Upper Middle Class is more expansive, not because they’re “better” people but because they have more resources so survival isn’t absorbing 50% or more of their time and attention. There’s time for Food, Art, Reading, Hobbies, Civic Activities, Politics, Organized Religion, Adult School/Further Education, School for Children, After School Activities, Sports, Work, Multiple Relationships—Private, Personal, Family, Friendship, Professional, Networking, Exploring Identity/Sex/Sexuality, Spirituality, Health—Gym, yoga, doctors, homeopathic remedies and activities, Travel, Life Planning, Retirement Planning.
You can see how this will overwhelm your mate because there’s so much to do in middle class and higher, so many more responsibilities. The class social system maintenance is almost a job unto itself. This will make no sense to him because he’s not been on the train for twenty years so he won’t comprehend how all of these activities and connections make the train (your life) move better, faster, deeper, present more opportunities for yourself, children, a partner. A lot of your disagreements will be over the allotment of time to “them” and to “him”. His activities and interests, far more constrained due to finances will constitute more of his identity while the things you’re used to will be about the expansion of identity. It seems close but it’s vastly different.
Here’s a poverty/working class question I’ve been asked by past dates/partners:
“Why do you write so much?”
“Because I like it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Why you write so much. Let’s watch TV.”
Now if I add that I publish and I get paid for my work, it edges a bit closer to making sense but my stepfather—-whom was from poverty and my mother wasn’t when they met, couldn’t understand where ALL the writer money was. How I could have all of these endeavors, a TV show, books, blogs, videos and I wasn’t Tyler Perry. Why was I still teaching if I didn’t have to why was I going to school for advanced degrees if I had survival money from media? Couldn’t I just go on Shark Tank and make a deal, make more money and then take care of him/them? He also assumed that what was his was his, my mother was to be shared and mine was to be shared. Poverty is egalitarian in some ways, whims in others, selfish and greedy in others. Poor people spend so much time thinking about money that it warps them. No one ever talks about this. It makes poor people shift their integrity, lower their ethics but not increase their productivity. It’s ironic and contradictory.
What’s missing in the lower class mental structure is meaning, significance in one’s life to do or create something. They may feel it but it’s rarely encouraged outside of basic school unless money can directly be made from it. Most drug dealers, hustlers, etc are extremely creative people but all the tools they have access to are illicit so crime becomes a form of creativity. Art is of course inherently possible to be an interest of the poor but it requires schooling, time, resources, materials to get good at which isn’t always available so the default is TV and video games.
Your families will clash because one will be about hiring someone to cook, prepare and bring the main dishes and the other will do it themselves and think it’s impersonal to hire someone. The wedding will be a NATO negotiation. And your family’s taste will always seem snobby, too much, extra, airs. Not because your family has done anything wrong but because higher social class seeks convenience and uses resources to establish it. It trusts that someone knows better and measures time to learn how to make lace doilies for a wedding table over going online and purchasing two hundred in an hours time. This means there are things you do, ways you buy food, travel, etc. that example this “convenience thinking” that he’s a;ready noticed but hasn’t directly chalked up to social class——because that’s an advanced analysis of personality and social being. He just thinks you’re different, weird, odd. Love glosses over until the infatuation period ends then your insistence on organic food when the food right next to it will be seen as blowing the budget.
What you want in life will start falling under the limits of what he can afford and provide because he may pridefully not want to be in social or economic out care to your family. To be indebted to them. He will view money differently. The higher classes view it as a tool to be used, to organize, to multiply, to project and propel into the future and into controllable assets. He’ll see it to pay bills and have fun then go get some more when that runs out. That’s a huge contextual difference.
Sex and fidelity will men different things as extra social time away will be seen as form of cheating if he’s not present, and maybe if he is. You’ll see in his sphere that sex is more available because marital/partnership bonds are less respected. It’s less respected because men are contextualized in two static terms lover or fighter. You’re asking him to create wholesale a third one, partner. He has been raised with rules about monogamy that are strict for women but extremely loose for men.
A great book that I regularly teach in classes to help students understand social class in love is Crossing The Tracks for Love. It clarifies the fights and experiences at every level of a relationship.
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