Is it fair to call someone a freeloader when they split all shared expenses 50/50?
We’ve been together for 8 years, basically since we were teenagers, and we currently live together in a rented 2BHK with another couple.
I recently started working and I’m trying to become financially independent. I have a pretty big education loan that I pay every month. Between us, everything is 50/50. We literally use Splitwise even for small expenses.
He owns a car, and yes, I obviously benefit from having access to it. But I pay half the fuel. I obviously can’t contribute to his car EMI because I don’t earn enough to take on that expense.
Despite this, he repeatedly calls me a freeloader**.**
His argument is that he worked extremely hard growing up, went to one of the top colleges in the country, and now I get to “reap the benefits” of his hard work. He says he told me to study harder, but I didn’t, which is why I now have a mediocre job and an education loan.
And yes, I do get some benefits from him. For example, if I want to buy something but don’t have enough money upfront, he’ll pay for it and let me pay him back monthly with no extra charges. I get discounts through his credit cards, and sometimes he takes me to things like pickleball using benefits/reimbursements from his job. I’m not denying that I benefit from being with someone who earns more than me.
But I don’t understand how that makes me a freeloader when we split our actual household expenses equally from rent to groceries.
What bothers me most is that we’ve been together for 8 years. I never thought of our relationship as a constant calculation of who has benefited more from whom.
So I’m genuinely looking for some objective perspective
If someone split all shared expenses 50/50 with you, would you consider it fair to repeatedly call them a “freeloader”?