We've been together about 2 years and things are good. He's a high school teacher in Oakland, I'm a product manager at a tech company in San Francisco. I make like $188k, he makes around $71k. We've never talked about the real numbers. Not once.
It didn't matter at first. It kind of still doesn't? But we started talking about getting engaged and last month his lease came up and suddenly it felt like it mattered a lot. My mom went through a pretty bad divorce when I was in college and one of the things she always said was that she wished they'd talked about money before they got married. Not in a scary way, just like. talked about it. I think about that more than I want to admit. So last month when he brought up maybe moving in together I got kind of quiet. He noticed. He asked if something was wrong and I said no and changed the subject. Which wasn't fair to him but I didn't know what to say. The thing is I don't even know what I'm worried about. I think I'm scared of making him feel like less of a partner. Like if I bring up the gap it suddenly becomes a thing that lives in the relationship forever. He's never once made me feel like the money is weird. I'm the one making it weird by not saying anything. My best friend says just have the conversation, she did it with her husband before they got married and yeah it was uncomfortable but they figured it out. My sister thinks bringing it up at all sends the wrong message, like I'm already planning for things to fall apart. I don't know who's right. I don't know if I'm overthinking this or if I'm the only one thinking about it at all. We're talking about combining our lives and I keep changing the subject every time it gets close.
