Argument over a £1

[ForGentleBeaker]

Years ago my best friend and her husband ran into severe financial difficulties and were going to lose their home. I was pregnant, hormonal, emotional, my head was all over the place, and I desperately wanted to help them.
At that time I had no money but we owned a property in an absolute rundown part of London - my husband purchased it with a gift from his parents and I was added to the deeds after we were married.
Long story short, my attempt to help my friend went awry, and my husband had to sell the property. The property is worth an absolute fortune now. The whole area has undergone gentrification, and we missed out on the crazy London property boom.

My husband doesn't ever want to discuss and I had thought we had put it behind us. I have immense guilt.

Last week, whilst grocery shopping with him, I exchange a premium product for a store brand, and he went ballistic. He started mumbling about why I was saving pennies when I happlynlissed away so much trying to help my friend.

In the car, I was called a jumped up bitch, and he spent the journey home ranting at me for making him sell the property; being a SAHM when the children were younger; spending money; and diminishing his role and magnifying mine.

He is refusing to speak to me because he doesnt want to listen to the verbal diarrhea coming out of my mouth - his words.

I don't know where we go from here. We have 3 children, and he is an excellent father, and husband, till now. It seems he has been harbouring this resent towards me but there is nothing I can do.

How long ago did this all go down? Are we talking 20 years ago, or 5 years? If it's been decades he really needs to let it go. Are you currently struggling financially, or are you doing fine and he is just annoyed that he could have made a profit on the house he used to own?

Also there was no way to know at the time that the house would end up being worth loads of money in the future.

Surely he could have refused to sell the house and made you sort out the debt yourself? He made the decision to sell the property so he can't completely blame you for that. At any rate, he needs to get over it or split up, what more can you do at this point?

What practical help can we offer her? Stop pinching penny now especially when it comes to what her dh wants to buy and the difference is just £1.

You royally fucked up and it’s affected the long term security of your family. Your husband is rightly pissed off. If I were him, I would have left you at the time as it was a totally ill judged thing to do.

She's minimising to the hilt on here. What makes you think she's not going to do it to him? If this man's got any sense and money left, he'll get his ducks in a row before she lends the money to some other friend with a sob story.

Were you working when you took out the loans? Why didn't you take on additional work to meet the repayments? Theoretically you should have been able to repay the loans otherwise the bank wouldn't have loaned you the money to start with. I doubt I'd be able to forgive you either, particularly if I'd said no to lending the money and you went ahead anyway. If one party says no to lending in this sort of situation, that's the vote that should apply.

Posters have asked her to describe the circumstances at the time and she has. What takes something from explanation to justification?

Is someone supposed to go without treatment for their mental health due to past actions?

It’s her husband’s responsibility to seek therapy for his own mental health.

Agree. If my husband had done this I would find it completely unforgiveable. Especially if that person was a SAHP and I was paying all the bills for the family, then they just pissed all their savings up the wall and got into debt. The pressure on a sole earner to keep an entire family afloat is immense (I'm doing it reluctantly ATM) and for the other partner to be so irresponsible is almost unbelieveable. And to do it over and over again to the the point where the whole family has a debt so large that he has to sell a house to pay it off?

His name calling is unacceptable but I can totally understand his deep resentment around the money.

I lent my closest friend over £100,000 to help her and her family but I know my friend inside out and we had a financial contract drawn up and interest was charged.

My friend paid every penny back with interest (I gave the interest back) before the term was up and it's only made our relationship stronger. There is no one else in this world, not even family that I would lend to. I know my friends word is her life so I knew she wouldn't let me down.

DH on the other hand, against my better judgement which I vocalised but have supported him as he supported me, has lent his friend £80,000 - this was 2 years ago, we are yet to see a penny back. I feel your husbands pain!!!

I'm not angry with my DH though as it isn't his fault.

He let it go but if by letting go you mean forgetting about it completely, it would never happen.

Op doesn’t sound like she made it up to her dh in any way for the broken trust and her wishes to select a cheaper item (trying save £1) is not only annoying but pretty disrespectful. Had she started working? It seems like on top of everything her dh had to pay for her therapy too, how did he process his stress and his feelings over this loss? By shutting up and keeping it all inside. That’s not easy.

Also, the argument wasn't over a '£1' but likely six figures if not seven.

OP this is a rubbish situation all round. I’m sure many will have a view but it’s unforgivable she went NC. Helping each other out of dark places what great friends do. You didn’t owe her £s though. You were a great friend and could’ve repaid the favour equally by being there for her when they lost everything. Just sorry for what you and DH have suffered. True friend would never have taken large sums from you, or expected you to get into debt. Going NC is beyond sh*y. Best thing you can do is ever more not invalidate your DH. If he ever gets triggered why not accept/acknowledge you had a monumental lapse in judgement? That he called it right and you are so sorry? Injured party much more forgiving when, for as long as needed the other side doesn’t dismiss, deny & deflect.

None of which would refute anything I wrote.

DHs justified resentment is something that cannot be addressed by anyone other than him, despite it being OPs fault. And with 3 children and a life together currently, him refusing to have any conversation at all is clearly not sustainable whether they stay together or not.

This was well over a decade ago, and I have apologised, of course I am sorry. If I could undo it i would.

Practical help can be all of any of the following:

Advice on how to open communication with her DH

Advice on couples counselling

Advice on how to become a safe partner again

Links to marriage support services

Why describe simple grocery item swapping – something almost everyone does – so nastily as ‘penny pinching’. It’s shopping. That’s all it is. There wasn’t anything about DH having chosen the premium item, just that she swapped it – so why make up something that isn’t there?

Have you taken any actual steps to mitigate this OP? Have you tried legal means to get your friend to pay back the money? Did you start working? Or saving to a family nest egg?

Would it be more respectful to go for the premium item then, by your logic? What exactly should she do to make it up to him years after the fact, publicly flagellate herself? It's not OPs fault that her husband chose to bottle this up for apparently over a decade.

She didn’t have a mental illness, she made a terrible decision that affected her family, then had appropriate emotions you would have after screwing over your family but didn’t then actually try to make up for it, letting her dh fix her mess at great personal cost. Calling it mental illness does a disservice to people who have mental illnesses.

It’s not more than a decade ago. It’s now.

Your husband hasn’t processed it or made peace with it or you. You need to accept that and be proactive.

But, again, why are you here? You’re so passive and disengaged.

As there was no form of written legal agreement, I wouldn't say attempting legal means would be a mitigating step. OP wouldn't have any proof. The worry is it could just end up costing more money and time, for nothing.

Look, it was a long time ago. But clearly your DH never put it behind him. You mentioned doing therapy .. but did he?
Clearly this uncertainty around job and finances is playing in his mind and he's thinking about what could have been.

So find a calm time and talk to him. Tell him you were surprised by the outburst and clearly he is still angry. What does he think needs to be done to make amends? If he won't talk then write him a letter.
Ultimately you probably need to go to marriage counselling to discuss this. I am not sure MN will help

“My wife cost me £500k on / house but she’s swapping my Kellogg to Tesco home brand to save £1. AIBU”

You can't undo it, but what are you doing now to support your husband who is anxious about his job and the financial future of the family?

What have you done over the decade to mitigate the financial loss?

You generally can’t do this if someone is declared bankrupt (which her friend and her husband were).

Legally, priority debt comes first – mortgage, loans, tax debts, bankruptcy administration costs, etc.

Unsecured loans, such as borrowed from friends/family is legally at the bottom of the pile. Once the bankruptcy process ends, the debtor is usually discharged from most remaining debts.

I really think that you need to stop focusing on 'if you still had that house you would be rich'! I sincerely doubt that would actually be the case. It was heavily mortgaged. The value might have gone up, but the rental value might not have matched it. Currently everyone that I know can't get rid of their buy to lets which they now can't afford to get a revised mortgage and nothing is selling. You also might have ended up selling it at some point because it was in a shitty area, the tenants were a pain in the arse or you simply didn't have the time to run 2 properties with a young family. It seems very rigid and simplistic thinking to say that, were it not for your friend, you would definitely still have had the house, still be paying low mortgage rates, charging decent rent and managed to sell it for a tidy profit before getting stung by all the recent changes. I think that a more realistic assessment would help you both feel less resentful about the situation.

If you wanted, you could look to getting a new btl in an up and coming area as a long term investment for your children, although investing in their pensions might make more financial sense.

As for your DH, I would be sitting him down and asking him what the reason for his outburst was and making it very very clear that you will not be called a bitch by anybody and certainly not by the person who co parents your children. I would be extremely firm over that and say that it was highly disrespectful, abusive, misogynistic and not language that you would wish any of your children to ever use or for it to be used against them. Unless he apologises and doesn't use it again, personally I would walk. I think that it's really important to have standards and draw a firm line in the sand over anything abusive like that.

I really think that you need to stop focusing on 'if you still had that house you would be rich'! I sincerely doubt that would actually be the case. It was heavily mortgaged. The value might have gone up, but the rental value might not have matched it. Currently everyone that I know can't get rid of their buy to lets which they now can't afford to get a revised mortgage and nothing is selling. You also might have ended up selling it at some point because it was in a shitty area, the tenants were a pain in the arse or you simply didn't have the time to run 2 properties with a young family. It seems very rigid and simplistic thinking to say that, were it not for your friend, you would definitely still have had the house, still be paying low mortgage rates, charging decent rent and managed to sell it for a tidy profit before getting stung by all the recent changes. I think that a more realistic assessment would help you both feel less resentful about the situation.

If you wanted, you could look to getting a new btl in an up and coming area as a long term investment for your children, although investing in their pensions might make more financial sense.

As for your DH, I would be sitting him down and asking him what the reason for his outburst was and making it very very clear that you will not be called a bitch by anybody and certainly not by the person who co parents your children. I would be extremely firm over that and say that it was highly disrespectful, abusive, misogynistic and not language that you would wish any of your children to ever use or for it to be used against them. Unless he apologises and doesn't use it again, personally I would walk. I think that it's really important to have standards and draw a firm line in the sand over anything abusive like that.