Thread for my DP: why I'm vulnerable unmarried

[Ebonyscrooge]

Can you please comment saying precisely why I am vulberable as an unmarried mother of 2 who works part-time?

-House is jointly owned
-Joint Life insurance
-Pensions to be left to each other

My partner does not see how/why this leaves me still vulnerable.

Thankyou.

Err... if he was a decent human being, he wouldn't need "convincing" to allow his partner (and mother of his children) a level of security closer to his own.

And if he's not a decent human being, should she marry him?

He already knows that marrying her would put him in a worse financial position in the event of a break-up (versus breaking up when unmarried). Ascertaining precisely how much worse off he would be would not alter this basic fact and would not make him into a less selfish and exploitative person. Why should he alter a situation which is currently working wholly to his advantage? (Unless he loved her, cared about her, and wanted to treat her fairly, of course.)

I'm not the one she has to convince.

Please stop, Scott, I beg you. If you hit me with one more blinding flash of the obvious this evening, I may never regain my sight.

Firstly, she has to work out if it is fear of divorce that is the main impediment to him wanting to marry her.

Oh you goit.

Scott, I get it. You sympathise with the man. (He's a dick, by the way. A very rich dick. OP has another thread about him under another name.) Perhaps you're divorced and bitter because your ex got compensation for losing out financially to raise your kids, I don't know.

But it's a shitty, selfish and deeply unloving thing to do to use a woman to have kids and allow her to lose out financially to raise them... yet complain that you're the one who'd be "vulnerable" if you ever had to compensate her for the fact that she took the hit and not you. Especially given that you'd be the one who would continue to benefit from uninhibited earning power and she would, in all likelihood, still continue to be working but with primary residency of the kids and all the resulting pressures on her time and money.

It's simply not "vulnerability" to compensate someone fairly for the sacrifices they made for your joint family unit. It is, however, a loving, trusting and protective thing to do that makes it harder to fuck a woman over. So when a man won't do it, well...

Mean with money, mean with love. Every time. Also shit in bed. Mean people don't make good lovers...fancy that.

I'm in love with my husband, and he with me. He earns more than I do, especially now I'm part time because of our kid and took full maternity leave. I'm from a wealthier background and brought more initial assets in. I also got a windfall a few years ago (five figures) and that's all his as much as mine too. Right now I'm protected because I earn less. If he became ill or disabled and I became the main earner, he'd be protected as I am now. I would not have it any other way. I love him, what's mine is ours, what's his is ours, and I don't ever want to see him shafted, even if things didn't work out between us.

If you don't understand that, you have my genuine pity.

Fermats, thank you. Don't worry, the username is a total pisstake. I like it because it clashes with more or less everything I post.

Don't worry, the username is a total pisstake. I like it because it clashes with more or less everything I post.

I'd guessed as much. Have you seen the episode of the Simpsons where Maggie gets sent to the "Ayn Rand Preschool"? One of my favourite episodes.

Not seen that one. I'll have to check it out.

OP, I apologise. I got carried away and not everything I've said will have been helpful to you.

Having read her other thread, I have a better chance of teaching a dog to read than the OP has of convincing this man to marry her. He knows exactly how precarious her financial position is, it suits him to his advantage so he will carry on as standard. The moral of every one of these threads is the same: if you are not independently wealthy and have a child with an unmarried partner, stopping FT work to look after the kids is financially unwise. Always.

@ aynrand - projecting much? I would have to agree with you that your posts are not helpful to the op.

Lord, accusations of "projecting" are getting so old now. Believe me, if someone's reminding me of my own horrid experiences, I'll bore you with them. Go on to the smacking thread if you want to see me projecting like your local Cineworld.

Mansplaining irritates me. "Hey ladies, maybe he doesn't want to marry her because he's protecting his money? Bet you never thought of that, didja!"

As for the idea that we shouldn't expect a high earning man to make himself "vulnerable" by committing to fairly compensate his partner when she loses earnings and potential due to family duties...fuck right off.

But my rhetoric was not sensitive to the OP, and for that I do apologise.

I don't know if anyone's got the right to complain that "get married" is antiquated and out-of-touch, if their alternative is "be richer".

Perfection.

Unfortunate that the issue was framed in class terms though. Especially when it's being used as a shorthand for income. While it's true that middle class couples are more likely to be married, and nobody's anecdotes of their friends being different disprove this, the benefits can be significant for working class and/or lower income couples too. There's a good argument for discussions about marriage and class, but I think some of the language used was exclusionary. Particularly given that low income women from certain ethnic communities are extremely unlikely to have a child before marriage.

Yes one of you needs to be at home but that means parenthood costs you ebormously and costs him very little.

Work full time and bill him for half the child care. Why put yourself in a financially poor position for how many years ?