DH wants DM rental income

[MMMMMBacon]

Summarised backstory first -

Married for 21 years and together 23/24 years. I am almost 47 Y/o. I am the higher earner of the two of us though we both earn decently - My only gap in work being a year Mat break 15 years ago. No second child mainly cos he is very tight fisted with money , even mine. I have always compromised and led a simple life - no fancy holidays etc , no fancy eating out or splurges with shopping. My only 'extravagance' from his perspective is I wanted our son to go a fee paying school and he does. Both our mortgage and DS school fees as well council tax, utilities, both phones go from my account that he also has a card to. His salary goes to another account that he saves , as he says, for 'our' retirement - he does afford himself little treats from there. He buys the groceries from there for us. He doesnt like eating out.

My mother has willed her house to me and is now almost 70. Last year she had rot and flooding in one part of the house and her situation was pitiable, staying at a friends house as the roof in one part of the house was horrific. She lives comfortably on a pension and some savings in the bank but didnt have enough to rebuild or even renovate parts of the house and it was ancient/crumbling. She thought about selling it to a small developer who would build it up as 2 units and then sell one and give her one unit. which I would get in future was her plan, it was H who said the developer seems very dodgy blah blah blah , finally long story short - I paid the money for the renovation and repairs which was under 50K (with him okaying it at the time) - now he says my mother should pay him 300 GBP every month for the 50K since he refused to free up any liquidity for me to have the 50k ( we have other assets we could have sold, and I had other plans for financing it myself) but he insisted at the time he pay the 50K from his severance pay he got last year (he got a new job immediately) - I told him I will give him the 300 GBP but he insists my mother pay it out of her monthly pension and savings. presumably my money is all his anyway and not he wants more. AIBU ?

So the SCO LBTT and tax on rent just makes it even more stupid of us then.

If just the interest rates being higher than mortgage rates for many of the periods in the past 20 years , makes it baseline stupid.

@MMMMMBaconI'm not at all surprised that your husband was the one who insisted on the big house. It sounds as though four bedrooms would have been plenty for your family and a much more manageable size. But I suppose it's another form of control on his part.

If you do proceed with the living arrangements you outlined above (living as a separated couple in the same house) I hope you will insist that your husband does his share of cleaning the house. It's not up to you to do everything, especially if it is physically taxing for you. Your son is old enough to help out around the house as well.

But TBH I really hope you don't stay in this limbo situation. Make it a real separation. Imagine how lovely it would be to have your own place for just you and your son.

Gosh he really is stupid, controlling abusive men often are.
The narcissistic part of their personality thinks they are brilliant and strategic.
Unfortunately often they are all ego and very low intelligence.

Thank you.

Does anyone have any insights or experience on why a man in a 24 year relationship , would want so much control , for no real purpose ? Why are they abusive when there is no real gain in it to them , it cant be fun on it's own?

Sorry that sounds rhetorical and neither here nor there to me as well...thanks for the advice everyone xxxx

thanks this is almost an answer to the question I just cross posted .....

I own my part to the bad financial decisions of not doing my research and insisting on a place at the strategy table - but I am often over the weekends gaslighted with how he has to do extra hours at work for his boss to earn his bonus etc - and why dont I clean all the toilets as he is working and we arent royalty no one is going to clean it for us - there are 4 and I usually spend half the saturday or sun on that, I hadnt looked at our financials in years. Bet he was shocked they havent been done today.

it cant be fun on it's own

They do find it fun - they love to smirk at their own brilliance thinking they've outsmarted you & getting you to run yourself ragged. It's their favourite game.

Once your eyes have been opened to the maliciousness of it all their control no longer works.

Ah, then that's different than where I am (US). Here it pretty much always pays to pre pay on a mortgage if you can. With 30 year mortgages it's usually rare that any type of savings account or savings tax credit earns you more than you'd be paying out on your mortgage for the same period.

He's a real asshole, isn't he?

Frankly I'd probably put locks on 2 of the bathrooms and say "2 is enough, that's all I'm going to clean. If you want 4 bathrooms cleaned, do 2 of them yourself".

So you’ve both liked other people whilst being married, except he roped you into helping her and was openly messaging her in the evening? He has made you feel guilty all these years and yet acted like a love sick puppy to another woman and humiliated you! You ended up in hospital because of him making you help her out, and she had a husband!
I can assure you, the only one anyone was laughing at was H.
He might rage at first when you tell him your terms @MMMMMBacon but he won’t want anyone finding out why! If you threaten to broadcast his wrongdoings, he will deflate but you are going to have to mean it and he will cower.
Going to therapy together, will show you whether he wants to have a happier relationship and he sees his actions as they really are, abuse and will change. I think he will want nothing to change and refuse to go, as he hates people seeing him for the nasty bully he is to you. He knows his treatment towards you is shameful, he knows people will lose any respect he imagines anyone has for him, but best of all (for you) is, he is a cardboard cut out bully, with no power over you. He bullied you because he deliberately created a power imbalance to feel the big man!

@AcrossthePond55 , Lol ....thanks for your words (I needed to hear that) ...
thanks to the other who have replied too.

Do you think his financial control, mental control, physical control - are retribution for me wanting to leave the marriage ten years ago with the open expression that I was unhappy was with him and that at 33 I felt I was young enough for me (for both of us) to find people we both were more compatible with re lifestyles , hobbies, values etc. I feel he had been indifferent enough to the marriage (would take 20 more pages to explain the first ten years but more of the same even before the 2013 Armageddon.

It is most often the Man (LTB) on here who wants to leave to look for an OW , or is attracted to a potential OW and then finds a thousand reasons to justify it. Am i the LTB here ? is this the male version of LTB. Genuinely wondering.

Thanks @sprycat, yes exactly he also did not visit me at Hospital the next morning after I had spent the night there with them monitoring my BP, but did come in the evening to get me I think (2018) when I was given the all clear to leave with my first prescription of BP meds .....

So what I am hoping from this condition of marital counselling is I tell the counsellor that I wanted to leave in 2013 and summarise my reasons at the time, and then I backed down as he wanted us to stay (I think he cares less of me leaving now broken and 47 , then he did when I was a healthy vibrant 33 , with more prospects) together and I did. And then for him to express his anger and other emotions in the safe space there at 2013 - and then for me to get him to agree with the counsellor help that even criminals locked away for serious crimes are treated well when doing life in prison and then let out early for good behaviour. So when is his revenge over? can we make a list of how much revenge has already been done and dusted, and can we sort a list for what else needs to happen. And then say the list takes us through to 2028. Is it over then ? will we have an equitable and pleasant partnership then as

A divorce would make him feel a failure and he is desperate for other people opinion of him to be admirable, I don’t think either of you have been happy but he got his kicks from grounding you down, making you feel unimportant and had you not liked that other guy, I think he would still of been this bad.

Does she also pay all the bills and mortgage while her husband squirrels away his salary?

But the separate bank account is non negotiable , and not allowed to go on his retribution list. He had that already from 2015/16 for ten years.

No @chocorabbit good point thanks

It was bad before 2013 too with the control, though there was fun and laughter and good times too

If your dwife wants to leave the marriage and you’re deeply unhappy about it, you don’t go down the route of ‘retribution’ when she decides to stay.
You grab that opportunity by two hands and improve the marriage. You try to understand why she wanted to leave in the first place. You look at what you can do better. You listen to her.
What you do NOT do is seek revenge!!

Seeking revenge means he sees you as an adversary that needs to be tamed. Not a partner. He is there to win, ie he has you as a maid, giving sex, support and more importantly to him A WAGE and you’re not allowed to leave because you’d be destroying HIS dream. You, on the other and certainly your wishes or wants simply do not exist in his world. Or just as something to beat into submission.

Your husband is clearly an abuser on several fronts.
I do think that your post that detailed your financial history though showed he wasn’t quite keeping his whole salary whilst you paid all the bills. He paid down mortgages etc.
Please do get some clarity on your financial situation before going ahead into divorce so that you minimise any nasty surprises. It does sound as if both of you don’t have a good grasp of finances - for example going into being landlords without understanding capital gains tax, or mortgage interest relief and tax on rental income. By the way, these are the same in the whole of the U.K., and not specific to Scotland.

You know, there is often more than one 'motive' in someone's behaviour. It could be retribution/revenge. It could be anger at him seeing you slipping out of his narcissistic control. It could be plain fear of losing his reputation as 'a good family man'. It could be purely selfishness and greed; he lives better with you there than he would if you leave. Or it could be a bit of all three. Or something else entirely. But TBH, I have found that why they do what they do doesn't matter and frankly, who cares? The fact is that they do it. Understanding why doesn't change anything and it certainly doesn't change them one whit. Much better to put that emotional energy and curiosity inyo figuring out what YOU want and why you're staying where you are not valued as an equal partner nor treated with respect.

No, you aren't the female version of LTB in the sense of leaving to look for, shall we say, sexual 'adventures'. If you had 'that moment' 10 years ago with this other man, you didn't act on it with him and you were right not to. Cheating is always wrong, there is no justification for it. Perhaps you should have left 10 years ago, but not for another man. For yourself.

But right now, in 2025 you are the LTB that simply says "I am unhappy in this marriage. I would be happier on my own". Acting on that is not wrong in the least. In fact, it can be the absolute right thing to do. Because saying it and doing it is honest. It is the right way to end a marriage.

The problem with staying when you are so unhappy is that can lead one into 'dangerous territory' and might make someone susceptible to cheating, as you already know. And again, cheating is dead wrong. It also, if discovered, ends up making any split extremely nasty and usually much more 'adversarial'. Better a divorce when all they can say about you is "She was unhappy" rather than "She cheated".

You know, I'm old and I've seen and done a LOT. DH and I have been together and married over 40 years. On the road of life there is a lot more in my rear view mirror than there is on the road up ahead of me. And if there is one thing I've learnt it's that we must be honest with others and true to ourselves.

And when it comes to marriage, love doesn't always conquer and love isn't always enough. You can love someone to distraction and that doesn't mean they are right for you.

Marriage needs common goals, common beliefs, and common values. And you must work in tandem, pulling together not in opposite directions. If you don't have that, then you may as well call it a day.

Instead of marriage counseling and ultimatums, you need to stop and think about your life and what you want. It's obvious that he thinks about that for himself all the time. It's time you started doing that too.

Thanks a lot to everyone who responded. Lots to take away and think about.

Thanks @AcrossthePond55 - your most recent post really spoke to me. I have come across your wise advice I think on other threads too (Jamais's thread etc comes to mind?) - thanks a lot for your words and wisdom, and 😍your time , Bless.

@MMMMMBacon

Thanks. Yes, I was on Jamais' threads.

Take what 'speaks to you' of my advice, I'm more than happy to share what 'wisdom' time has given me. Life has many blessings in store for you, too. Introspection and prayer (if you're the 'praying kind') will get you there. And counseling can really speed things up!

A note on prepaying the mortgage. In a lot of cases you get penalised if you over pay by more than 10% in a year.

The trick is to over pay the 10% each year and save the rest in an ISA. When you remortgage, you put the savings down as a capital payment, so you're mortgaging on a new amount. It's like a new "deposit". That way you get interest, no penalty fees and you can overpay.

I am into spirituality quite heavily in the past ten years - from the Bible, to the Gita to all the Buddhist wisdom I can get - I am starting to fear though the combination of the ' turn the other cheek/non violent zen' that I seem to have picked up increasingly - is toxic with a narc - unless one really looks at the bigger picture :-) into the afterlife - however, all that goes out the window at times when this sort of sudden snap happens like thursday with the rent from my mum of all things that broke the camel's back.

@MMMMMBacon

Well, I can't speak to Buddhist philosophy, but as a Christian 'turning the other cheek' in my mind doesn't mean standing still and allowing others to take advantage of us or treat us badly. It may mean we don't 'retaliate in kind' but it doesn't mean to be a mug or allow abuse. There's nothing 'un-Christian' about telling someone to stop doing something that injures us or walking away from a bad situation. And there's nothing un-Christian about using legal means, like suing, to recover what we've lost or to make someone be held to account for hurting us, like calling the police on an abuser or a thief.