My partner (27M) and I (27F) have very different financial situations and I feel it’s putting a strain on us as our wedding approaches. We’ve been together for nearly 10 years and got engaged last year. To sum up our financial situations, I currently make six figures and have no debt at all. My partner has around $200k in debt and does not have a job. I don’t blame him for being in this position. He needed to take out loans during undergrad and grad school and his type of grad school did not enable him to work while he was there; however, when he finishes up his certification exam, he should be able to find a six figure job. I say this to establish that he’s not a lazy bum or anything like that.
The stress mainly comes from not knowing how long it’ll be until he can find a job in his field as the certification process can take awhile in addition to trying to receive a job offer. I feel increasing stress about the situation as our wedding date approaches (set for early next year). In the short term, I’m stressed about him not having a job, not being able to contribute financially to the wedding (so far, I have covered 100% of our portion of expenses), and not being able to help with the wedding planning (due to being busy studying for his certification). In the long term, I’m stressed about taking on the financial burden of his debt after the wedding. I feel his debt will no longer be just his problem but now become our problem. In general, I pay for nearly everything in our relationship at the moment (dates, trips, etc). I’m also worried about the chance that he will not have a job by the wedding and us already starting off our marriage with me being the sole provider. It also makes me a little sad feeling like we will need to put off things that are very important to me after the wedding such starting a family until the debt is a little more manageable.
I have been open to him about why this situation stresses me out but he has told me my stress is just making his stress about it worse and that I need to continue to bear with him. I feel like the only thing I can do is try to continue to handle things on my own financially on behalf of us both and stay silent about my stress. He has also expressed he regrets proposing when he did. Had he known all the time and money that goes into planning a wedding, he would have waited or pushed for a longer engagement.
I would love to hear from those who are/were in similar positions, particularly women. Did the big difference in financial situations cause issues in your relationship/marriage or did everything end up ok? Am I really just making the situation worse by being open to him about how stressful this is to me? Or am I being overly stressed for no reason?
Some additional notes: we do plan on doing premarital counselling and I know finances is a topic we will discuss. Also, I have been aware of his financial situation for awhile and was always hopeful it would improve by the time we became engaged but unfortunately it did not work out that way.
TL;DR: Partner has a lot of debt and no job while I have a high paying job and no debt which is putting a lot of stress on me regarding the differences in our financial situations currently and in our future.