Dear Prudence: My Girlfriend is Unempathetic

[minoanmiss]

My Rich Girlfriend Has Some Really Weird Ideas About How Life Works.

Q. Burst the Bubble: I love my girlfriend but she grew up in an upper-class bubble where being poor meant missing the yearly family vacation. I grew up without running water for several years. We talked and talked and talked about our life experiences and our expectations about our future together, but sometimes her inability to empathize at all just catches me off guard.

I have a co-worker who is a single mom with two disabled sons. I talked to my girlfriend about her troubles getting her super to fix her AC; my girlfriend’s response was that my co-worker should “just move then.” I had to bite my tongue and ask her with what money? Was she going to pay? The same issue keeps cropping up. It is like my girlfriend can’t imagine any other worldview but cookie-cutter suburbia.

She even went so far as to argue with me that it is “illegal” for mixed-sex siblings to share a room. I shared a room with my two older sisters and my grandmother once we moved into a real house. It was a two-bedroom house with my other grandparents taking the other room and my parents on the pull-out couch. She knew this but “forgot” in the heat of the moment.

My parents and grandparents lived for my sisters and me. They sacrificed years of their lives to give us a chance to do better. My sisters and I all graduated college. My grandfather and father both dropped out of high school to support their families. I don’t know how to get around this issue. Ninety nine percent of the time we agree on everything. Advice, please?

A: You’ve introduced this as an issue related to how your girlfriend grew up, but you characterized it much more accurately when you said “inability to empathize.” This isn’t about family backgrounds. Plenty of people who were raised wealthy have managed to open their minds to the experiences of those who are less fortunate. I think the way she continues to “forget” that some people aren’t rich (and then judge their life choices) speaks to her character, and it’s not something that’s likely to change. I don’t have the whole picture, but unless there’s something I’m missing—like her huge donations to charity or tireless work for the local mutual aid organization—you should put a big note in her relationship HR file that says “can’t be bothered to care at all about the lives of people who aren’t as lucky as she is.”