This is primarily a vent, but if anyone has any advice, please feel free to chime in.
We are going to MC tomorrow and this morning we had a brief check-in to talk about what we wanted to talk about with the MC. (Did you follow that?)
H said that he wants to discuss our "financial situation" and how the financial vulnerability he feels is keeping him from growing closer to me. I knew this was coming, because he'd brought it up a few times over the past few weeks and I'd deflected the conversation (because really, my sympathy for him on this issue only goes so far).
Let's recap, shall we?
1. He makes more than 3x as much money as I do. 2. His paycheck is now deposited into a bank account that my name isn't on. 3. We live in a high cost of living area and I cannot pay my necessary expenses without help from him. 4. The amount I am asking for is less than what my attorney said that I would be entitled to receive. 5. If he stopped giving me (enough) money, I wouldn't have the resources to pay my attorney to go to court. 6. I left a much higher paying job (and a much lower cost of living area) to move here for him 2 yrs ago. His salary has doubled since we moved. Mine has gone down by about a third. 7. He created the situation by choosing to move out.
His concern is that giving me a set amount of money each month will set a precedent for alimony in the event that we don't reconcile.
Now, in theory, we should have enough money between the two of us to pay all of our bills and then some. My suggestion was that we commingle our finances again in a joint bank account that is used for bill-paying, and then pay ourselves an allowance for spending money so that we still have privacy and control over our own discretionary expenses. I told him that our allowance could be in proportion to our individual incomes if he preferred. I mentioned this idea to him a few weeks ago and I'm assuming that since he's still hung up on the finances that he doesn't want to do it (or doesn't think that it's going to resolve the problem).
I am looking for another job but quite frankly I like the job(s) I have and a new job is incompatible with some of my goals if we do reconcile.
