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Me [28/F] with my [27/M] BF of 5 yrs - he is obsessed with podcasts and can't hold down a job, but thinks I am shallow and bourgeoise. I don't know what to do. Relationships (self.relationships) submitted 6 hours ago * (last edited 55 minutes ago) by anotherthrowaway2222 My boyfriend and I have been dating for about 5 years. We get along very well and he is very kind, caring, sweet, our sex life is great, we rarely ever have serious fights, etc. When we met just after graduating, we were both underemployed creative types with somewhat useless art-school degrees; since then some combination of luck and hard work on my behalf has meant that I started to have a decent career (marketing for a tech company) and now make a decent salary (~$65k.) I am a photographer on the side which is what I (stupidly) went to school for, but I don't mind my day work, and I think I am lucky to have a good work/life balance. I don't know if I will ever make good money on my creative pursuits but I am happy I still get to do that on the side and I generally like my day job well enough. My boyfriend, however, has just been temping since he graduated 5 years ago, but very rarely gets more than a few days here or there. He works on some creative projects (painting & sometimes writing), but never seems to finish anything and does not make any money off it. He also recently got taken off his parents' health insurance, so he has none, which worries me as much of his family is diabetic and he has had some health issues in the past. His parents are pretty wealthy and will help him out in a pinch with things like rent and health expenses. (I do not have this luxury, my parents do not have money. His family isn't, like, crazy loaded but they have a nice house and go on loads of vacations and his parents drive BMWs and give him any money he asks for, etc.) For a while this didn't really bother me-again, we were both recent art school grads when we started dating, being broke is kind of par for the course-but since we've moved in together 2yrs ago, it has started to bother me. We were happy when we were both young and broke, but I am getting to a point where I would like to do things like go on a vacation or buy kitchen chairs instead of sitting on apple crates. It would make me feel great if he was able to contribute to things like this as well. But I feel very bad because he doesn't seem to care about these things and always says I am being very bourgeoise.

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I also would like to (eventually) have a family, and it's starting to worry me a little bit that if I were to ever get pregnant, I would have to worry about being the breadwinner. He doesn't really help much around the house and doesn't know how to cook, so I admit I am skeptical of what he would contribute in a family situation. He also often says that he wants to get married, but that it's understandably hard to deal with things like planning a wedding/getting a ring when he doesn't have an income and that he just wants to wait until things improve before he starts thinking about those kinds of details. I guess this makes sense, but I'm not the sort to be impressed by fancy jewelry or a big ceremony-honestly, thrift store rings and a little party with friends would make me happy-but it seems to worry him, so I now avoid the topic. These conversations have been exacerbated in recent months due to politics. He and I are both left-leaning people, but he recently has become very obsessed with a series of popular far-left podcasts, and while I don't disagree with much of their politics I find them very abrasive, and I find him constantly parroting them back at me. It feels like every conversation now begins with "Well today on CTH so-and-so said," and every serious conversation about money or healthcare or rent or work ends in "The spineless Democrats couldn't commit to actual socialist change and Obamacare didn't do enough to make healthcare accessible, I can't possibly get health insurance" or "Neoliberalism has just totally f----- the job market, what do you want from me? Until the state actually makes an investment in the people, it's basically impossible," or whatever. These don't devolve into crazy screaming matches or anything, but it just is starting to bum me out that any conversation I try to have that involves any sort of financial/family/health planning just always gets shut down with a snide remark about how the system is f----- and there's nothing he can do. I also find it annoying that he had little-to-no interest in politics before this and was not at all politically active; he's honestly not even registered to vote. Regardless of your political leaning left or right, I find it a little upsetting to be lectured by anyone who refuses to participate in the system because "it's so broken." (I am not an especially outspoken person but I do vote in local and national elections, volunteer in my community, and regularly give money to causes and charities I care about.)
I feel s----- because he thinks I'm being very bourgeoise and making too much of a big deal over money, which is the last thing I want to do. But it's starting to make me feel crazy. I also sometimes get the feeling that he resents me for "selling out" or something like that-that I'm "part of the problem" because I have a corporate day job. On top of that, I think I sometimes feel resentful since as a white dude who comes from a lot of money, I feel that life has given him more opportunities than me (child of immigrants & female) and it frustrates me-I know that's not always just how the system works, but it really does feel that I have had to work much harder for many things. I am starting to feel that he is just repeating these political things as a way to avoid the sorts of dull and banal adult conversations one has to have about things like money and the future and commitment, but I know he thinks that I am just not politically informed enough and that I "follow the rules" too much. But I also worry that maybe I AM just being shallow and placing unreasonable expectations upon him. I feel really guilty, but I also don't think it's TOTALLY unreasonable for me to have some concerns here. What should I do? Am I not being understanding enough of his situation? TL;DR: It is starting to bother me that after 5 years, my boyfriend hasn't really gotten a real job or insurance and turns any conversation about these things into politics. I feel badly because he thinks I am just being very bourgeoise, but this also is starting to feel like an excuse to me, and that he's just parroting back some of the things he reads/listens to. I am not really sure how to broach this, and I'm also worried that maybe I AM being crazy and shallow. Am I in the wrong here? What should I do? edit: typos and removed some accidentally kind of identifying information (names)
Fascists then Fascists now Helicopter Ride!!!!! Leftists make bad arguments durr FIR FIQ TEEEESTS "...all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice.... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." -Karl Marx
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Uploaded May 17, 2023 at 12:46PM EDT

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Dirtbag Left

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