Just found out the person I am seeing has absolutely no assets or pension!

[Jemjemima]

I recently had an amicable separation from my husband about a year and a half ago and have been seeing a new partner for about 6 months. This person really is a wonderful man and I haven’t felt this comfortable with anyone for a very long time. He is attentive, caring and has been very supportive. I was very Frank from the start that I didn’t know which direction I was heading and that I wanted to do the right thing all ‘round to make the separation as calm and respectful as possible for my 2 teenage children. He was happy to offer support and we have had some great times together. I had noticed he had quite a few credit cards, rented a flat and had a lease car. I am financially solvent and have worked all my life and planned hard but I am not interested in grand jestures or posh nights out. I always pick up the bill every other meal, treat us to a weekend away etc, but I have noticed on occasion his cards get rejected. I have asked him about it and he just says it’s all fine. I have started to have feelings for this man but my gut is saying no! I have since discover that he is in £30k worth of debt, no assets and no pension. He had a good job and was earning £70k but was always struggling a bit. He is 59 and has recently been made redundant and his employment and insurance stops paying in September. My daughter goes to uni in about 16 months for 5 years and so I know I will have to be careful with my money, this I had planned for. I will soon be living alone once the house has sold and will need to be cautious but I hate myself for wanting to end this relationship because of his lack of any stability. He has actually been fighting for unfair dismissal and has said he will have a payout soon and that will be his pension but it will just not be enough and he has some cavalier ideas for his money! I want to end the relationship but I feel so guilty. I am not motivated by money in the slightest. He is currently trying to keep the relationship going but I want to run! I hate to be practical when love is involved!

@LouiseMadetheBestBroccoliPasta I also used Burned Haystack Dating Method at this exact age and it's worked out great for me in terms of weeding out the unsuitables, for whatever reason.

He sounds perfect for a fling, but not for an mid-life and older age in current UK OP. I hate to say it but flying by the seat of his pants is ok at 20 but not ok at 55, and as everyone has said, he will be looking for the emotional and monetary anchor for himself, and you are worth more than that. His plan for old age was you and that's not ok. Yours can't be to pay off his debts!

You sound hot! My experience is that this is a great age to be dating again so after you have licked your wounds, perhaps get out there with the wisdom that this experience has brought.

I'm not saying he wasn't in love with you, by the way. Just that for him, you were the whole package, for you, not so much. Be kind to yourself for now, OP.

From this

he knows that his situation may end what we have and he has said to me ‘better to have loved ….”.

To this

he has said that he wasn’t enough at the end of the day and it was just about the money, making me feel shallow

Wow, he really changed his tune when his rainy day saviour was no more.

Sounds like you dodged a bullet.

I agree so much with this.
I can well understand your upset, of course it was hard, but you have saved yourself so much grief.

Well your epitaph should be "I am so fond of X, however, I am responsible for the financing of the university educations of my children and than comes ahead of solely financing any relationship!

Not that you owe anyone an explanation.
His lovely family may well be disappointed but privately they know well that he is feckless.
They are fond of him and of course they would love him settled and to have landed on his feet!

But that is not on you to accept.

My old friends youngest brother is 40 and his 4 siblings are all very successful, coming from a successful MC family. Parents have recently past.
My friend is putting boundaries in because as the much indulged youngest he has lived, travelled and not settled, as a creative.

He keeps meeting fantastic women socially but after around 6 months they back away.

The family home where he has been living is being sold and because of how feckless he is the siblings are buying a small apartment between them from their proceeds after splitting the rest equally among them.
They are retaining ownership of the apartment as they wouldn't trust him not to dispose of it at some point.
They don't want him turning up trying to live with any of them, and she promised her parents they would look after him after her mother was very upset and regretful of how they spoiled him. He was very much a menopausal surprise birth in her mid 40's and adored.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this attractive, interesting man, bar the fact he is spoiled and workshy.

My friend has been privately very honest with me that she would be absolutely thrilled if he met some well set up woman to take him on, but she reckons those he has met, have the measure of him and thought better of it, no matter how charming he is.
And he really is!

There have been many threads from higher main breadwinning women on MN that ended up with his type, and it never is a happy tale.

We are here for you as you navigate this.

If it's any consolation (which it probably isn't, be kind to yourself for a bit!), the mismatch between you and the way you conduct your finances would have been the death knell to your relationship in the end anyway.

Also, if he's so 'fly by the seat of his pants' and not wanting to be financially responsible - are you absolutely certain that his stories about having to change houses to keep his OCD wife happy and bail his sister out of gambling debts are absolutely true? Someone who generally cares little for money and its worth doesn't often have the wherewithal to be able to do these things... So I would suspect a large amount of guff and 'talking himself up' here.

But whatever. You're allowed to be sad. Just don't let him talk you around, you've done the right thing, better to split now and be quietly sad than split in five years with huge debts and lots of screaming and acrimony.

Frequentlyincorrectbut
Thanks - this is good advice honestly. You guys have become great allies - it is very telling isn’t it that I have only told 1 of
my friends about his situation - I know now it was the shame and the judgement. How could she be so stupid but your heart gets involved! Xxx

This is tricky - in OLD I have found that this is the case for 99% of the 50something men I have met up with so it looks unlikely that if I do end up having a LTR with someone we won’t be financially equal at all.
I have also found that if they have assets it will be more than 1 car or a car and at least one motorbike!

Burntlemon
wow! That is a story! Thanks for this - I appreciate the time
and effort and your kind words. To be able to be absolutely open is hugely important and you guys are all so supportive and emotionally smart!

You have nothing to be ashamed of, so you shouldn’t fear shame or judgement. However, you also shouldn’t feel like you owe your friends an update. Talk about it when you’re ready, no one is owed an update..

I agree with @nomas you don't need to go into depth if you don't want, just say it wasn't working out, we were incompatible but I did really like him and I'm sad. Tell say one close friend. I certainly don't tell everyone about my own dating disasters and now I'm having fewer of them, I still only tell a few and that's after I know what's happening.

This is a live story!
My friend is 60 with 3 children of her own and doesn't want to be "mother" to her brother.
Thats why she has roped her siblings in to buy the apartment. As the only girl, he tries to come to her for "life advice" and to offload.

She loves him, but is still menopausal enough to just not have the bandwidth for him and his life choices.
Her career, family and own challenges are enough.

He's a bit "poor me" since the latest lovely successful girlfriend had a rethink and wanted space.
He's great company but is very much money is "vulgar" to dwell on.....all the while for the last 10 years living in and out of his parents home while they have been in a nursing home, and having his bills paid for by them, as he "creates" and lives his best life.

I have two daughters, I'd be demented if either of mine rocked up with this charmer in tow!

Well done for listening to your gut.
It's hard, but you will detach from him emotionally.

And yes, that definitely was a compliment to accept.😁

@Burntlemon I've known two men like this. One is a man that lived with my mum for free for years. Another is a relative whose wife has just died; he's already lining up the next candidate. Both are 'against consumerism' and just seem to hop from woman to woman. Very enjoyable as companions, but as life partners, they just depend on the hard work and assets of others, live in their houses, and can only reject material things because other people have them. I find it exceptionally annoying. If they genuinely lived a non-material lifestyle in a shepherd's hut or in a shared house, I'd at least believe they meant it.

Yes this was predictable from someone so self serving. A pattern or behaviour he has had all his life.

Happy to deploy the love-bombing lines and dazzle with charm whilst he was nurturing his ‘investment’.

Funny how these characters who ‘don’t care about money’ ALWAYS find themselves with women who have more assets than they do!

@Jemjemima the reality is is that he is more money focused than you are - but his focus is on acquiring access and benefits to other peoples rather than generating and saving his own.

It is interesting that he can’t demonstrate his love for you by respecting your needs and choices - the bitterness has revealed itself.

I predict that he will be back with some hideous romantic grand gesture as a last deluded and desperate attempt to win you over.

Keep strong - don’t worry about his ‘upset’. Keep focused on your DCs. This is the best investment. Mine are a few years older than yours - 3 have graduated and 1 just started uni. It’s my absolute pleasure to see them as independent, hardworking, financially savvy, ambitious and emotionally stable young people. It required a lot of dedication and focus from me over the last 10 very difficult years to nudge them through. And I do think that they need your emotional support and financial direction until they are 25. Best of luck to you.

@Jemjemima I feel for you , it’s hard not to feel a shit but sometimes you just know that you are setting yourself up for other issues however much you like them and care - my son of 27 is trying to end it with his live in GF at moment - she really has given it her all and I’m very sad too as I love her to bits, but he feels trapped and domesticated at 27 in London, she bases her whole life round him isn’t keen on him doing stuff without her and he is really not keen at all on her family and can foresee issues - but he does care a lot and feels shit and she is devastated. so yep I do get how you might feel

The future is a scary enough prospect even if you know you're going to be financially comfortable, because none of us knows what it's going to look like or for us as individuals, what's round the corner. My partner and I ARE comfortable, but the thought of having to scrape by in old age makes me shudder.

You didn't simply 'end it for money'. You took a sensible, pragmatic decision to protect yourself. And NOTHING kills love faster than poverty caused by one half of a couple's actions.

Not wise at all just living and learning as I go along!

I never saw myself as 'romantically vulnerable' at all, in fact the opposite. I'm very savvy and quite harsh sometimes yet I met mine a year after a very painful divorce (v long marriage) in the wild so the physical attraction was instant.
As it began to play out I look back and I just buried every red flag that unsettled me. And the unsettled feelings grew and grew.
I was even going to do a thread here about a year ago but didn't as I actually knew what the majority of posters would say. I was lalala fingers in ears for longer than I should have been as the good stuff was so good.

I can look back and I now see how vulnerable I actually was.

I can't recall the thread or the posters name but she talked about 'hyper-sexual' feelings that can come after infidelity trauma (or any kind of rejection trauma) and I look back and recognise that too.

Im now going to look up the burnt haystack theory! Never heard of it.

Yep, they live among us.
Particularly the very MC.
They are raised and indulged and are used to the good life, just with someone else handling the dirty business of paying the bills.

It is very expensive to live a genuinely comfortable MC life.
I know, as I do, and it is eye-watering paying the bills for a arge comfortable urban home and lifestyle.

Two of my privileged children have moved away from home to another city post university, and when they return home I am finally hearing real acknowledgement of the huge comforts they have enjoyed, not least a car to run a round in as they refuse to pay for one where they are.

They are both well paid in their first jobs but are genuinely taken aback at how expensive the cost of a good life is, when you have to pay for everything yourself.

We are not swooping in to help.

An old well paid friend married a spender husband in an ordinary job where he has done the absolute minimum for 40 years.
He is now retiring, asap.
She will continue to work to fund their lifestyle, that she has provided.

Their whole marriage he has been all about his hobbies, trips away, walking trips, sailing, living HIS best life with fatuous remarks to her that "it will all work out".

The truth is she has made it work out, he spends, doesn't like discussing vulgar money and the dirty business of the funding of their very MC lifestyle.

He loves his good food, fine wines and to project that lifestyle.
Frankly he makes my skin crawl and despite her requests over the years to socialise I have gently batted her away.
I don't want to be in his company listening to his pompous tales of his travels while she foolishly pays for it all.

I have been very frank with my other friend to warn her to take zero bullshit and imposition from her brother, as he could very well end up wanting to be housed at some point as he has never paid a bill.
A charming tosser.

My H has tendencies like this, although he is the big earner in fairness and is hard working - but certainly is more than happy to want that lifestyle and live up to the hilt and not into discussing anything that involves a ‘downgrade’ to life - it’s frustrating because it leaves me feeling very insecure in my early 60s

My husband could also be like this, and after living with the threat of the baillifs and never being able to properly enjoy our lifestyle as it was always undercut by 'how do you have the money for this'? I made it one of my non-negotiables for a new relationship.

My children are my monetary priority, that's it. If you are a single parent, it's doubly hard due to tax unfairness (your tax goes up at an earlier point than two people in a couple earning far less each) and it all being on your shoulders. I would not jeopardise this for any amount of sex, love, flattery.

I do get the hyper-sexual thing though, it's so overwhelming being properly loved by someone after its been dormant for so long, it can turn you peculiar and it's important not to make life-changing decisions for you, or your children's future, whilst in this state.

Just keep all your financial affairs completely separate, whatever else happens.

It would be very silly to tie yourself to him financially but, given I'd never live with anyone again, I'd date this reckless hobo no problem but I'd just keep it casual and never move in with him.

@Kweenbeee "Funny how these characters who ‘don’t care about money’ ALWAYS find themselves with women who have more assets than they do!
** the reality is is that he is more money focused than you are - but his focus is on acquiring access and benefits to other peoples rather than generating and saving his own."

Yes exactly. I also see his accusation to OP that she's money oriented as a classic case of projection.

In any case, OP, chalk it up as a pleasurable short relationship that broke the miasma of misery and self-doubt that you were under after your divorce, and that taught you about yourself and what you want.

Give yourself time to heal and reflect, but know there are much better things out there for you :)

@elviswhorley kind of agree, but the OP's new man was already talking about moving in and getting married after less than a year and the OP was swept up in this. Living apart for decades could work but for many at mid-fifties, this isn't what they are aiming for in making a new relationship. I'm not, anyway, it's a lovely idea but hard work in practice living between two homes I'm finding.

You did the right thing for you - 100%.

I can't get my head around living with a romantic partner at our age though. We end up caring for them more often than not. They don't take care of themselves and our last years are spent on them before we pass.

Nurse with a purse. Hospice wife.

Him asking her to marry him is a massive insult isn't it? He's offering nothing but could take everything.

That is offputting as all hell.