Lina moved in with Tom and his roommate, Ian*, in a large, centrally located riverside apartment complex in Manhattan. She was unable to afford her full share of the $3,200 USD monthly rent and instead took on a smaller portion, around $800 USD. After all, both partners knew their financial circumstances were not the same. “He was further along in his career than I was; at the time I was a struggling artist pursuing acting and bartending most of the time,” Lina says, noting she was barely able to scrape together any savings. “When we went out for dinners, he’d pay.”