Maybe She Isn't Evil

[RDS]

My W did the same. I can't remember the exact dollar amount but it was close to that. She quietly accumulated it over a decade while I was saving to pay off our house. When I sprung the news on her one Christmas that our home and cars were paid off and we were completely debt-free, I got a deer-in-the-headlights look. Not at all what I expected. Yeah, little did I know we were nowhere close to debt free. I still think that was a large part of BD, was all the anger and resentment she built up over the debt that she never told me about. I had to pay a large chunk of that in the divorce as well. But I'll tell you, it is really nice to know I am completely independent of her financial follies now, so at least you have that going for you too. As tight as your financial situation may be, at least it is 100% in your control now.

I can pinpoint the moment when my marriage started to fall apart and it was the day I opened a CC bill fully expecting the amount to be “0”. Instead it was over $10k, and the more I investigated the more I discovered how deeply in debt we were. Every CC bill was maxed out and there were several of them. I hadn’t put my head in the sand. My XW had always taken care of the budget and she did it well. Our bills were always paid on time and our cars were paid off ahead of schedule. I remember us joking about her parents being so bad with their money and it was something that would not happen to us. I worked on the road 330 days a year so I didn’t see her spending the money like she was.

It happened to us and it happened much worse. At the start she said all the right things about helping to drive down the debt. It never happened and I got more resentful as time went on. It finally got so bad she couldn’t take it anymore. Naturally, in her eyes it’s 99 percent my fault.

I try to stay upbeat about it all, but it’s hard when the plans I had for the future were ruined and I have to start over at my age. I’m living the bachelor life like a 20 year old, but I’m considerably older now. My life’s achievements are gone. That’s a bitter bill to swallow sometimes. Divorce should not be this devastating just because you were married for so long.

I never paid attention to my credit score. It was always good. Whenever I needed credit I always got it and the people giving me credit always commented my score was good. After my XW left me I checked my score and it was in the low 600’s. I was upset. I’ve since moved it up into the mid 600’s which is in the “fair” category. I still have a long way to go to get it to where I want but it’s a goal I’m shooting for.