Please help my friend

[NickMyLipple]

Posting on behalf of her...

Her 'D'H is being a twat. He is useless with money and they decided they would file for bankruptcy a while back. He has done nothing about this. She has all the forms and tried to ensure he had the £700 cost for filing for it saved.

Recently he has been in a horrible mood. Although they live under the same roof, they don't talk. He doesn't eat dinner, doesn't communicate...just sits and watches telly all evening. She is really sad about this. She text him on Monday and asked how they were going to get through this, and he didn't respond. Last night she got the forms out and asked him to help her fill them out. He ignored her totally. She asked him where the £700 had gone which he had saved- he didn't know. She asked him if he had paid the rent that week - he didn't know. He also didn't know if he had enough money to do so.

She has since called the housing association to see how much in arrears they are; they had a payment at the beginning of the week to cover until the end of the month. This is unusual for him, he would normally pay weekly.

When I asked her if she loved him, she said "not now" but that when he is in a good mood, they have some good times.

She is worried she has made a terrible mistake in marrying him, but she is on her second marriage and is worried what people will think about her!

This has happened before- he even took her wedding and engagement ring off of her over a year ago to sell them to get some money when they were in dire straits before.

If it makes any difference, she has a child.

I recon LTB but is there any actual proper advice from anyone?!

There's not a huge amount you can suggest if one of the main reasons she's still sticking by this miserable man is 'because others will think badly'. She's been through divorce before which tends to take a lot of the mystery out of it, but if she's letting pride hold her back then she's making a choice and grown-us are free to make bad choices.

It probably does make a difference that she has a child. It can be an isolating and lonely business being a lone parent. She may be reluctant to go back to that, and many people stay in bad relationships because they fear loneliness. However, it's also significant that she has a child because the poor kid doesn't deserve to be brought up in poverty and watching Mum and Dad's train-smash of a marriage being played out in front of them.

She has been a single parent before- she will be better off financially and have more of a disposable income being on her own. She also has lots of friends and family nearby who are very supportive.

I just asked her if the main reason for not splitting up with him is because of what others may think of her; she said it was a consideration but not the main one. The main reason for staying is to minimise disruption.

In sales training there is a technique called 'objection handling'. The customer will set up a reason why they don't want to commit and you solve it. But they still don't want to commit so they give you another objection and you solve that. Finally, you get to the 'real' reason and, if you can solve that one, you can make the sale.

You addressed the original problem of embarrassment and that wasn't it. I suspect therefore if you show her that there would be minimal disruption and she'd be better off etc. then she would land you with another objection :) There is a real reason why she isn't kicking him out on his sorry backside but you haven't found it yet.