Should I leave my fiancé over a small(ish) issue?
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Honestly, your more detailed post only further solidifies my opinion.
There may be lots of great qualities about this guy…but that can’t overcome a pretty major red flag. It’s not black and white, you’re either totally incompatbile with someone or you are so comaptabile it’ll work. We can be with people we are mostly compatbile with but for one or two things, and those one or two things can be dealbreakers.
This would most certainly be one of those things.
Do.not.get.married.unless.he.majorly.fixes.his.financial.habits.
Just do not. Disaggregate your finances, right now.
He’s nearly 30. Psychologists say our brains are basically done maturing by 25. At this point in his life, he should be caoabke of maintaining a budget and spending responbibly. Do not accept his excuses. DO not accept his failure to do so as a character trait that you just have to accept as part of the package. If he won’t rise to the occassion, DO NOT IMPERIL YOUR OWN FINANCES, AND DO NOT MOTHER HIM INTO IT.
I guess, if you truly do get so many good things out of this relationship, you can stay, but do not get married and keep your financial lives entirely seperate, forever. No joint accounts, no bailing him out. To me that sounds very hard to do, but some couples have made it work, maybe you can too.
Honestly, financial disagreements are like, one of, if not the main, causes of divorce/breakups of long term relationships. This is not a small issue.
I think you’re kidding yourself that unless he changes you have a long term future here, but you can try.
The several overdrafts in one year and bounced rent check are sticking in my mind. How has he paid all of those fees, if you live paycheck to paycheck? Does he have debt? Do you know the state of his finances?
I just can’t even imagine someone being so careless. One bounced check or overdraft as an adult shamed me into being so overly careful ever since. It’s actually amazing that he doesn’t care, and has convinced you it’s not a big deal.
Ok so small update. My coworker friend approached me this afternoon and completely unprovoked asked if I had left my fiancé yet and if I planned on taking their advice. Shortly afterwards I got a text from my married friend who told me coworker friend is ending things with his gf and married friend feels coworker friend and I are much more compatible than my fiancé and I and wanted to know if I would ever consider dating him.
Okay so you know that at least one of these people has an ulterior motive driving some of this.
I think you can tell everyone thank you, you heard them, but this is your relationship and you need to drop it.
Then stop venting to these friends about your relationship.
Now, all that said –
Although this one guy might have been so pushy because he has the hots for you, I *do* think they’ve brought up good points that you should take seriously.
You do not want to be with someone long term that will irresponsibly imperil both your finances, nor should you take over. Your boyfriend should be an equal partner here that you can trust.
If that isn’t going to happen, you are looking at a lifetime of financial fights and stress.
Do you really want to sign up for that, no matter how great he is in other ways?
All I can think is if all your friends are saying this perhaps you’re presenting this with more frustration than you might be portraying here and they’re reacting accordingly. And really you SHOULD be frustrated! If someone wants to spend themselves into the poorhouse that’s one thing but they shouldn’t drag someone else down with them. Somewhat ironically I’m not going to tell you to dump him but I’d be thinking long and hard about what the next twenty, thirty, forty years are going to look like if this situation doesn’t change.
Ange —
That could very well be, I think it’s almost universally bad to complain about your partner to your co-worker friends and bring your relationship to work and almost as bad to gripe to your friend group, when you’re a mature 35.Another possible explanation: she is new to this established friend group, the most vocal person about the need for her to leave bf is the guy with the hots for her — perhaps the other members of this friend group are trying to help this guy replace her bf.
Neither her bf nor her relationship is what I would choose, but it seems that she is happier with it than we are. She needs to talk to her bf and to a neutral counselor, rather than airing her relationship dirty laundry with this friend group.
I still wish she would clear up the question of whether bf is doing his share of earning $ to support the two of them. It also seems that neither of them could survive financially on their own.
There are some serious financial red flags not discussed yet. Why wasn’t bf buying whatever he bought with a credit card. That gives at least some chance to quickly back out of a purchase, allows the dost to be paid off at minimum (plus tons of interest, but better than bouncing a check to landlord). How did bf survive financially until age 29, or I guess really age 28, until they joined finances and she managed his finances?
Why don’t they save anything? If he can have $100/week of walking around money, and she presumably has the same, they ought to be able to save. In the current environment, building a $ cushion take precedence over anything beyond rent, food, transportation to work, and utilities that they are currently spending on.
I think it’s generally true of both men and women: when they get a partner who is immature and significantly younger, a big part of the reason is that they expect this to give them the lion’s share of control in the relationship. Most people seek a relative equal — well most people who want a mutually strong relationship. She has said she suffers from OCD, is an introvert, and has to be in control — all of that sets special needs in a partner. His immaturity seems a feature, rather than a defect.
LW, we’re all telling you that your hair’s on fire, and you keep saying, “yeah, but my co-workers shouldn’t be looking at the flames.”
When you were talking about how he was younger and immature with money, I thought maybe he was in his early twenties tops. But he’s 29. At his age, you can’t blame a lack of financial sense or cleanliness on a lack of maturity. They are part of who he is. I think you need to realize that, and also realize that more time (after 3 years of dating, no less) is NOT going to change him into someone who is good with money. It’s possible that he can change his financial issues, but time alone isn’t going to do it. This isn’t going to be that easy and smooth. His understanding he has a serious financial problem (and not minimizing it as a “small issue”), he himself wanting to change, and then taking a financial class that your community center hosts or speaking to a financial adviser would just be the first steps on a long road to change. And it could be he will always be bad with money, and that once you marry him your own credit score, standing with landlords, and more will also go down with him if you become linked legally.
Would you want to marry him if he never changes with money, if he never magically “matures” to become the person you want? If he were just as-is for the entirety of the rest of your lives together? If the answer to that is no, then you should not get married. That doesn’t mean you automatically have to leave. It does mean that you and he should go to a financial adviser and/or classes together, be clear about your credit scores and debts, and work together to become financially responsible – while dating. Especially, you need to verify his credit score so you are aware of how deep this rabbit hole goes. For another thing, if you don’t start to save for retirement, you either won’t get a comfortable retirement or you may never be able to retire at all. And you need to find a way to save money, because the economy is very shaky right now and you need to be able to handle some knocks without becoming destitute, because it is coming to that for a lot of people right now. Only after you both have been transparent with your spending and started making good, demonstrable financial choices for another couple years without backsliding should you consider joining hands (and finances, and debts) in marriage.
As for your friends, I don’t think that they will always hate your boyfriend now. Hate is a pretty strong emotion. They can advise against marrying him without hating him or always being upset that you choose to be with him. If they are good friends, they will eventually tell themselves that clearly you see something in him they don’t, and that it is your life and your choice. Ultimately, they are just concerned for you. You don’t have to ditch them just because they aren’t crazy about your boyfriend.You are of course going to be the one in the group who likes him most, and that’s fine – you are the one who is with him. As long as they don’t get pushy with you about breaking up with him and getting with the co-worker, I think you can still maintain those friendships. Maybe cool it with the coworker though, as he has crossed a boundary. I think you should give it time for things to die down, maybe broaden your circle a bit, and in awhile reassess how well your friendships are going with everyone. And don’t engage as much in the complaining sessions. Those can really give people odd pictures of what’s going on, and a competition on negativity isn’t the funnest way to spend your time out with friends anyway.
NEWSFLASH: The reason so many are in shitty relationships is they foolishly jump from one mess right to the next.
Try —- GASP! —- being single for a while. But for god’s sake dating some lovesick rebounding coworker is the LAST thing you need right now.
PS —- Stop blabbing to any and everybody about your relationship. What are you? A fucking Kardashian?!
If you’re not going to leave your partner – fine. But you are choosing to live with someone who is always going to need monitoring and may be a lovely companion but is not a good room mate and definitely not someone you should co-mingle finances.
Nonetheless, if a whooooole bunch of people are telling you that certain behaviors are simply unacceptable then I’m not sure why you feel the need to make excuse after excuse after excuse.
And as for “all men are lazy” – no. My dad and my stepdad, who would have been in their 70’s had they each lived long enough, had wives that worked, so they did the laundry, vacuumed, straightened up, did the dishes or managed the dishwasher. They cooked too.
Stop making excuses for an adult. It’s beneath you.
