money changes everything

A cousin of mine, whom I dearly love, wanted to set me up with her best friend's younger brother. She had broached the subject with me more than once, and I know that she had also asked my sister if she thought I would be game. I told her that she could give the guy my phone number.

In the meantime, since she had told me his name of course, I did what anyone would do these days. I googled him. It turns out that he was an immensely successful doctor, a specialist in a very lucrative branch of medicine. My cousin had described him as a great guy, spoke of him in glowing terms, and I have no doubt that he was. But immediately a wall went up for me. How could I date someone who had a monthly income that was far more than what I make in a year? Someone who undoubtedly had a country house or Fire Island house, an expensive German car, a stunning Village apartment? Where would we go out for dinner? We are from two extremely different classes.

There was an article in last Sunday's TIMES about how money really means far more in personal relationships than we would like to admit. For example, if you go to an expensive, elite college, you will likely become close friends with people who are quite affluent, if not downright rich. You (I), the scholarship student, would find that money was not a barrier, really (with the exception that I, rather unique among my circle, had to actually get a summer job each year). Our common experience would bond us. Where we came from did not matter all that much.

But once we had all moved on to more adult lives, we find that the money does create an barriers both psychological and material. I have chosen a life for myself that, in all probability, won't bring me wealth. But many of the friends whom I was close to in college and post-college days are now well established, wealthy, living in Brooklyn brownstones or in posh homes in wealthy suburbs (yick) with lifestyles so different from mine that common experience no longer applies. I am acutely aware of this construct, and it disappoints me. I miss some of my college friends very much, but the money wall between us grows higher and wider and more impossible to cross.