My wife and I have been married for 3 years. I’m 65 she is 54. When we first starting dating she was very poor working in a dentist’s office. I make a good living in the sciences. She was recently divorced and wanted to stay in the same school district that her daughter had been attending so I helped by giving her money for her apartment every month.
One thing that she did a couple of times was complain about how unfair it was that she didn’t have more money. After a year of dating I told her what I was worth and she asked me why I didn’t spend more money. I told her that I was saving for my retirement and had been saving for many years. I never got a dime or help from anybody. I was totally self-made. She couldn’t understand this. These instances should have been red flags to me.
Being the codependent-caretaker type (I’ve been in ACOA, ACA and CODA for several years), I continued to make sure that she had what she needed. She moved into my home after dating for about a year with her 17 year old daughter. When we were married 3 years ago, she had always talked about how she hated her job and wanted to quit. She quit her job and told me she wanted to go back to school to get her AA degree and then get her bachelors in elementary education. I supported her on this and paid for this while at the same time I gave her money every month to pay her bills as well as a healthy allowance. This lasted for about a year. She decided that she didn’t want to do that. She then decided that she wanted to get into photography so I supported her on that and paid for courses and equipment toward that end. She was quite good at it as well. This interest also faded after a short time when she decided that she wanted to go to real estate school. I supported her on this and she completed the program and eventually passed the exams and received her license. She joined a realtor and we paid all the monthly fees for a couple of years but she never made any attempt to get clients or sell a home. There was always a reason why she couldn’t do this or that. She always seemed to play the victim card when it was time for her to step up and put her knowledge to use.
During this time she became disillusioned with her friends and one-by-one alienated every one of them for one reason or another saying that she didn’t like the way that they were treating her. Earlier this year, she had been wanting to do some remodeling in the house and I supported her in this as well. We spent about 20K and she did a nice job with everything. However, there has always been this thing about money where she said she deserved more. She bugged me about getting a will together. I did this and left everything to her in my living trust. She also wanted access to ALL of my accounts. I told what was in there but my main money is in some investments and was money that I made prior to knowing her. We have a joint account that I put my paycheck into that she has access to along with a credit card that she can charge items to. I haven't really restricted her on spending. I just wanted an accounting to make sure things were not getting out of hand.
During this time she had her own account and credit card that she kept from before we met. During the time I’ve known her, I have bailed her out of credit card debt three times. Each time it was about 3-4K. The last time that happened I told her I wanted to be able to check on her accounts in order to make sure that she was not getting into debt again. She agreed since she could see into all of my accounts because I let her take care of paying the bills and such. However, now she refuses to let me see her accounts for some unknown reason. I suspect it is because she is running up more debt.
What set me off on all of this, finally, was when I did my taxes this year and found that I was getting back a good sum of money. I told her about that and suggested that we use the returns to put the money back into the accounts to help continue to save for retirement since I’m getting close to that time. She blew me away by stating that she thought it was fair if I just gave her half of the returns so that she could spend that money on anything that she wanted. I had no choice but to agreed and gave her a check for half of the returns. Although I said nothing about it, I was very angry that she did not want to contribute any of that money back into the accounts, especially in lieu of the fact that we had paid out a lot of money for the remodeling that she wanted to do. She continues to berate me for not giving her more money to spend even though she has filled up the entire house in every nook and cranny with her stuff. She has three of everything but is still not happy with that. Recently, I have suggested that if she wanted to have even more money to spend, she might want to consider getting a job since based on the outlays every month for her, we aren’t saving much and have really fallen off the track for what I wanted to amass for our retirement. She told me that working was too stressful for her. She can’t seem to grasp the idea of saving more for retirement. he only thing she says to justify her feelings about it is that "God will provide".
I don’t spend any money because I can’t afford to with the outlays I have been giving to her. This is getting really old fast for me and I am reaching a breaking point. Top that off with the fact that now she doesn’t like where we live and wants to move to another state even though I told her how much I loved living where we are and she agreed to this before we were married.
Whenever I try to talk to her about this and other issues, she either talks over me, gets angry or rages. One relatively new thing that she does is when I do get angry because she will not listen to what I have to say, she tells me that I am "falling off the wagon", i.e. I'm starting to speak my truth and stand up for myself. She then demands that we see this marriage counselor that always takes her side no matter what the issue. I end up spending an hour in her office getting beaten up and leave feeling like I used to after my own parents beat me, physically ill, and I give in just to keep the peace which I know is literally killing me. I know that I have abandonment issue problems ("fawning" due to my codependency) and am working on them in my own recovery, but this is starting to take over my life.
Am I justified in feeling this way? My friends think she is using me for money and doesn't really care about me. I'm starting to believe this.
One thing that she did a couple of times was complain about how unfair it was that she didn’t have more money. After a year of dating I told her what I was worth and she asked me why I didn’t spend more money. I told her that I was saving for my retirement and had been saving for many years. I never got a dime or help from anybody. I was totally self-made. She couldn’t understand this. These instances should have been red flags to me.
Being the codependent-caretaker type (I’ve been in ACOA, ACA and CODA for several years), I continued to make sure that she had what she needed. She moved into my home after dating for about a year with her 17 year old daughter. When we were married 3 years ago, she had always talked about how she hated her job and wanted to quit. She quit her job and told me she wanted to go back to school to get her AA degree and then get her bachelors in elementary education. I supported her on this and paid for this while at the same time I gave her money every month to pay her bills as well as a healthy allowance. This lasted for about a year. She decided that she didn’t want to do that. She then decided that she wanted to get into photography so I supported her on that and paid for courses and equipment toward that end. She was quite good at it as well. This interest also faded after a short time when she decided that she wanted to go to real estate school. I supported her on this and she completed the program and eventually passed the exams and received her license. She joined a realtor and we paid all the monthly fees for a couple of years but she never made any attempt to get clients or sell a home. There was always a reason why she couldn’t do this or that. She always seemed to play the victim card when it was time for her to step up and put her knowledge to use.
During this time she became disillusioned with her friends and one-by-one alienated every one of them for one reason or another saying that she didn’t like the way that they were treating her. Earlier this year, she had been wanting to do some remodeling in the house and I supported her in this as well. We spent about 20K and she did a nice job with everything. However, there has always been this thing about money where she said she deserved more. She bugged me about getting a will together. I did this and left everything to her in my living trust. She also wanted access to ALL of my accounts. I told what was in there but my main money is in some investments and was money that I made prior to knowing her. We have a joint account that I put my paycheck into that she has access to along with a credit card that she can charge items to. I haven't really restricted her on spending. I just wanted an accounting to make sure things were not getting out of hand.
During this time she had her own account and credit card that she kept from before we met. During the time I’ve known her, I have bailed her out of credit card debt three times. Each time it was about 3-4K. The last time that happened I told her I wanted to be able to check on her accounts in order to make sure that she was not getting into debt again. She agreed since she could see into all of my accounts because I let her take care of paying the bills and such. However, now she refuses to let me see her accounts for some unknown reason. I suspect it is because she is running up more debt.
What set me off on all of this, finally, was when I did my taxes this year and found that I was getting back a good sum of money. I told her about that and suggested that we use the returns to put the money back into the accounts to help continue to save for retirement since I’m getting close to that time. She blew me away by stating that she thought it was fair if I just gave her half of the returns so that she could spend that money on anything that she wanted. I had no choice but to agreed and gave her a check for half of the returns. Although I said nothing about it, I was very angry that she did not want to contribute any of that money back into the accounts, especially in lieu of the fact that we had paid out a lot of money for the remodeling that she wanted to do. She continues to berate me for not giving her more money to spend even though she has filled up the entire house in every nook and cranny with her stuff. She has three of everything but is still not happy with that. Recently, I have suggested that if she wanted to have even more money to spend, she might want to consider getting a job since based on the outlays every month for her, we aren’t saving much and have really fallen off the track for what I wanted to amass for our retirement. She told me that working was too stressful for her. She can’t seem to grasp the idea of saving more for retirement. he only thing she says to justify her feelings about it is that "God will provide".
I don’t spend any money because I can’t afford to with the outlays I have been giving to her. This is getting really old fast for me and I am reaching a breaking point. Top that off with the fact that now she doesn’t like where we live and wants to move to another state even though I told her how much I loved living where we are and she agreed to this before we were married.
Whenever I try to talk to her about this and other issues, she either talks over me, gets angry or rages. One relatively new thing that she does is when I do get angry because she will not listen to what I have to say, she tells me that I am "falling off the wagon", i.e. I'm starting to speak my truth and stand up for myself. She then demands that we see this marriage counselor that always takes her side no matter what the issue. I end up spending an hour in her office getting beaten up and leave feeling like I used to after my own parents beat me, physically ill, and I give in just to keep the peace which I know is literally killing me. I know that I have abandonment issue problems ("fawning" due to my codependency) and am working on them in my own recovery, but this is starting to take over my life.
Am I justified in feeling this way? My friends think she is using me for money and doesn't really care about me. I'm starting to believe this.