Selfish and depressed husband

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-14-2006
Selfish and depressed husband
3
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 2:48am
I have been married to my second husband for two years, and it has been a roller coaster. One day he is happy and says everything will be fine, the next he hates me, his job, and life in general. Every month it seems he wants something different. We have moved several times and are not in good shape financially, even though we both make good money, because he keeps making these stupid choices. For example, he thinks we need to go on a $5000+ vacation once a year, because he works hard and deserves it. He bought a brand new car while we were in the process of buying a house in another state and trying to sell our old one. Now we are a 3-car family with two mortgages, and I am going to have a baby in two weeks and we will lose my income when my paid time off is up (he doesn't want me to go back to work). All of our financial problems are due to decisions of his. When we moved to a new state when we first got married, I thought it made sense to buy a house right away but he wanted to wait. Then when home prices had absolutely peaked he decided it was time to buy, even though I was against it. Then he decided we needed to move again in order for him to be happy, so we are looking at selling our house at a loss. He complains all the time about money but he spends it like crazy on beer, eating out, and generally overpaying for everything, also just plain stupid stuff like not getting reimbursed for work stuff he pays for. I am always careful when discussing money with him to talk about "our" decisions and not blame him, even though it is all his fault! I finally pointed out to him, "Doesn't it say something that when we got married, I was the single mother making half what you make, but I was the one with savings, a 401k, a home, more assets in general and a higher credit score?" He finally acknowledged that he needs to defer to me more on financial decisions, but he still insists on moping about all the time and blaming everyone else for our problems. Now he is saying that maybe we shouldn't move after all. This is after my two other kids have gotten all excited about it, we have already moved all our belongings and like I said, purchased a home in another state. I feel like we are never going to get ahead if we keep moving around and spending more money in order to try make him happy.
Tonight he went on and on about how we will never sell our house and we will lose so much money when we do sell it and we will never recover from this. Yes we will lose money, but he still makes a good salary and we're not talking about losing $100k here, it will be about $20-30k which still sucks but worse things happen to other people every day....we will learn from this mistake and move on. We had to borrow from his 401k because we used all our savings for the down payment on his new car, now he complains about the $8000 401k loan. Well when we first got married he had no money and we had a lot of big expenses for our initial move, honeymoon, plus the lawyer to get the custody agreement for my kids changed, so I had to cash out the $40k I had in my 401k, and that did not bother him at all! I used the money I made off the sale of my own house to make the down payment on the first house we bought together, and I am losing that too and have come to terms with it and I don't throw that stuff in his face, yet he acts like the world has been unfair to him and says I just don't get it, that he works so hard at his job he deserves better. Well I think I deserve better, it would be nice to get to be the selfish one who complains unreasonably and gets to be constantly reassured and babied and have him work hard please me. There is much more he has done, but this post has become very long I know. When things are great with him they are absolutely wonderful and I am very happy, but when they are bad they are absolutely miserable and I literally hate him and wish I were dead.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-05-2007
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 3:32pm

Welcome to the board sunnysmother,


What a sad place to be in for you.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 3:47pm

This sounds like more than depression to me, as well. I don't think that there is any way to deal with this until he has an appropriate diagnosis. Not that I am a doctor, but he sure sounds like the many in my family with Bipolar Disorder. The money/spending issues are typical of Bipolar, as is the depression.

As for you, are you feeling suicidal? Living with a depressed person can make you depressed. The money issues alone could make you feel depressed. Please, take care of yourself, get help! Call the suicide hotline in your area. Make yourself an appt with your doc to talk about this ASAP.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-31-2003
Fri, 08-03-2007 - 11:02pm

Hi sunnysmother,


I'm very glad you have found this message board, the members and Dr. Shoshanna will give you wonderful advice and support--but I want to encourage you to find someone in real life you can talk to about how you're feeling.