This one has me honestly stumped and it's wild. The source was obviously Reddit although I found it on Instagram. As always click on the pictures to engorge them if you can't read them.
I'm not going to put any of the initial reactions to this, although the consensus was that he wasn't an asshole, because the opinions of the internet were literally all over the place.
For me personally it raises so many more questions than it answers. The first being the obvious one that he's been able to suddenly come up with the funds for his other half's bills with no explanation of where he got the money and she's not asking. Even though you would obviously exercise some caution about telling people about your finances, my impression is that he's being at least secretive about it. And why isn't his good fortune showing in his life style? How is it even possible that he's been extremely fortunate in life and she isn't able to see that in any way? I don't think he answered the question but I wonder what culture he comes from because literally telling your fiancée nothing about your finances until after you're married is utterly bizarre. It's also looking for trouble, because you would want to know about that before getting married, surely.
It's also apparent that they are not made for each other in other ways because he saw her reaction to this as giving him the 'silent treatment'. She also didn't like that he posted this on Reddit.
Although these people provide the material for me to opine about their lives, as a general rule I think someone who has to ask advice on Reddit when he has upset you by being basically secretive about where the money comes from, may not have the emotional literacy at that point to undertake marriage. And then to kick off the conversation by showing her the Reddit comments is just WTF.
However I find her as peculiar as I do him.
Yes it's unusual to manage to save up $160,000 and I'd be asking where it came from, it also isn't actually a huge sum of money. I have no idea whether it would even buy a decent house in the US but suspect it wouldn't. He's talking about this sum as if it's untold riches, but so is she which makes me wonder how naive she is.
I'm very wary of her reaction to this, that it made her feel inadequate. WTF is going on in this relationship? It's exhausting just reading about it.
My conclusion would be that obviously if they still see something each other (and strangely what they see doesn't come across in this post) they should start with some kind of counselling to make sure they're both on the same page and stop the relationship being this dramatic.
However my personal opinion is that they're not made for each other: the way of communicating drives her up the wall, he has to ask outside their partnership for help, her reaction to this annoys him, she (IMO) over-reacts by feeling inadequate at this. Phew, it's exhausting.
I don't see any big red flags with the relationship. They've been dating for two years before considering marriage and they're at the ages where people really start to understand who they are and what they want from life. We all come to relationships with baggage. Some more than others. I think they've had some really healthy dialogue here. Asking Reddit about relationships is a Millennial thing to do, but that doesn't make it wrong, and by telling her about the Reddit post it offered more opportunity for dialogue. I think they should not feel rushed to marry and make their own timeline. The dialogue doesn't stop once you marry, it's not a finish line, it's a transom from one room in your brain to another.
ReplyDeleteNo Assholes here. Normal people working through relationship communications. My spouse wasn't a very good communicator when we first met, I imagine he came off as aloof to most people. It was really nice when he was first promoted to manager (15 years ago) and told me I made that possible because I made him a better communicator.
Yes that is so nice!
DeleteThank you for an interesting perspective. Perhaps it says something about me that the prospect of working through normal communication problems makes me want to hide under the bed far more than the prospect of dealing with a raging sociopath does!
You're welcome, dear! Working through the mundane things in life is actually the hardest part, I think. We get conditioned by society (media and marketing mostly) to expect more drama about things. I still get plenty of drama in my life that I didn't ask for! LOL
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