Single mom, her traditional fiancé disagree over finances

DEAR CAROLYN: I am a longtime single mom, professional and primary breadwinner. I am engaged to a wonderfully kind but terribly old-fashioned man who begrudgingly accepts that I’m a higher earner.

I recently lost my job and suffer from several disabling conditions, like anxiety and PTSD. Our combined kids are young adults (17-21), and my house is their home base.

I know a job offer is imminent. A person at my church has given me money to help me during this transition. They told me to “keep it between us,” which I should have done. I told my fiancé. He said, “Do whatever you want, but I would never take money from someone at church,” and reacted very strongly about it.

I think I’ll accept the gift and remain silent to the fiancé. It’s not optional that I need financial help, and he is unable to provide any. What say ye? — Anonymous

DEAR READER: I don’t accept his begrudging acceptance. That’s what I say.

Your question is about the money, I know, not this. But the money will have been accepted or not — and probably your “imminent” job offer, too — by the time this column sees daylight, so for my purposes, it’s not relevant.

The relationship problem beneath the money-acceptance problem, however, is that you have significant disagreement between you and the man you’re about to marry over a matter of consequence, and that remains office-pacingly, key-mashingly relevant unless you happen to have dissolved the engagement since writing your letter to me. Or he has somehow extracted his head from his [“traditions”].

You are single, you created a home, reared children to young adulthood mostly or entirely on your own, have professional credentials, are a breadwinner, have held yourself together in the face of “several disabling conditions,” and default to honesty even knowing it’s the harder path.

In other words, you deserve a whole lot more than grudging freaking acceptance of who you are and what you’ve accomplished.

You deserve someone who doesn’t see your life’s résumé as against his beliefs.

Since we’re talking about beliefs: My core belief is that I have no standing to say what’s right for you, be it kind or grudging or otherwise. So if your life with your fiancé is the life you want, without reservations based in beliefs or anything else, then ignore all of the above with my sincerest support.

But if the current situation does have you rethinking this fundamental piece of your relationship, then you will also likely be tempted to turn away from such an uncomfortable reckoning in favor of keeping the peace. Don’t. That’s all I’m saying. Problems chafe more with marriage.

So answer every hard question you have to your own satisfaction before taking so much as another half-step on this path. If you don’t have counseling support for your health conditions, then the

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — findtreatment.gov — can help you find care.

Couples are going to disagree, even about big things. But if an effort to resolve your differences includes your “kind” partner holding an “I would never …” over your head, then the disagreement goes beyond any given issue and into what each of you thinks is an acceptable way to view and treat people you love.