Am I losing my sanity, my marriage, or both?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
221

I’m not “blatantly wrong”. If he took that action, and took control of all the marital assets, he would end up in divorce court and the court would take them back, with prejudice. It’s not his money. In the absence of an explicit agreement to the contrary, it’s legally their money.

And while taking control of their money might be the right thing to do if his wife were actually insane, and not just a practitioner of an extremely common quasi-religion, given the circumstances described, it would be morally abhorrent. The sort of action i describe with words like “theft”.

222

What I haven’t seen ( although I may have missed it) is any sort of objective statement of why this is a problem. The OP says they can afford to go out to eat a few times a week and travel and he would like to have more money in savings - but that doesn’t mean they can’t afford whatever it is she’s spending on crystals and such. Maybe it does - or maybe he’s like any number of people I know, who have set their own priorities without consulting their spouse who then get annoyed when their spouse buys a fishing rod instead of trying to pay off the mortgage in eight years or get mad when their spouse buys L’Occitane rather than whatever is on sale at the drugstore that week so that the difference can be added to the multiple millions he has ( and he makes it very clear that the millions are his). There are couples where one person has a real spending problem and there are couples where one person is like Suze Orman screaming at a 10 year old that she can’t spend her birthday gift to buy a doll, doesn’t she know she has to pay for college. We don’t really know which way this couple leans - and it makes a difference. The solution to the problem of not having enough to retire at all is different from the solution to the problem of not having enough to live a better life in retirement than you lived while working.

The fact that Mrs. Akaj spends this money in a way he doesn’t approve of doesn’t mean they can’t afford it - it means it’s not what he prefers to do with their money. And there’s nothing wrong with that as long as he’s not unilaterally making decisions based on what they can “afford” based on what he wants to with their money. If he was talking about rent not being paid or lights being turned off it would be a very different situation than one in which they can go out to eat a few times a week.

223

Just wanted to say I loved your whole post. Thanks!

224

I’m not so sure about that. I suspect that some people buy guitars thinking (maybe without consciously realizing they’re thinking that way) that it will magically make them a better guitar player, or magically make them cool, or magically make them at least a little bit more like a rock star.

225

At least somebody has come close to saying what they mean here! Akaj has been really cool about this, considering what people in this thread are saying about his wife, but jesus, it is not helpful to tell somebody that they should treat someone they love more like an idiot, and less like a person worthy of respect. It’s not a solution. It is not how you do marriage. I think Akaj understands by now that you all think his wife is stupid.

You all want her to to be punished for believing something silly, but you all believe silly things. Other people deal with your silliness. The question is how they deal with it, and does it work for you and them.

What I have taken from your posts is that you didn’t even notice that the OP of the thread, the human being who asked for help, had already expressed that he didn’t think the advice “take her money away and give her a stipend for shoe leather” was helpful by the time you arrived, and you think it’s more important to talk down to the people who have noticed that. FYI.

226

You make some good points here, so I’ll try to flesh out the financial picture.

I keep track of spending, and our basic, non-negotiable expenses take up about 80% of our combined take-home pay. (This does not include the auto-deduct that goes straight into a Roth 401k.) So if we never ate out or went to concerts or bought anything discretionary, we could put the other 20% toward savings or retirement.

(Why worry about putting more toward retirement when I fund my 401k every paycheck? Because we “lost” most of the time between 2004 and 2015 paying for and renovating a house we couldn’t afford, during which I was unemployed for an extended period and our IRAs were virtually wiped out in the 2008 collapse. But that’s another story.)

So what happens with that available 20%? We tend to spend almost every penny of it on the discretionary stuff, some of which items are things we both enjoy – dining out, concerts, weed, etc. But almost a third of that 20% goes toward Mrs A’s personal purchases (mostly the woo stuff), while my personal purchases are almost negligible.

Meanwhile, if we incur unexpected expenses – car or home repair, medical stuff not covered by insurance – we have to dip into savings for it.

We’ve talked about budgeting our discretionary spending to 15% of take-home, so we can add that 5% to savings and/or additional retirement funding. Eat out once a week instead of twice? Yep, that would help. But her personal spending is usually the single biggest number in this category. If we’re going to make a meaningful improvement, IMO it’s only fair that she rein herself in here.

She knows all this. We’ve had this discussion. So the $350 crystal ball felt like a big fuck-you.

And we just put new tires on her car, which cost about the same amount. Guess where that’s coming from?

227

I absolutely believe that’s what you took from it. Consider this your victory; we’re done.

228

I don’t know that that’s the only fair option. Sure, it’s one fair option but another one would be to cut down a lot on eating out and travel and maybe increase your own personal spending. Maybe she enjoys buying crystals more than going to concerts or going out to eat or traveling.

How much of this is related to the fact that your own personal spending is negligible? I had a similar issue with my husband regarding free time when our kids were little- it initially felt like he spent too much time doing things he enjoyed , like bowling and golf. But eventually I realized that it wasn’t really how much time he spent on those things - it was the fact that every hour he spent bowling was an hour I was responsible for the kids and it felt like he was “spending” all of our collective free time on himself. So how I fixed it was I started using some of that time for myself - which had the side effect of him using less for himself but it went over way better than directly asking him to spend less time on himself ever did. Would your wife be willing to spend less money on crystals and such if it was so you could spend some on your refrigerator magnet collection?

229

Good question. I’m really not a “stuff” guy. I buy a few used paperbacks and CDs, and new clothes only to replace old stuff (and sometimes not even then). So I suppose there’s a degree of resentment that I spend so little on me while she spends so much on herself.

But the fairness aspect seems clear to me if it’s a question of cutting back on things we both enjoy (eating out, concerts, etc.) so she can buy more of the stuff that only appeals to her.

230

I understand where you are coming from, and think it is reasonable, but only if the wife’s thought process is something fiscally responsible like: we have $500 of discretionary spending this month, and I’m going to spend $350 on something only I enjoy.

But I expect the thought process is more: here is a thing I want, so I’m going to buy it.

@Akaj is then stuck balancing the books. Of course he isn’t just the accountant, so he also has to balance the emotional debt of

I really think the only way to make things work is an allowance, which has tons of marital repercussions and gets into lots of the problems discussed early in the thread. Perhaps the best way to approach is not an allowance for just her, but a shared one for both.

Put $500 per month (or whatever number) onto a prepaid credit card, and then that is the card used for concerts, eating out, and crystal power. Then accept that much of it will be spent on things that only are meaningful to her. If she is happy, then you’re happy, so it may be money well spent. Mostly you’ll be happy that the total spent is limited. Take up cooking as a hobby.

231

No. As was explained in the OP and a few times since, she she’s it as an investment in her future career that will more than pay for itself in the near-ish future.

232

Yeah. This isn’t fair to you. I’m guessing part of the issue is “rein it in” wasn’t put in concrete terms. That’s a pretty vague request, so she could rationalize the purchase more easily (not saying her behavior is okay, just thinking how we can prevent it from happening in the future.) Time to figure out a specific budget for her woo stuff, that she can agree to.

233

Eh … it’s probably more “I want it” than “investment in my future.” Even if she had a concrete, well-thought-out plan to generate significant income with woo therapies, a beautiful, expensive crystal wouldn’t play a big role in it.

And she doesn’t have a concrete, well-thought-out plan. She’s barely comfortable charging any money for anything short of straightforward massage, and doesn’t even market herself in that department.

234

Sorry it took me a while to respond to this. I wasn’t trying to single anyone out and I think it’s totally valid to think “something must be done.” I think it’s wrong for one person to control all the finances unless the other person has agreed that’s best due to impulse control issues or something. This is a really sticky wicket because the OP is in a long-term committed relationship where this didn’t used to be a major issue, so DTMFA doesn’t really apply. What remains? Hope she’s going to come to her senses. Maybe there are ideas I haven’t considered.

Thank you for the compliment, I shall pass it on to my husband as further evidence that I have no regrets.

Now, to respond to something @Princhester said, I do not believe controlling all the finances is by itself domestic violence (though I do think it’s wrong), I am saying that it is a frequent component of domestic violence. Abusers generally do their best to make their partner dependent on them before escalating abuse, which means cutting them off from their family and friends and controlling all the finances. “Domestic Violence” is better understood as a range of behaviors including violence but also accompanied by other elements of power and control, financial dependence being one of the most common. I would even argue, based on professional experience, that finances are the number one barrier survivors face in trying to gain independence from their abuser. Most have zero access to money and many have been kept out of the workforce so their immediate options are to either stay with their abuser or be homeless. Add kids to the mix and many people are just out of options.

Because these things are so inextricably linked in my mind, it’s difficult for me, personally, to divorce controlling the finances from domestic violence, but even if I could, you would still have the problem of unequal power in a relationship, which is not okay.

I wish there was an easy solution to prevent one partner from financially fucking over the other one, but there isn’t one.

235

Perhaps you need to visit the crystal globe lady and see if she has one thats filled with your specific energy.

Seriously though you might want to make an effort to join her and become involved with it more. Do you guys do stuff together, like do you have projects around the house that you do together? Cooking or another subject you both enjoy and participate in? Might take some discipline, and a bit of acting because I believe it’s pure bunk too, but try and remember when you would do anything to just be with her. So it might be difficult if you went off after the globe purchase, but tell her you’ve been thinking and want to research, setting her up a New Age business venture. Really get into it, discuss all the aspects and costs of setting up the business, possible suppliers, competitors in your area, how to set it up online, and the whole nine yards.

Barring that try this link

[The new age looks enlightened and exotic because it borrows freely from non-Anglo cultures | Life and style | The Guardian]

Personally, Im thinking it’s just a stage all people go through, life can get boring, and monotonous some need thier life to have meaning. As you get older you get, she is perhaps saying, is this all there is?

Ive seen my ex-wife and girlfriend go through a huge adjustment once the kids were grown. My ex-wife just turned up her drinking and has become a somewhat functional alcoholic Ive been told. While my girlfriend and I bounced from project to project till we decided we worked better separately. LOL, you either improvise, adapt, or overcome or you don’t.

The point is either love her enough to put up with her shit, thats within your financial means or don’t.

But I do recall a friend of mine, remember beanie babies? well, his wife got obsessed with them. Bought hundreds of them and had them displayed throughout the house and in one room it was nothing but beanie babies, displayed in cases separated and cataloged. He put up with it till he found out she screwed the guy at the local beanie baby store, and all of her purchases and beanie baby shrine in the house, were because it gave her a reason to go to the store and see and talk to him. Hell the guy didn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore, but she kept going in and buying shit, built a shrine to him and not for the beanie babies.

So hopefully that offers some perspective…

236

Do you both enjoy that stuff? Does she enjoy it as much as she’d enjoy a crystal? Because i like that stuff a lot more than my husband does, and to the extent that we budget “fun purchases”, restaurants would come out of my budget. Even though we enjoy them together.

Also, if the savings aren’t causing issues, maybe you should also try auto-deducting something each paycheck for a rainy day fund? If she sees less money, will she spend less? Because it might be easier to get her to sign up for a rainy day fund than just “cut back”.

237

Moderator Note

This is MPSIMS, not the Pit. Instead of focusing on the issues, you are developing a pattern of lashing out at posters that you do not agree with. If you want to attack other users, you know where the Pit is. If you want to remain in MPSIMS, you need to start dialing everything WAY back. Focus on the issues, not on other posters, and maybe take a break so that you can approach your posts more calmly.

Further behavior along these lines will get you banned from the thread, and (depending on the severity) may result in warnings.

238

Have you seen my avatar? No crystal could withstand that energy.

I am, and I do. In fact, tomorrow I’m her roadie for a nearby spiritual fair, and I’m helping her develop signage.

The concerts were her idea. Once our son was in college, she committed to seeing more live music in our area and by 2019 we were seeing 20-25 shows a year. Chicago has plenty of smaller venues so we saw a lot of great acts for < $100, drinks included. Covid obviously curtailed that but we’re back to almost one show a month.

In fact, that might be a great way to frame this: “You know, for the price of that crystal we could have seen four concerts together.”

239

I’ve had good luck with that approach for some people. “I’m shopping around because the price difference is like four nice bottles of wine” or whatever. Still, it only works if the person you’re dealing with thinks of something as a allocating from a pool of resources. “Crystals or concerts” is a perfectly reasonable set of options, but the issue comes up when the person insists on “all of the above.”

If you’re wife can recognize the trade offs, and make a choice, then I think you win regardless of what she picks. If money is too negative of energy for her to respect (or whatever), then you’re back to the same problem.

240

Hey all – once again thanks for all the great advice and conversation!

I’ll probably try to move the needle on this with Mrs. A over the three-day weekend, but I won’t likely be back on the SDMB until Tuesday. So if you ask me anything, please don’t expect a quick response!

Meanwhile, send some positive energy my way! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :face_with_spiral_eyes: :hamsa: :diya_lamp: :om: