AITA for refusing to pay my girlfriends dowry?

3,807 points•659 comments•submitted by Mymoney1111 to r/AmItheAsshole

I am white and my girlfriend is Chinese. I met her in college while she was studying here, and continued dating after she graduated and got her green card.

I recently proposed to her and she said yes, but said I would need to ask her parents for permission before we get married. She also explained that it’s tradition that the groom pay the brides family a dowry in the form of a lump sum of cash.

Note: her sisters dowry was 80,000 RMB (~12,000 USD).

So we travel to Henan province to her home village and I ask her parents. Having looked up before hand online, I was expecting to pay a dowry of anywhere between 50,000 - 150,000. They end up demanding I pay 800,000 RMB (~120,000 USD).

The thing is, I’m successful and can definitely afford this amount of money. I would happily give away 120K to marry my girlfriend, however what angered me is the fact they were clearly asking for this much simply because I’m a foreigner. As I said, her sisters dowry was 1/10th of that.

There was no way I could decline this without pissing off her family, so I just declined as politely as possible and left. This initially upset my girlfriend thinking I valued the money more than her - but after reassuring her it was a matter of respect she said she understood and agreed her parents were trying to take advantage of me for being a foreigner.

So as you’d expect, my girlfriends entire family things I’m an asshole foreigner shitting over their culture/tradition. But to me, I simply resent being taken advantage of, and was happy to pay the normal amount.

My girlfriend and I would end up supporting them anyway as it’s chinese tradition. Why on earth should I pay them a crap load of money on top of that?

AITA?