This post is about me(40) and wife(38) We’ve been together for 15 years. Theres so many layers to this story, (including trickle truthing me about her past), but lying about money is what I’m focusing on now.
We had a child when we got married. At this point we didn’t have a shared bank account. We agreed that I would pay the mortgage and she would pay for childcare then split the rest of the bills evenly to keep it simple.
Five years later I find out that her family had been paying for all of the childcare and I’ve been paying my ass off to keep up with the bills. When confronted she says it’s even because she’s been paying for all the groceries, etc. Okay should’ve brought in the finances sooner, but I thought we had an okay thing going. At this point I opened a shared bank account where an even % earnings went in for both of us.
Fast forward a year or two, she’s a couple thousand dollars in debt – her mom bails her out. Fast forward a year or two she’s a couple thousand dollars in debt – I bail her out.
Here we are four years later and she’s 12,000 dollars in debt. The only reason I know is because we got in an argument and I point blank asked her, how much debt are you in now? Obviously she’s been hiding it up to this point.
She has a side hustle, if you can call it that, as an illustrator. She makes at best $3,000 a year doing it. Over the last 3 years she’s been working on these projects, but all the while entirely closes herself off from the family (2 kids now) while she’s working on these projects.
When I first confronted her about her being entirely absent she says she’s doing it to pay off her debt. We have money saved in the finances in our joint account and I explain it would make way more sense to pay it off rather than pay interest and come up with an agreement. She declines, which I somehow respect as she drains any kind of retirement she put into and forgot about from her twenties.
Fast forward to today, she’s still like $8,000 in debt and ignoring our family when she gets home from work. When I confront her about it, in so many words, “we’re all depressed we want you to be present.” She says, I’m trying to build something so I can make more money than what I make in my current job and make money for the family. She makes $50k a year.
This cycle leaves me feeling like a crazy person. I don’t want to separate my kids from their mom, but it feels super toxic. Realistic advice welcome.
TLDR my wife is in debt over and over again and tries to use working for extra money as a reason to ignore the family.