“My Fiancé is a Failure and I Resent It”
I started my career and working towards my long-term goals shortly after. I talked to him about getting into school to get the education he would need to start a career and get a job. He willingly started going to school and got excited about the possibilities that were in front of him. However, since he was also working a dead-end retail job to pay his bills and for school, he didn’t feel comfortable enough to take more than one or two classes at a time. He also had a very hard time deciding what he wanted to do with his life and flip-flopped around in different programs. I was not too worried about it at the time. I mean, who really knows “what they want to be when they grow up”?
Over the last three years, a number of bad things happened: he totalled his car, I spent three nights in the hospital and had two surgeries which put me into massive amounts of debt, our water heater broke and flooded our house, one of our pets was diagnosed with kidney failure, I’ve needed about $4k worth of dental work done, etc. While all this was going on, he was still working his part-time retail job and going to school. Because of that, I had to pay for each of these items without any help at all from him financially. But I was ok with that because there was a light at the end of the tunnel – he would have a job and could help me out financially after he finished school.
Then over a month ago, he flunked out of the program he was in (and hit my car causing significant body damage in the same day). He also owes the school almost $1k to pay back the assistance he got before he can sign up for another program. Because of this, I have no idea when he will finish school and get a career. And as for my car, the body damage costs more to fix than the car is worth.
At this point, I feel very resentful of him. I’ve had to carry the financial weight for our entire relationship, and now there is no end in sight. It’s been six years, and he’s not progressed much at all in
that time frame. I feel like I’m judged by everyone I come into contact with because I’m wearing hand-me-down clothes that are two sizes too big for me, I’m driving a car that looks like it’s been in the demolition derby, my teeth are in terrible shape and I can’t afford to get my pets’ shots. I wanted us to be married long ago, but his failure to get through school has kept that from happening.
We’ve talked about all of this many, many times. He’s feeling pretty worthless (understandably) and is depressed. I’m feeling trapped and resentful, but like I owe it to him and to our relationship to give him one more chance to get his situation in order. After all, I still love him and these last three years have been hard on him too! But I’m seriously doubting his ability to rise above all of this and actually achieve anything. Should I give him another chance to succeed or should I MOA to avoid carrying more debt and resentment? — Resentful Provider and Girlfriend
One of the most important things a couple needs to survive long-term is trust. It may be the number one most important thing, and here you are basically saying in various ways that you don’t trust your boyfriend — actually, your “fiancé”. You don’t trust him to succeed at anything, you don’t trust him to be dependable, or provide for you, or even meet you halfway on financial contributions to the household. It doesn’t sound like you respect him very much — another important factor a relationship needs. I wonder: do you even like him that much?
What is clear is that you resent your boyfriend a whole lot. You think he’s a failure and resent him from keeping you from the life you want. But that’s the thing — owning nice things (for example, new clothes) and being comfortable and having some savings are things YOU want, but they may not necessarily be what your boyfriend wants. If he’s so unsure about what he wants to do with his life, isn’t it possible he’s confused about the kind of life he wants?
Six years is a very long time to spend with someone, and I’m sure despite the resentment, there’s probably a lot of love there. Shared history and lots of time together will bond people even when reality threatens to pull them apart. But you can love someone and care deeply about him and his well-being and that doesn’t mean you’re meant to spend your life with him. Six years is a really long time to be disappointed by someone over and over. Are you sure you want to spend the rest of your life feeling resentful?
Here’s the thing: your boyfriend may never change. You can’t bet on him getting his act together and working toward the future you want. It just may never happen. Especially if he’s depressed and fails to get treated for depression. That would be the first thing I would do if I were you — convince him to see a doctor. There may be a medical reason he’s so unmotivated. But regardless, you have to decide whether this is something you can live with. (If he IS depressed, it may be a life-long battle he has to fight to stay well).
I would never advise someone to get engaged to someone she isn’t quite ready to marry just yet. The whole, “We’re engaged, but we’re going to wait until X,Y,Z happens” doesn’t make sense to me. Don’t get engaged until you’re ready to get married. Do you think once you get married, everything good is locked down and you never again have to worry about unemployment or not having money or getting sick or whatever else life might throw one’s way?
Married people have challenges too. So if you can’t deal with challenges before getting married, don’t get engaged. If someone has to change before you’ll be happy marrying him, DON’T SAY YES TO A PROPOSAL. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to him. What happens when you get engaged before truly being ready to get married is the engagement becomes a kind of prison. You can’t MOA, even when the going gets tough, because you’re engaged and that’s practically like being married.
Except it’s not. You haven’t signed any papers. You don’t have to involve lawyers. You probably don’t even have to divide too many assets. You truly can MOA. It may not be easy emotionally. Actually, it definitely won’t be easy emotionally. But logistically, it will be much, much easier to move on before you tie yourself down to marriage.
You can’t change your boyfriend. He has to want to make changes himself. If you don’t see any indication on his end that he wants a different life, then there’s no sense wasting any more time in a relationship that doesn’t have much future. Your boyfriend may not want any better or any more, but it sounds like you do. Why let him keep holding you back?
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
This is why I live by the rule that I need to be able to support myself through anything, whether I’m dating or not. Because emergencies crop up. Cars get wrecked. Teeth need to be fixed. And in the end, if it’s my need, then I need to be able to cough up the money to do it. And for goodness sakes, LW – START A SAVINGS ACCOUNT. Put $5 aside when you can. It’ll add up before you know it, and you can use the money either for the emergencies, or save it for something nice for yourself or for the two of you.
And WWS about the fiance – never go into an engagement with goal other than getting married. Not “when we own a house.” Not “when we have this job” or “this income.” When you both are ready to have a life together – period.
WWS re: waiting until x, y and z falls into place before marrying (or before anything, really). why? if your ready for marriage, a baby, getting a dog, i dunno, whatever- just do it. if you live your whole life trying to check things off of a checklist you will miss the point, i promise.
You started dating a deadbeat, he showed glimmers of hope but clearly over the years he didn’t change. some people never do, and it never happens because your girlfriend has pinned wildly unrealistic goals and ambitions on you. I can’t imagine why you stayed so long… either your hopelessly naive or just hopeless. But as many wise women on this site have said – Aim Higher. And you should never agree to marry someone who really don’t don’t like or respect.
WWS. 6 years is enough time to see how well someone deals with “real life” and bills, etc. It just might be that he has no real prospects ahead of him and that he lacks a true work ethic, organizational skills and cognitive ability to truly be able to function at the level that you want to function. Think hard about what YOU want for your future and if he cannot supply that or be a co-creator for that and if he keeps bringing you down, time to MOA. When you are young, it is easy to give someone the benefit of the doubt and put up with a little career indecision, but he does seem to have a pattern of lack of motivation and success at achieving his goals. Next time find someone more evenly matched with you as far as education and motivation is concerned. The wrong person can really bring you down and hold you back! Best of luck!
“What happens when you get engaged before truly being ready to get married is the engagement becomes a kind of prison.”
So true, wendy hit the nail on the head on that one 🙂
All I have to say is, don’t let anyone hold you back, ever. The right guy moves you forward and is right there with you. It’s refreshing, believe me.
I really loved Wendy’s compassionate response to this. LW, you need to closely read everything she’s written, & decide whether or not your plans with this man are worth waiting for… indefinitely
“He’s feeling pretty worthless (understandably) and is depressed.”
LW, I really hope you meant the “understandably” part as it’s pretty understandable from his point of view that he feels worthless and not “understandably” because you think he should obviously feel pretty much worthless in this relationship because that is how you see him. If it’s the former, sure, that’s understandable given the information you provided. If it’s the latter, get out of this relationship now.
A lot of wisdom here from Wendy and the commenters above!
I would add only one thing, and it’s more a question than anything else.
Why would the guy WANT to “improve”? I mean, he has a place of his own, a willing bedmate, and basically no responsibilities. From his POV, he’s got it good! So, why?
6 years? This is who he is.
I feel like you are holding onto this relationship for the simple fact that if you let go, and he does eventually get a job, that what you did with him would be all for nothing, and some other girl is going to benefit from all of the blood, sweat, and tears you put in with this guy. I know it’s hard, and you have put so much into this relationship over the past 6 years, but it really is time to start thinking about yourself, because he isn’t trying that hard to better his situation.
LW, here is a harsh question. Is your fiance smart enough to live up to the dreams you and him have? I have found that people recognize thier physical limits but don’t realize thier mental limits. I just can’t believe that a part time student with a low stress, part time job could fail out of school. I mean, that speaks volumes to me. Either he doesn’t want this and doesn’t have the motivation or he just can’t handle the intellectual requirements. This does not make him a bad person but is this something you need in a man. Versus, if he was in a trade and made good money, would that satisfy you? Or will he always be a person who does the minimum to squeak by?
Do not date and especially do not marry someone when you are focusing on what “they can become.” Look at what is going on in the present and what has happened in the past and make your life decisions on THAT. The “potential” a person has is meaningless. People act in the ways that they want to act and forcing them to change, even if it is just a better version of themselves, just builds resentments. You’ve been creating this life around this ideal that you want your fiance to be and look at the life that it has got you. That is VERY likely what your life will continue to look like, that is the way it has been.
One more chance? Why? Because you aren’t ready to say that this isn’t the life for yourself and you want to move on and build a better life for YOURSELF and he’s not helping? Quit with the fucking “chances” and MOA.
Resentment is the death sentence of relationships. If you get married, your marriage most likely will not survive years of resentment and contempt. And I don’t blame you for resenting your boyfriend. He just can’t seem to get it together, and you’ve given him more than enough chances to try. We say it all the time on DW, but love isn’t enough. Break up and stop letting this man drag you into a hole of debt and resentment before you’re too deep to climb out.
I’m not about blaming here, LW, but I think you hold some of the responsibility for the situation. It was good that you had faith in his abilities, but at some point, you’ve started enabling him more than helping him. True, you’ve had some bad luck with things breaking etc., but you’ve got to move forward.
So, what do next? Making some hard choices. Figure out what you owe, what your expenses are each month, and show him. Your income is clearly not meeting your expenses, so either he starts working somewhere full-time and bringing in more income or you take a second job. Encourage him that by contributing to the household, he will feel good about himself.
You don’t have to be stuck in this cycle of debt. Just realize that marriage isn’t going to change anything. Either he needs to be in this relationship, fully participating, or you need to take steps to fix and preserve your financial well-being.
WWS.
LOVE is not enough to make a relationship successful in the long term. It isn’t. No matter how much you love someone, it’s not enough. I wish more people would understand this.
Simply put, walk away. My sister went through this EXACT same thing with her fiance. It literally is the LW’s story. They were so broke. They tried the Dave Ramsey classes, counseling, he went through bankruptcy, so so much. She kept bailing him out over and over. She finally walked away. LW- please walk away. Better yourself. Don’t resent him, resent yourself and feel guilty. Its ok. You’ve tried really hard!! MOA. He will pick himself up and move on too. You will both be better off. My sister and her ex-fiance are now about 10 months later too. Its hard but it will be ok.
And the pet thing KILLS me. Try to find new homes for them if you can’t properly care for them. However, I understand how pets are our babies. There are rescues out there that take in animals with special needs. My friend volunteers with one in FL. That was one thing my sister did to her pets and kept bringing in more that would make me so sad/mad. Please try with that if you are having a hard time affording yours. I am very sorry to hear that.
I always hate it when a defensive sounding LW chimes in but I can’t let this one go since it’s come up a couple of times…
My animals are being very well taken care of. I’m paying for their vet treatments (with a credit card, unfortunately) and buying them very high quality food – better than I ate when I was suffering through health problems last year. And I don’t ask my vet to give my pets free medical treatment. I have the scars from scratches I received giving the sub-q fluid treatments to prove it.
I’ve had a couple of boyfriends like this guy. They were really nice and really caring, but didn’t have their acts together – they were chronically unable to support themselves, they had no goals – so ultimately I had to accept that their lives didn’t fit with my values.
It’s hard to make a decision that feels like giving up on someone you love. But Wendy is right that the kind of life you want, LW, may not match up with what he wants, and when your values aren’t in line, it’s really hard to have a healthy relationship.
I date your fiance, granted not for 8 years, but for close to five years, and it took me a very long time to realize that it was just who he was, not a “rough patch”. I was working part-time and full-time in low paying jobs throughout college and he was years older than me and I was the one paying for everything! He just couldn’t get it together and there was always some new reason or excuse on the horizon.Honestly, the breakup was the best thing for BOTH of us. I found someone I was happy with and shared my goals, and he didn’t have someone hanging around to enable his behavior.
Your fiance is unmotivated and you love him, but how did you get to the place where you are responsible for everything? Did you ever discuss him looking for a slightly better paying job to help out or taking on another part-time job to help with the damages he caused to your car, debt, etc? Sometimes when we love people, we think we have to love them unconditionally and accept all their downfalls, when that’s simply not true. A healthy and stable relationship is when both people feel that their needs are being met, but here they are not. You are doing everything, while he isn’t doing much. You’re not his mother, but your relationship seems to have this weird parent-child vibe to it. He needs to contribute somehow someway more than he is right now. If you truly believe he can’t do that, you need to evaluate if you want to spend the rest of your life like this.
You got yourself into this situation by allowing your fiancé to fall into this pattern, and by making excuses for him the whole way through. I have very little sympathy for that. Get out of the negative situation. Move in with someone who can help you pay the rent and share some responsibility.
Honestly only one thing really stuck out to me while reading this. You need to give your pets to a friend or shelter who can care for them properly.
Nothing makes me angrier than people neglecting animals that they CHOSE to have. It’s different if you are having trouble supporting yourself or even a child. I understand reaching out for assistance in that case, and I feel great sympathy for people in those situations.
But — you purchased or adopted your pets and it seems to me like that was a really irresponsible choice. If you’re worried about being able to afford your animals’ medication or vet visits, you shouldn’t have them. There’s no excuse.
Your situation is unfortunate and I know how hard it must be to deal with. But your animals shouldn’t suffer because of you. And it IS because of you. You are making an irresponsible choice to keep them when you can’t properly care for them. They have no control over the situation.
Give them to a shelter who can provide them with the care they need. Even if they need to be put down… I’d rather my animals die as easily as possible at the vet than die slowly in my house as their organs shut down because I was too irresponsible to get them the proper care.
Focus on YOU and get your life together. You can’t expect to be able to care for others if you can’t even take care of yourself.
This couple shouldn’t have combined finances and probably shouldn’t be living together. Moving in/combining finances when one partner can’t carry their own weight is a very fraught situation, especially when the dependent partner doesn’t have strong internal motivation to change their situation. LW, maybe your fiance would be more motivated to advance his schooling and career if he didn’t have you to fall back on. So even if you don’t want to break it off with him, consider separating your finances and maybe your living quarters until he can be a real contributor. Taking that step back can be extremely difficult – most of the time it’s easier to just make a clean break – but it’s an option.
WWS.
And may I just say that getting an education does not guarantee he will ever get a job, let alone one with an okay paycheck + benefits, because education is not motivation, nor is it the persistence or fortitude that I genuinely believe most people need to find their way into the workforce today. I mean, obviously education helps open doors, but it really just might be that he’s a directionless person who will bounce from job to job to unemployment to job to job because nothing makes him happy or satisfies him. (I dated someone like that. We both the exact same education (same degrees, same college, same law school). He graduated over two years ago and is still underemployed and lives with/off his parents. I”m gainfully employed in a non-legal. It’s not because I’m special or smarter, it’s because we had VERY different attitudes toward life. I can only imagine what it would have been like if we’d stayed together because I would be supporting us both to live like adults, OR I’d be dating a grownup who lives a cushy child’s life (wealthy parents) with no start of our “adult life” together in sight. Neither option is attractive.) If he’s not a motivated person, or discouraged easily, or just can’t handle adulthood for any reason, that won’t change.
I am 26, and it took me awhile to get my shit together, mainly because of student loan debt and consequences from suffering from depression. I like how Wendy pointed out that he needs to get help for that – I know people who continue to never go anywhere, work dead end jobs, etc., because of their depression.
And sometimes, you just need to grow up, put on adult shoes, and make some decisions about your life. If this guy is where he was 6 years ago, or pretty close, that is not good. People grow and change, it is a part of life – if he hasn’t started maturing, he may never, and that is not fair to the LW, who obviously wants more.
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude [about it]. Don’t complain” – Maya Angelou
“If nothing changes, then nothing changes” – Anonymous.
I’m not really understanding why he can’t work more than part time, as others have said. My dad worked full time, went to school in the evenings, and had a wife and two small children to take care of. Took him 8 years but he graduated with honors. I’m not sure if your fiancé has a hard time learning or if he’s just lazy for him to flunk out of his program, because he doesn’t have a lot on his plate to prevent him from doing better academically or taking more than 1-2 classes at a time. I’m sorry but he doesn’t sound very motivated. Even if he’s depressed, considering he dropped out of HS, it seems like this is more just part of who he is than a result of being depressed. Listen, you can’t make him be a harder worker, more motivated or more ambitious. You’ve been with him for six years. This ambition and drive doesn’t appear out of thin air. You have it, he doesn’t. You feel like he’s weighing you down and you’re super resentful. He’s probably not going to change, so unless you’re ok with dealing with a lifetime full of the same issues you’ve had for the last 6 years, go ahead and move on. And make sure you chose your next boyfriend based on the qualities he possesses that are important to you instead of trying to fit another square peg into a round hole.
LW, you guys just changed in different ways. That’s a risk you take when you start a relationship with someone when you’re fairly young and neither of you have a life plan. Not everyone grows up at the same rate. It just sounds like you guys are too different now. You have certain expectations and he can’t, and probably doesn’t want to, fulfill them. I’d say just to move on and find someone you have more in common with.
I agree with others that have commented on the letterwriter blaming all of her financial problems on her boyfriend. If I moved in with someone (25 and never lived with someone) I honestly would not think I am on the hook for half of their medical bills. You get sick, you need dental work, your car breaks down that is on you to take care of. Being married isn’t going to take care of your money problems, and him having a career isn’t going to as well. People fight over not having money, having money, and everything in between. Through my parents marriage they’ve gone through everything: my dad making more money, my mom making more money, companies going under, oil bust, oil booms, housing repairs…there is always SOMETHING. It sounds as though you haven’t had any conversations on how you want to live, what you want out of life, and that all points to getting unengaged at the very least, and I would probably take wendy’s advice and move on. Your relationship doesn’t sound fun, you don’t sound fun.Your young right? Why are you wasting it?