[pyrogen]

Aelle, that's very interesting. I'll google, I want to learn more about the "x" class.

I've had this frustration... when I get involved with people who are *culturally* in sync with me... often they have a lot of expectations and assumptions of privilege. Many of their political views, even, will come out of these assumptions.

I just did not grow up with that kind of privilege. Where this can play out in nightmarish fashion is when you're planning a wedding... thinking about my relationship with my ex husband. His family was very resentful that my family didn't have any money and couldn't afford a wedding. But they expected a big wedding nonetheless. And it came out of my ex husband's savings. To please his family. And he resented ME for that. He also was very pro-public-schooling and totally dug in about this. I'm not, because of having grown up in "bad" areas that had "bad" schools. The idea that you can actually get an education from a public school, surprises and amazes me. Another thing we often got into arguments about, had to do with his anti-military leanings. Um, practically my whole family is either 1) a veteran 2) married to a veteran or active duty person or 3) on active duty?

He and I had every academic/intellectual thing in common, but we were opposed on practically every issue that would constitute a hill either of us would die on.

And I tend to be just a little more conservative than a lot of the "educated/academic" type of people.

After him, I vowed to get with someone who would "get it" next time... so I got with someone from a working class background, who was just as poor as me. Oh, that was candied hell on a stick. He felt like I wasted my time with all the stuff I'm into. All of our time was spent focused on lower-heirarchy needs. It became worse after we moved into a fixer-upper house... his first home was a great point of pride for him, but to me, it was something time consuming that would be taken away from developing the mind. We had totally different ideas about what we wanted to share with a family and as a relationship, because of different class backgrounds. Totally different love languages.

I turned away from an academic focus while with him, to become strictly vocationally oriented and grounded, and I TRIED to be more working class, and I was totally miserable... I feel like I totally lost myself with him. Life was supposed to revolve around work, and it was acceptable to hate work, because after all, most Americans hate their jobs, right? And there's something wrong with me if I expect to actually get pleasure out of my day to day life?

This will probably give any TV watchers a laugh - I finally broke up with him after the episode of CSI where Grissom left the team to go be with Sara in the jungles of Costa Rica. I literally broke down in tears after that, because that's closer to what I have always envisioned of love... not working two jobs, spending all of free time fixing a house, and an endless parade of BBQs with exactly the same friends, every weekend, the rest of my life. My ex would probably see me as horribly selfish, but I also see it as a good thing that I left him to free him up for someone who shares his vision of life.

My most recent relationship attempt after him - screwing this up feels like such a loss to me (he was almost too good of a fit on paper - I got a little too excited about him and scared him off) - was with someone who had an advanced degree and heavily academically inclined but worked his way through school, by working in a factory. This really seemed like the perfect mix for me. That's really the kind of blend I need in a partner... I need them to be very higher-Maslow-needs oriented (focused on learning and on personal development), but they have to know how the other half lives.

One reason I wouldn't get with a culturally poor person (as opposed to someone educated but in a low paid field) is because poor people *think* like poor people, and this colors *everything*. They don't envision the future beyond that pension plan. Everything is extremely day to day. They think things can never be better, and they think very small, and they won't emotionally support you if you have bigger ideas, because they want to drag everyone down to their level of misery. The way I was raised - was to believe that as long as you keep learning, anything is possible. My parents didn't stay poor - they just succeeded later in life. They still had to have the vision to do this. They never told me anything was impossible. If I announced (at 35, with health issues) that I wanted to be an astronaut, they would tell me, "Go for it! I'm proud of you!" while thinking, well, ok, as a sick 35 year old, she might not become an astronaut, but she'll probably end up a space scientist working for NASA out of all that hard work.

My parents were/are "shoot for the stars, you might land on the moon". Whereas a lot of working class people tend to be very, "Stay on Earth, it's secure here, it's scary and risky up there". They aren't personally acquainted with anyone who does anything but some "practical", "safe" job, so to them, it doesn't exist.

A lot of immigrant families tend to be this way, too... can't tell you how many of my Asian friends really wanted to be anthropologists or artists or such, but the family pressure to be in a "safe" field is impossible to overcome. In this way, those "safe" fields of medicine, engineering and management, can be like a better-paid version of the working class.

Which is ridiculous, because in any recession, there are few "safe" fields. Plenty of those people in "safe" professions are getting laid off, while the risk takers are laughing.

I'm sorry to hijack the thread. This just illustrates (I feel) several of the things that can come up when you get with someone who is from too different of a socioeconomic background.

To make a long story short: a poor person from "old money" has more in common with a rich person from "old money" than the same poor person has in common with another poor person who is from a poor background.

Class is a lot more than simply money, it's a whole set of attitudes, wishes, goals, and expectations - it's a worldview. For many people who come from generations of poverty, or from a working class background, vision and hope is beat out of them from day one and they simply may have too much to overcome to begin to be positive-thinking people.