DH thinks I only love him for money

[namechanged4thiss]

I should start off with saying he doesn't have any f-ing money!

DH quit his job late last year because he wanted to start his own business (he previously earned around £36k). I wasn't best pleased about this but accepted he really wasn't happy so grudgingly agreed. He also has health issues so he found his previous desk job difficult, I accept this.

We have some money that his parents lent us. He is using this for his business and to cover household bills. At some point we will need to pay some of this back. They have said not for 10 years so it doesn't matter too much if this is all spent. We worked out we can live off it until around September, then shit hits the fan because I can't cover all costs on my salary alone.

We've argued today because I'm sick of him spending so much money and from my point of view not working hard enough on his business. Yesterday he dropped DS at nursery then went to the gym and worked out and had a sauna. Got home at 12. Then announced he was off to lunch with a friend. He probably did 2 hours of work max.

He has no concept of budgeting and spent £1k on an item he wanted but he says is for his business. This irritates me because I feel like I am sacrificing a lot, and he's not.
I have had a promotion recently (now earn £50k) and feel like I see no benefit because I need to make sure as much goes in the joint account as possible.

DH says my love for him is conditional on money. I say he's being an unrealistic twat. AIBU?

Wow. I confess I only read page 1 of 9, but from that I got a strong impression that you are actually considering divorce and may be staying with him because his parents would ask you to pay back half of the loan. Sorry if this has been discussed subsequently and clarified, but don't divorce him on a whim, and don't stay with him for money.

From your description it sounds like he needs someone other than you to give him a good talking to (even in your thirties and forties, your dad is your dad), but if your relationship has come to the point where the only reason you are staying with him is out of fear financially, you need to move on.

Better not water.

ffs auto correct

Well, he doesn't seem to have any money - other than the amount hat has to be paid back eventually - so I don't quite understand this. It appears it is you that is earning the money, while he is wasting it and not doing his fair share of domestic stuff either.

Do you think counselling might help? Issues like this seem to be difficult to resolve between just the two people involved. Speaking from experience, people who are upset and angry tend to just shout at each other and not listen to what their partner is saying. Or one or other goes off in a huff and there is just continuing underlying resentment, rather than resolution. Perhaps having a neutral person to mediate between the two of you might help.

He sounds just like the guy who's just fleeced so many of us (his clients) out of thousands of pounds worth of our deposit money because he's treated his business the exact same way your stupid immature dh is treating his stupid little business. Luckily we paid by cc so got the deposit back, but many sadly paid by BACS and have lost thousands to the thieving shit head. Your dh is a moron. Cut ties with him now - he's a waste of your precious life, your energy, and you don;t need him.

The Life Coach training, while not working is stupid.
He clearly has time for a part time job.
He needs a life coach (not, honestly no one does), and a financial adviser.

I should say I grew up with a parent who had their own business - it can be a hard, constant, never ending, ground hog day fucking SLOG. Yes, they have money - but by fuck, they are absent. Phone constantly needs answering. Supplies need constantly supplying. Issues need constantly fixing. Clients need constantly communicating with. It. Is. Never. Fucking. Ending. Your whole life gets swallowed up into it. Put me off forever from running my own business. And your dh just swans around doing sweet FA? He's taking you for a mug.

The only people getting rich are the ones who flog the whole life coach business to him, the training courses etc. He is enjoying a carefree life while telling everyone he's starting up his business, but you pay for everything. You are right to be worrying about money. The fact he turns it around on you makes it even worse.

To think a new business venture will just blossom and fruit by itself is plain stupidity. It takes total commitment, hard graft and good planning to make a paying concern from scratch. Ask him three things - to specify the commodity, how he will find potential customers and how much competition will he face. Then ask him to produce a costed business plan and a viable budget. He won't find much progress in lolling around in the sauna. It takes that dreaded four-letter word, 'work', to achieve anything.

I agree with everyone suspecting MLM in some guise. It’s a very popular way to move money up the pyramid - “coaching”, so much more difficult to quantify than some dodgy product which costs to manufacture. Many people who appear to have succeeded in MLM (this “success” is usually an illusion propped up by family money or a partner’s job) often use that “success’ to create a coaching business. This is often because they realise they can’t make sustainable money in MLM so they opt to coach people to stick at the very thing they know is a dead end. Sometimes the coaching is the product and a way of moving the money up the pyramid, with the coaches sent out to recruit other coaches and so on.

it sounds like he’s vulnerable to a scam. Phrases like “scarcity mindset” are the kind of phrases people are taught to apply to anyone who questions the scam. Critics are Haterz, negative, jealous, have previously failed so are bitter. It’s all right out of the cult playbook. I’m sure there is an MLM sitting behind what your DH is doing. All the money he puts into it will go into the pockets of one or two people at the top. Personally, if I was you I would put my energy into separating because if he’s down the rabbit hole of a coaching scam he’s not going to be easy to rescue and you need to protect yourself. If it’s not MLM and is just an excuse to be lazy with a hobby-job cover, it’s no better really for you OP.

@Barbecuebeans could we distinguish between coaching/therapy pyramid scams and psychotherapists who are in no way part of a pyramid structure? I only ask as I spent years getting my degree, MSc and hundreds of hours in closely supervised practice while training in the NHS and I like to think I’m some way from what you describe! 😱

anyone interested in coaching/therapy scams might like to take a look at “Belief Coding” the lucrative brain child of The Apprentice runner up Jessica Cunningham. Also Michelle Stonhill and Emma Cooper, but there are many others sadly.

@namechanged4thiss I really hope you can find a solution. It’s very unfair on you.

Well I think you should tell him he has a pie in the sky mindset and to pop along and pay up his half of the household expenses with it.

How can he be a life coach when he doesn't even have the insight and motivation to make his own life work?? What kind of health issue allows you to spend a day at the gym and in the sauna but stops you working and being an active parent? Get out of there.....!

Um no.

There are an awful lot of counsellors and psychotherapists that spent a lot of money on their training and don't earn a lot now. I didn't say their qualifications are not worthwhile or rigorous, just that many don't earn a lot from e.g. PP.

All that training didn't cure the chip on your shoulder, did it?

"How would he live?" - more to the point how will you live when he's pissed away all the money he's borrowed.

This is insane, he doesn't even have the common sense to manage his own life, why would anybody pay him to help them manage theirs? And I doubt that he'd ever make a fortune anyway, unless he's ultra organised, pushy, and write a book that actually sells.

Been in your situation with resulting bankruptcy. Get rid.

If he can behave the way he is now then I can tell you almost certainly that he will not succeed as a life coach .

Why so aggressive @Barbecuebeans? I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you and there are a lot of coaching, therapy, counselling qualifications which aren’t that credible - therapy isn’t regulated nearly enough. Those relatively unqualified ones may be scrabbling around buying courses and not making a living etc as you describe but I would not say “both of these professions are to some extent pyramid selling schemes”. That’s a ridiculous generalisation.

I wish there'd been a vote. I've never seen a 100% vote for YANBU before!

BTW, how about looking at it like this: if you get out of his life, you will be doing him a favour by leaving him free to follow his dream.

Has he been sucked into a dodgy six figure coaching scam run by one of those alleged six-figure coaches @namechanged4thiss ? They’re just poorly disguised pyramid schemes where a so-called six-figure coach will take all his money to show him how to recruit people who will pay him all their money for him to show their recruits how to prey on people … you get the picture.

Some of these alleged life coaches spend thousands on advertorials in newspapers and magazines like Forbes and The Sn (the latter which has published a few of these recently). These advertorials are designed to trap the unwary - they look like articles written by bona fide journalists, only they’re not. They consist of a so-called life coach or a business person telling their rags to riches tale, and are designed purely to rope in prospective victims. It’s an age-old con. One recent advertorial in The Sn was about a Forever Living life coach who was talking about how she left the police force to set up her own successful business. Her Facebook account tells a totally different story -a few days after the advertorial was published she posted photos of herself wearing a heavy winter coat indoors complaining about how she can barely afford the heating. It’ll only be a matter of time before she leaves MLM and rebrands herself as a life coach, just like two others mentioned on this thread. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

Run OP: run (and take your money with you)!

I have read your messages but not others responses, but here is my two cents worth. I hope you feel this is being given constructively…

you mentioned upthread for him to become a life coach he is having to undertake expensive courses and he says the business is going to be making money…

this sounds to me he is inexperienced in the field so probably his “assessment” the business is going to make money is somewhat premature, unplanned due to inexperience, and perhaps a mid life dream.

has he ever operated his own business before? it is common for employees to look at self employed people and think they rolling in funds when they have no true idea of business on costs and expenses.

secondly, why did he not undertake these courses before he left the safety net of being employed?

Not putting aside the issue of funding these courses which could have been paid from his on going salary and not a loan from the bank of mum and dad.

And what if once he has done these courses, life coaching isn’t all that it might crack up to be?

Is he looking at starting shop in the house and will require a room dedicated to hosting clients? Is this part of the loan from your in-laws?

has he considered business or industry mentoring before he trots further along into debt?

This is how I’m reading it and the questions I would have wanted answered before he decided to leave his job.

did you get any say in this?

Don't let him take the piss! My own circumstances were similar - husband lost job through drink driving. I had sold a house and he seemed to think this could pay for endless courses (I never gave any access or paid for course) some of them £20k!!!! I then had screaming fits that I was standing in his way!!!!!!! He got very used to being at home, getting up whenever and going to the pub (again, under the pretence that he was meeting a bloke about a job). Whilst I appreciate alcohol doesn't seem to be a factor for your husband - the complete disregard that someone else pays all bills etc does seem to be the same. You mentioned about putting as much as poss in a joint account ........I would keep my money in my own.

Please don't doubt yourself - he is pissing money away being a man of leisure whist you are working your bollocks off - he could work part time at the very least - he is blaming you just to make you feel bad so that you put up with this nonsense in the vague hope of something better for the future

Being self employed as is my partner you have to work bloody hard to get any business going and then no guarentee of success. Hes treating this like a glorified holiday leaving you to support him get rid and enjoy your money you earn on yourself N child having a better life

Well it's good to know I'm not being unreasonable.

I'm taking everyone's points on board and seriously considering the future. I hope I'll be back in 6 months saying he's turned it around but if not, I'll be back for divorce support!

Regarding MLM, I was concerned about this at first but I actually don't think it is one... may be wrong though!

I've decided I'm not worrying about the loan. I'll tell the in laws to take me to court if necessary.

Thank you all