Quote: do you have any suggestions on what we should do financially? W: I think we need to sell the house and pay off the debt. H: I dont feel that is acceptable. I gave you two options that you were not comfortable with either. Please give me a second option.
We frequently have this dynamic going on in our home, also. My husband is a Chicken Little type. The sky is always falling, if you ask him. When I ask him a reasonable question, he comes up with an outlandish answer..this momentarily throws me off guard. I used to respond by saying, Oh come ON! It's not necessary to sell the house..let's think of another plan..
But the tone of the convo had already been set--I ask a question, he flies off the deep end, and I reel him back in. It was MOST unproductive.
Then there were the times in which I'd say, Fine!! We'll sell the house and live in a 2 bedroom condo!
That wasn't what HE wanted either so then we were both mad and nothing got solved anyway.
Finally, I started refusing to take the bait and voila, some real communication started happenin. Meaning, what if you had said "tell me more about your ideas..." when she said to sell the house. Force her to own up to her chicken little behavior and to the fact that she HAS no ideas and wants you to magically fix it all. The fact that you kept hammering her with "I have presented you with two options.." and the fact that she didn't mention these two options should tell you that she doesn't WANT those two options. The fact that you kept saying it was prolly ticking her off. On the other hand, her failure to come up with any good ideas of her own was prolly ticking you off.
I think we all respond better to each other when we are shown respect even and especially at those times when we don't deserve it--as your W surely didn't when she was Chicken Littling all over the place. Asking her to elaborate on her idea will show her several things: 1. that you value her opinions and ideas. 2. It will force her to acknowledge that this is a joint problem--not YOUR problem to solve. 3. By "buying into" the solution (which she will have to do if it is her idea), she is all that much more inclined to actively participate in it.
I just have to think that telling her "that is unacceptable" is not getting you closer to your goals of drawing your wife towards you and eliminating debt.
I think the others are giving you good R advice, as well as advice on the credit cards. That is a bunch of baloney. We have always kept a credit card but one night we were sitting around trying to think of legitimate reasons to have to use one and we came up with only ONE. People say, In case of emergencies, etc, but really what kind of emergencies requiring instant cash do people come upon that often in their lives? Wouldn't one card--that you never use for any other purpose--fit that bill? I have a terrible history with credit cards and now stay away from them, with the exception of when I go on an Ebay binge. Still working on that bad habit.
Take care and if she has problems going to Dennis, then go to someone else. He'll tell her in no uncertain terms to get a company CC and stop racking up interest on your family card.
