Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My wife is a highly educated super smart professional who works as a researcher at a Academic Think Tank. I work as an Instructor at a college. We both are super curious, intellectual, and committed to learning, creativity and our careers.
I came from a highly educated intellectual family who lived a very white collar lifestyle. On the other hand my wife grew up in a super blue collar working class factory town (Oil City PA). No one else in her large Catholic Family continued their education since High School and all of them work at a factory or fast food jobs. (All making under $9 an hour in their 30s.) Her Mom and Dad are as working class as can be.
While there is nothing wrong with being low skilled working class, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the impact of living in this type of environment had on my wife and even with her current high level job and education she is still deep down a blue collar working class person in her attitudes and personality.
I just can't get over her family. Their diction, choice of words, interests, lack of knowledge about basic things and finally the fact that they don't read anything or follow current events.
Has anyone else's marriage been turned upside down because of the blue collar white collar differences in lifestyle and personality?
My wife is a highly educated super smart professional who works as a researcher at a Academic Think Tank. I work as an Instructor at a college. We both are super curious, intellectual, and committed to learning, creativity and our careers.
I came from a highly educated intellectual family who lived a very white collar lifestyle. On the other hand my wife grew up in a super blue collar working class factory town (Oil City PA). No one else in her large Catholic Family continued their education since High School and all of them work at a factory or fast food jobs. (All making under $9 an hour in their 30s.) Her Mom and Dad are as working class as can be.
While there is nothing wrong with being low skilled working class, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the impact of living in this type of environment had on my wife and even with her current high level job and education she is still deep down a blue collar working class person in her attitudes and personality.
I just can't get over her family. Their diction, choice of words, interests, lack of knowledge about basic things and finally the fact that they don't read anything or follow current events.
Has anyone else's marriage been turned upside down because of the blue collar white collar differences in lifestyle and personality?
A socially inept snob (in their eyes)
So....you happened to be driving though PA on your way to a business meeting in NY and met you wife working at a truck stop??? She rode off with you to NY to get married?
I understand to some extent the contrast you are experiencing with your in-laws compared to your own background. I come from more of a white colar background, and my wife and I are both college educated and business professionals. However, her parents are working class (factory career backgrounds) and only one of her six siblings has a college degree.
Still, it does not cause stress or problems in our marriage at all. They are wonderful people! I really like them and they seem to really like me! What their job or income is, or what mine is makes no difference.
I am curious about two things.
1) you said she is still very working class in nature despite her intellectual side. What do you mean by that? Also, is she not meeting an expectation of yours? Or are you disappointed in this?
2) How is her family interfering in your marriage? Maybe they are not as intellectual or current in some areas as you, but they must be failing to meet some expectation or actively causing trouble to interfere?
I was routinely dismissed, ignored, and mocked by my ex's family, who considered themselves to be a class above due to profession (those who worked were medical professionals and attorneys, those who didn't were doctors' wives and lawyers' wives/professional country club loiterers/their small city's equivalent of "socialites" (in their own eyes, at least, if nobody else's).
I grew up rurally, in an agricultural community, and am a teacher. My parents ran a small mom n' pop business (carpentry) and struggled financially. Both are intelligent and educated, but my family was seen as rural, hick-ish, and uncultured, and by extension, so was I. I and all my siblings have bachelor's and/or graduate degrees from demanding academic programs.
The irony, of course, is that my ex's wealthy, white collar family was and is severely lacking in class, and that I am more highly educated and went to better schools than my ex did, have traveled the world when my ex has had only the most provincial, insular experiences, and have had far more cultural exposure than any of them have ever had (for the most part, they never met a country club bar or wine bistro they didn't like, and that's the zenith of their cultural exposure). But a pretentious snob's a pretentious snob, no matter what the reality of a situation is.
The 'problem' if there actually is one is probably more in your 'white collar' head, than anywhere else. Why would you marry someone without first telling them you are a snob who expects everything in your life to be perfect? I can't believe people are so damn uppity they think like you do...
I just can't get over her family. Their diction, choice of words, interests, lack of knowledge about basic things and finally the fact that they don't read anything or follow current events.
Other than people who litter, there's arent too many people on this planet that disgust me more than snobs such as yourself. You need a good, hard punch in the face.
I also question the intellectualism of the OP, given the Randomly and incorrectly capitalized Words in Sentences throughout the Original Post. It seems like a person whose writing needs such work ought not comment on the perceived intellectual bent of others.
I don't know, it just seems kind of like a lack of knowledge about basic things, to me.
It sounds like your wife's family, and maybe some of her ways, are triggering you. By that I mean that they are bringing to your awareness feelings that you had before you met her, but were probably not conscious of, feelings that are connected to issues you need to work on.
Counselors and therapists have years of training in how to guide their clients in this work. Go for it -- as a side effect, you will become a much happier person.
When there is conversation in the family gatherings I have been to with my wife's family (99% of the time we just watch TV), it is about how terrible management or white collar people are who don't deserve to be making good money and aren't really working when they sit in an office doing research (directed by her family towards my wife) and they tell me college is a waste of time (directed at me the College Instructor).
So there is plenty of snobbery directed at white collar people from working class people too.
FYI: I had not met the family before we got married because we were living overseas and they don't believe Americans should travel overseas.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
