OT- About me and Husband - Long

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from snipped-for-privacy@aol.combeads (Cheryl) :

] DIVORCE.... the ] LEGAL ALTERNATIVE ] TO AXE MURDER

exactly!

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from snipped-for-privacy@aol.comnospam (LC aka Fiddy) :

]divorce is FORTY grand!!!

has to be a lawyer. i can't even afford to file the paperwork yet. and if it isn't done RIGHT, it could cause problems for years!

I'd like to make a couple observation.

Feeling bad about yourself and having low self-esteem are general mental health issues, and not necessarily indicative of Depression (the mental illness, as opposed to feeling depressed).

But the big thing is, you can only ever fix yourself. You can't "make him feel better". You can't make others do things. And even more, you can't make people feel any particular way. Only you can make yourself better. By all means look into counseling. I very highly recommend it. But get it for yourself. You are the only person you can change. But by changing yourself and making healthy choices, you might influence him to choose to change.

Tina

"Empress Beads" wrote ... ............

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That's what I was thinking too. ~~ Sooz To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. ~~Joseph Chilton Pearce

REALLY good one. ~~ Sooz To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. ~~Joseph Chilton Pearce

How about a trial separation? ~~ Sooz To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. ~~Joseph Chilton Pearce

Some otherwise perfectly good men simply can't handle money at all... and, in a best-case scenario, they turn everything over to their wives. I mean, the paycheck, the bank account, everything. That's how my best friend and her husband handles it; he works, she manages the household and everyone/everything in it. He gives her his paycheck, and she gives him an allowance. This is the *only* way it could work for them, as he has absolutely no money sense and no impulse control, but is otherwise a very good man indeed. And it does take a very good man, to be willing to give every penny he makes to the woman in his life to manage as she sees fit.

-Kalera

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from Kalera Stratton :

]This is the *only* way it could work for them, as he ]has absolutely no money sense and no impulse control, but is otherwise a ]very good man indeed. And it does take a very good man, to be willing to ]give every penny he makes to the woman in his life to manage as she sees ]fit.

that's the way Oran and Grace do it, too.

REALLY good one.>

Or better yet - the kick in the pants where you tell your ex (who calls for the first time in 15 years), and once insisted you would never make more money than he makes (try three times his salary already....) that you are about to get a law degree... and there is a moment of silence... and he responds,

"I pity anyone who goes up against you..."

heh heh heh heh....... Cheryl DRAGON BEADS Flameworked beads and glass

i can't even afford to file the paperwork yet. and if it isn't done RIGHT, it could cause problems for years!<

Ouch! Mine cost $750 and Mike's was $385 or close to that. But we both did "standard" divorces and dealt with dividing "stuff" without any legal fussing.

KarenK

long time ago, so IMO the onus is removed from you.<

I completely agree with this! You can't hold a marriage together on your own, it absolutely takes two. When my ex starting looking online for "other women" I believe he'd taken the mental steps away from our marriage. The end.

And please remember (god I should have this one tattooed on me) you're his wife, not his mother or caretaker. Please don't get into the mental trap of "he needs me, what will happen to him on his own." The cold hard answer is he needs himself, and tough on him if he can't make it. But it's absolutely wrong to take you down with him. Protect yourself and your child, because he won't do the job. If you choose to work it out, go for it, but do so with precautions in place to save yourselves.

KarenK

OMG this is sooooo true! My kids are 15 and 12 now, they've been away from their dad for 4 years, other than visits, and I'm gradually seeing them heal as well as me, AND seeing the results of some of the negative influences. I cringe every time I hear the same verbal excuse patterns my ex used to use. Like "I didn't have a chance to do XYZ." Arrrgh! Funny thing is, it's much easier for me to say to them what I always wanted to say to Ed...."What, your schedule was full? Of what???" Sorry, nobody required them to play video games for the last hour. (Sometimes my boyo gets totally swallowed up and doesn't even hear the timer I set.) I'm learning that some of the patterns CAN be broken, if I help them pay attention and to realize what they're saying and doing and why. But wow, it's weird how sometimes I'm sure I'm living with their dad again.

KarenK

Ohhhhhh I bet that felt GOOD!

KarenK

Administratively this is how Mike and I do it, too. We have a joint account for household expenses and stuff like that (we have our own separate accounts too). Mike has other income sources (SS and Navy retirment) that go into HIS account, but he gives me his work paycheck. I do the deposit, I pay all the bills and do most of the grocery shopping by myself (or with kids, which is usually a disaster LOL). In our case it's mainly because I'm just plain cheap from years of having nothing, and I have all the bill-paying set up online already. He moved into a well-oiled machine.

The way cool thing now is, after years of never knowing if/when I'd be able to pay all bills, I don't have to think about it anymore. We're planning, once we move into the new house, to get everything set up to be paid automatically. And for the first time since I was single (back in '86) I have money in savings! The day I realized it was adding up faster than I could possibly use it (well, within reason LOL) I sat down and cried. I always knew it was really possible, I knew I'd done it before (I saved regularly when I was on my own), and kept floundering with what was wrong when I was married. To this day there's money gone that I just can't account for. But NO MORE! And what a rush to know that I really AM capable after all.

KarenK

Yeah, the door swings both ways... I could tell stories about two of my former sisters-in-law that would curl your hair. One of them, when my brother gave her the house he'd bought, decided not to make the $400/mo mortgage payments, (the house would rent for about $1200) and got to the point where she was forced to sell it... so she took the $40 grand she got from it and bought an expensive new car. Now she's renting an apartment for twice what she would have been paying on the house (that I know she liked because she picked it out!). She works for the State and makes more than me and Moxley combined, but she's always calling Leon wanting more money because she's "broke". Leon is a chef at a Japanese restaurant, and always pays more than his child support on time every month because that's how our dad raised him, AND he gives this worthless creature money every time she asks despite the fact that she makes more than twice what he makes! AND she has a boyfriend!

So yeah. It is a behavior that is definitely not limited to men. I won't even start on my cousin... she boggles my mind.

My current husband manages his own money fine, and gives me half the household expenses every month come rain or shine. Sometimes he really struggles to do it, and in the months when I make more than him I almost feel bad making him pay the full amount but I think it would be bad for his ego if I "helped" him financially. He needs to feel capable, like a good provider, and I think it burns him up a bit that he can't pay ALL of our expenses.

-Kalera

I'm not seeing this. Marriage should be about having someone who takes care of you, nurtures you, and is a partner who stands equally beside you... not someone you have to babysit. I'm not sure what's codependent about that; it sounds like normal healthy interdependence in a strong marriage. Unless you mean that his requiring babysitting is a symptom of a codependence wherein he has a need to be irresponsible and she has a need to babysit him.

Wanting marriage to be about a mutually nurturing partnership is healthy, IMO.

-Kalera

Or mine and DH's saying:

Him: "Murder's cheaper than divorce" Me: "It's only murder if they find YOUR body"

Boy, do we get some strange looks for that one!

BTW, have I mentioned we have a sick and twisted relationship? I'm sick, he's twisted (pun on the scoliosis) but, it's apparently working for us. Go figure.

Later,

Helen C

And my husband and his mother can outshop me 100% of the time. I like going in, get what I need, go out. None of this window shopping stuff for me. DH on the other hand can shop and shop for hours on end. We've opened and closed a mall together and boy was I beat. He was ready for more. LOL

I like that! I can hear Keith and myself saying that!