One of the biggest and most common roadblocks in a relationship is understanding how each other grew up. 

We all grew up differently, even if the superficial details are the same. Everyone has a different family and thus a different story. You could’ve grown up in the same town at the same time with the same number of people in your family and have completely opposite experiences of your childhood. It’s the people around us who make us who we are, and that’s what we can’t choose when we’re kids. But when we grow up and start to form relationships with each other, this can be the thing that we have to work through. It can be hard to understand somebody else’s point of view if you didn’t have all the same life experiences. This is especially true when it relates to money. Everybody grew up with a different relationship to money. Some people grew up, not worrying about it, and others can’t imagine a world where they don’t worry about it. These people have a way of getting into relationships with each other. It’s just one of those laws of nature. 

If you can’t understand where the other is coming from, at the very least, you can respect it. 

Relationships are built on trust and respect, and if you don’t have that, then you don’t have anything. But feelings of jealousy are also natural and can be hard to get over. That’s what came up in this story when the man couldn’t quite understand where his girlfriend was coming from. She grew up without having to worry about money and with a significant amount of privilege. He had the opposite of that upbringing and couldn’t quite empathize with her position in life.