Hi!
So.. me and my bf have been together for two and a half years. Living together for a year. Our relationship is not perfect but we try to resolve our problems together and overall I would say everything works.
Except when we have to deal with money.
For context as I think this might be really important- I come from a very stable family and my parents adore each other very much. Even after being together for 35 years. My dad makes probably twice as much as my mom and from what I know they use “his” account for literally everything. My mom also has her separate account where some of her money goes. Anyway the point is I have been raised in a household where everything was shared and no one thought of the income as separate.
Now my bf had divorced parents and on top of that they both remarried and divorced again. From what I gathered this has been a huge issue and obviously impacted him when he was a kid. I am always patient with him and try to navigate his behaviour when he behaves well “solo” rather than a team player in our relationship.
Also – I am employed but during this situation I was just in between jobs (for literally like a month). Our finances are that we go pretty much 50/50. Rent is 50/50 and groceries are like 45/55 (and this was actually also a fight when I said I simply feel like paying 50/50 is not fair since he eats 2/3 of our meals).
He makes normally 2x as much as I do. His salary fluctuates so it might be sometimes more than that but I’d say that’s the base. I do all the chores at home. I cook, bake, clean, take care of our cat.
The issue occurred around three months ago when we moved in to our new apartment. It is still rental tho, not ours. His parents gifted us 3K to do whatever we need to do.
I already bought a pretty expensive mattress – futon – which he demanded. Not that I buy it but that he does not want any other mattress and since I know he would otherwise sleep on the floor I agreed.
He then bought a bed frame (I was so happy because it meant we could have it right away and would not have to save up for it) which cost probably around 1,5K.
Then we started to buy other – small things. Like kitchen utensils, the vacuum, the first big round of groceries, glassware, kettle and such. No furniture was needed other than the bed because the apartment was already furnished. So honestly we just bought the small necessities.
I felt weird as I was always paying for that and he just transferred half of the money but never offered to pay for it all straight away with the money his parents got us. I also paid for most of our decorations, pillows and such as I felt like I was the one wanting to have it nice so I never really asked him to pay for any of those.
At one point it just felt straight out weird. I must say I don’t think I handled the situation/confrontation well at that time so I do not really want to go in depth but I know I did not use the right approach and apologized for that. However afterwards when he calmed down a bit I asked about the money. Not in a way like: Why don’t you ever use the remaining 1,5K or something. I just pointed out it feels really strange that he did not use any of it for the things we needed.
(I also felt sad as I was not in a great financial situation as he is and thought using his parents money would help me not be burdened during the unemployment period).
He said he paid his part of the security deposit with the rest of the money and I quote “I have to make myself happy as well, no?”
It’s been a while now but I still feel extremely contradicted as to whether my feelings about this were correct or if I overreacted and there is no place for me to complain.