I thought long and hard about putting a password this entry. Mostly because I am sure as I start talking and getting angry all over again… I’ll be cussing quite a bit.. and also because I didn’t want to have to defend myself to my husband, for the millionth time, for anything I write here tonight. But then I realized that I also needed him to hear me and how I am feeling. So I left this entry open. I hope it will make him see that he is creating more problems for us by ignoring his responsibilities, by not acting like a grown up and accepting his role in the things he does, and by expecting me to handle 100% of everything… from the bills, to the house, to the kids, to waiting on him, to his personal issues and so on. I am not super woman… nor and I his servant. I can’t not… nor am I willing to.. be at his beck and call doing all his grunt work.
Today I had some pretty shity finance things happen. I am not going to bore you with all of the details but I will summarize parts so it all makes sense. One thing I will say is I am tired of the financial holes that I keep falling into. Especially the ones that are not my fault, or my responsibility.
Situation #1 :
My husband got pulled over on March 3rd, 2006 for speeding and not wearing his seat belt. Obviously he got tickets for both… AND they took his drivers license. It should have been an irritating but fixable situation. The fines were for $120.00 bucks. However my dear husband decided to ignore paying those fines. So he never got his license back. On February 24th of 2007 (11 months later) his license expired. It was time for him to renew it. But he couldn’t… because he didn’t have it. He still had not paid the fines from those 2 tickets. You’d think at this point he would have made it a priority. Nope not my husband. By now I had set the money aside for him to go pay these fines at least once. Probably more like twice. And He would refuse to go take care of it on his own. He said he worked M-F till 6pm and that I needed to go handle it. When I told him I tried and that they refused to talk to me over the phone… He said he’d “try” to get a day off so that WE could go handle it. Insisting that I had to be with him… and if I wasn’t he continually says… even today… “That it will never get done then!!” To date… he has NOT taken a day off to drive over and pay those first 2 tickets.
So now it’s June of 2008 (OVER 2 years after the initial tickets.)… and he’s been ticketed twice more now… for driving on an expired license.. ohh and he’s been arrest and tossed in jail for blowing off the first of those new tickets and it’s court date. Which by the way… Cost us $313 dollars, we did not have, to bail his ass out! Furthermore.. the money came from his children’s savings. And obviously that wasn’t a wake up call for him either… because he got a second ticket for the same thing. AND it’s now June of 2008, as I mentioned above, and NONE of the tickets have been handled. And he still has en expired license.
Tonight when we were discussing all the money problems… I said to him.. that this issue was 100% HIS fault and that I was angry he hadn’t taken care of this stuff AGES ago. He’s 39 years old… Grow up!! And ya know what he said to me… He looked me in the face and said, “I don’t see how you can say this is 100% my fault and problem.”
WTF??! Are you fucking kidding me?? I wasn’t driving the car when he got pulled over and ticketed! I didn’t tie his ass up when it was time to go renew his license. and I have set aside the money for him to pay his fine at least 4 times now.. and he’s always found a reason why HE can’t go handle it. Now he says how we never had the money or how the money got used for something else. But he neglects to acknowledge that the money was waiting for him for weeks, EACH TIME, before it got used for something else.
So in his warped, fucked-up, little mind.. this is now… My problem??? My responsibility??? Excuse Me? I don’t fucking think so!!! Where in my wedding vows did it say… “I shall be your doormat and drive all over god’s county cleaning up your criminal activities for you while you sit on your ass at home… watching nascar, drinking your pepsi and bombing the world in Call Of Duty 4???”. Last time I looked… that line was not in our vows.
Forgive me while I take a breather… I am ANGRY!!!!
Ok Back… I have regained my composure. I just do not see how he can pin even 1% of responsibility on me for any of this. And I know that no judge is gonna buy the defense of… “Well, I told my wife to handle it, Sir.” And the fact that he expects me to take partial responsibility just shows me that I am wasting my time in this marriage because he obviously wont ever grow up and be a man. He wants to be a little boy pushing all of his problems on someone else… expecting.. MOMMY to fix it. Well, I am not his mother!
Situation #2 :
Rick claims that he has NO idea were any of our money goes… and yet he has 2 laptops and a main PC, 2 HD tv’s… one is plasma. All 4 of our children have their own computers. I have laptop and main PC… and a Cannon Digital Camera…..He’s got 6… no maybe 8 RC cars…a project Camero in the garage… as well as various other misc. items in the past, and present. We spend every large sum of money we get… bonuses, tax returns and so on… mostly on toys.
Having those things isn’t the big problem its how and when we get them that is usually the problem. We make bad choices, take stupid risks and spend money on big items when we really shouldn’t.
I say we because I have been right there for most of it. And honestly I have no back bone and my husband knows it. He whines about how badly he wants something and how hard he works and how much he or we deserves it.. and I agree that he does work hard… but very often I am reminding him we can’t afford “X” thing and that he has to wait… and then as soon as he gets the money…via tax return..bonuses, stocks.. and so on… he buys whatever it is. Without checking to see if we need it for anything else.
About 50% of the time I manage to get some money out and I put it towards general living or bills. But we really should be putting like 80% of that money towards our bills and daily living… and because I don’t want to deal with his temper tantrums … I don’t push hard enough and I let him do it his way. Almost every time I regret it after the fact and I am angry. But normally it’s too late to change it.
What most people do not see is the hostile, argumentative & sometimes destructive side that comes out when Rick wants something and I wont let him have it. He’ll break things, dismantle things… like a person’s car. Hide things… take back gifts. Start arguments at midnight when I am trying to sleep and so on. He’s also been hostile towards the kids.. and then he’ll tell them to blame me because I won’t let him have or do… “X thing”. Like he’s saying.. “I’ll make the kids miserable if you don’t get me what I want.” And I can’t live and function in the house when he’s like that… and I get tired very fast of those games.. so in order to keep the peace…I give in and let him win. And sometimes I don’t even try to tell him no in the first place. I can usually gauge him and tell how bad the fight will be if I say no and I go off of that.
Now in all fairness.. he has gotten better over the years, by about 20-25%… but the patterns are already laid… the habits are already created in him and in me. I know this behavior… this pleasing, keep the peace thing.. I am doing is wrong and is only adding to our financial and marital problems. But if I had to chose between dealing with him in a tantrum or keeping the peace. I tend to fall on keeping the peace. But times… they are a changing and after 15 years I am finally tired of this game now.. and I am not keeping the peace anymore! I am finally burnt out completely. My level of energy for this is gone. I have reached an emotional point of not caring.
Situation #3 :
This one ties both of the previous problems together.
Rick doesn’t listen to me, we aren’t a team. And he doesn’t take an active role in anything important in our lives. He doesn’t take parenting seriously… He doesn’t take our bills seriously either. He really believes that since he works a full-time job and I do not, currently, work outside of the home that everything beyond him going to work each morning is my problem. Period! Even if the problem was of his soul creation (like the tickets).. He expects me to fix it.. or hold his hand while he fixes it. And if I don’t he won’t either. And in all honestly… even when I worked a full time job outside of the home… he still acted like this.
Rick got 6 credit cards over the last year or so…after not having credit for about 10 yrs because of previous credit problems and us having to file bankruptcy early in our marriage.. They are all OVER-maxed. And currently all but one of them is in default! Last summer he had maxed them all up (for about the 3rd time) and decided to take out a small consolidation loan to pay them off. We discussed this at length and I told him it was bad idea. Because we couldn’t afford to pay on the cards… and the loan. And I didn’t believe that he’d stick the cards in a drawer and leave them there.
BTW… the loan and cards are solely in his name. I have student loans on my credit and until I get them paid down… I do not want, nor can I handle, more credit problems, lol.
My fears came true when not 90 days after he took the loan and paid off the cards… all of the cards were once again maxed out. Now he has reasons for why each card was maxed.. and by themselves doesn’t sound bad at all. He also feels as if he’s being picked on and has done nothing wrong. Additionally he feels I am EQUALLY responsible and to blame in this financial burden. But I did not charge the 6 cards up.. over and over.. and I didn’t take out a loan to pay them off and then charge them up again. Only to have over extended my financial means… and now have 6 credit cards that I can’t pay…which are screwing up my credit.
He did this things…knowing I disagreed and that we couldn’t afford it… and he didn’t care. He wanted what he wanted. But now he expects me to help him clean up the mess. I think that bullshit. and it’s VERY selfish. This crap has a LONG lasting penalty on our lives.. not just his,,, but on mine and our children too. And yet he has the gall to stand in front of my and tell me, “He thinks he’s very self-less and that he always puts us first.”
He also doesn’t see how these financial things have a domino effect and how something stupid he does will screw us up for months and months to come.
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I am tired of not having enough money to pay our bills because when I had the extra cash it was spend badly (either on toys or on cleaning up yet another of his self-created messes) … instead of being saved… or put on something really important for the whole family and not just him. And I am tired of being made to feel like an moron because I want to be responsible. I am tired of arguing with him for hours that, No he can’t buy that car part, or computer… because we need to pay the rent, or electric bill. And I am tired of the bullshit guilt trip and attitude he puts on my as if he’s being neglected and denied. I am tired of his messes being dumped in my lap to handle. I am tried of him taking money from this house that’s needed for the kids, for food and for the bills… to clean up one of his stupid messes. I am also tired of him treating my mother with disrespect… and then expecting me to call her and borrow money when we have problems.
I told him almost a month ago now if things don’t start changing … I am done. I do not believe that he thinks I am serious. But I am. I really cannot take anymore. At this point I do not believe he has any intention of changing anything… for the long haul. He wants to stay the same and continue to dump everything on my shoulders. and I am putting my foot down. I refuse to be his dumping ground or doormat anymore.