Okay, that was somewhat clickbait. The story is a little bit different and I really need your advice.

I'm so worried that I'm going to come off as greedy. I don't want to take anything from anyone, ever. The problem is that I think I truly deserve more than I'm getting.

The arrangement

From the outside, it appears that my boyfriend pays for our life, a comfy living, nice cars, I get to do what I want all day.

That's how he offered it to me and I was interested because I wanted to focus on my art. I have a promising career, if given some time to work on it. He didn't even expect me to cook.

I wanted to help

I wanted to help out in a bigger way, so I did all the manual labor and yard renovation when he bought a house. I installed 1200 square feet of flooring, painted, did baseboard, tiling, plumbing, landscaping, etc. Thousand of $ in work. I felt super happy to be helping him like this. He turned a $40k profit when he sold it and bought a new house.

The new house is more terrible. It's a full time job, so now I barely get time to do my things. It also just sucks to live here because of the mess.

I became slave labor

He told me about the neighbor being impressed that he was able to have a stay-at-home girlfriend. Dude doesn't know the half of it. My boyfriend could not have purchased this house without relying on my skill. He's told me this many times. The labor is going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time were done. He's expecting to turn a $400k profit in a couple years.

My boyfriend, however, truly believes that I have an awesome life. He told me a lady at his work was "jealous" of me. Yeah, please come over and remove the rotten mildew drywall. Oh and reframe that wall over there because it has extensive termite damage. I'll just be over here scraping lead paint off the doors. Fuck. So much fun!!

The seeds of my financial concerns were sowed

It occured to me as time went on that I'm not actually gaining anything here. I love my boyfriend, but everything else sucks. I have no assets at all, my bank account barely has $100 in it, and my resume is non-existent so I couldn't even get a job later if I wanted to. He seems to think that my reward is living in such a beautiful, expensive house. This is flawed reasoning because:

1. I would not choose to live here. I would live somewhere more affordable.

2. I'm not enjoying living in a construction shithole, believe it or not.

3. My actual passion in life is on the back burner. Who knows how long it's setting me back and what opportunities I'm missing.

The car incident

This really occured to me when my car that I owned broke down for good and got scrapped for $500. My boyfriend told me to keep the cash and he'd get a new car. Without me on the title. This is where I'm worried I'll sound greedy, but I hope you'll understand. Now, I have no vehicle to my name. I have nothing.

I brought it up gently and he said "well you wouldn't have a car anyway because it broke down and you wouldn't be able to afford it." That just absolutely crushed me. I don't have money because I'm working for him constantly, for FREE. I'm not a "stay at home" girlfriend. I'm a construction slave. I thought he was going to take care of me. He can afford to let me have a car. I know this for a fact. I estimate that I've contributed $50k+ in labor over the past couple years. He doesn't think I deserve the $7k that half the car is worth...? He never expected me to contribute in the way that I did. So, I would have got nothing if I never helped, and I still get nothing while I'm tremendously helping.

The aftermath

It makes me feel so insecure that I'm sick to my stomach. Why am I working for free when I get nothing? He says I have a good lot in life. Yes, I have food, a roof, clothes, etc. but I'm poor as fuck. I'm living in a million $ neighborhood and I would be homeless if we broke up tomorrow. I'm not a dog. I DO think about tomorrow and financial security.

I don't want you to think that our relationship sucks. It's actually very good. I could be with him forever (and that's the plan) if I didn't have to worry about this. He seems to really appreciate me helping and thinks everything I do is awesome. Unfortunately that doesn't translate into any financial security for me. The only solution I see is getting married, but I don't know how to bring it up without making it sound like an ultimatum.

I see three options:

1. Get married so that I know that I'll have financial security, and I'll feel comfortable building his wealth. The planned improvements for this house will require $100k+ in just my labor. I think I deserve that financial security.

2. Break up and I move back home to finish my engineering degree. He's a high maintenance person and I don't see maintaining this relationship and working full time. It's just not a reality.

3. Have him pay me per hour. He said he'd do this, but deduct living expenses. Again, this is a shit hole and I would not be required to pay for living expenses if I did literally nothing. So why am I going to elect to pay money that I don't have to? I want an actual salary if this is the choice.

Sigh.

Conclusion

I hope I was able to explain this situation without sounding horrible. I just feel so unsafe. I mentioned my mom's life insurance policy (she's not dead) the other day and he said if he were me and he got that money, he'd buy a car because everyone needs a vehicle. And I obviously don't have one. Like, fuck, way to rub my poverty in my face.

He's your typical "I didn't even know there was a problem" guy. So it's not malicious. He think I'm just contributing to the household. But, no. I'm contributing to HIS household. I get nothing. I have no rights. To anything I'm building. I am an employee. He either needs to pay me like an employee, or have me be part of the team.

Please let me know what you think. How can I bring this up? It's extremely upsetting for me. Like, I instantly start crying because I feel so guilty and vulnerable at the same time. He doesn't want me to feel like this. I just don't know what we should even do about this situation...