Barrybran - [Insert Original Thread Title Here]

[Barrybran]

Journaling:

So the theme of the day is our finances and what happens to them once my wife loses her job. I believe she will find work and I get the impression that her confidence that she will find work has been shaken. Tonight, I came home and she wanted to know our expenses as we would have to join our finances back together. This wasn't a positive. My wife appeared very frustrated that she would have to rely on me and calculating our expenses appeared to make her more disappointed and angry. She told me what she could expect to receive from the government once she was out of work and also made an off-the-cuff remark about how much she would receive if she moved out, a figure over double what she would receive staying at home.

This morning and tonight have angered me. I've kept it to myself and tried to help my wife where I can, finding the numbers and answering her questions. I feel very disrespected by her though. She chose to separate our finances months ago and now that she is losing her job, she appears to expect that I will pay her bills. Don't get me wrong, I've chosen to live my life as a married man and to me that entails supporting my wife, regardless of what she feels about our relationship. I feel it is the right thing to do and I will do it. After tonight though, I feel that I need to voice my feelings 1) because I am angry and voicing my feelings is something I didn't do enough previously; 2) because I feel a little used. Things have been moving forward and I don't appreciate that she would consider going through the torment of dealing with government agencies over the support from her husband; and 3) because I've struggled for months trying to make ends meet, curbing my spending and increasing my debt because I was left in a position where I couldn't support my own life and now she won't be able to support her own life.

I know there's a boundary there somewhere. I also feel that I've done the right thing so far by supporting my family and that doing so moving forward is the right thing to do regardless of what she thinks or feels. I am conflicted right now and I've decided to sleep on it. I work early tomorrow morning and I have some time at home by myself through the day so I'll have a good 12 hours to process and digest things before expressing my feelings.

If nothing else, it cements my thought earlier that I will need to back off. She appears to be in a negative frame of mind and my presence hasn't helped during these times before. On the plus side, I see two positives: either my wife will find work and her mood will improve or her presence at home will create more flexibility for myself to be able to go back to the gym and catch up on my uni studies. As upset as I feel at the moment, I am going to keep looking at the positives.