We’ve been dating for nearly 5y and in that time I’ve always had a full time job earning average money and she has been studying with part time jobs earning far less. I had almost no savings and we never really gave details about how much we had in savings until maybe a year or so ago.

Over this period she has always said she couldn’t afford things and I’ve paid a larger portion of rent (probably 70%) since we moved out together 3 years ago.

I’ve never wanted to let money get in the way of living/our lives and could probably do a bit better job of saving. And I was always happy to pay more until she also started working full time when we would start splitting things evenly.

My dad passed away unexpectedly and he left me $500,000 which I got about 6 months ago – which is obviously life changing, I’ve probably never had more than $10,000 in my savings. We’ve started the process of buying a house and i was happy to put most of the money into a deposit and pay a larger portion of the mortgage until she started full time work (2y away).

Right before we went to submit the application she said she actually had $50,000 in savings and should we mention that in the application. She was a bit embarrassed to bring it up. I get that she wouldn’t mention this when we first started dating, and I don’t even care about the amount, but she has actively said “I can’t afford this” and let me pay for things countless times. I asked why she left it so late to bring it up, that we should use some of it to pay for the house, and asked her how long she had had it. Basically she had it the whole time and that it was savings she accumulated since she started work as a teenager.

I’m annoyed for a few reasons – she was going to let me put most of “my” money into the house without helping, and that all these years I’ve been paying a greater portion of things including rent, food, bills, overseas holidays, entertainment etc while she had waaaay more money than I ever had. I was earning more but that meant I wasn’t saving much, if anything. She also wasn’t saving much, her money was mostly from before we met.

I never wanted money to get between me and anybody else, especially my partner but I feel really hurt, lied to, and taken advantage of. She’s normally great and I love her, but she isn’t the best decision maker sometimes, and I have caught her in little lies before. These lies didn’t bother me much before as they were insignificant – most of the time a laughed it off like “why would you lie about that”, but now we’ve hit something big in life and this proper lie has me worried.

I’m really struggling to get past it and the relationship feels tainted now. I’m not sure I can get past it, but everything else in the relationship is great. And it’s really not a good atmosphere to be trying to buy a house.

Anyone else have similar experience? Did you split or how did you regain trust?

TLDR; girlfriend kept secret a large savings balance and let me pay for most things for years even though I had little savings. Only brought it up once we nearly applied for the mortgage and was about to let me pay for the whole deposit with money I got from my dad when he passed.