preamble

grew up lower middle class, moved to the projects during recession, close to homelessness couple times in childhood. hs moved to suburbs with parents having decent, but still blue collar, jobs with great insurance.

scholarship kid, got into a prestigous t30 east coast school, travelled a lot with said scholarship. 1 year of doing shitty restauraunt jobs after graduation, got into a lucrative field, high ceilinng, good starting salary with great benefits.

saying all this to say, i've been in a couple of relationships where i've kinda been treated as a class traitor. since college, whenever i date someone from the same socio-economic background as me, i often feel as if i'm treated as such. i've had partners and exes ridicule me for being in social circles with people who come from much greater socioeconomic bakcgrounds than us.

now that i'm older and work in public service, directly helping people facing homelessness, i don't really care about this as much as i used to. but it still kinda irks me that anytime i'm in a relationship with someone from a similar background, i feel an implicit and sometimes explicit critique of my character for my upward social mobility. sometimes i feel like it's easier for me bc i'm a man and i try to recognize/reconcile with this reality, but it just bothers me.

when i'm in relationships with people wealthier than me, it's not really an issue and we can often have productive conversations about our differences and perspectives.

not really looking for advice, just wondering if anyone else dealt with this, probably gonna delete later but idk