This is a tough post for me to write, and I apologize in advance for the length. My reasonably blue-collared upbringing impressed upon me the decidedly blue-blooded notion that you don’t discuss money with people outside your household. Ever. Nonetheless, it plays a big role in my story with Handsome and I’m guessing that I’m not the only betrayed spouse who feels this way.
Before the Spring of 2012 (when Handsome’s acting out really commenced) Handsome and I would bicker, but rarely fight over anything other than politics. Maybe we’d feud over a scheduling/ child care issue, but these were fleeting matters, and quickly smoothed over. Starting in 2012, however, Handsome suddenly started to pick fights about our finances.
A touch of background: Handsome and I work full time (plus) and our jobs permit us a comfortable, culturally rich life. We have a lovely home and a summer home and retirement savings and we take nice vacations. We carefully pick and choose what we spend our money on and we are generally in agreement. We aren’t buying the $14 organic peanut butter at the grocery store, but we have taken our kids to Europe and South America. Our kids are a big source of spending (activities, camps, babysitter, etc.). Collectively, I don’t think that we live beyond our means, but we don’t live below them either. There is no great big pot of money left at month end, and a major unexpected expense (like a big home or car repair, for example) can still sting.
I’ve written here before about how Handsome and I divide our finances. I bear the vast majority of our expenses, but my income is significantly higher. The idea has always been that we each bear our proportionate share of expenses and neither of us should be penniless throughout the month. Imagine my surprise when I would be having a discussion with Handsome about paying for something relatively minor and he would suddenly start SCREAMING at me about how he has “no money” and “can’t live like this anymore.” When these outbursts started in 2012, I just started bearing a greater portion of the financial obligations, both to try to help him out (was the division unfair or overly burdensome to him? I didn’t know…) and to avoid the conflict. The outbursts continued, and they got more frequent.
By our first DDay, I had been subjected to these screaming tirades about money every few months for the better part of five years. Tirades from a man who, when he needed to replace a Ford Escape that was aging into a money pit in 2015, called me one day out of the blue because he found a new Land Rover he wanted to buy that very day. He wanted to get me to agree – sight unseen – to the purchase of a car that didn’t meet our needs (we had discussed getting something with a third row) and which I sincerely doubted he could afford to maintain. That proved to be true. He couldn’t afford the dealer maintenance. (I now know he bought the car when his physical affair with the Whore was at its pinnacle, in an apparent pathetic attempt to impress a woman who has neither a car nor a driver’s license and spends the vast majority of every single day on her cat pee- stained couch.)
In the back of my mind I always kind of wondered – why is he always broke? If anything his monthly expenses decreased while his income increased, so what’s the issue? He was so very highly agitated about it though, that I figured it wasn’t worth the battle to get into it with him. For the past few years I mostly bought my own Mother’s Day and birthday gifts for our kids to give me so that they could feel like they were actually participating in the celebration. I almost solely and exclusively bought our kids’ birthday and Christmas gifts because he plead poverty.
In the wake of both of my DDays I’ve come to learn where his money was going. Several hundred dollars a month went to buy beer. Then there was the porn he purchased, the expense of his burner phone, the fancy meals he squired the skanks to, the hotel room for the Whore, and all of the cash he showered on them. Hundreds of dollars out the door each month. By my general estimation, he blew at least $16,000 on his acting out from 2012 through 2017. All the while he would stand in our house and scream at me till he was red in the face about not having money.
For Christmas in 2016, Handsome told me that he was “short on cash” so he couldn’t buy any of our kids’ gifts. He seemed sincerely remorseful about it and I just did what I always do and handled everything. Our kids had an awesome holiday. He has since admitted that he found Angel Baby “outside on the street at work, crying in the rain” (note: that bitch needs to get an umbrella because in his tales of woe she’s always outside in a downpour) and that he gave her “a couple hundred dollars” to buy Christmas gifts for her kids. There are no words that I can think of to adequately articulate my white-hot rage at that scenario… her brood and her opening gifts purchased through my husband’s largesse when he didn’t spend a dime on his own kids.
I know that Handsome’s screaming fits are what Dr. M considers “intimate partner abuse.” They were uncalled for, offensive, and yes, abusive. I am still terribly scarred by them. Handsome complaining about money is an extreme trigger for me. To put it into perspective, as of today I have as great a physiological response to his financial infidelity as I do to his physical infidelity. Any hint of a complaint from him about money is enough to send me spiraling into nausea and misery.
This past weekend – over the holiday – our hot water tank decided to die a quick and untimely death. You say “no big deal BW, they’re cheap.” Well, not ours. We apparently have the Ferrari of hot water heaters and replacing it is a several thousand dollar expense. We replaced the condenser for our AC just a few weeks ago for another few grand. This, of course, led to a dreaded discussion about where all of this cash was to come from and Handsome said “well, I’ve been saying for years that we really need a slush fund for these kinds of things.” Yes, Handsome, you asshole, you have been saying that and we certainly do. All or any fraction of the $16,000 you spent on your acting out would have made a lovely pot of cash to rely on for these things. Or the tens of thousands of dollars we’ve spent just this year on your SA recovery or our betrayal recovery. Yes indeed. That would be quite helpful now, wouldn’t it?
I went there. The place I normally bite my tongue and avoid like the plague. I pointed these facts out to him. His initial response? Deflect with anger. Blame me for bringing it up. Act as though the problem isn’t that these things occurred, but that I dare mention them. Shortly thereafter, the shame appeared, but I fear that this too is an addict’s manipulative tool. Pout and sulk enough that I feel badly for raising the issue. Make me never want to raise it again. Here’s the new thing though… it doesn’t work on me any more. If he apologizes to me sincerely for creating this predicament and stops acting like he had nothing to do with the situation, I’ll show empathy. We’ll figure it out together. Otherwise? I love a hot shower as much as the next girl, but I’ll freeze my tushie off on principle. The burden to fix what he broke cannot fall on me alone. I didn’t put us in this position and I’m tired of coming to the rescue.
I have been doing just the opposite lately, I have been biting my tongue, I don’t usually do that. Several months back I decided to stop saying anything to him when he would say or do something that triggered me. So much time has passed that I felt like I was just punishing him by bringing it but this isn’t working for me, I am growing more distant from him and even more depressed because of it. It’s time I sit down with him and talk about it again and I am dreading it UGH!
I just related to so much of what you said, my H made this mess and it’s his job to clean it up, he wouldn’t go into the kitchen and spill a glass of milk and walk away from it and leave it there for me to clean it so why does he get to go have an affair and make a mess out of our lives and marriage and walk away from it and leave me to clean it all up. As long as I’m sitting here dealing with this mess and trying to clean it up, he needs to be helping me, and for the most part he really is trying to help so I feel guilty when it isn’t enough for me UGH! I just don’t know what else to do. I’m sorry I’m starting to ramble 🙂
It’s 3:30 am here and I can’t sleep because I have been thinking about his affair today and I have a million things going through my mind and was just laying here trying to decide what to blog about to try and get it off my chest.
I wasn’t trying to make your post about me, just saying I get it. Hang in there ❤️
No worries B.B.! I get it. Typically I very intentionally avoid bringing up Handsome’s acting out when we are arguing. I don’t want it to be my go-to move, or to shame him unnecessarily. But here, when what he did directly ties to our current situation, I felt like I had to say something. I can’t make believe that he didn’t spend all this money. It happened. It hurt us then and it’s hurting us now.
❤️
I don’t blame you, you probably should have said more 🙂
I still don’t think my H has been completely honest about what he spent on the whore and that bothers me a lot because I will never know the truth.
Hopefully one of these days we will stop hurting from this mess they placed us in ❤️❤️❤️
Ha! I thought about a few more things I could have added afterwards if I was thinking straight.
❤️
Lol…I do that too!
I could have written this first paragraph today. I have been biting my tongue all summer and it is messing me up and taking me back to behavior and emotions I was, and should be, well past. So much so that I had my first counselling session today in over a year. And what did my therapist tell me? I need to step INTO the conflict. So yeah, if it’s not resolved, we need to keep bringing it up.
It’s such a fine line… saying what we really think versus biting our tongues. I’m glad, Cynthia, that you have a therapist to turn to, and I think it speaks to your degree of healing that you were able to take a look and say “I really need some extra help right now” and return to counseling. It’s just like a tune-up to the great progress you’ve already made. ❤️
I feel as though I’ve held things in for long enough to give Handsome some room to start to heal and to make progress, and now I need to speak up for myself.
Oh lord! 😜 I think I have just grown tired of bringing it, we never seem to resolve it either way UGH!
Let me know how it goes for you, I hope y’all can have a good conversation and you feel better. 🙂
‘…Deflect with anger. Blame me for bringing it up. Act as though the problem isn’t that these things occurred, but that I dare mention them. Shortly thereafter, the shame appeared…
Here’s the new thing though… it doesn’t work on me any more. If he apologizes to me sincerely for creating this predicament and stops acting like he had nothing to do with the situation, I’ll show empathy. We’ll figure it out together. Otherwise?’
Such an empowering and free place to reach BT. Well bloody done!
Thanks Jangled. I actually have to coach myself through these moments deep inside my head. I try to determine whether the shame is real or manipulative. I suppose that sometimes it could be both. I really shudder to think of how he manipulated me for years to hide everything he was doing, and I’ve just had to set my mind straight that it ends here.
I think/ hope that I am generally fair to Handsome in my writing. He is doing some awesome things, but this is just an absurdly huge issue for me. It would be bad enough if he just spent the money. But to spend it and simultaneously verbally abuse me for being broke? It’s going to take me a long time to come to terms with that.
❤️
Cognitive dissonance and acting like his actions don’t have consequences in the physical world right now aren’t fair for him either. It’s super important to have aired this so he understands that repairing your heart isn’t just related to him not having an affair. There’s serious life altering ramifications from these choices and he wasn’t thinking about them then, and he clearly doesn’t seem to be giving them consideration now. His rage and shame channels are to be expected, they will pivot to charm and hoping that will help you swoon and he’s gonna expect you will forget/forgive that his reaction was pretty turd like…. and it’s awesome that you expect and don’t react to all that. You’re above that and you’re trying to be healed and an adult. This is called consequences and he needs to see that his affairs weren’t just emotional pain. They really fuck up life in other ways.
Good for you.
I agree CR. He has to gain an understanding of this and how/ why it affects me so much. Take the Christmas gifts, for example. Do I really care that I bought all the kids’ gifts? Nope, not at all. I care that he made a choice to fund the holiday of a skank and her brood rather than his own kids. I care that he sat there that day and accepted the hugs and the “oh, thank you Daddy” glee when he had made a deliberate choice to buy gifts for other kids. At the end of the day, it’s not the dollars at all. It’s the deceit and the verbal abuse inflicted in furtherance of the deceit.
You speak the truth for sure when you say that these affairs really fuck up life in other ways. They sure do.
❤️
As part of my husband’s 12 step work, he had to figure up the financial costs of his addiction. Since he had been acting out for over 30 years, he estimated around $100,000 spent on low-end prostitutes. He had a lot of regret and remorse when he figured up that total. He also admitted giving $ to whores and not having sex. This blew my mind when I first heard it, but since then, I’ve learned it’s pretty common. This disorder is so complicated, and it really is not about sex. In therapy, my husband came to learn that he has a “white knight” syndrome. In short he got off thinking he was rescuing pathetic women. Of course whores/skanks know this and exploit accordingly with tales of woe. Over the 27 years we had been together, we had our share of tight financial times. (Who doesn’t other than the 1%?) I thought of some of those times and the extra $400 or so he was spending per month on whores sure would have been welcome.
Recovery is just so damn hard for everyone. It’s interesting that in the 12-steps, the part about really looking at the damage you’ve done doesn’t come until steps 4 and 5. In the 12 Step book I use, it talks about “safety and the brain.” Apparently, recent research has shown that only when the brain feels safe can it optimally reconstruct itself, and of course recovery is all about reconstructing the brain. Financial damage is very concrete and looking at that is very hard for addicts.
Looking at the financial cost is equally hard for partners because it’s yet another betrayal, a financial betrayal. I mean, if our husbands had secretly spent huge sums of money on a hobby or sport, like golf, and poor mouthing us, it would be a betrayal and we would be pissed as hell. Now you add SA and it gets really intense. My sponsor, who has 16 years recovery, told me recently that when her husband balked at the high price of redoing their kitchen, she thought, “Well, you didn’t think spending thousands on escorts was too much.” Yep, after 16 years of solid recovery, the thought is still there. Like I said, this shit is hard.
Yes, yes, and more yes. I am right there with you Maggie, and the only reason that Handsome’s number isn’t six figures is that he got caught. My husband also has “white knight” syndrome (thus, I think, the job in law enforcement) and he has the addict’s “attention whore” (his words) mentality. Combine that with easy access to cash and it’s a recipe for disaster. I know that he occasionally takes pity on someone at work and slips them a few bucks. It’s human and I’m fine with that. I did not recognize, however, that he was a cash cow for Angel Baby. The Whore’s husband is fairly certain that he was giving her money too, which Handsome denies, but it wouldn’t shock me. It’s one thing to slip a kid who hasn’t eaten in a few days a $20 to buy dinner. It’s a whole other ball of wax to drop cash on your side piece(s), particularly when you’re screaming your head off at your wife at home about being broke.
I find myself oddly looking forward to steps 4 and 5.
❤️
The ways they damage us and things is so unbelievable. I don’t see the need to bite your tongue with this, you bringing it up is shining a light into the ways he tossed money away for HIS issues and that the hot water tank is for your family. He doesn’t know what to do with those negative feelings and emotions anymore so cue anger and blame (anything to make you shut up). Glad you’re calling him out on this.
The anger and blame – I’ve written about this and I believe it’s because: 1) he cannot use women to cope with negative feelings so they emit anger, 2) it’s a tool to silence you, and 3) he is so disgusted that he just does not want to go there.
They’re used to being liked, respected and most importantly, idolized – and when he’s called out on his shit he goes into fight or flight mode like a cornered wounded animal that will scratch and bite even those who are trying to help.
It’s like dealing with a toddler again in those moments – tantrums with no reasoning, no responsibility, no empathy.
I’m sorry this happened to you. You are completely rational and I’m proud of you for not tolerating it xo
All so very true SSA. I can imagine that it is overwhelming to him to really take a hard look at the financial consequences of what his actions. I know that at the time he was acting out he felt entitled to spend the money. As Maggie pointed out though, if he spent the same amount of money on a sport or hobby I’d still be pissed. The fact that he drank it away and blew it on skanks just compounds the betrayal.
I think he sees now that I’m not putting up with the angry outbursts. Pre DDay they were a daily occurrence. Now, I can count them on just a few fingers for the last few months, which is great. I feel as though I am also better at assessing what his anger is about. On the money, yes, he took it out on me that he felt shame, but I see through that and can call it out. It’s progress.
xo
love it!