@Superdude, is your fiance the same person as your carjacked girlfriend?
In other words, she’s the kind of person who counts her McNuggets.
Hmmmm…
If you read through that thread, you’ll notice that his girlfriend got carjacked because of her sister:
Her sister has had issues with addiction, and owed money to people who were not-so-nice. Her sister convinced them that [girlfriend] would be on the hook for it… [girlfriend] is reluctant to take this any further with the authorities because family was involved.
But earlier in this thread, he stated that the sister in question hadn’t had any drug issues and the family is a tight-knit group that looks out for each other.
Funny, that.
That doesn’t bug me at all. Remember they’re not married yet.
I am president of my condo association. We (the Board and management company staff) handle all the money involved very professionally with lots of checks and balances and a wide paper trail. Because it’s not my/our money.
I am also the managing trustee of my aged MIL’s finances. Everything is done on paper with full written justification and all the trust beneficiaries are copied in on everything. Because it’s not my money, although a chunk of it will be when MIL’s estate eventually matures.
My wife and I share a checking account. It’s been 20 years since we kept ATM receipts or told each other when we make a payment from it. Because it is our money.
That’s the difference.
I’d be suspicious of a GF that wasn’t happily bringing me back receipts if I’d told her to go grab $100 from my ATM while I take my nap after working a night shift.
To be sure there’s a lot of “tone” to how and when she delivers the receipts that is lost in the vagaries of a message board post. You may be legitimately reacting to more tone than I noticed.
It feels like maybe you’ve got some 'splaining to do.
Lots of well-meaning people offered up lots of well-considered advice.
I guess my question is: were you trying to deceive everybody else or … mainly yourself ?
[good find, @stretch ]
I smell a man who desperately wants to save a maybe-decent woman from a definitely non-decent family.
As long as you’re willing to move across country and cut all family ties forever, go for it. But beware future-wife’s backsliding. Probably better to move and live together a few years before marrying.
My sister and her husband were in those shoes until his mother died. “Never again!” they said. While she was alive, the siblings were like, “Oh, sure, we trust you…” and they never wanted to get involved. But after his mom passed there was a ton of bickering about it, like maybe they’d embezzled or something.
I think we can look at the OP’s situation and try to bring our experiences to it, but ultimately it will come down to whether there’s a comfortable level of trust or not.
I’m a big fan of not demanding information. I mean, if you go to fiancee and yell, “I DEMAND AN ANSWER!” or whatever, you’re going to get the answer they think you want to hear. IIRC at the extreme end, the takeaway from torture techniques is that people will tell you anything to make the torture stop…you can’t be sure you got an honest answer when they’re under duress. Granted this isn’t torture but it’s high pressure and that doesn’t always give the truth. So see what they give freely.
Suppose there’s a woman I’m crazy about and I want to marry. It turns out that my sister stole from her. What would my reaction look like? I’m going to go to my fiancee and fall all over myself apologizing, repeatedly and daily. Maybe some back story comes out, like “We knew she had a problem years ago but after much therapy, we thought it was all behind us.” I think you should be included on any of that, since it’s clear that you qualify on the need to know basis. What’s coming from them freely? If they clam up like you’re a lawyer, that tells you something. The denial you mentioned—is FSIL expecting family ties to pull her through? Are they avoiding you? Are they trying to change the subject? Is FSIL in hiding?
I’m also a fan of not asking people to promise things they can’t reasonably deliver. Suppose fiancee agreed to move across country and give up her entire family. For a few years, maybe she could but in the long run, I doubt it. Families evolve and change, with new babies coming along and marriages and funerals and holidays and whatever. I’m not sure of the OP’s situation geographically—would fiancee giving up her family mean essentially that OP gives up the same thing?
Nobody has to get married, though I’d probably recommend it if kids are in the future.
I went back to the earlier thread @stretch came up with. I now recall having read it at the time, but didn’t post to it.
Today I found it interesting that the OP kept us informed during the effort to find the GF. Which culminated in him reporting in post #83 that GF had been located at home. The thread then continued for another ~70 posts. Zero of which were from the OP.
That implies to me a LOT of OP-GF drama took place. Which is all very relevant to the next episode we’ve been yakking about here.
Right now I don’t doubt the OP’s posting sincerity. I’m starting to question his decision-making though.
I brought up moving away, thinking that there’d still be contact, but only a couple of times a year. Not the constant intrusions and drop-ins and the “Oh, I told sis we’d bring a salad to her house, she’s grilling burgers in an hour.”
Which would answer questions like “Can she live without her family drama?” and “What’s her personality like without her family?”
And of course “Is she willing to make the sacrifices needed to build a new family with the OP?”
Yes, it’s possible that the OP’s being sincere but not making good life decisions right now. Relationships have a way of interfering with objectivity at times.
Going back to this – as I said, you don’t have to get married and you probably needn’t even consider it unless you’re planning to have kids together.
I’ve read nothing about a future family so that leads me to wonder, assuming no kids are involved and it’s just ‘luv’ we’re talkin’ about, why marry?
You can live together or not, divvy up finances and so forth. The only downside is that if someone gets seriously ill or disabled, the other is ordinarily under no obligation (or under limited obligation) to offer financial support. But if the relationship is truly good enough and one person’s not using the other as a meal ticket, then maybe things can be worked out.
Marriage makes a lot of things easier financially. Here’s are some examples of the many benefits of marriage:
Generally, if you’re going to commit to someone long term and be their partner then you might as well. Of course, you want to make sure that’s someone that is right for that role. But it still makes a lot of sense for two people living together long term to get married even without children.
I will say, being obligated to stay in close contact with someone who will steal from you is not a good financial decision.
No question, if you’re confident that it’ll last, on paper, marriage does make financial sense.
OTOH, if it doesn’t work out…very expensive.
My thoughts exactly.
Assuming our barely informed but ultimately well-meaning caricature of the OP & his GF are remotely correct, them getting married is a high risk venture.
A lot of that risk can be mitigated with a trial run of living together for a non-specific but definitely limited period.
The OP seems like a level-headed guy except when it comes to his choice of GF versus volume of baggage. A level headed person like that can make the trial work if that’s possible and walk away if it’s not. And transition to marriage if the trial proves a success.
He/We must balance the “What’re the upsides of an ultimately successful marriage over cohabiting for e.g. 3 years?” with “What’re the downsides of an unsuccessful marriage any time over the next 20+ years due to family issues?.”
I/we can’t put values on the two pans of the scale. But we can sure describe what the pans need to hold.
I think that describes me until my mid-20s. I dated a lot of women who had serious problems and even got engaged to a few, but fortunately never got married. (In one example, being cheated on the day before my wedding was a horrible experience but in retrospect she did me a favor.)
After enough bad experiences I decided to be picky and recognize that as much as it felt good, being a white knight to comfort and care for a troubled woman was a baaaad idea. It never ended well. Rather than me fixing her situation, it always went the other way (my situation got worse). I finally figured out that those red flags didn’t mean “here is how you can help me”, they meant “stay away”.
When I did finally get married, it was to a stable and level-headed woman with a good family. It didn’t last forever but we were married for 7 years and there wasn’t much drama, we just grew apart. The divorce was amicable and we actually get along really well. My second marriage has gone even better, and lasted longer, and hopefully will last for decades more.
For me at least the key was recognizing that stability is just as attractive as any other quality, and that the “gorgeous woman who loves you but has issues” person is a bad idea.
What we know of the OP’s fiancée from this (inevitably) biased portrayal doesn’t quite trigger my warning bells but I do think that the way things play out with this potential SIL and the support he receives from her and the rest of her family will be telling. In particular, I would except the fiancée to go out of her way to protect him from a predatory sister, including distancing herself from her if necessary. If that doesn’t happen I would probably have to reluctantly remove myself from that situation because you can’t marry someone that won’t be on your side when it matters.
Different sister. The fiancée is the youngest of 7 kids, with 5 of those siblings being sisters.
But, I’ll be honest, I never even considered that act in relation to this issue. I’m glad that you brought that up, because I’m now looking at this relationship from an entirely new perspective.
I appear to have some soul-searching to do regarding the fiancée. But I don’t know that that changes my course of action regarding my stolen money.
Looks like there are some heavy conversations in my near future.
Yeah, I’m sorry, man, but I think it’s clear that there’s some dysfunction in the family, which isn’t strange – I’m guessing a majority of families have some level of dysfunction somewhere. In large families, siblings often compete for parents’ attention and love. This can create resentment, and it’s often the case that older siblings resent younger ones. Sometimes siblings may not realize they’re resented – I didn’t realize I was resented by my older half-brother until I was well into adulthood. It’s complicated because there can be love and resentment at the same time, too – love for someone as a sibling but resentment for perceived favoritism. I’m guessing your fiance’s siblings resent her on some level and her parents may not realize it - or maybe they realize it and just don’t want to acknowledge, which leaves it a matter between siblings to settle among themselves…which rarely ends well. So my hunch, based on all the info I’ve got to work with, is that your fiance is a target of resentment and want her to fail somehow.
I don’t think you absolutely have to break it off with her but definitely slow things down and put off the wedding until this somehow gets resolved in a way you’re okay with.