In early 2020, before the pandemic changed everything, our problems had already begun quietly tightening around us. Our Parent PLUS loans had reached their peak after our youngest started her final semester at a university in New York that January. Two-thirds of my take home pay was going straight toward loan payments.
Every month felt like walking a tightrope. And then, somehow, our son’s compassion became twisted into a reason for conflict.
One evening, I sat down with our son and explained the truth. Our finances were stretched so thin that even basic expenses felt uncertain. He listened quietly, thinking. Then, with a kindness far beyond his years, he offered something I never expected. “Mamma, I can help. I’ll stop paying my student loans and cover the Parent PLUS payments until you don’t need me anymore.” He was already paying his own loans, yet he still stepped forward, willing to support the family. It was one of those rare moments when a child’s character reveals itself with clarity and grace.
When I shared his offer with my husband, I expected appreciation. Maybe pride. At the very least, gratitude. Instead, his ego stepped in. He said that if our son truly wanted to help, he should take responsibility for all of the Parent PLUS loans we took out for him, not just help temporarily, but assume full responsibility.
Something shifted inside me in that moment. We had taken those loans as parents. We had signed our names. We had made those choices out of love and duty.
Our son’s offer was generosity. My husband’s response was punishment.
In that moment, a familiar ache rose in me because this wasn’t the first time I had witnessed this imbalance in how he views family obligations. At the beginning of our marriage, when his sister came from India, she lived with us for years until she could stand firmly on her own. We put her through school, paid her tuition - thousands of dollars - without hesitation and without ever expecting repayment. He never asked her for that money, never hinted at it, never framed it as a debt. We did it because she was family. Because helping her was simply the right thing to do.
And that’s why his demand toward our son was so painful because our son wasn’t in a position of comfort or abundance. He had just completed his master’s degree and had taken a modestly paid fellowship, the kind where passion outweighs salary. He wasn’t making much at all. In fact, he had decided to move back home just so he could keep up with his own student loan payments. He was doing everything he could to stay responsible, to stay afloat, to build a future step by step.
So when he offered, despite all of that, to pause paying his loans in order to help with our Parent PLUS loans—loans we had willingly signed for—it was pure generosity. A gesture rooted in love, sacrifice, and maturity. And yet, instead of recognizing the goodness in his heart, my husband responded with expectation, entitlement, and pressure.
So when he turned to our son; our own child; and demanded something he never demanded from his sister, the contradiction hit me with a kind of emotional clarity I couldn’t unsee. Why was generosity so effortless upward, yet burden so easy to push downward? Why compassion for a sibling, but pressure for a child? The unfairness was sharp, and it cut deeper than the situation itself. It revealed something about who he believed should carry the weight and who shouldn’t and it broke something in me. The contrast couldn’t have been clearer.
And then for once the world eased but our relationship could not. The pandemic struck, and unexpectedly, federal student loan interest dropped to 0%. For a moment, we could breathe again. Our younger daughter returned home from New York, ending the burden of big-city expenses. Our payments paused. Our budget finally balanced. It was the first real relief we had felt in months.
But that relief only masked a deeper truth. It wasn’t financial strain that was breaking us. It was my husband’s reactions under strain.
A marriage can survive hardship, but not when empathy gives way to ego. Money alone doesn’t destroy a family. But the behavior around money—control, shame, anger, selfishness—can expose fractures that were always there. My husband’s response to our son revealed far more than his opinion about loans. His behavior revealed to me how responsibility, hierarchy, and respect were being expressed in our marriage.
Where I saw a son stepping up, he saw a son falling short. Where I saw kindness, he saw disrespect. Where I saw partnership, he saw threat.
It was one of the earliest signs that the health of our family depended on something he was unwilling to offer - Responsibility grounded in humility; not authority. Next
Previous
Comments