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

I think you are confusing the personal with the business side too much. You have accrued business debt, unwisely. Theres no point in blaming personal issues on this, the buck stops with the business owners. Throughout your post, you actually blame what has happened to you after other people - the other businessman, your wife, but not yourself. Its actually not about blame at all though - its about making sound business decisions and investments.

Most businesses need borrowing - its a perfectly normal state of affairs.

If the business is that successful, isn't an option to sell shares in it? Is it a public limited company? If not, and you are turning business away, sell shares and expand? Otherwise I would say you are structuring it wrongly if you are drawing a tax inefficient salary of 100k pa between you and using this to service your debts. Surely you should draw salary in dividends and restructure the debts so that they are company debts with limited liability? Do you have stock in trade or other assets such as land or business, or even insurance policies? If so, why not arrange a floating charge over it with a bank to consolidate your other borrowings but enabling you to continue trading?

Your MIL's house is mortgaged for £200k? Who persuaded her to do that?

The bit I don't understand in this is why anyone would put their 200k house up as collateral. Especially if this was for the second business.

How much time and cost to renovate the second house you have? Is it sitting empty?

I need to go to bed. Talk to your wife and see what she wants.

Xpost with Linerunner!

And I agree there is little excuse for doing nothing with the "spare house" - if you are 31 and work 9-5 5 days a week, whats stopping you (having renovated many properties myself while working longer hours than that).

Think about what you mean when you describe your wife as being unable to make decisions because of her ill health. Do you really respect her, as an independent adult able to make decisions for herself? There's a difference between inability to make decisions and refusal to make decisions. There's also a difference between someone whose decision making capacity is impaired temporarily due to illness and someone who cannot make decisions over the longer term. In the context of ongoing decisions about your relationship, maybe some discussions and bits of decision making need to happen over a longer period of time. She's your partner, not your child.

In the context of work, it's clear you two working together isn't working well for either of you; she needs a job elsewhere, which gives you some independent income to that from your business. If she can't drive and that's likely to be true over the longer term, why aren't you living somewhere with reasonable public transport? [Incidentally, funding for taxis to and from work may be available from Access to Work, if she cannot travel independently and public transport is inadequate].

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.

OK Tell me if I'm missing something in this plan:

You sell the business now, for £250,000, and use the money to completely pay back MIL's mortgage. Then you declare yourself bankrupt.

MIL's mortgage is the only debt that has a personal significance for you, and that would be sorted. Your investment property would be included with your other assets and liabilities, but since the mortgage on it is higher than its value, that would be to your advantage as bankruptcy would cancel that (net) debt too.

You haven't said anything about your own situation vis a vis home owning, mortgage, renting whatever. But if I understand correctly, you still get to keep your home when you're bankrupt. You then both go out and get jobs, and get on with having a proper life (with or without a baby).

The alternative seems to be to continue working your arse off for another four years, just so you can pay off MIL's mortgage as above + pay back the rest of the debt from the added value of the business (IF the business goes as planned and reaches that value, which you don't know will happen). Why do you want to do that? You'll be no better off for it yourselves. In fact if you bow out now you'll be nearly clear of bankruptcy (which takes 5 years) by that point anyway.

I'm also of to bed in a minute. Tired.

This discussion has most definitely been helpful.

Hellymelly - We technically have legal recourse but our solicitors said it would cost approx 100-150k minimum to go after him. Also they advised that he's the type of guy that wouldn't pay if we won and I'd tend to agree. I agree my wife would be better off having a separate career. this course of action is a priority I reckon. Baby and nanny would be the way to go.

I'm very confident we can be happy if I get my crap together and pay her more attention.

Quinteszilla - The crazy thing is that we've finally got the business to a good place and there's light at the end of the tunnel with regards to this. The main issue is our relationship that I now need to sort out. We finish at 17:00 and we don't talk about work after this or on a weekend. We had our first holiday in 4 years recently-ish and it was great. we didn't take any work calls, answer any emails or anything and had everything well organised so there was no hassle when we returned. I think mostly she's panicking because of her age.

I think we need to get our cr4p together. I need to get fitter, look after myself, eat well, see the doctor and get in a better frame of mind so I can give her whats she needs.

Bankruptcy one year now but they would lose their own home. But of course this should be a limited company which could be wound up, although there might be personal guarantees on the loans, which as FastLoris points out could be paid off.

Why anyone would get another 200k of debt when already in debt for 350k is beyond me. When going bankrupt would be a better solution. Put the family home into your wife's name to protect it from bankruptcy and allow her to act as a company director following the bankruptcy while you are employed by the company.

There are so many better ways of having done this.

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.

It seems likely that this is due to her low self esteem, which you are aware of. Self esteem is one of those things you can't give someone, but you can certainly chip away at it.

It sounds as if you feel some resentment of your wife for her role in things. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that is how it came across. This is understandable,but likely to contribute to her low self esteem.

If you feel antagonistic towards what you perceive as her attitude, or in any way imply that her failure to secure work is due to her laziness / incompetence / insert punitive adjective here, it will only exacerbate the situation.

You can help by
-being patient
-making it clear to her you think she would be a great employee
-Making sure she understands your business problems with her were down to your mutual incompatibility combined with the stressful situation and not her incompetence

If you don't believe this but really do think she's stupid or lazy or incompetent, you really cannot help her and are probably still contributing to her low confidence, which in turn inhibits her from going back to the slim, nicely coiffed, employed woman she used to be. If that is how you feel all your efforts to 'fix' her are likely futile as you need to deal with your own feelings first.

I'm not looking at getting a further 200k of debt. I don't think you've ready the previous posts which I can't blame you as there's quite a lot now.

Here's a summary for those just skimming over the thread.

I had a small business turning over approx 80k a year as a one man band.

I had someone I considered a friend. We bought his business for 400k. He then put us out of business in many ways.

Part of the 400k came from remortgaging MIL's house. She borrowed 150k against house and invested 50k. Both wife and MIL were well up for it. Mil was going to retire and work for new company and get shares.

We wound up 400k business. Half of the debts were written off except MIL's mortgage which HAS to be paid.

We spent last 5 years building up original business I started from 80k per annum to 500k per annum turnover.

Long hours and stress has done us both in and relationship now struggling.

It may be an idea to sell business for £250k and then declare bankruptcy. I could even start same business again. Without any of the debt we could downsize it and it'd be a doodle to run with just me and a couple of staff.

Hookedonchoc - My wife was fantastic as an employee where she worked previously. When the responsibility doesn't ultimately lie with her she's fine and very good at what she does. She just fell apart when it was actually her own business. This was mostly due to the stress and then the stress has gradually chipped away at both of us over the years destroying our relationship. I've been trying to get her to get more hours and wiggle her way back in to where she worked before which she is doing. she does approx 2-3 days for our business now but could leave completely.

"It may be an idea to sell business for £250k and then declare bankruptcy. I could even start same business again. Without any of the debt we could downsize it and it'd be a doodle to run with just me and a couple of staff."

Before you do this though, you may look at what to do in terms of how your salaries are paid, do you both get dividends? Is Mil getting dividends due to her share in the company? Can your wife, or maybe you both, get part time jobs? Can you put your house in your wife's name to safeguard it? Is it a limited company? Is the debt on MILs house your personal debt, or the company's? Are there any tax benefits to the debt, etc?

Bear in mind if you start the same business again, you have one Major competitor, your old business.

Can't help with the money side of things I'm afraid but if it helps my granny has addison's abd although she had a few miscarriages throughout the years she still managed 9 live births so there is hope for your wife.

I feel so sorry for you both. Could mil not move in with you?

Be prepared that with the kind of stresses your relationship has been through, it could be years before you are both happy and stress free again.

Glad to hear it, apologies for any offence caused.

nirishma - that's great to hear. thanks for that.

Quinteszilla - we take 7.5k each in wages, rest in dividends, business is limited. it's likely if i set up again the staff would leave and come and work for me. They like working for me and they're good guys. I trained them from scratch so they know the job inside out. I could go back to carrying out the work personally though and earn 50k a year pretty easily by only working 6 months of the year.

the MIL's mortgage has to be repaid personally so we obviously have to pay tax on this too.

So apart from MIL's mortgage, are your other debts debts of the limited company, or you personally? Or the limited company covered by personal guarantees?

Op, I completely understand how you think you can trust someone and they can screw you over in a business sense, been there, done that.

I think you really need to examine the idea of children.

In many ways you two sound a lot like my DH and myself, although we never risked our parents' houses, but they did help us out financially. I, however, kept a measure of independence and I think that is what kept us together and sane.

I didn't want children for a long time, didn't have them until late 30s. I think if your wife is hesitating about not having them, you should give STRONG consideration to having them. Not being sure about wanting to have them is very different to being sure you don't want to have them. Part of being unsure would be a nervousness about being a mother, about having someone rely on you, the fear of the unknown.

Moving into MIL's is a good idea, if you're working long hours it will be good for your DW to have the company. As you say, it would be the help she'd need if you did have children, and there must be a closeness if she was willing to risk her house for the two of you.

If you move in, then you can use that money to pay someone else to do your wife's job, and let her recover. She doesn't need to work for awhile, let her regain her strength physically and emotionally.

You need to stop being her boss, as simple as that. In the business you are her boss because of the way it is run. I could work for someone else, but not my DH. Not and have him stay alive because I'd want to strangle him if he treated me as a lackey. As soon as you stop being her boss, you can go back to just being her husband, that's the only way you'll be able to save the marriage I feel.

Good luck.

Apologies if this has been asked before but what job does your wife do for the business?

All I am thinking is that if you love each other but are unable to work together because you are controlling and she can't do the job the way you want her to and if you both want to have a baby then why can't you do that if you are making £100K profit each year.

I understand that you want to pay off your debts as quickly as possible but, really, if your wife's post commands a salary of £25K a year, for example, then you could still pay an employed to do her job and pay off £75K p/a which would extend the time you are paying off your debts but would surely be worth it if you looked at the bigger picture.

Assuming your wife loves you and wants child, you may have to make this compromise. She has made loads of compromises for you, that is what marriage is about and if yu did this you would be making steps to address your controlling nature.

Also, do not suggest to your wife, at age 40, you split up so she can find someone else to have a child with. What is the likliehood of her finding someone to do that with in the time frame???

Just following here and nothing really productive to say that has not been said already.

I applaud your self-knowledge and second the idea that it would be best for your wife and you not to work together. Apart from the problems you have mentioned here, I don't think it is easy for a relationship to spend so much time together on problems. When you first met, you would have gone to see a film, gone out to eat, complained about your workmates, complained about your housemates. Now you need to get a bit of that back, see each other as someone you can relax with and get away from problems with.

2 things going on here. The business side which sounds like you have sorted out now, wife looks for job elsewhere. If I worked with my hubby we'd throttle each other.

Personal side, you are already working at this, need to find out from your wife if she wants to try for a baby, it may just be she's feeling that heading towards mid life panic, a reassessment of who she is. If yo want kids go for it now, there is no perfect time, my hubby and I saved for 6 months before our first and have managed ok since, I threw this obstacle at him that we couldn't afford to have kids but we did it and I am so pleased we did.

For the record I can't see that mil would have agreed to the remortgage without knowing the risks. You took a risk it went wrong and good on you for trying to rectify it.

Your wife needs to work at all this too, may I ask why she is over your mil's? Are you trialling separation, is she requiring help due to her illness or some other reason.

I have 'RTFT', and I have a few questions?

(A) why her Mums house/security etc! And on remortgaging why didn't you create a contingency plan, as a control freak?

(B) if you can earn 50k alone why don't you wind your business down for a year or two (totally doable) go earn the 50k alone while she goes back to her job, or similar..do the scrimp/save for a year or two and get ahead of yourselves?

(C) at current research Addisions is not considered to be hereditary. And is actually very rare. And while there maybe issues in conceiving it's not a foregone conclusion.

(D) why would it be Mum/Paid Nanny/grandparents job to care for this imaginary baby/ be the one getting up in the night etc? You want a child with someone who has a chronic illness why nowhere in your posts is the possibility that you may end up being sole care for this child?

Before you dismiss me, I speak as someone who comes from a background of a family business. Ma had a hobby that became something she did more and more, earned pin money, realised she was underselling. Became bigger, we as kids worked for her and got extra pocket money, it was to do with sewing and millinery by the way.
Then Dad joined, it grew, ended up employing several relations.

So lots of pressure there then.

And I have a chronic condition.

Hi Rob - I have read the OP and all the responses: it seems to me that what's done is done and there's no mileage in going over the whys and wherefores. You obviously love your wife very much still, so court her, tell her, buy her flowers, romance her, take her away for a weekend - it doesn't need to be expensive. Share the possible options regarding the next steps you could take, both with the business and with your relationship and listen to what she has to say. If it's appropriate show her this thread - ask her if she'd like to involve her mum in some of the discussions. Apologise and then apologise some more.
I wish you both well. I hope that when she realises that you do love her and you are willing to do what it takes to make your marriage works she is able to find the hope and trust in you that she needs to carry on.