We have been married for 17 years and during that time I have worked in the advertising industry, taking breaks for maternity leave for 9 months and a year respectively.
When we were first got together and during the years when the kids were little, I was the breadwinner. I really wanted to be at home with the kids but couldn't as we needed my salary. I accepted that but it was a really low point in my life.
As well as commuting into London everyday into a high pressured job, I also seemed to have responsibility for everything house and child-related and to make things worse, my husband then used to accuse me of emasculating him. I have never felt so abandoned and alone.
Fast forward 10 years and my husbands job has grown and he started out earning me, which seemed for awhile to help his self esteem. Last year, I was made redundant (at 53 I am quote a dinosaur in advertising years and my time was up). To be honest I was relieved in a way as it was exhausting keeping all the balls in the air and I'd hated the job for years.
I was lucky enough to have a fairly decent redundancy payout but since then, i have been using it to run the household and cover the kids expenses. About 6 months ago I prepared a spreadsheet to show my husband the monthly costs I had to cover (he has never had to cover anything to do with the house./kids and so i thought it would be a useful place to start) and I tried to engage in a conversation about the future and how we were going to go forward financially.
He refused to engage in the conversation and now my redundancy money is running out. I am willing to look for another job if needs be but want us to agree together how we should manage the household finances/division of labour and what the plan for the future should be. Whenever I try to broach the subject, he starts shouting and the conversation never happens. I'm actually scared to talk about it now but I need to.
I have never been financially dependent on anyone in all my life and In hate this feeling. I hate feeling alone and unsupported emotionally and starting to wonder if I'm the one being unreasonable?
Me issue is that hr has never really approached 'us' as a partnership. He has always acted like everyone (including me) is potentially ';on the take' and out to get him. I know this is partly shaped by his childhood experience (his father gambled and was financially unreliable) but after 17 years of grafting and contributing to the family both financially and in terms of running the house and managing the kids, I'd have hoped he'd see me as part of the same team.
I'm feeling scared and unsettled. I feel like I need to find a decent paying job as a form of self protection now.
We're selling some property that we own at the moment and when that goes through, we will have a decent amount of equity in the bank. I suggested that we should discuss what the future plan is given this money etc and he shouted that it wasn't going to be 'a meal ticket'. When I asked him what he was implying by that comment, he just stormed off and again, wouldn't continue the conversation. The worrying thing is that he's been opening bank accounts in HIS name to put this money into.... despite the properties being in both our names. I've challenged him on this and he's told me I'm overreacting.
He IS better at managing money than me (as in he resents spending anything and I do tend to spend more) but I am happy to contribute again if I know that we have a plan that we are BOTH working to. I at least want to feel that we've talked about how we will live and run the family costs.
He's always been highly stressed and anxious as a person and gets very angry very quickly, so I've been tiptoe-ing around the subject to try and avoid rows.
Has anyone else experienced this and found a way to engage in a constructive conversation?