I’m sorry to hear about you and your husband, Rilchiam.
I agree with Kalhoun, and, I have to say that from where I sit, I’m not seeing a lot of teamwork in your relationship. Why the completely separate finances (to the point that you have to count slices of pizza)? It sounds like you even have separate food. I realize that different people do things different ways, but you don’t sound like a family–you sound like roommates (and roommates who don’t get along at that.) It sounds like that’s the sort of relationship your husband wants, too–he doesn’t want you to move out, after all. He just wants to be able to bitch at you about not paying half of the rent.
If I didn’t want to have a relationship with my spouse anymore because they were “cranky”, I’d ask them to get counseling. Or to see a doctor. Or for a divorce. I wouldn’t say, “Well, this is it. I can’t stand you because of your attitude, but, don’t change anything, and you can go on living here like nothing’s wrong.”
It sounds like you two have different goals. You want to be a writer, and he wants to…buy a lot of electronic stuff and DVDs and eat name brand food. Has he always been OK with you being a writer, or is he just enomored by the potential glamor without understanding that there might be sacrifices?
Maybe you should tell your mother what’s going on. I mean, look at it from her point of view–she’s lending you money and thinking, “Well, what do they need money for? Mr. Rilch is just blowing it on iPods and DVD’s.” That could be why she’s cutting you off.
What are you going to do if your book fails? Make that when.
You’ve already indicated that you know most but not all of the fault as you perceive it lies with you. It seems to me that a good dose of humble pie on your part would work wonders. You are certainly not giving him that quantum of solace. Nor is he giving you the same. Are you sure you’re not behaving like a spoilt teenager?
From what you’ve said, you work part time and he works full time. So make use of those extra hours to make the home look nice, do the shopping etc. Keeping a decent-sized house is neither quick nor easy as anyone who’s done it knows (and you haven’t added kids into the mix).
Do you truly love him? If so, tomorrow you greet him at the door with a smile and a kiss and you say that you’re sorry. He’ll likely apologise too and you take it from there. Puto out for him and he’ll put out for you.
Juniper200: Well, I tried financial counseling on my own once, and it turned out, all they wanted to do was lock me into a debt consolidation that could have wiped me out permanently. One shift in the house of cards, and I would have been in even worse trouble. Can you recommend a financial counselor that you know has helped some people?
PunditLisa: I am looking for an agent. I have no intention of self-publishing.
When I said I wouldn’t “subject” Mr. Rilch to my mom, that was a shorthand way of saying that they don’t get along, so living in proximity to my parents would be a bad idea in the long run. More on that later.
Bruce_Daddy: What dropzone said. Trotting up and down the aisles of three different stores, trying to squeeze a week’s worth of groceries, including picnic supplies, out of a twenty-dollar bill, is not conducive to relaxation. (I’m just lucky that the three stores are all on my as-the-crow-flies route home. If I had to make detours, with the price of gas being what it is…!)
gum: Yes, I still love him. More on that later as well.
Sublight: No, we hadn’t made up our minds. This was just his way of really getting my attention.
Zebra:
Not sure what you mean by that.
Anduin: Thanks, but we’re not going to separate.
DeadlyAccurate: You know, that’s one of the things we talked about today! He just had/has this fixation that I could hand my manuscript to a publisher and get a $10,000 advance within a month. I think I’ve finally gotten him to understand that the people you “hear about”, like J.K. Rowling and Frank McCourt, didn’t really “come out of nowhere” with a million-selling book just like that, and that the reason you “hear about them” is because they are very much the exception, not the rule.
So I think he now accepts that it’s not that easy, and rarely that lucrative. BUT, he still anticipates that I should at least be able to earn enough (over time) to justify the time I spent on this. And that I should be able and willing to push to make that happen. Which is not an unrealistic expectation.
Anger management…yeah. I think our insurance covers that.
vunderbob: That’s a possibility too. Also, Mr. Rilch wants me to start working out.
catsix: Thank you for the thumbnail of UStC. Yes, that’s about right. Muhammad Ali almost bought a house there. One of the highest-paid Pittsburgh Penguins did buy a house there, and proceeded to upgrade it into the million-dollar range. Mr. Rilch’s home is far from that range, but it’s sure not the house where I grew up.
Kalhoun: Yeah, that’s stuff we need to work out through counseling. Either us or just me.
dantheman: Well, we are talking. More on that later.
NurseCarmen, astro, Tansu, CrazyCatLady and jlzania: More on that later as well.
fessie: I’ll see if I can get that at the library.
Trunk: Not quite. I do have a job. The groceries he was buying were for him alone, because my picnic menu wasn’t elegant enough for him. (And the funny thing is, he ended up eating all the stuff I got and not touching his! MOTL.)
And I’m not even sure what you’re getting at here:
Why should he pay my debts? They’re mine. I asked him for half the cost of the pizza I bought, and he refused, on the grounds that he’d just paid the rent.
He’s not an asshole and I’m not a freeloader. The problem is not our individual debts: the problem is that my personal debts suck up such a large percentage of my income, I’m unable to contribute as much as he does to the joint expenses like rent and electric. And he resents that, and I don’t blame him. But I have a lien on my account, for crissakes, and it won’t be lifted until August. MOTL. pervert:
That’s very thought-provoking. Thank you; I hadn’t looked at it that way. Once again, a poster’s integrity is at odds with his SN!
MinniePurl: Ahhhhh, the money thing. MOTL.
Khadaji, Kiki and Wang-Ka: Thank you.
Trunk, again:
—Choosing my husband over my mother…I’m just doing what I saw her do. My paternal grandmother is/was a great big sucking black hole of need, always expecting “her son” to be on call for her. My mom put up with this for years, and finally told my dad, “You took the vow that said ‘forsaking all others’. That means ALL others.” I only know this because she told me, so I don’t know what else was said in that discussion, but shortly afterwards, my grandma went into a retirement home. She was happy (still is, given that she’s mostly catatonic), and my mom was happy, and, though it was hard for him to admit it at first, so was my dad. It took decades for him to break that pattern, but everyone, including him, is glad he did.
But sauce for the goose, y’know? My mom is still volatile, and I’m fully aware that that’s where I get it from. She screams when things don’t go her way. She’s rabidly interested in politics, and still expects me to vote the same way she does. She even takes it upon herself to tell me how I should vote in state elections. I mean, she’s in Nevada, and reads up on what’s going on in California, and tells me, “You should vote for Candidate X, and against Proposition Y”, and gets indignant if I present a counter-argument.
She was bound to clash with Mr. Rilch, who is somewhat conservative. The war…Suffice to say that they both think you can only be one of two things: a total hawk or a total dove. That, plus their opposing reactions to a West Wing episode, plus the way she acted during a game of Trivial Pursuit, led me to say, “Look: you haven’t had him since birth, to dominate and beat down and bend to your will, like you did me…No, I’m not brainwashed by him. I’m an adult, and I make my own decision, not yours or his. But I’m telling you right now, if you can’t have a discussion with him, as opposed to a screaming match, we’ll just both have to avoid you.”
Well, we’re still on speaking terms. And to be fair, a lot of that has to do with my sister going to bat for me. But the point is, Mr. Rilch and myself living in the same town with my family would be nothing but big, bad trouble.
—Well, perhaps I shouldn’t be keeping score. But sometimes I feel like only the evil I do lives after me.
—Grocery shopping for two hours, yes. That’s the way it is. Do you really live in Baltimore, or just a suburb?
—His defense of the DVDs is that he’s worked hard and earned the right, and a DVD on his salary is like a pack of gum on his grade-school allowance. MOTL.
—The eggs. MOTL.
MinniePurl and PunditLisa, again: He’s frustrated because he wants me to hang up the retail job and get a better-paying one. Why haven’t I done that? Well…it may be a poor excuse, but basically, job-searching and interviews are trying for me. I feel like I was lucky enough that my current employers thought I was good enough for them, and I don’t hate the job, so why go through the whole rejection process again?
TroubleAgain: Joint account? Excuse me while I guffaw.
Anaptyxis: What khadaji said.
filmore: No, we’re not getting divorced.
Tamex:
—See, this is what happens when you discuss your personal life on the board! (Not that I regret posting; you guys have been very helpful and supportive.) We get along in so many more ways than we don’t get along! Seriously; we make all kinds of time for each other, and we have our in-jokes and ways of showing affection and our rituals, like the head-scratching. There’s a LOT of love in this relationship. Yesterday just happened to be a time when the bad came to the forefront and couldn’t be overshadowed by the good.
—He really WANTS me to be a writer. He loves my stuff, and, it was his idea for me to stop working for a while and just devote myself to writing. Then, bills started piling up, and I had to take the retail job. Now he’s frustrated because he thought I’d be published by now, or at least in negotiations. He wants me to get published, partly for the money, as I’ve said, because “you should have SOMETHING to show for all this”, but also because he wants me to make my mark on the world. Selling duvet covers isn’t something they put in your obituary.
He’s not just fixated on “potential glamour”, but…The thing with him is, he went to art school, and now he’s a union electrician. Yes, it pays well, and he’s worked on some big-time shows, and had great experiences, and all like that. But somehow, he just never gets around to working on his art. He gets the bug every so often, and starts a sketch…and leaves it half-finished…and then a few months later starts another sketch…So he’s not perfect either, and is also letting his potential dry up. He did admit today that “at least you finished your manuscript”. MOTL.
—Yeah, good point about what my mom’s probably thinking. I do remember a phone convo with my sister, years ago, in which she shrieked, “He’s a compulsive spender!” At the time, I shrugged that off, saying, “Oh, you got that from Mom”, but now I realize how carefully I’m guarding my speech around both of them, avoiding any mention of “Mr. Rilch bought such-and-such”.
I remember years ago, a married couple was carrying on their pre-divorce debates here on the boards (before the mods told them to cease and desist). At one point, the husband said, “Well, look at my wife’s sig!” The sig said, “Veni, Vidi, Visa. I came, I saw, I shopped.” That’s Mr. Rilch, except he no longer qualifies for a credit card. MOTL.
I was going to go into detail about what happened today, but to paraphrase A.A. Milne, “I am very tired after that last post, and I think I shall stop there.”
Rest up, Rilchiam. responding to everyone on SDMB must be almost as tiring as dealing with your relationship!
Now for more unwanted advice: Since he won’t go to counselling, do so yourself. Do a searching inventory of the problems that you are bringing into your own life and relationship. Decide which ones need the most work and work on them with your counselor. Do this with utter disregard for whether he’s making changes, or responding to your changes. And don’t try to get him to change, because you’ll only waste effort better directed at fixing the things about yourself that you want fixed.
Even if the relationship doesn’t last, you’ll have taken care of yourself, and made positive changes in your life.
I spent many, many days wishing that my coal patch house was USC instead of a coal patch house, and that my dad was some business guy with a big degree and flashy car instead of us being poor.
I can relate to you in that, at the very least, having no concept of what it was to grow up in USC. They were ‘the richies’ and I wasn’t. It’s hard for me to watch my best friend now at a shopping mall because he spends money like water. It boggles the poor girl’s mind, even though I’m not still living in the coal patch. I still have the mentality.
I just wanted to say is marriage is hard work. It isn’t 50-50. Sometimes is 60-40 or even 90-10. If it is off balance, like 70-30 all the time, something is hinky.
Are you working together towards a common goal ( other than paying off bills that are ever growing?) or are you working against each other like a couple of magnets, polar opposites?
I can’t wrap my brain around a couple that doesn’t share their debts. Even if they were racked up before the marriage. In my opinion (not that THAT matters) you marry the whole person – past, present, and future. I can understand your wanting to take responsibility for your debts, but if you aren’t uniting – and I mean REALLY uniting – there really isn’t much point in getting married.
I paid half the mortgage from the time me and Mr. Kalhoun started living together. We always had a joint account. I dunno…it just makes me feel like we’re really working together on our life.
I don’t mean to make it sound like we don’t have any problems, because we’re just like any other couple. But one thing we rarely argue about is money. Because it’s ours – not his and mine. That means we have to come to some sort of agreement on how we earn it and what we do with it. Anything over $100 is discussed and we each know what it’s being spent on and what will have to wait due to other priorities. You might want to try it for a few months and see if it works for you. I do hope things work out for you. (For the record, we are polar opposites on food, too. The nice part about it is that since I do 100% of the cooking, I get to have a little more “caviar” than “beanies and weenies”. )
Rilchiam I am very sorry you are going through so much. “Relationships are hard work” is a tired cliche, but pretty damn powerful when it applies to you.
I wish you two patience and communication and compromise.
You get your shit paid off and then start saving together. All the money goes into one big pile. You remove money from the pile to pay for groceries that you eat TOGETHER. You remove money from the pile to pay for DVDs as long as you agree that they’re reasonable things to buy.
Our concepts of marriage and relationships are clearly way too far removed from each other for this to be fruitful for either of us.
[yes, I live in the city of Baltimore. And I have no idea how it could take someone 2 hours to get groceries.]
I know at least one couple who does this because the husband wrecked his credit rating before the marriage. Keeping money seperate means that she can still get credit, and gives them a better mortgage rate.
Rilchiam:
Sorry to hear about your situation.
Motley Fool The Motley Fool UK site has a collection of articles on getting out of debt, but more usefully some very good discussion boards under Dealing with Debt. They are mainly UK focused, but they’ve advised some ex-pats and people abroad. They might be able to give you some advice, or ideas on places to look for help in the US.
If you want to contact me by email I might be able to give some advice, but my experience is mainly UK.
Sorry to hear about the troubles, Rilch! I am wondering, though;
Why the guffaw? It sounds to me like a lot of your problems are about money;, and if you had a joint account, that might help significantly. Consider, for example, the following idea:
-Both of you contribute equally to making your family work. (If this isn’t true, fix it).
-Both of you deserve equal fun.
-Put your paychecks into a joint account.
-Take $100 or so out each month for each of you as discretionary money (or $20, or whatever you can afford).
-The rest is for family purchases.
Set a budget, and include a food budget, for both of you. You might fnd that under the food budget, if you buy Log Cabin syrup, there’s not enough money for name-brand cola. Maybe you’ll find that if you give up cola altogether, you can afford real maple syrup. Thing is, you should be looking at the food for both of you: he doesn’t get to have the fancy stuff while you get the crappy stuff.
For your part, the Little Lord Fauntleroy stuff is no good. If he likes a certain food, it’s not your job to belittle him and mock him for it; you should be happy that it makes him happy.
As someone else suggested, y’all have a less entwined financial relationship than I had with most of my college roommates. That is either symptom of or cause of a lot of the problems here, I think.
I’m not pointing any fingers at Rilch with this, but not everyone is squeaky clean in the financial area, and separate account do make sense in some cases.
Especially when one of the spouses thinks the other one exists to clean up all messes, like the financial ones.
My credit was utterly trashed when me ‘n’ Mr. K got together. I had repossessions, late fees, literally NO credit. I couldn’t even get a phone. Through mutually contributing to one account, I learned how to manage my money. It took some years to clean up my financial mess, but I’ll tell you ONE thing…there was no way I was going to fuck up his AAA credit rating. I learned how to budget, how to save, and how to wait for things I wanted. And guess what…I am now an equal partner on our mortgage. I never thought I’d be a homeowner. Joint finances is the best thing that ever happened to me (and him! I make more than he does!)
I think it’s a trend that’s been growing recently as female incomes have approached near parity with male incomes in many cases, and the debt people accumulate as individuals has exploded. Many new couples (seemingly far more than in the past) so are making provisions to categorize the debt they bring into the marriage and maintian separate lines of responsibility for it post marriage.
Marriage is a bit of a different animal than it was 20 years ago, and there is less blending of a persons (women’s most specifically) identity and obligatons into the shared net of marriage. To a certain extent it is more like being co-equal roommates, legally and operationally, than it used to be.
It’s interesting in a way, as husbands not taking on their wife’s pre-marriage debt obligations is sort of the flip side to the wife not taking the husband’s last name. They are different issues, but IMO they spring from the same well of marriage becoming more a partnership of emotional convenience than social necessity.
Ouch, Rilch, this all really sucks. But, I’m just curious, and feel free not to answer this if you don’t want to, but – your response to a suggestion of a joint account was to guffaw. What’s that about? That’s normal. It’s what married people do. Are you both resistant to the idea, or is that coming from one side or the other?
In any case, I wish you the best. Know you’re in my thoughts and.
Well, I don’t understand that, either. We lived together for nine years before we got hitched (seven years ago). We had mutual finances from day one. And I didn’t take his name when we married either. I just think if you’re a couple, you’re a couple. Kind of old-fashioned, I guess…that’s really the only traditional thing about us. That and “no sucky-fucky” outside the marriage.
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