner or that if they love their partner enough then they will change, but people change because they want too and it’s not a reflection on you if your partner doesn’t change. It’s not that you didn’t love them enough, or give them enough, it’s simply that they don’t want to change because they don’t see a need too!

There’s an old adage that goes the only thing you can change about a man, is his underwear! 🌹

"Wow, you seem really exercised about this."

Missing point of thread, I know, but there is nothing wrong with this sentence. What do you think is wrong with it?

It's not Xmas making you feel this way it's your partner. If he cared about your feelings he would set a spending limit and be willingly taking you on holiday. Think carefully about how he behaves towards you.

I agree.
OP your worth as an individual is not measured by your income.
Please try to see past this.
I wish I could go back in time and give myself a hug and a firm word.
I know how the christmas thing is a pressure.
One year my ex OH was interested in astronomy.
I saved and bought him the best telescope I could afford.
On boxing day my ex said " I wish I had known you were buying me a telescope- I could have advised you on a better quality model to buy me".
I felt crushed- and ashamed- but looking back he was the shit bag.

His jokes aren't funny.

Perhaps you should tell him this. And ask if he's trying to be hurtful.

Let him know how stressed you are. And how tight your finances have become.

Now is his chance to make some changes. Or yours.

@JoanOfAllTrades That's a wonderful response, very insightful and great advice to OP.

@JoanOfAllTrades

Yes; that’s a lovely, caring Mumsy response ☺️

Dont have kids with this man He will have you funding your own maternity leave and despite what some on here will tell you thats not feminism

♥️

OP did you go halves on your first date with him?

@C1N1C Men like you are part of the reason why women like me are child free by choice.

@VanGoghsDog @BigSkies2022 Thank you, both. I was starting to doubt my ability to write coherent English.

Anyway - enough derailing of an important thread!

This seems like a fair set up. I'm on the opposite side of the situation and have tried to be fair, but I think I'll need to step it up a bit more based on what you said.

Don’t have children with him

he wants you to struggle whilst he has savings and lives a comfortable life

thats not a partnership

His lack of kindness and generosity is a massive turn off for me. My dp out earns me by a long long way and yet we pool our money and there is never a mention of who earns what. He doesn’t sound nice at all. In fact he is taking advantage of you, paying an extra £100 !! wow that’s not generous. He’s taking money from you even though he knows you have so much less of than him.

It’s not just about the present but also the future: with this guy you won’t be able to save for retirement. I’m older than you and I really regret having neglected my pension pot in my 20s.
I know you love him, but please, love yourself even more.

@JenniferBooth thank you :) doing my part

Glad this has helped you understand the true problem here. Any one that wants to make you feel like you owe him something because you earn less is not a loving partner. I understand not wanting him to pay for you because you want to pay your own way but I agree with others you need to sit him down and tell him how this situation and the pressure from him is making you feel. Tell him you need to alter the bill split etc to properly reflect the difference in your wages, but that if that happens he can't make jokes about it because it will be really upsetting for you. Ultimately if he continues to behave like this I think you need to leave him.

@NaturalBae @HappyWinter @Foreverhope1

Thank you all. I really hope the OP reads all the helpful responses and comes to a realisation of the situation that she’s in 🥰

I’m glad I’ve helped you to see that there may be further room for improvement in your relationship. It’s good to share 😊

You’ve set the precedent with him. You pay nearly what he does on mortgage etc even though he makes 4 times what you do. That is simply not right. But do what you want, you say you want to do this, so, you can’t really complain.

Your husband joking about it and rubbing it in about how you couldn’t afford house without him is UNACCEPTABLE.

Is your name on the mortgage? If so, and if it were me, I’d tell him from now on he pays 4 times more on the bills and mortgage and holidays. You’re a team and a family now, not single friends.

My husband made 3 times what I did when we began dating and after we married. While dating he paid for everything, he wanted to, and 26 years ago, it was just how it was that men paid for dates as ‘gentlemen’. There is nothing wrong with people not doing that anymore and being independent, not conforming to patriarchal norms etc. For me though, I liked feeling cherished as every other guy I’d dated, while they too paid for dates because of the time period, did not have nearly the caliber of character as my husband.

My husband would not dream of mocking my contributions to our marriage, financial or any other. When we married, we put all our money together in one shared account. His checks go straight into the account, and I decide how to use it on bills etc. I do the finances and taxes because he doesn’t want to deal with them. If he wants to spend over 50 or 100 dollars (USA), he asks me if that will be ok. It has worked very well without any problems for 26 years.

Your partner is not treating you as he should. You need to correct that.

They are not married. But yes the OP is being badly treated. He is selfish and greedy with little concern for his partner. Thank goodness there are no children involved.

And his 'jokes' :are not jokes, they are digs at the OP, probably dressed up in a jokey manner but they are obviously what he really thinks. Whereas actual jokes are supposed to be funny.
Poor OP I think she has has a shock at the responses she got and been frightened away. But I hope she will take on board what people are saying, they are only warning her. A man with a mindset like his is unlikely to change, unfortunately.

Update please!!!