I’d like to remind everyone that Tollhouse has no information and is totally certain.
That’s not the typical situation that good advice comes from. Please consider that before heeding it.
I’m so tempted to snark here but I wont. Gracer and Astro have already covered my thoughts on this.
I’ll say this though, this is a text book example of there is two sides to every story.
I had a GF once who’s idea of “contributing” was paying a $60 cable bill to the over all house hold bills. I was fine with this but when it comes to the financial decisions in the house hold, to think that she gets equal say in those decisions is laughable.
Sorry for not getting back to you guys earlier.
I’m obviously not going to take advice to just jump off the deep end and destroy my relationship.
I want to work things out. I’ve also suggested couples counseling and have been suggesting it for a couple of years now. The excuses were all ‘money’, ‘time’, and ‘you find someone then’.
He’s admitted to me that he thinks he needs to see a therapist but listed money, time, and his clearance as reasons not to. His career may require security clearance at some point.
I love him. I don’t want to end it. I SEE him struggling and upset/cry at the fact that he doesn’t want to get married and doesn’t know why. He tells me he wants to make me happy and I believe him.
He told me yesterday that he’s been depressed the past few weeks because he’s been thinking about getting married and wants to make me happy but doesn’t want to get married and doesn’t feel ready.
I think therapy is a good step if I can somehow get him/us to go.
I do not think that he’s taken advantage of me monetarily at all. I think that if anything, he’s taken advantage of me being here for him all the time, and taking for granted that if doesn’t step his game up, I’ll still be here.
I do feel that I have no legal ties to anything that we have together and that makes me concerned.
He’s a good guy. He works hard to support us and is always there for me when I need it. I was in the hospital for a week and he was there all day on the weekends, stayed overnight every night, and still went to work. He went to the store and bought me things I needed, snuck me in food, etc.
As far as money goes. He makes a lot more than I do. I took out a $10,000 loan to fix up the house under my name. Additionally, I paid $4,000 in closing costs as well as contribute $250 or more a week for the bills (I generally just contribute anything/everything I make for the bills).
Additionally, I am the primary keeper of the house, cooking, cleaning, painting maintenance that I’m capable of doing (light electrical work, I repaired the furnace last week, yard work, mowing the lawn).
Last year, I cleaned out the whole garage (his side) and built him a work bench, hung all his tools, and made him an outside place to work. I painted the garage and cleaned the inside with the vacuum.
I plan on doing roof work on it this summer.
Over the winter I took a mall job to buy Christmas gifts and got him a two work benches, a huge rolling tool box taller than me, and bought tools to fill the tool box, a drill press, lighting, vice, and a bunch of other things and built him a workshop in the basement. I bought him a heating blanket because I like it cold and he likes it warm and that’s one thing we bicker over.
For our anniversary I bought him a laptop because his broke. Sadly he smacked on it when we had an argument and now the hard drive is making funny noises.
I felt that I owed him for “supporting” me for all these years. I wanted to do something special. I always want to do special things for him. It makes me happy when he is happy.
He contributes a lot more money than I do though, not emotionally but monetarily.
I have a lot of thinking to do. I need to make some choices, have some conversations, and not be wishy washy about my needs.
In case you didnt read the thread, I was** hardly** the only person who feels the OP needs to e careful.
People make time for things that are important to them. And therapy should be at least partially covered by insurance (now, with better coverage after the ACA kicks in fully). And frankly, making sacrifices when needed for the sake of your relationship is how relationships are supposed to work.
As for security clearance, I will say I haven’t the first clue how it works, but if going to therapy is a disqualification, I’m surprised anyone gets clearance. Therapy is not at all unusual. Mom dies? Grief counseling. Is grieving over Mom something that makes you vulnerable to a bribe? For that matter, is working out whether or not to get married to your girlfriend something that makes you vulnerable to a bribe?
I’d say that he needs to do some actual research on this rather than make excuses, because I’m not seeing it.
OP, you bought him a laptop and he hit it hard enough in anger to cause it to have a problem? I read your reply about all youve done for him , but he doesnt want to put any time or cost into counseling? Give me a break. oh this is scaring me.
So your the primary housekeeper, cook and maintenance person of the house,even doing electrical repairs, painting and vacuuming the garage it sounds almost like a slave, your bending over backwards even plan to repair the roof on your own and in return he is not even willing to go to counseling and broke the laptop in anger that you gave him for an anniversary gift. He is only “nice” to you as long as you do everything his way and dont make any requests for what you need. If your willing to be a kind of slave who doesnt have her own needs met, it could work. If you have some real legitiamte needs and you would like him to meet you halfway, it wont work,he is only meeting his own needs and sounds like he has a anger problem
Just as a heads up up he knows perfectly well why he does not want to get married, he’s just not telling you. He has had 8 years to come to a general conclusion on the direction of your relationship and it does not include marrying you.
His crying that he’s all “confused” is absurd. You need to wake up and smell the coffee. Think about your life experiences. A 28 year old man who has had ONE girlfriend for his entire youth. There are a lot of 28 year old men who would be hesitant to commit in his shoes if he felt he had not sampled anough of life and women.
:eek: Not only are you contributing to paying his mortgage, but you took out a loan in your name to pay for improvements to his house? Contributing something to the mortgage is not the worst thing, since that is essentially what any renter does. But why in god’s name have you taken on a debt for him? That sweat equity you are contributing has value too. You need to stop calling it “the house.” It is his house.
I cannot comprehend why you have put yourself in this position. I see you in a few years, single, in your thirties, finding it harder to meet a decent guy, wishing you were married, and paying off debts incurred for the benefit of your ex. Or else you are going to be married to a guy who has an anger problem and who doesn’t really want to be married to you. See what you can do to minimize your financial losses and then get out. Find someone who wants what you want.
He’s never going to marry you. Read “He’s Just Not That Into You” by Greg Behrendt. Seriously. 'Cause he’s not.
This, plus if he were serious, the two of you would refinance the property in both your names and he would quit claim the property to both of you so that you would have an equal share, or 60/40 or 70/30 or whatever your contributions work out to.
As far as the security clearance and therapy, you can pay cash and not give your real names. No one will ever know. He doesn’t want to go because he knows the truth would come out.
He may behave in loving ways towards you, but he isn’t doing anything that legally or financially binds the two of you together. You’re playing house. If you want a husband, it’s not going to be this man.
Yes, he does have some anger issues as well and that’s another reason he want’s therapy along with the fact that he’s depressed all the time and doesn’t know why.
The argument was about his job. He’s been working 7am until 730-8pm m-f and Saturdays and Sundays 7am - 6pm or later with a few days until noon. This has been going on for the past three months. It’s supposed to end this Friday but who knows.
He’s exhausted and those types of hours in and of themselves are taking a toll on our relationship.
I do feel like a slave at times. I talked to him about how I don’t feel he appreciates what I do and he said he does but he says he also doesn’t ask me to do those things.
But a lot of the stuff that needs to be done won’t otherwise get done if I don’t do it and it needs to be done.
A couple weeks ago, I tore out the whole floor upstairs because it was crappy linoleum half broken up, 1970’s crap and under was amazing hardwoods. He fought me for a year on that floor and didn’t want to do it because it was probably “too hard” to rip up so he wanted to wait to carpet over it. I was so sick of waiting and sick of the way it looked (it was REALLY REALLY bad).
I didn’t HAVE to do it, but I didn’t want to live with a half torn up floor.
In all fairness he’ll probably help me with the garage roof.
I realize in all this I am really making him out to be a ‘bad guy’.
I’ve lived with him since 2007 and in that time he’s paid for a lot of the bills including gas money for me when I needed it.
We have pets which he is mostly responsible for financially (dogs).
Hes also there whenever I need him.
I kind of feel selfish when I complain that I never get to see him because he works so much because… he’s working to support both of us. And I also feel selfish when I want things he won’t do (like marry me).
I feel that what I do for him and US is not enough and It’s not as important because I don’t contribute enough money.
I also feel that contributing only money to the relationship is also not enough.
I’m pretty sure I have my own set of emotional issues I need therapy for at this point.
sigh
I think you nailed it there.
Figure your own stuff out, then figure out what you want to do.
He will not complete you, nor you him.
You say he’s always there, but it sounds like he’s almost never there, on account of working.
I hope you work out these issues, but one thing I would definitely insist on, if I had taken out a loan in my name to do repairs to somebody’s house, would be getting my name on that deed of trust. Quit-claim deed. Cheap and easy. You probably don’t even need a lawyer involved. Then the interest on your loan could be tax-deductible, if it isn’t already (and if your name isn’t on the house, I don’t see how it could be).
For the love of God, with all due respect please open your eyes. You seem to know his treatment of you is way off but then you justify it,like “well,he takes care of the dog”…i give up.
No, you’re not. He sounds like a guy who works hard and has been there for you many times. He’s not committing to you, and frankly that’s not a crime. It sucks, but it’s not criminal.
What you seem to be confusing that with is a man who is making a firm commitment to you. This man hasn’t. The longer you sit there, the more you will feel a false sense of investment and the harder it will be to leave.
If you want to live in limbo, it’s your choice. If you want a husband and a family, start looking elsewhere. I’ve seen this happen so many times with friends. They made every excuse in the world for their boyfriend who wouldn’t take that final step, then one day they got dumped and he was married to someone new within a year while they turned into bitter bitches when it was no ones fault but their own for staying with a man who made it crystal clear he wasn’t going to commit to them.
Your not making him sound like a bad guy, its just that he is. He is at best dishonest and selfish.
Yeah…I tried that line for a long time.
For all intents and purposes, my SO and I had been “married” for a long time. We were living together in a monogamous relationship. So really finally getting married was really more of just having a big party with all our friends and family to celebrate our years of love.
Don’t get me wrong. Weddings are a huge expensive pain in the ass to plan and execute. But ultimately ours was a lot of fun.
I’ll tell you one reason IMHO. Being in a long-term relationship where you aren’t going forward. At some point even he has to be frustrated with his inability to either break up or get married.
My theory is that there are two stable states, like two poles on a magnet. You are either single or you are in some sort of mutually agree apon committed marriage-equivalent relationship with kids. That is to say, the relationship either tends to get pulled towards marriage (or equivalent) and kids or it breaks apart and you both become single. Anything in between eventually creates stress as each person will pull towards either extreme and against each other with varying degrees of force and.
You need a massive reality check here.
You are living as a dependent in someone else’s home, with no security, few assets, and no formal or informal partnership. This is not a normal, safe, or comfortable position for anyone to be in. But it is especially not acceptable for a person in their mid-20s. Especially if you’ve lived with him for pretty much all of your adult life.
You NEED to be able to support yourself, especially if you plan to ever have children. You cannot consider yourself an adult until you know that if all hell breaks loose, you are going to be able to manage financially. This means you must maintain and build job experience and skills. Now, your business may be doing this. But if it’s not providing you as much career advancement and skill upgrades as a full time job would, you need to get a job. If the house goes to hell, well, maybe you guys need to think about if owning is really the right thing for you (and it’s often not if you are working 12 hour shifts), or about what home tasks you can outsource. But you need to know that if you need to, you can walk out tomorrow and get a job that pays a living wage. And if you have been out of the labor market for any amount of time, this is going to be hard.
I need to repeat myself here. You may not need to be financially independent but every adult needs to be capable of being financially independent if they need to be, no matter what. And they need to do whatever it takes, including pissing off partners and hiring maids, to get that way.If you do not do this, you are risking ruining your life, and the life of any dependents you may have.
Again, loving partners do pick up the slack when another is out of the market for some reason (kids, layoffs, etc.) But every partner needs to make sure they could do the same for their partner.
You need to have formal access to your assets, and you have to stop giving stuff away. That $4000? You gave that away. The labor you contribute to renovating his house? You are giving that away. This needs to stop right now, and you need to demand formal recognition of what you’ve already paid into. If he respects you at all, he won’t even blink at arranging that.
And if he doesn’t want to give you rights to what you have paid in, well, if he needs a roofer he can hire a roofer. If he can’t pay a roofer despite working 12 hour shifts, he can’t afford his own house and that’s his problem.
Also, get your ass a bank account that not a soul knows about and only you can touch. Sock enough money in it to survive for a couple months, or at least enough for transportation back to your parent’s or a safe friend’s house. Every human being on the planet needs this.
I could say more, but frankly your situation right now scares the hell out of me. I am guessing you have been dependent on him for most of your life, and have had little time to be independent or support yourself. This is a dangerous situation, for about a billion reason. You gotta take care of your own for a while. It’s a mean world, and if for whatever reason you have to enter it full on for the first time alone when you are 30, it’s going to eat you alive and spit you out. Grow up now, get yourself to the point where you can, if need be, be independent, or else you are going to be unsafe and insecure your entire life (and that’s the best case scenario!)
Answer this question - Why should he marry you? Phrased differently, What’s in it for him? That seems to be the angle from which he is viewing the situation.
Aside from a small tax break and potentially cheaper insurance rates, he has all the benefits of marriage and none of the risk. He can walk away at any time and get by far the better part of the bargain. Pretty sweet deal if you can get it. He sees marriage as all downside. It may take a confrontation to make him see that he can’t have it both ways.