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Madison didnt have an easy childhood. As a kid, her house was always in disrepair. Her parents
couldnt consistently afford electricity or indoor plumbing, never mind fancy appliances and wall
hangings. Madisons classmates made fun of her shabby surroundings. Some refused to play
with her.

Even after graduating from college, marrying and settling into a middle-class life, Madison
couldnt shake her insecurity about her home. She read design magazines and blogs obsessively,
poring over the latest trends in closet organization and wall colors. She redecorated frequently
and was rarely confident in her choices. When she redid her kitchen, she considered more than
200 faucets.

Her husband, Evan, hated how much Madison (their names, like all names in this piece, have
been changed as a condition for my interviews) spent on furniture and gadgets they didnt need.
He couldnt understand her fixation. Why would he? Evan grew up with middle-class parents, in
the kind of house Madison was so desperate to re-create.

Studies show that couples argue more about money than about sex, chores or spending time
together. For partners who marry across class lines, however, money isnt just something to fight

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about. In researching my book about inter-class couples, I found that the financial stability of
the spouses childhoods shaped their marriages in many ways, contributing to clashes about
leisure time, home maintenance and even how to talk through their feelings. These pairs were
middle class by the time I met them, but their different backgrounds still caused problems.

For example, Danielle grew up in a working-class family. She dropped out of high school and left
her home town, marrying a man shed later call a lunatic. Over the next six years, she moved 17
times, stood in countless welfare lines and even thought about stealing toilet paper. To cope with
this crushing poverty, she just pretended like [money] didnt exist, she told me. I would just
spend what I needed to and never think about it. I was afraid to face the realities of it, which is
that its limited.

Then she met her second husband, Jim, whose boss joked that he had grown up with a silver
spoon in his mouth. It was true Jim was raised in a mansion and attended a prestigious
university. Though Jim and Danielle have been married for almost 30 years, they still treat
money very differently. Danielle, like many of the spouses who grew up working class, didnt like
to budget or develop a long-term savings plan.

Jim, whod grown up with a financial safety net, wanted the same for his family. He managed his
money carefully, always aware of how much was being spent on what. He would pore over
coupons and spend hours researching purchases; Danielle would get annoyed with his constant
drive to save 11 cents. Jim so routinely returned items Danielle bought that she once
deliberately spilled soda on their couch so he couldnt take it back. Another time, she lied and
told him stores would not accept returned cologne.

I saw this divide between planning and going with the flow flare up in other ways, too. One
pair, Scott and Gina, fought bitterly over how to spend their free time. They even briefly broke
up over it. This tension affected how they raised their young children. Scott, who grew up in the
middle class, believed that their 6- and 3-year-olds should be enrolled in Chinese lessons and
pottery classes, and that their free time should be spent watching cooking shows. Gina, who
grew up in a working-class family, disagreed. She thought the kids should play freely at home.

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Sometimes, talking through these issues presented its own obstacles, which defy stereotypes
about how men and women talk to each other. William, for example, was the son of a sawmill
repairman and a saleswoman. In his blue-collar family, keeping your feelings to yourself was
dishonest, a common sentiment among the working-class families I spoke with. He learned to
express himself freely (and often loudly). Williams wife, Anneka, grew up in a professional,
white-collar community. She learned what many middle-class children do: that reactions should
be intellectualized, not expressed in emotional tones. My knee-jerk reaction to things is to shut
up, Anneka said. I go underground, back off, think about the situation, and then Ill come back
and react to it.

Anneka and William had to get used to each others emotional styles ones that may have made
sense in the classes from which each spouse came but that initially made less sense to each
other. They also learned from each other: William to wait to express his emotions, Anneka to be
more willing to feel and express hers. I am a lot more openly affectionate than I would have
been otherwise, she said.

Another source of tension for inter-class couples is housework. One man I spoke with, Jason,
grew up working-class. It took his parents five years to replace their kitchen cabinet doors and
more than a decade to save enough to change the linoleum floor. Jason married Lori, a woman
who grew up with three beautiful homes and a yacht. Both Jason and Lori had good jobs, and
eventually they bought their own large house.

But Jason didnt adapt easily to their new home. He would say, I havent done anything to
deserve this house, Lori explained. He doesnt even in his deep psychology see the house as
being his. Like other working-class spouses I spoke with, he refused to do simple household
chores, afraid that he did not have the know-how to care for this extravagant new space. At
times, he even neglected maintenance on purpose, leaving the mailbox askew after it fell to show
his neighbors that he didnt share their values or fit neatly into their world. Lori found these
attitudes infuriating, although she understood where they came from.

Though it shaped these couples lives, most people I spoke with swore they never thought about
the class differences in their relationships, afraid that doing so made them, in the words of one
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source, snotty. Another man, Jim, denied that class influenced his marriage: We dont have a
great sense that one person is better than the other person, more privileged or anything like
that, he said. Class doesnt make a damned difference.

Of course, it does. But thats not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the couples I got to know drew
strength from their difference. Its what brought them together in the first place. Those who
grew up poor often disliked the unpredictability of their lives. They were drawn to their
middle-class partners because they offered the promise of a stable future. Similarly, those who
grew up in the middle class spent their childhoods engaged in many organized, planned
activities. They appreciated the unscheduled family time that was more familiar to their
partners.

Today, the opportunity to marry or even meet someone of a different class is disappearing.
Economic segregation is rising in the United States, and inter-class marriages are becoming
more rare. The couples I spoke with, though, offer some hope that these differences can be
navigated and that even in profoundly unequal times, love can cross class lines.

outlook@washpost.com

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