Boyfriend’s lack of job, money raising concerns about future

Dear Carolyn: I have been with my boyfriend for a little more than a year and everything’s been great. Our relationship, overall, is healthy.

But recently I have started noticing a growing resentment toward my boyfriend, because I’m always paying for most things. When we go out to the movies he’ll pay for his ticket and I’ll pay for my ticket, the snacks, and the food if we go out to eat afterward because he doesn’t have any more money.

One time he asked if I wanted to eat at McDonald’s, so I assumed he was going to pay and left my wallet at home. When we got there he realized he only had $3 and asked whether I had brought my wallet.

He doesn’t have a job, and when he looks for one he doesn’t try very hard, it seems. He says no one wants him because he doesn’t have experience nor a car, but he doesn’t bother to go job-hunting.

He has a car, but he lost the key to it about a year ago and it doesn’t work anymore because it has been sitting in his driveway. Instead of saving up his money, he spends it on weed.

This has been going on since the beginning, but it just started bothering me and it’s starting to affect our relationship. I do love him and I don’t expect him to pay for everything all the time, but it would be nice if he would take me out on a date at least once where he pays for everything without worrying whether he’ll have enough money.

I have brought it up to him and he was very understanding and said he’d work hard to change, but I feel that, until he finds a job, this resentment will keep growing. Am I shallow for this?

Your boyfriend is a loving, caring, understanding person who functions.

And no, it is not “shallow” of you to regard it as a setback that his car is a driveway ornament and being high is his top priority. Your misgivings are the most promising thing about your letter, because the rest has me afraid.

Why are you doubting yourself? Why so little respect for your own feelings?

Why are you backpedaling on legitimate concerns?: “I don’t expect him to pay for everything all the time ...?” Did you really proofread your letter and worry readers would think you were greedy, for thinking it might be nice if your boyfriend invited you to McDinner only if he had the money to pay for it?

And why is your main concern about this (“healthy”?) relationship that he doesn’t pay for popcorn at the movies? It’s like saying patients’ main problem with stage 4 cancer is that their hats no longer fit.

I’ll be the first to agree that greatness takes many forms, and if your boyfriend is in possession of such greatness of companionship, moral support, affection and burdensome-chore completion that having to be his money source is totally worth it to you, then I’d say to embrace him as-is and go in peace.

But your resentment is telling you that you’re not getting enough out of this pairing to justify what you’re putting into it. And the only answer to that is to listen carefully to what your better judgment is trying to say.