She Doesn’t Want To Marry Her Boyfriend Because He Isn’t Driven, And She’s Afraid Of Being Poor
For nearly four years, this 25-year-old woman has been dating her boyfriend, 27. She’s deeply in love with him, and she thinks highly of him. In her view, he’s the nicest, most compassionate, thoughtful person she knows.
Throughout their entire relationship, her boyfriend has proven that he’s devoted to her and wants to do anything he can to support her and make her happy. Over time, they started discussing how they wanted to get married one day and have children.
According to their Latin culture, it’s not expected that children move out of their parents’ homes once they’re legal adults.
Instead, it’s common for children to live at home until they get married. So, she and her boyfriend both still live at their parents’ houses.
While she thinks her boyfriend is a great partner as far as meeting her emotional needs, she’s concerned that he wouldn’t be a reliable husband in regard to financially providing for their family.
Right now, he works as a middle school art teacher, so he doesn’t earn a high salary. At the moment, he doesn’t seem to be interested in looking for a different job or any side gigs so that he can make more money.
Meanwhile, she just earned her license to practice law (the process of receiving the license is a bit slow in their country).
She doesn’t earn an impressive income as a lawyer yet, but she predicts that over time, her salary will be significantly more than her boyfriend’s.
This wouldn’t be a problem for her at all, but she’s concerned that her boyfriend isn’t driven to move up in his career in the same way she is with hers.
New Africa – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
She’s noticed that her boyfriend doesn’t make an effort to save up money or progress his career forward.
Hypothetically, he could be researching other schools to work for, switching to working at a high school where he would earn higher pay, or finding ways to make money through his art.
Since her boyfriend is a talented artist, she’s asked him if he’d ever be interested in selling any of his artwork or finding a way to utilize that skill outside of teaching at a middle school.
She brought up the idea of becoming a tattoo artist because, in their country, tattoo artists make an impressive salary, and there aren’t too many hurdles to jump through in order to enter the field.
Another option she thought of was for her boyfriend to dive into digital art. He is technologically inclined and has a graphics tablet that he uses for his art, so he already knows a lot about how to create digital artwork.
“In his rare free time, he usually just plays on his Nintendo Switch device, spends time with me, attends music practice, or does other chores unrelated to work or money,” she said.
“He always changes the subject when I suggest he look for alternatives or simply dismisses by saying he will think about it, but never actually does.”
If her boyfriend proved that he was serious about growing within his field and progressing his career, she would be happier and more supportive of his chosen field. But she’s disappointed that he seems comfortable remaining, in her view, professionally stagnant.
The two of them are on the same page about their future. They’ve talked about how they hope to have three or four children someday, but now she’s worried that this wouldn’t be feasible because of her boyfriend’s lack of ambition to make a higher income.
When they’ve had conversations about money, she’s gotten the feeling that her boyfriend underestimates just how expensive it is to provide for a family or even live by yourself without financially relying on your parents.
“He truly believes $3,000 per month is enough to start a life and start a family. Let me just state that it is not, at least where we live,” she explained.
“We would basically need to count dimes when grocery shopping, probably would not be able to afford gas to move by car freely, wouldn’t be able to pay for health insurance and other things I consider essential like a nanny/childcare after maternity leave ends.”
She’s tried to bring up her concerns about their finances, suggesting that they track their monthly expenses and spending on a spreadsheet.
Her boyfriend didn’t think this idea made sense because there was crossover with some of their family members paying some of their bills.
Because of this, he argued that they have no way of accurately predicting how much money they’d need to save for their wedding and starting a life of financial independence.
Another concern of hers is how much of the labor her boyfriend would expect her to do at home if they got married.
If her boyfriend never furthers his career, she would be the breadwinner for their family, but it would obviously be incredibly stressful for her to do all of the housework on top of balancing a career. This doesn’t seem fair to her.
Now, she’s deeply worried that her boyfriend’s lack of motivation in regard to his career will negatively affect their future as a couple.
If they got married and her boyfriend stayed the way he was, she wondered if their marriage would last. Or she envisioned the possibility that they would struggle with money and her love for him would diminish over time.
“I’m afraid I’m being too greedy, selfish, or cruel. I truly love him, but I’m afraid of being poor beside him and ending up unhappy,” she shared.
She knows that her income will increase over time as she furthers her career, but she’s concerned that her boyfriend doesn’t seem to understand how important it is for them to earn enough money to support the family they’ve been dreaming about building together.
What advice would you give her?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
More About:Relationships