To end reconciliation plans over this?

[Sutured]

I split up with my long term partner a month ago over a house.

Basically I moved in with him to his flat that was far too small. It was only meant to be temporary and we'd agreed we'd buy a bigger flat together. That had been the plan for about four years.

I've never owned a flat or home and I'm 46, so this was really important to me. Without sounding like a sappy moron, us buying a place together was genuinely a dream for me and I'd been looking forward to it for so long. Saving up and all that.

I have two DCs in university, so when I moved into DPs flat temporarily, it definitely wasn't a family home as it didn't have bedrooms for them. So it was a big, big, big issue.

DP promised we'd buy a bigger place but then didn't. He kept putting it off and after a year of no movement from him on it, I gave him and ultimatum that either we moved into a family home for me and DC, or I was moving on my own.

So....I did exactly that. I had to move a fair distance to be able to afford a 3 bedroom on my own, but I needed space for the DC and - of course- had to rent because I couldn't buy on my own

I was completely devastated. I felt so let down and ultimately betrayed by DP and couldn't believe really that after all my investment in a joint future that I ended up renting a house miles from anywhere on my own.

Of course DC will come "home" for a few weeks a year, but it still isn't the joint family home and future I'd been wanting.

DP spent weeks apologising and begging and asking how he could fix it. So I started speaking to him again. Mostly about the fact that in our 5 year relationship he makes decisions that aren't for us as a team and are more for him as an individual.

To my horror, he then said to me he'd been looking at bigger houses to buy ON HIS OWN. I was apoplectic with rage! After dicking me and DC around for a year he miraculously is able to buy one as soon as I leave????

I went literally BALLISTIC and didn't speak to him for a week. Then he came back to me, begging blah blah and said he realised I was right about everything etc and that he couldn't lose me and we started discussing reconciliation.

Anyway, after a week of that, he told me tonight that he bought the house last week!!! Literally after I told him that was the worst possible thing for us as a couple, he literally went to see it, made an offer, sorted the mortgage and FUCKING BOUGHT IT.

He is crying and begging and saying it's OUR HOUSE but it fucking isn't is it? Committed couples don't act like this do they???

I've run this past my best friend and she thinks IABU, that he bought a big house and says its for us and wants to be together in it but this doesn't feel normal???

I feel heartbroken

Is it me?

@margotrose sorry, I don't really need you to agree or disagree on what I choose to do with my money.

As for why he saved while I paid for things, it was because I genuinely believed we were a unit and he wouldn't screw me over.

That might well be stupid, but truthfully I wouldn't want to buy a house with someone I couldn't trust financially anyway.

I want someone I can trust who makes life choices with me as a team and who respects me too much to treat me like a passenger

Exactly this, OP, and I completely understand your point of view.

I would be incandescent with rage over this.

Well, unfortunately you've learnt a very expensive lesson. Never trust anyone to have your financial interests at heart - especially when that person isn't married to you and has zero legal obligation to help you or protect you.

I'm married and I still don't share my finances completely with my husband.

And of course you don't need me to "agree or disagree with you, but I'm not the one seething with anger and resentment over spending 60k on "stuff".

If you were truly happy with your choices, I don't think you'd have started this thread at all.

Why nothing like that? Both are leaving yourself vulnerable to other people's bad behaviour. It's taken a long time to get to the stage where women are (by any reasonable person) no longer blamed for the actions of predatory men in some circumstances, but sadly not in all circumstances it seems. OP has done nothing she should not be able to do if everyone was honest and trustworthy. It is his actions that are the problem, not hers.

OP, could you buy a one bed flat, rent it out and rent a bigger place for while the kids are still needing to come home? You'd be building up equity and could move in once the kids had their own places.

He sounds like he has zero emotional intelligence and is trying to win you over with is grand gesture.

If he stopped proceding on this property and was genuinely repentant, would you consider talking to him?

If so - tell him

Why nothing like that? Both are leaving yourself vulnerable to other people's bad behaviour.

Because they're two completely different scenarios

You can't control how strangers behave while you're out running, but you can control how you spend your money and who you choose to trust with it.

OP has done nothing she should not be able to do if everyone was honest and trustworthy. It is his actions that are the problem, not hers.

I disagree, I think both their actions are problematic.

It's a bit tasteless to compare making poor personal financial decisions to being raped or assaulted.

I think the problem is viewing this as a 1) newlywed scenario, where you're planning to set up a family unit together, or 2) typical husband-wife scenario, which involves decades of history and sacrifice. Or 3) some kind of Lothario Tinder Swindler scenario.

Let's take a more prosaic lens: woman in 40s (mother of adult DC / DC at uni) meets also mature man (father of adult DC). At this stage in middle-aged life with adult DC, each family unit tends to protect their own interests. In contest of assets, own blood children will almost always take precedence over new partner. I am sure OP would apply this to her own children too.

Both happily live the high life together, apparently sponsored by woman. OP is pretty contradictory as well. First he coerces her into going to Africa and glamorous activities, and she wouldn't have spent that if not for him. Next she's deserves it because she earned it as a single mother over 15 years etc.

Anyway, it doesn't sound like she would have been able to afford a house even if she hadn't spent ~£15k (£60k divided by 4, counting both OP and her DC) on him. He's paying her back £10k anyway. It sounds like the vast majority of the house will be paid for by him and the sale of his flat.

I can understand making joint financial decisions as a couple, but surely at this life stage in a newish relationship, your own earning capacity should be the largest factor in how you approach your joint plans. It's a bit rich imo to hope to have your cake and eat it too – to live the high life while simultaneously waiting for a house to land in your lap.

I can understand the hurt and betrayal but I also think some realism is necessary: adult DC will rightly always have the highest claim to her partner's own money. It's really off to compare it to actual domestic financial abuse or even rape and assault.

You have been screwed over. Whats happened to you is the single mum equivalent to when a non married SAHM goes part time and then gets shafted by the DH.

I'm not sure how this can ever get righted though.

Hindsight now tells you that enabling him to build his savings at the cost of yours was a bad move.

It feels archaic to say marriage brings financial security (to either sex,), particularly when there's a large pay discrepancy.

Thanks @brielliance - I completely agree.

So you paid for day to day living, plus treats, gifts, holidays. He put his in savings and investments.

Ask him for a lump sum back since you've been subsidising his life. Some of those savings are actually yours (at least morally).

Even if you ignore the money side, he really doesn't have your back :/

And of course you don't need me to "agree or disagree with you, but I'm not the one seething with anger and resentment over spending 60k on "stuff"

No I'm not, we had a fabulous life and I very much enjoyed the "stuff". I'm seething with anger because my partner bought a house without consulting me.

If you and your husband are married and don't share finances that's great. I imagine if you chose mutually to share finances then you'd also expect a say in what they are used for.

I wasn't comparing the outcome, simply pointing out that in both situations it is someone else's bad behaviour that is at fault. A lot of people do recognise that the victim is not at fault in extreme situations, but can't seem to see it when it's more mundane. It is not OP's fault that this man has conned her out of her savings. If it turned out he had done exactly the same thing to several other women would people be less likely to blame her bad choices perhaps?

OP, could you buy a one bed flat, rent it out and rent a bigger place for while the kids are still needing to come home? You'd be building up equity and could move in once the kids had their own places

I've had time to calm down.

What I think I will do is take a second job, save like mad and then buy a flat of my own or for rental. Anything I can live in for old age is fine.

Im not worried about DCs inheritance. My family are wealthy. No, before you ask, I wouldn't go to them for money. Not at my age!

Well, that's where we disagree - in OP's scenario, I think they both made problematic decisions.

It's not her fault that he turned out to be a dickhead, but it was her decision to spend 60 grand of her own money on "stuff" while allowing him to save the equivalent in his own name. Presumably he didn't hold a gun to her head - she chose to spend her money that way and to not make sure she had protection in place.

So you paid for day to day living, plus treats, gifts, holidays. He put his in savings and investments

Ask him for a lump sum back since you've been subsidising his life. Some of those savings are actually yours (at least morally)

I don't think this is about money for him. I think it's about a pathological lack of capacity to make adult decisions as a couple.

He's offered to give me half the house. He's offered to pay my costs for moving here. He's said he would pay the entire mortgage so it would cost me nothing.

It's honestly not about money, it's about him not feeling ready to just have one house. He's able to do all this now because I have another house.

I can read him like a book.

Every major decision is on his terms, which are generally maladaptive and complicated for other people and either you accept it, or he will steamroller over you, manipulate or dick you around.

If you and your husband are married and don't share finances that's great. I imagine if you chose mutually to share finances then you'd also expect a say in what they are used for.

I wouldn't do that to begin with, though, because I was always taught to maintain your financial independence, even within a marriage.

Sorry, to add to this - did you really "mutually share finances" when all the savings were in his name only? It doesn't sound like it.

Why on earth didn't you put the money in joint names? Why didn't he share the daily spends? The way everything was set-up makes absolutely zero sense to me. It's just asking for trouble really.

@brielliance

No need to lie, I didn't say this

First he coerces her into going to Africa and glamorous activities, and she wouldn't have spent that if not for him. Next she's deserves it because she earned it as a single mother over 15 years etc

I said he wanted expensive holidays whereas I was fine with a couple of weeks in Cornwall.

All the other activities in my life such as gym membership, sailing lessons, going for weekends to visit DC are things I more than earned thanks.

I would move in, once the property has been transferred into joint names and he has reimbursed the £10k of expenses. Even if things don’t work out with him, at least you will have protected yourself financially then.

The thing is, has he actually conned her out of her savings? Her logic genuinely sounds confusingly entitled to me.

Crucially, if he didn't exist, she would still have got long Covid and faced a drastically lowered income.

And unlike a typical marriage scenario, it's not like his upgrading his salary was a result of her doing housework (she talks a lot about them staying separately) or raising his kids for him.

Next, she keeps attributing costs (for her and adult DC's lives) to him that would still have existed if he wasn't in the picture. E.g. because he didn't give her a free house, "l had to rent a house - deposits, moving fans, had to buy all the white goods and furniture so that cleaned me out to the tune of more than half my savings". I mean, yes, newsflash, everyone has to pay rent if they don't get a free house!

She keeps saying she paid for everything for him, but her primary examples of this are of leisure and not day to day costs. I struggle to believe she and her DC didn't get anything out of the 6 years of sailing lessons, theatre trips, Christmas shopping, international holidays, family gym membership and so on.

If hairs are really being split, he should refund her £15k (a quarter of the £60k leisure costs which was spent on 4 people), or maybe £30k assuming she could have made impossibly mindblowing investments that doubled, and then move on.

@margotrose I think you're honestly being deliberately contrary. I've never heard of a married couple who didn't buy and choose a house together and own I equally regardless of who earned what. Most don't sit there divvying up ownership of stuff based on who earns what and if such a relationship works for you, great. It's not the sort of relationship that works for me.

I'm not debating my view of how couples define finances. I think couples should share everything or I dont see a point being in a couple, and I don't judge anyone if a different philosophy works for them.

Always have your own back, men are often completely unreliable.
I have my own home and there's no way l would ever give up my security. He is causing you way too much stress and upset, he doesn't sound capable of a normal relationship. You could have bought a house together and then he decided to work abroad for months on end, he seems to have form for that
My friend bought a house with her partner, very shortly after he decided to work in Australia, on his own. He couldn't understand why she was upset.

I think you're honestly being deliberately contrary. I've never heard of a married couple who didn't buy and choose a house together and own I equally regardless of who earned what. Most don't sit there divvying up ownership of stuff based on who earns what

Except I never once said that's how my marriage or my finances worked I said I always maintain financial independence - not that we didn't buy and choose our home together.

I think couples should share everything or I dont see a point being in a couple, and I don't judge anyone if a different philosophy works for them.

But if you'd shared everything "like a couple should", then surely none of this would have happened? Because you'd have had joint savings (and spendings) and he wouldn't have been able to save for a home in his own name while you spent all your money on stuff?

So what exactly was OP's bad decision? If she, on her own, had saved up enough for a house deposit, while still spending money on some enjoyable activities and accepting she was going to be saving a bit slower because of that, would you berating her for her awful decisions?

They saved up for a house deposit, they chose to save a bit more slowly in order to have some enjoyable activities in their life at the moment, they have done this successfully and now have enough money to buy a house. The only mistake she has made is in trusting him. What she thought was, and morally is, their money, has now turned out to be his money. He's conned her out of her savings.