Poor people who have dated rich people, what did you learn?

The Background and The Breakup Plan

My boyfriend’s mom called me an educated peasant in the bathroom after I defended public schools at their family dinner. When I finally opened up to him about what I heard, he laughed coldly and said, “You embarrassed my family”. I stayed silent.

That was three months ago. This morning, he was standing outside my apartment in tears.

My boyfriend was born into third generational wealth. Meanwhile, I grew up in Tent City on Skidro.

I still don’t know who my parents are or what they look like. But with the help of a few right turns in life, I managed to work my way up at a door to door sales job and rent my first apartment.

My boyfriend was actually the first one to approach me in my local Starbucks. He smelled like Tom Ford cologne, wore an expensive suit, gold watch, very put together.

I honestly expected us not to get along because of how obviously different our backgrounds were, but we yapped for almost an hour straight, and he even made me laugh. Not the forced smile laugh, but a real wholesome one.

After that, we went on more dates, and I slowly found myself falling in love. I tried to savor every moment we shared because I assumed when I told him about my upbringing and my lack of formal education, he would instantly turn his nose, but he didn’t.

“Wow, so you really worked your way up”. “You know, that’s really impressive”.

I didn’t detect any hint of untruthfulness or entitlement in his voice. Instantly, my walls went down.

I was ready to marry that man. From there, I started accepting his invites to his lavish parties and high society events.

It was like a whole new world. Parents were genuinely stressing about whether they should pay for their kids to attend Yale or Harvard.

Others were discussing the pros and cons of going to Santorini or the Canary Islands for summer. I knew that none of them would even be able to fathom the fact that I practically spent my entire childhood daydreaming about having enough food to eat, debating whether I should skip lunch or if I should skip dinner.

Needless to say, I had no contribution to their discussions until the topic of politics came up. There was a very heated conversation going on at the other end of the table.

Suddenly, the woman very loudly exclaimed, “Ugh, public schools shouldn’t even exist”. “If you can’t afford real education, then I don’t see why you should even be allowed to be part of society”.

And instead of anyone calling her out on her BS, they started nodding their heads like it was the most reasonable opinion in the world, like it was something they had discussed hundreds of times before. I just bit my tongue.

But then my boyfriend’s mom said, “Right, like if you can’t afford food, maybe that’s nature’s way of saying you shouldn’t be here”. I took a deep breath and said, “I mean, these are all great points, but don’t you think some people just need extra help getting back on their feet?”.

The entire table went silent. I even heard a few audible gasps.

My boyfriend looked wideeyed and extremely shocked. I twirled my peas around my plate with my fork.

“But I mean, still, the poor should be kissing our feet and thanking us for all we do for them,” I said, trying to save myself from being noticed as an outsider. Everyone immediately broke back into clamor about how much they hated anyone who wasn’t them.

I really thought it was a good save until I excused myself to the bathroom and closed the stall door. That’s when my boyfriend’s mother and sister walked in.

“Did you hear what William’s girlfriend said?”. “Gh”.

“Don’t get me started,” his mom replied. “He had warned us that she was from the gutter, but I didn’t know she was an educated peasant, too”.

“I hope he realizes that she’s nothing but a poverty project soon and dumps her”. I stopped listening after that.

I still don’t know if they knew I was in the stall. But I was humiliated.

As soon as they left, I called for an Uber home. The last thing I wanted was to face his family again.

But I didn’t break up with my boyfriend. In fact, I never told William about what I’d heard because he made me think that he loved me.

So now I was going to make him think that I still loved him. From there, I showed up to every single event.

I learned everything I could about networking and the ropes of high society. Soon, I became the number one seller of my door-to-door sales job and was on track to earning six figures a year.

I was making the company so much money that they even planned an event just to honor me. Nothing as lavish as the ones my boyfriend attended, but still a pretty big deal.

So, I invited William and insisted that his entire family come. I also may have lied about it being a red carpet and black tie event.

The feeling of me getting on stage was exhilarating and made even better by the fact that whenever I looked over at my boyfriend and his family, they looked disgusted. They spent the entire evening fake smiling and whispering to each other.

I was on the way home when I got the call. My boyfriend had broken up with me.

His excuse, things just weren’t the same anymore. I laughed and our conversation only lasted 2 minutes.

I was satisfied that I had made the most of the situation and was ready to leave it in the past, but apparently William was not because he never expected me to be completely fine with him leaving. And it wasn’t long before he taught me exactly what secrets rich people are hiding.