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My family is falling apart due to my selfishness
My husband is threatening to leave and my 9-year-old daughter is distraught because I am embarrassed about our home and our cars. We live in an affluent suburb, but we're not one of the rich families. My daughter wants to invite friends from school over, but I'm mortified about their parents seeing our home or cars.
I know these things shouldn't matter. I love my husband, but he says I'm ruining our daughter's self-esteem and disrespecting him by being embarrassed by a life he works hard to provide. What's wrong with me, and how can I get past this? I don't want to lose my family.
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Hi,
Here's what you do. You be yourself. And don't let other people make you feel down on yourself. So you aren't the richest person. So what? You're really going to let other people's opinion of your things make you lose your husband. I'm sorry but you have to prioritize. What is the worst thing that will happen if they see that you aren't rich? The sky will not fall and you will not be harmed. They might make comments to their friends but who cares what other people think anyway. I have to agree with your husband, You are on the quick road to running your daughters self esteem into the ground. Are you really going to sacrifice your daughters pride to make strangers feel better about themselves? In my senior year of high school I moved to a neighborhood where I was poor and they were all rich. I never let on because I was so ashamed. Now I look back and wonder why I even cared. What was the worst they could say to me? That I was poor? I already knew that." I should've had more pride. Instead of walking around hanging my head and so should you. You can clean your house and your cars, tidy up, but take pride in what you have. Money isn't everything and if they are too shallow to realize that then forget them.
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You need to be more comfortable with yourself and your life. Just because everyone else in your suburb is rich and you're not, doesn't mean you should deprive your daughter the right to have friends outside of school.
Your husband is surely right that you're hurting your daughter's self-esteem by acting like your material items are bad enough that no one should see them. What are you so afraid of? What are your daughter's friends' parents going to think/say? You think they're going to walk into your house and say, "Hi, I'm- Wait.. What in the world is going on here? Your house isn't extremely expensive and neither are your cars. This is ridiculous. Come on, Susie, we're leaving" ?
I guarantee you unless you live in the straight ghetto, none of your daughter's friends' parents are going to say anything about your car. It sounds like you live in a nice, safe, ritzy neighborhood. If you lived in the ghetto, I could see people saying, "Well, I don't want my daughter staying here. This just doesn't seem safe." But just because your home and cars aren't as nice or expensive as your neighbors doesn't mean anything. Honestly, no one's going to care or probably even notice.
It sounds like you've just got personal self-esteem issues that you're pushing onto your daughter now. You live in a nice neighborhood, you have a house, you have carS. That's a lot more that some people have. You need to be appreciative for what you've got and show your daughter to do the same.
This has clearly gotten out of hand. You need to relax and let someone else, like your husband, make some decisions. Let your daughter's friends come over. Stop making your daughter think that her house and vehicles are so awful that she should be embarrassed. You're going to end up with a very spoiled, materialistic kid on your hands if you don't watch out.
Just sit back and relax. Let your daughter have a friend over. Meet the friends parents and see what they say. I guarantee you they're not going to say one negative thing about your house or cars. They're not even going to care. It sounds like you're in a good neighborhood and all that is going to matter to them is the safety of their child. No one cares what kind of car you have or how big/nice your house is.
Darby
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