Wife's confidence destroyed, 5 years of hell, help

[Robinneed]

I have a feeling this is going to be a bit lengthy but please read as I really need help:(

Im a guy. My wife and I married approx 4 years ago and have been together for nearly 9 years in total. She's 39 and I'm 31. We're having some problems and have been for a while and I don't know how to sort them out. I need help and opinions! I love her and I fear that if we don't get this sorted we're not going to last much longer. A lot of it is my fault but we're in a bizarre situation that has lead to some incredible stress which has lead to some bad behaviour and poor decision making.

I'm going to explain a bit of history and then I'll tie it all together so don't worry if it sounds a little random at first.

My wife has been ill for the past 20 years with Addison's Disease. She has it under control to a degree with medication but she still has good and bad periods of time. Sometimes she can feel pretty good and other times she struggles to walk, think and generally function. She has lots of food intolerance's so has to eat a squeaky clean diet. I do most of the cooking though as I enjoy it and I cook her some tasty food.

When we first met my wife had a full time job that she enjoyed. I set up my own business just after we got together. For 3 or 4 years things were going great, we had plenty of money and things were expanding nicely. I had a friend who was closing down his business and was selling some machinery that would benefit my business. One thing lead to another and after talking with my friend we decided to buy his entire business. This meant my wife left here job and came to work for 'our' business. The office was based at home. Working together took a bit of getting used to. We had quite a few arguments at first, as anyone would expect. I'm a bit of a control freak too when it comes to work and I want things done my way. Unfortunately it turned out that my wife, partly due to her illness and partly just because of how she is isn't really cut out for being self employed. She can't handle the stress. Anyways..... without getting into major details our 'friend' who sold us the business turned out to have an illness we weren't aware about and was a schizophrenic. To cut a long story short him and his wife turned out to be complete nutters and shafted us out of approx £350,000.00! He since beat up his wife, put her in hospital, he tried to commit suicide a few times and ended up in jail several times!

He also did everything he could to put us out of business as well as harassing myself, my wife and our staff. We received death threats and constant hassle day and night for 2 solid years. They also tried their best to split us up which nearly worked until we figured out that they'd been playing us off against each other.

Basically we closed down the new business and turned all of our attention back to our original business as we had acquired a new £350,000.00 debt which had to be repaid. We were so stressed and on the run up to closing the new business down my wife had cried herself to sleep for 2-3 months. Nothing was worth that and it was destroying here health as stress is one of the worst things for people who have Addison's.

When we were looking at buying this second business my wife was quite happy and up for it but when the sh*t hit the fan she got depressed and decided she never wanted to do it in the first place. I've been blamed for the disaster which I can see her point as she's not a risk taker whereas I am. We'd also remortgaged her mums house for £200,000.00 which was one of the worst things we did and I've learned my lesson there. Never borrow from friends or family.

From the above you can see that our personal and business lives are incredibly deeply interconnected which is not an ideal situation to be in.

Unfortunately, because of my wife's health being up and down a lot of the time she's not up to the job and I reckon she's built up quite a lot of anxiety and negative feelings towards the business due to the far from ideal way in which we started working together. It also doesn't help that I want things done my way. The business has done incredibly well because of the way I do things though so I feel my way is the best.

When she's feeling good and on-form she's great but when she's not she can't do here job and the business suffers. Under normal circumstances this wouldn't be so much of a problem because when I say the business 'suffers' we're still nearly taking a 3 figure salary between us but because of the debts a lot of this money gets wiped out repaying them.

Every year our business gets bigger and better but our relationship is taking it's toll because I've pretty much managed to destroy her confidence and made her feel worthless. I don't do this on purpose. It's just the pressure of having to make as much money as possible from as few a staff as possible in as shorter space of times as possible and if she does something to bugger this up I tend to get annoyed with her. If we could survive on 50K per year it'd be a piece of cake but we need to do 100k every year just to survive and pay enough of the debt back to keep the bailiffs from our doors.

Another side effect of our business problems is that our sex life has died. I've never been great at affection. It doesn't come naturally. In the early days of our relationship our sex life was great and we had amazing sex. My wife was very open minded and would try anything (no threesomes or anything, I'm not interested in sharing her). I ended up working 16 hour days 7 days a week for approx 4 years and it destroyed my sex drive as I was incredibly fatigued and had so much going on in my head 24/7 I couldn't relax and just very rarely felt up for it.

We've built a really good business with our first business. We have great staff, we do a fantastic job and our customers love us. We've worked very hard and we have an excellent reputation in our industry. We now have an abundance of work. More than we can do. In the last couple of years I've started to structure the business so that I'm now down to 5 days a week and work within normal office hours. This has made a huge difference. We structured it so that my wife doesn't have to do more than 2-3 days a week and we've actually increased our income. Unfortunately it's all still getting swallowed up by debt repayment. We live OK but we only had two holidays since we met and one of them was our wedding abroad. Now I work less it's hard to get back into the touchy feely affectionate kind of relationship we had before as it seems very awkward and alien to both of us.

I do have a plan over the next 4 years to be able to get out of our awful financial situation. It's going to take a lot more work. However our marriage isn't going to last that long. My wife is miserable, she has no confidence (mostly due to me) our sex life is nearly non existent. I don't want her feeling like this.

Another issue is that when we met, both of us said we didn't want kids. It could be difficult for her to conceive due to her illness as her hormones are all over the place but it might be possible. Especially if we got some medical help. Just recently I've ended up with a new nephew and after spending time with him my opinion about kids is changing. One of the issues making our marriage even worse at the moment is the fact i'm 31 and my wife is 39. She's 8 years older. For the last two years she's been saying she's running out of time to have kids but she has also said she doesn't want kids. I think she's getting a bit panicky because of her age and I can fully understand this. I'd be quite happy to have kids if she wanted to but due to our business and her illness I don't see how it could happen. There's no way she'd be able to get up through the night to tend to the baby and I fear that if I had to our business would suffer.

Normally I'd just say stuff the business.... Family first! If necessary I'd have been willing to ditch the business and go and get a normal job but if we ditch the business we loose everything we've got and my mother in-law becomes homeless at the age of 61! She has no pension and barely any savings. Therefore I'm absolutely screwed which ever way I do things.

I love my wife. I still find her incredibly sexy and good looking. She used to love making herself look good by keeping slim, make-up, nice sexy clothes....etc. Now she's unhappy and depressed and stressed. She's gained a little wight which means she doesn't wear any of her nice clothes and doesn't bother with her hair or make-up much. I know she's dying to be how she was previously and I'd love her to be too but the situation and my attitude has destroyed her.

At the moment she's moved out 3 days ago and is back at her mums. She's coming back tomorrow but we need to get something sorted once and for all or that's going to be it!

I hope some of you have read all of this but I could understand if you couldn't be bothered! Please help and give me your opinion.

I've even thought of posting my story up on crowd funding sites such as Kickstarter or Crowdfunder in the hope that a miracle might happen and people might take pity on us and pledge the 300k we need to get out of this mess.

If I could I'd be totally happy to declare bankruptcy, loose the house the car, everything, if it saved our marriage and allowed us to have a child and make my wife happy but I can't bare the thought of loosing my mother in-laws house too! My father in-law would be turning in his grave. That's not an option. I'm truly a decent, honest hard working guy who just wanters to do well for myself and my family but it's all gone badly wrong. What a mess.

Any opinions or advice?

Thanks in advance,
Rob

Howbad. I think he's just trying to figure out how his wife could feasibly have a child, and I think he's right that it could only happen with MILs help.

Personally I think having a baby is a terrible idea, I don't think his wife's help is up to it, or that she's being at all realistic. It could well be a complete disaster.

When all the posters here believe him when he says he destroyed his wife's confidence, I don't. I think he feels responsible for the poor business decision and its consequences, but some women would have been able to cope with that.

OP what's your current debt repayment plan, how long will it take exactly to clear at the current rate?

Good post from hookedonchoc

Bluebell - For 5 years I did 16 hour days 7 days a week. I ended up burnt out. This is what got us in to the situation we're in. I've spent the last 2 years fine tuning the business, spotting where I'm wasting my time and spotting where I am best spending my time. I've given more responsibility to employees which has got me down to 5 days a week 9-5 pretty much. I can't tweak it any further. I do have plans to get out of the business further but this is all part of the 3-4 year plan. Believe me when you have around 450k worth of debt due to a failed business there's only so much you can do. I'd intended to build the business to this stage 4 or 5 years ago and then re-address the children situation but everything went wrong and it's left us short on choices.

Hookedonchoc - Thanks for you response. I totally hear you about bringing children into a dodgy relationship. I'm not entirely sure she wants kids and she isn't either. She's just panicking that she's running out of time but I'd hate it to be too late for her. It's crazy really as we've gone through so much together and survived and now there's light at the end of the tunnel and a plan in place it's all falling apart. We're in the countryside. I've recommended moving near a bus route or whatever but she loves it where we are. There's a pub in the village that would give her some shifts and it's a cracking social place but she just doesn't really follow anything through. I am working at getting the business to a point where she doesn't need to work for it. I've recognised tis as a problem over a year ago and we're at a point where she could go and get a job if she wanted and she has been able to for a while now. She says she wants to and then doesn't bother though.

Quinteszilla - That's funny. Your so wrong. I have a great team of staff who work completely on their own. I see them in the morning to give them the paperwork and I see them in the evening when they bring me payment. They run their own jobs completely. Maybe my words of a control freak were badly chosen. Basically due to her illness my wife isn't capable of making the necessary decisions a lot of the time. Therefore I was forced to make them and gradually it's ended up where I do all of the decision making.

Twinklestein - Your bang on really. I made a bad business decision and everything has really stemmed from that. With regards children we always said neither of us wanted any. My wife actuality told me she couldn't have kids and if she didm it is likely they'd have her health problem or worse. This is really whey I never even considered or catered for the fact that we might have kids. I though it was a certainty we wouldn't. Now she's heading for 40 though she's panicking and I think most of this is panic but I do know that I've done her self-esteem no good and I need to fix that.

Current plan is we're paying off credit cards and bank loans and part of mother mother in-laws mortgage. I've had meetings with our accountants and we're looking at selling our business in 3-4 years. Currently it's been valued at approx £250,000 but with how we have progressed over the past 7 years and how it's snowballing into something good we estimate it would be worth £400,000-£500,000 in 3-4 years time which would allow us pay of the mother in-laws mortgage and get debt free.

Quint that's really out of order. If you just want to find someone to insult, why not go to a tabloid website?

Personally, as someone who's built up, run, bought, sold businesses, I think his assessment that he is stuck with it for the moment, that he needs to do everything that he is currently doing, is correct. Taking on a partner means paying their salary, and he can't afford to do that at the moment. The more he does himself the less he has to pay someone else to do. Moreover no-one will ever care as much about his business, have so much invested, and so much to lose if it goes wrong.

Running your own business does turn you into a bit of a control freak.

Xpost with OP

How on earth did you get swindled out of £350k?!!! I'm only asking because I would really question my Hubby's character if it happened to us.

There are options like having a full time live in or live out nanny. You could hire a night nurse in the early days of having a baby. And in the future, have an aupair. There are many child support options, especially if you are willing to pay for it. And it doesn't have to be forever. Just to say there is always a way and there are many single parents that do it because they have to!

I totally know what it's like to have problems in business. Its hard, too easy to blame each other. You need to work out a structure so that you can guarantee quality time with your wife. A weekend holiday break is worth booking so you can make plans and talk about the future.

If we could survive on 50K per year it'd be a piece of cake but we need to do 100k every year just to survive and pay enough of the debt back to keep the bailiffs from our doors.

So you're taking 50k salary and 50k is going on debt repayment?

CookieDoughKid - Long story but basically the people we bought it off were friends of approx 7 years. We thought we knew them. Turned out they were crazy. The business did really good money. Good profit margins. It turned out the way he made such a profit though was to price a job up, do it and then quadruple the price with extras. He specifically picked on single and widowed women and then went around late at night threatening them if they didn't pay. He scared them to death. When we bought the business him and his wife worked for us for a while. We found out that they'd been stealing some of the work and doing it themselves. We started digging then and found they'd changed our contact details and bank account details with some big companies we dealt with. They'd taken our phone number off of all of our advertising and replaced them with theirs. They'd put bogus insurance claims in on our company vehicles and received payment, they'd been scamming the VAT....... it was insane. He was insane and very scary also. He intimidated the both of us along with everyone else he worked for. It was 2 years of hell. By the time we discovered what they were up to it was all too late. We hit the recession and that was it.

Twinklestein - We weren't initially as we didn't even have enough money to live on really. We were only paying the interest on mother in-laws house. As we've upped our profits we've paid off more and more.

What did the Police do?

Quint - many businesses, particularly specialised businesses, could not operate without the 'person' behind it. Your comments are unfair and out of order.

OP - you say the business is now doing well. Could you afford to replace your wife completely so that she doesn't have to work at all? I appreciate she may still choose to work elsewhere but if she were free of any commitment to the business then would it ease her stress a little?

She may or may not really want children - maybe with all the stress she is facing it is hard for her to really think about what she wants so a bit of breathing space may help to resolve that.

The problems that the business has encountered were not of your doing and you are now doing the best you can to try and remedy this. Likewise your wife's illness - not something that either of you could have foreseen. What a terribly difficult situation that you both find yourself in.

Have you thought about getting an outsider in to look over the business.? Not sure who I mean exactly but there are business specialists - trouble-shooters who would look over the business from a different perspective and may have a solution which would mean that debts are settled sooner?

The crowd funding idea is an interesting one - I am also considering it for a business venture (expansion) and plenty of people use it for personal funding. Nothing to lose by trying I guess?

If you are 31 years old, and down to 9 - 5 five days a week, I am not really seeing then why night feeds would be an issue. I see why you would not bring a baby into a precarious financial and marital situation but that is a different matter.

If your housing costs and expenses are £1300, and you are taking home £50k a year, can you not afford to buy in some help for the baby? I'm not prying, just that I am a single parent, working full-time on less and I pay childcare.

I apologize.

So what's your current salary and what is your annual debt repayment?

I'm asking because I want to know how you are financially day to day now, and whether it's feasible for your wife to give up her work? Could you pay someone else to do it? Or is your wife working for less than you would have to pay someone else?

Linerunner - absolutely naff all. Most of the issues were civil. You don't understand this guy. Even HMRC are scared of him. We reported his VAT scamming and they did nothing. They've had run ins with him before. He's a nasty man.

FMF - Thanks. The haters aren't bothering me as I know that generally most of what has happened I've genuinely done my best and tried to sort things out for the best so I can't do anymore than that. I now need to fix the damage to our relationship. The first plan is to replace my wife in the business asap and for her to hopefully get a job she loves.

I've had a friend who is a multi multi millionaire many times over who for the past 30 years has been buying, improving and selling businesses. He's since retired and just keeps his hand in by working as and advisor, visiting businesses and looking at their systems to see where they can improve. He had a look at ours and that's mostly how we have got to where we are now.

With regards to crowd funding - It doesn't sit comfortably basically asking for a handout but if it secure the MIL's house, sorts our debts and saves our marriage I'd do it.

Bluebell - Maybe we could. Finances are tight but getting better all the time. I have other costs. I have another house we own but because of the business disaster we never finished renovating it. Also to try and rescue the other business we borrowed money against it so it's worth less than we owe and we can't rent it because it needs fixing.

Twinklestein - At the mo we likely draw down 70k per annum between us.

We'll pay out approx 40k per annum in debt repayment.

Robin, I have a feeling that if your wife posted her story on Relationships I would suggest she leaves. It sounds like such hard work, so draining, so stressful. What needs of hers are being met?

It just sounds relentless stress.

Hmm, I've nothing hugely useful to say, the only thought that occurs to me is why the mad rush to pay everything back in 4y? Could you think longer term, more sustainable debt repayment and give yourself and your wife some breathing space?

It's my wife that wants to try and stick to the 4 yr dealing as she doesn't want it dragging on forever and also that is when the mortgage is due for repayment.

Linerunner - She could just leave but that still doesn't solve anything. The debts are still with her. Her mums house is still up for grabs if we go under. Her leaving doesn't solve anything financially so there'll hardly be a reduction in stress. Don't forget that my wife went into the business very willingly. It was only when the deal wen bad that she decided it was a bad idea. It's because of me we're still here today. Otherwise we'd all be on the street. Including her, her mum, her sister, her cousin as they all work for us. Most could get new jobs but mum would loose house.

I am off to bed so haven't read the whole thread, i will tomorrow, but this is what struck me.

1. do you have legal recourse for the huge amount of money that you were shafted out of? I'm not sure how that happened when you were buying his business rather than going into business with him?
2. I think your wife would be better off having a separate career, the distance would help you both, and there would be far less friction.
3. Have a baby. Get a nanny. (And I speak as someone who had both my babies in my forties as my DH is also 8 years younger than me and didn't make his mind up about children until he was your age.)

Does Mils mortgage term end when she is 65?

I am careful to not say anything more though, as I suspect I am married to a man just like you, in a very similar situation (without illness, but with kids, and without the debt and the dreadful business partner) so I fear I project far too much to be of any use.

I am trying to extract myself from the business, but it is so hard as I am still needed, and our lives are so intertwined. I know all there is to know about living, breathing and thinking business, with husband, all hours of the day, and burning the midnight oil. Never being able to go on a proper holiday, always bringing laptops and wifi dongles and work after breakfast and after the kids have gone to sleep.

He has however gone and gotten a job elsewhere in an attempt to move on emotionally at least. We recognize it cant go on.

What is the total of your debts?