One of the things I love so much about this place is that I see so many parts of myself and my life played out in my friends here. I see a lot of myself and MrsZB in Lou and BB. MrsZB spends every penny we make and then some. Twenty years ago, when we had no kids, I was knocking down $160K/year and we still lived paycheck to paycheck. She blows money like it grows on trees. She denies herself nothing. We have a huge closet full of her clothes – some of them several years old with the tags still on them. IOW, she didn’t need them and has never worn them. But she saw them and liked them and …, well, you know. Right now we’re close to bankrupt. I don’t know what we’re going to do if we don’t get that old house sold pretty soon. And would you believe that W is talking about buying the kids a $7000 four-wheeler for Christmas?!?
Me, I’m admittedly cheap. I won’t but things that I legitimately need because I’m simply unwilling to spend the money. That, and I just don’t want anything. To me, things are just things. And as you acquire more and more, those things start to own you instead of the other way around. I know I’ve related this before, but in the movie Cheyenne Social Club, I can’t remember if it was Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda, but one of them is telling the other that he didn’t know why anybody would want to own more than two shirts – you can only wear one at a time. My philosophy exactly.
I appologize ahead of time if this response is harsh. But IMO you guys can't sit around and place blame only on your wives for spending. Because it sounds like there wasn't a boundary put in place. Also to have a wife that has almost put you in bankruptcy you sat back for quite awhile watching and never took action. For example...how could anyone have resentment if they put their foot down and made boundaries. Example okay wife works and makes XX amount of dollars. You could say you are responsible for the electric, phone and water. I will pay mortgage, insurance or etc. Hold them very responsible for whatever it is and not turn back. If the electric gets shut off because of their irresponsibility then let them figure out how to pay it. If the wife is a SAHM then give her XX amount of dollars for say groceries and you make sure everything else is taken care of. If a husband or wife see's that the other partner has this huge spending problem and doesn't step in then to me it's like being weak and whipped. So afraid of confrontation that they will sit back and watch themselves going broke.
My husband himself is not responsible. I have completely seperated our finances. At first he thought I was going to cave. But I didn't. Now he is starting to be way more responsible in paying what he is assigned to pay.
According to the co-dependency books…. Maybe we were too emeshed but this separate, my way, your way model is not working for me as well as it does for some people.
I agree with you. I think there are some good points to the codependency model, but a lot of it goes to far as is just a bunch of bull. I like Harley’s rebuttal to codependency (see here). Common sense should rule.
Funny that she say’s you are controlling over her money. Does she have any of it left? If she decides to spend her part of the retirement savings, what happens latter, when she needs a place to stay and food to eat? Does she dip into your share of the funds? If you two are together, I hardly see how you can tell her that she ran out of money and doesn’t get to eat anymore. So her spending “her” retirement funds cannot be separated from spending “your” retirement funds. To me, this would be the line in the sand, a point of no negotiation.
So if she’s spent “her” money and her mom’s money, where do you go from here? Has her spending been sufficiently satisfied with this latest spree to put home improvement on the back burner (assuming you finish you half of clearing out unneeded items)? If she wants to buy something else, will it be with credit cards in her name only, requiring her to get a job?
I still feel she has a “welfare” mentality at work here and it will not change until it has to. I think that is why change in the relationship has been so slow – because it has not had to change. You only said that you would like for it to change, but you never did anything to make it change.
I think there are times with some people when change needs to be forced. Otherwise you may end up leaving the relationship, and that is no different than forcing change anyway. To me, you can either do it sooner or later. Doing it sooner has the benefit of occurring when some warm feelings still exist. Doing it later may be when all these feelings have been exhausted. I see this pattern repeating all over this site.
The conventional wisdom has it that you cannot force someone else to change. That is true, but often the other will change, only at a sufficiently high level of pressure (such as divorce). The problem is you never know where the critical point is. How many times has a spouse conceded to working on the relationship after the other is walking out the door. If that act constitutes a 10 on the scale of force, maybe a 9 would have been enough.
But if you only work on yourself and do the right thing, you may only be putting forth force on the level of a 5. If the other person is conscientious, this level 5 incentive should work. But not everyone is like this. Some people care more about themselves than the relationship or the contentment of their partner (this lack of empathy is almost always FOO driven). So once you’ve done everything you can to fix yourself, to address all the complaints of your spouse, and change is not occurring, I see only two explanations – either more time is needed or more pressure is needed. And time is something that affects you. There is no need to put up with glacial change that occurs over decades. So why are so many people reluctant to up the ante?
I have done that and the utilities have been shut off. That's why W has a strict allowance now (one of the things we addressed in C). Our current financial difficulties are due to our buying the new house with the joint assumption that we would be able to sell our old house. The two house payments, two insurance policies, two sets of taxes, two sets of utilities, etc. are what's killing us now. But it's important to the big picture to see that even in this sitch, W still wants to go out and spend $7K on a four-wheeler. Kind of crazy isn't it?
What’s so crazy about a $7k four wheeler if everything else in your life speaks of high spending? You bought a new house didn’t you? And I bet it wasn’t a smaller one. If you were making $160K+ years ago, you must be pushing the high $200ks by now. A $7k purchase will not make much of a difference. What kind of cars do you drive? Do you have a big screen entertainment center, all the latest electronics, do your kids go to private school, do you wear designer suits, and so forth?
To make an argument to pull back the spending, you need to be consistent in your signals. Do she get this consistent message? Do you live the level of frugality you want her to adhere to?
Quote: Mrs. NOP said she felt she was not being heard but when it happened, she seemed to drop her resentments / flip a switch ( chose your word Mrs. NOP) and was willing to go the faster path towards making the M work more smoothly.
I think it was a case of "you got peanut butter on my chocolate/ no / you got chocolate on my peanut butter.
NOP saw, experienced and focused on the sexual issues. I saw, experienced and focused on the relational issues.
It got kind of messy. In a withdrawn, boiling just under the surface kind of way. I think we had a level of issues that you can only get when you've been with each other a few decades.
In relationships that have gone bad, both parties keep a record of wrongs. And it is the nature of humans to think their list is the more painful, their hurts more aggregious. There is also a tendency to do the adult version of "s/he started it first."
Which is why (in our sort of case) there must be a willingness to stop assessing who is the most to blame.
Our situation appears to be somewhat unique compared to the ones discussed here. For instance, we didn't have *major* differences on our view of and approach toward finances, family, child rearing, and religion.
In our interminable discussions during the 2+ years we waded through this, I suspect that NOP thought I was just trying to deflect the sex issue by bringing up the relational problems. And I could see how it would have appeared that way. Our limited success has been detailed here by NOP, with the occasional "I think we've made it" amidst a great deal of dead and dying monkeys.
As you've noted above, the "turning the corner" point came when NOP agreed that I might have issues within the relationship that were as important to me as his were to him, that needed to be addressed.
Re Lil ------------------- Well... maybe the Bronze Age or the Iron Age... ------------------- How about post WWII expansion, throw in some 1930 depression out of work situations, the pack-man thing, some Internet hype, a Y2K scare-not, and an iPod generation.
--------------------- Just kidding, Lou. BB goes overboard, definitely. That she should be paired with someone who is so retail-istically conservative is a great irony (and something Jung would love). BB is showing you your shadow-- a part of yourself that you are positive is not there. ----------------------- My shadow????? Back to something like the “Johari Window,” the frame others see that I don’t and throw in a little of the hidden to all frame???
-------------------- But she's showing you symbolically-- in code. Do you have your Captain Midnight Decoder Ring? http://www.irememberhamlet.com/captainmidnight.html ------------------ Decoder Ring information: The sponsor of the program was Ovaltine, a chocolate milk mix. To get the decoder ring, one had to send in so many foil tops from Ovaltine along with a quarter and it would be sent by return mail. Ovaltine was an extra expense to our family and a quarter was about two and a half week’s allowance. --------------------- Dang! I never had one Lil. We did not buy much chocolate flavoring for milk or much milk for that matter. I never got an allowance.
I am on this site looking for some decoder ring tips.
------------------- Maybe somewhere inside you is a Little Lou who wanted things but wasn't allowed to have them, didn't have the money, parents wouldn't buy them... so he taught himself not to want. ------------------ Pre school Lou wanted and got an Erector set. Second grade Lou wanted a Wizzer Motok Bike but got a regular beater bike (first bike) when in 6th. Grade. http://www.whizzermotorbike.com/
Big Lou wanted a 1965 Mustang but the wizard of OZ showed him they were Falcons under the sheet metal so Lou bought the Falcon car instead.
The “Wizard” taught Lou how to look behind the curtain to see what consumer goods are really made from. The “Wizard” did not have many tips or a curtain about R’s and Marriage on that day.
-------------------- His mom used to criticize him by saying, "You've got the willies and the wants," like it was a bad thing. And his first wife carried on the tradition. She handled the finances and gave him $10 cash allowance each week for 25+ years. --------------------- Bad situation Lil.
I worked fulltime and a part-time job most of my adult life. I always had money. Full time job, paycheck went into the checking account that BB had. My part time jobs paid for tools so I could do more work, landscaping, dance lessons, vacations, extras for the house (used pay check for house toys) and for some cars we drove.
Target opened in town and we used to spend $200, sometimes $400 (1978) a month for needed and fun items monthly. Sunday AM, read the paper, see what was on sale, go to church, eat lunch at Burger King, go to Target buy some of the fun things that were on sale, go to another store and buy a couple of items that were on sale or trendy things, like today’s iPods but Pack-man and cassette tapes then.
Target addiction was so bad, we used to go Sat evening and look at was being stacked for re-pricing for the Sunday sale. We would try to guess what was going to be on sale and always looked at the promotion/mark-down isle.
------------------------ It was so much fun for me when we first got together for me to buy him nice things... a leather briefcase, nice slippers, etc. One day we received a check for several thousand dollars in the mail unexpectedly (bequest from a great aunt) and I insisted he fulfill one of the wants he had talked about for years: we built a pottery shop and he took pottery lessons. ------------------------- Lil, bless you for being so kind and thinking and doing things for your late H.
--------------- He became quite a good potter during the last four or five years of his life. But I digress (as usual). ----------------- Digress as needed. I remember the pottery stories. They were good.
------------------ I'll bet all the while Grown Up Lou is annoyed and irritated by BB's irresponsible "getting" and "buying" and denying herself nothing... Little Lou is secretly delighted and envious and wishes so much that he or someone could be so generous to himself. -------------------- Grown Up Lou is annoyed and irritated by BB's irresponsible but more so that she does not seem to appreciate what we bought as a couple (my way of thinking) says it was only something she went along with to keep the peace. Grown up Lou sees grown up? BB as “if it is not her idea, she wont like it.” BB buys based on looks, Lou buys based on what is inside.
Little Lou sees how much work went into acquiring and maintaining things, that things don’t buy friendship and respect. Little Lou sees the people that don’t have what little Lou had. Little Lou sees that some people get too big for their britches and lose almost everything.
Little 5-year-old Lou knows dad died a couple of years ago and mom gets $40 a month and he annd his sister each get $20 a month. Little Lou knows the rent is $35 a month. Little Lou knows a lot of other things but does not know how they all play out to the end.
-------------------- After my husband died when I reflected on how I showered him with whatever he wanted (not just stuff, but I was committed to making his life wonderful), -------------------- The Not just stuff is the part that interests me. Stuff is what is at the stores. I see smiles at the stores but not much love that I can take home and hold, that is holding me back.
------------- I realized that while I loved doing these things for him, what I also wanted was for someone to be that committed to making MY life wonderful! ------------- What would have “making your life wonderful” looked like to him then, to you then and to you now?
--------------- He loved me, but he did not express his love in that way. ------------ How did he make you feel appreciated / loved. I am thinking about how many people say their SO is giving their version of the 5LL (HDH’s giving PT but the W wants WOA)
------------ My bf IS and Acts of Service guy... but lacks the sexual interest. ------------- So bf is a 10 AOS, a 1?(or your number) in the sex dept, a 5 in gifts but you would trade some of the 10 in AOS for a 4 in the sex dept?
-------------- and the wheel goes round and round... --------------- That is why we all post.
------------------ What do you want, Lou, that you deny yourself? ----------------- First most trendy things don’t count. What I want is to be with someone: mentally stable, heterosexual monogamous female about my age with common interests, that is interested in me before the pets, (pets are fine and need proper care but not above people) or some world problems that deal with superiority or religion, do some reasonably priced traveling, interested in personal health, have a moderate exercise program in place, has friends, reads books, has a variety of interests but not radical.
Re QOE100 ------------------ Seriously, what would really make you gush like a girl......other than a great romp with BB? ----------------- Jill, for you, and I would like to see you blush too. How about a month in the southern states going from National Park to National Park in a small motor home, with a couple bottles of Arbor Mist wine, some diet coke, some grilled food and sex at least once a day and twice on Sat and Sundays. Throw in a couple of mountain bikes and maybe we could find some interesting rocks, plants, and flowers. No not in malls, Jill! In the forests and fields dear girl.
I know it will be close quarters in the camper so we can go to a couple of malls to window shop. One rule is if anyone buys more than will fill a banana box, something has to go. After a month of that I don’t know what I want. Well that was from 21 year old Lou.
The adult Lou does not want to inflict too much mental stress on anyone, does not want to be selfish so is proceeding with caution.
Lou. That is what I think now. Life changes and so do I.
