It seems to me that she wants you to show a little testosterone in this matter, and you’re trying to get by with the PC bit. Have you asked her to clean? Have you asked her to stop spending money like a wild woman? Then ask/tell her not to spend these hours with the other man. You have caved in and sworn eternal fealty in saying you won’t talk with friends; yet this mother, with a husband and children at home, goes out, at hours when most people party, and most married people are at home, and you let this state of affairs exist? I don’t think it’s a spending/cleaning habit that is the weak spot in the marriage.
She hasn’t been the victim of “unempowerment”. She already is empowered: she controls your and your family’s lifestyle, and she tells you (by actions) what you have to spend each week/month.
I found out Nov. 5 2005 my husband had been a methadone addict for a year. Our daughter was born Sept 10, 2005. He had hid it from me completely and the financial disaster was/is devastating. He is still clean today. I still randomly drug test him and he attends NA. Most days are hard, some are easy, but we both had to be on the same page. If he wanted to continue, there is no way he would have lived here Nov. 6th.
Before you know if your marriage can be saved, you have to know if your wife is willing to save it. Actions mean everything my friend. I’m very sad when reading your posts, I can’t accurately say because I don’t know her side, but from YOUR perspective, you are the only one in a committed relationship.
Can you have a date at home? I realize that “kid woke up” is a tradition: Murphy’s Collateral For Little Kids says that a kid can sleep beautifully 99 nights in a row and wake up on night 100, when the parents are trying to have a candlelit dinner - and of course, then the kid wants to know what’s going on! Mparents’ “couples group” included a couple hours of shared meditation during the week before the monthly meeting and they managed it more often than not; note that this time has a whole week to happen, it’s not “Thursday at 8pm or else”. They learned to make special the shared moments they found and just shrug it away when a plan went awry because one of us had come down with the flu.
Although I’ve been arguing the unempowered stance, I gotta say this is an excellent point. And it’s probably typical of what happens in marriages, and why money is such a hot button issue; Belrix has evaluated the situation and made the official declaration of How Things Shall Be, but his wife (whose input was not sought) behaves in a way that meets HER needs. It’s not a matter of “who’s right”, it’s a matter of working together to get BOTH of your needs met (which also requires being honest with yourselves and each other about what those needs are – not always an easy question to answer).
Re: childcare while exercising, that’s a challenge for us too, which is why we just joined the YMCA. Ours is $46/month for the family, and that includes a free “drop the kids off and we’ll supervise their play” room during certain hours of the day and night. You might be surprised at what’s out there. We also take ours to the park frequently. Pushing them on the swings isn’t true cardio, but it does get us out of the house together.
Now yesterday, we went for a nice walk in the nature preserve. Again, the pace was the kids’ and not ours - but as we were carrying them on our shoulders most of the time, that has to have some benefits!
I typed out the original budget, using past months’ transactions as the pattern. I then added $100 per paycheck to go directly to savings, and all those other things that we should be doing but weren’t necessarily planning for (like putting money aside for car maintenance). Whatever was left over was divided as MOMO.
I then sat down with my wife and went over it line-by-line, asking her input along the way, we tweaked here and there a bit. It seems to me, though, that she just wanted to glance at it and say “whatever”. My rationalization for this is she didn’t really want to deal with it. She didn’t want to find out that there was limits to what she could spend and what she could do.
I’ll give you an example from the last 24 hours. Yesterday she took my little girl shopping. My daughter had some birthday money and gift cards from her recent birthday and she wanted to use them. OK - so we discussed new shoes (She needs some & Grandma suggested clothes with her check so it’s a good match), new earrings for her recently pierced ears (other Grandma’s suggestioin), and something from Toys R Us since that’s the gift card.
My daughter came back with multiple bags. After the flurry of show-and-tell I asked my wife, sotto voce, if she managed to get all that on the birthday money alone. My wife said she had to throw in $3 of her own cash to cover Toys R Us but that was all. Wow, thinks I.
Today I look at the account and she spent $123 from the family account. There’s $176 in the account right now and I know an automatic withdrawl of $190 comes out in two days. Payday is 5 days away.
I can ask, I can plead, I can beg, I can appeal. I can show her the bank balance. I can tell her that we’re getting low and to only spend on essentials. It doesn’t matter. Today I’m mad enough to strip her of the checkbook and debit card. Her only way to prevent this would be to take $123 of her MOMO, if she has the much left, and replace what she spent yesterday.
That’s less a budget issue, I think, than an honesty issue and a refusal-to-own-up-to-mistakes issue. She knew how much she had to spend, and she spent more and lied to you.
That sounds more like she’s got a blindspot for money management more than anything else. As big a PITA as it could be, I’d take all the money away, do the food shopping yourself, and give her an envelope with real cash. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
Obviously she’s not getting the financial message, and obviously money is the number one marital arguing point, I’m at a loss as to what to suggest here.
She’s never lived alone, right? Perhaps she’s never learned the reflexes and doesn’t understand how critical it is. It’d suck to have her learn that while going thru a divorce. That’s like pulling the ripcord because she’s never learned to swim.
(yeah, not really, but I’m struggling for an example here.)
FWIW, my mother in law went through just this ting in her divorce…racked up 75k in debt before getting things sorted and is STILL paying it off…8 years later.
You can return some of that loot to get the $123 back, right?
Don’t worry about your daughter. If she’s five then she’ll be happy with what the birthday money bought and a quick trip to the dollar store for some sparkly hair bows.
Have you talked to your wife about taking away the checkbook? Don’t present it as a punishment, but as a temporary thing so that she doesn’t have to worry about money while you two are trying to work on your marriage. She may be more receptive to the idea then you think.
If she’s out-and-out lying about expenditures, ignoring the effort he’s putting into creating a budget that is inclusive of her needs, and only give a cursory glance to the sheet he’s discussing with her, I’d say she has no intention of working through the issue. I’d take the checkbook away, take her name off it, cut up her cards, and let her ask for cash. Fuck that. Life is too short to have someone who’s supposed to be on YOUR side working against you.
I really feel for you Belrix. If my wife was constantly draining my bank account and showed no interest in “doing the right thing”, e.g. getting a part time job and earning some money, then I would be just as frustrated as you are. Having read about her other issues I think you have you hands full.
The only thingI would add is that marriage is a partnership… and just like with a business, if the two partners end up working at cross purposes the marriage/business will surely fail.
While the marriage counselor should be impartial, they should also point out when one partner is not acting responsibly or in good faith. It sounds like you are being reasonable and that your wife is living in her own world. Unfortunately, a threat of divorce may be the only thing that forces your wife to face reality…
She sounds at best like she’s got some growing up to do, but more likely she’s an immature dependent looser.
If they didn’t already have kids then I’d be yelling at him to get the hell out.
As it is I’m wondering why
A) He was attracted to someone so unstable in the first place
B) He married her when there are so many non-crazy, responsible women out there
C) After living with her for at least 5 years (if my math is correct) he decided to make two little people with her.
Belrix, you need to protect your family from her irresponsibility. Close your accounts. Cut up your credit cards. Put alerts on your credit reports. And you need to stop pretending that she’s someone she’s not. Deal with the reality of your wife as she actually is and plan your life accordingly.
Maybe someday she’ll pull her head out of her butt and you can have a marriage again, but for now you should be in damage-control mode.
Only $45 is “reimbursable”; the rest is disguised but valid “family” expenses. Gas from the grocery-store pumps looks like groceries, drugs from the pharmacy with candy & gum disguises the nice round amounts the insurance creates.
Now I feel like a reactionary fool.
At least the upcoming withdrawl will clear but I’m going to have to cover my next fill-up from the remainder of my MOMO.
I’m not sure I understand, Belrix. Was this end result of last episode you mis-calulating and jumping the gun, or was she still playing fast and loose with the money?
Well, the deal is gas & pharmacy expenses come from the family account. This accounts for two of the four charges against the account although they’re disguised charges. (Pharmacy usually comes in nice neat increments of $25 & $10, this wasn’t. Gas from the grocery store owned pumps looks like groceries).
She says that when she went out yesterday she forgot to take her cash and spent instead from family account, and that she intended to pay the “few dollars” back, the two charges that weren’t supposed to come from the account.
The cynic in me says she was waiting until I asked, since she said nothing yesterday when I asked specifically about the purchases. If I didn’t ask, my inner cynic says she didn’t intend to repay the account.
Really, marriage is a crapshoot, not a business transaction. You don’t really know things like how they’ll spend money until you make that big leap. You marry based on emotions & hopes. Besides, people present the best sides of themselves, I think, during dating & early living together. After the marriage, they tend to be more honest in their reactions. Really, though, I think our problems jumped to a new level after the birth of our children - when the realities sank in.
My oldest child is 9, by the way. We’ve been married for nearly 11 years. We conceived in the first year of marriage. We’ve got three kids, the youngest turned 4 not long.
I’m named Unintentionally Blank for a reason, I don’t think I could account for every dime I’ve spent.
Without going into greater detail than I care, I can’t honestly assess if her overspending is intentional, accidental, or if you’re obessing over it. I can’t tell if it’s a mountain or a molehill at this point.
You suspicion of her actions though is probably more than a little unhealthy and could easily become a self-fulfilling prophesy. There’s stuff goin’ on here I’m not qualified to assess or comment on, I’m afraid.
I don’t mean to sound hateful or snarky, but have you come right out and asked her if she wants a divorce? The marriage counselor asks her to spend more time with her family, so she goes over to “buddy”'s house until 1am. But you’re not supposed to discuss your marital problems with your friends. You sit down with her and try to explain the family finances - she says “whatever” and goes right out and overspends.
My instincts are telling me these are not the actions of a woman who thinks her marriage is in trouble. Have things been this way the entire time you’ve been married? I think she either doesn’t realize how unhappy and frustrated you are, or she just doesn’t give a shit and assumes you will continue to put up with it.
And as for her “buddy” - if she has the right in your marriage to ask you not to discuss your marital problems with your friends, then you have the right to ask her not to spend so much time with her “buddy”. Sauce for the goose…
Well, I understand your position, Unintentionally Blank. Personally, I think I over-reacted on this, although I over-reacted to the board. I spoke with her more calmly… I hope.
Yes, I obsess over the money. I check our bank balance every day.
I do think I come by these two behaviors, honestly. My wife has taught me that they’re necessary. A month ago we had nearly $100 in NSF charges.
I have friends who nearly got divorced because she would sit down, make out the bills and checks, stamp the envelopes, drop them in the garbage, and take the money to the coke dealer. TWICE.
They almost lost their house and car, had their utilities shut off and all the worst things you can imagine to go with it.
He took over 100% responsibility for everything. SHe is responsible for buying groceries and cigarettes with her pittance of a paycheck. She doesn’t pay bills, doesn’t participate in any major financial decisions, and is treated like a child.
I’m certain he stayed with her because it would have cost him too much to leave her. They’re just starting to get to an adult place in their relationship, nearly 10 years later…But he doesn’t trust her to this day.