Spork
Active member
Ah Spork - I can feel the sadness emanating from this post! Feeling like that is definitely not love and he is very very bitter indeed!
Really the fact that he and all his current entourage are still there is proof of your care and humaneness. I'd have kicked them all out by now, or moved out myself.
It is also because it's a very serious part of my personality that, when I consent to an obligation, I take that with an absolute seriousness. With people that can be a little more fluid because if they break things from their end to a point, then I am justified in backing out from mine. But financial obligations....oh boy. I have not paid a single thing so much as a second late in over a decade. It's not just responsibility, it's a core belief that you simply don't make promises without doing EVERYTHING to keep them or knowing you might not be able to. I didn't get us a pet for 12 years because I was determined to never let an animal down again (we became homeless in the early days and did not do right by the animals in our care back then.) My good name and upholding my obligations is just...it's critical to me. Also I hate conflict and I'm an escaper/avoider. If I can't see the best course of action, I hunker down and wait. I am afraid to be wrong, though I'm not afraid to admit to having been wrong when I know I have, after the fact. I seem to know a lot of people who just don't care and do what they want, and it doesn't seem to matter if it's right or wrong. That...is not me.
And I also see human feelings as sort of nebulous and confusing, compared to numbers on spreadsheets that give me concrete answers.
So imagine now...it would not have been possible for him to refinance that house without employment, to get my name off of it. I cannot afford to establish my own household, AND be responsible for the mortgage, and he is, as far as financial acumen is concerned, like a child. Clueless, willfully ignorant. The entire concept of budgeting and financial obligations is like Chinese to him, he doesn't get it. Either we have All The Money for All The Things or we have No Money for No Things. That's how it's been for him. He now has a job and a paycheck (this is new)...and he keeps talking about the hundred and one things he's going to do with all this money...but he doesn't actually make that much and from what I know of his spending habits, he will be lucky if he can just break even and meet his obligations.
But he's more likely to spend all of his money, and when the collectors call, say something like, "What do you want me to do??? I don't have any money?? Fine! Fine! I'll just rob a bank and it will be your fault when I'm in prison and YOU can explain it to my Mom and my kids!! FINE!!!" Like that's seriously the kind of fit he would throw to handle a collections call after spending all of his money on dumb things.
So here I am, with my name on his house. And his name on my credit cards. And a joint loan in both of our names. Which I always managed, to brilliant perfection...but the money is running out, the cards are maxxed out, and my budget is telling me really scary things now.
This kind of setup is enough to paralyze me with a man who SAYS things that make us all afraid he might be some kind of a dangerous psychopath...but hasn't actually hurt anyone (yet) so I'm like, "Is it really that bad?" The nebulous emotional stuff, I have no answers to. But the spreadsheets don't lie, and the story they tell is that he and I don't have the income to support two households.
So I ask myself the question that Fire loves to ask me... "How bad does it have to get?" Well, we finally have reached that point. This is happening, I'll be moving out by 4/1, and if I have to default on my obligations and ruin my credit...*sigh*...at least I'll be alive and well to recover, and I'm gainfully employed in a good field, I will come back from anything that results from this. If he defaults on his obligations, I've got a dozen backup plans ready to spring into action to take my older son out of there, and the rest of that house of cards can just fall.
I would have gotten lawyers and authorities involved, maybe even had him institutionalized or arrested for some of what he's put me through in the past...but I'm absolutely afraid that if any of these things happened, eventually he'd be free to come after me, and he would. I actually sometimes think that there might be some sort of degenerative brain disease going on with him. Some of the things he says... And residual compassion for him, wishing he could be the man I knew in his best times again, if only I cared for him he might get better, has also stayed my hand somewhat. Not that I want to go back to him in the relationship sense, but I hate to see him suffering. I wish he could get better for himself.
So yeah, that's my mess!
But I went yesterday and looked at an apartment complex and I'll be going to see a couple more of them today. I'm going to take my younger son and go live in a place full of peace and happiness, I will create a haven and we'll both heal.