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.

Perhaps it was just about bearable for your poor husband to stomach when finances overall weren’t tight and he wasn’t worried about losing his job (especially as his coping mechanism appears to have been to block it all out and refuse to talk about it)

But a change in circumstances was always going to bring all that hurt and resentment flooding back if it’s unresolved in his mind. Bitching about a £1 mark up on a branded item he wanted would have been an absolute kick in the teeth in that scenario and the final straw. He snapped and not without good reason

So you don’t regard anxiety and depression as mental illnesses?

Have you personally medically assessed the OP and are you a health professional?

Are people diagnosed with mental illnesses (like depression by the way) categorised into people who have made bad decisions in the past and people who have not? And are those former designated as not worthy of the diagnosis?

(Clue: the answer is no to all of those questions)

Your poor dh, I feel sorry for him. How could you lend so much money that you ended up losing a house to pay for it.

Did you do this behind your DH back or with his knowledge?

But without her actions would she still have had those emotions? 🤔 her feelings were a response to her errors but sure, call it mental illness and wipe all responsibility if that makes you feel like a good person.

That’s really tough lesson there but I’m sure you’ve realised never to lend money to anyone that you can’t afford to lose!
I never put myself into a situation where I’d be asked for a loan. Fair friends wouldn’t ask you to risk your own financial stability. It seems from what you’re saying that they inevitably lost everything anyway but they also lost your money. So essentially your money made no difference to them but losing it heavily impacted your finances and your relationship too.
Your husband got angry because he perceived it that he put up with you losing so much money for the family yet you’re nitpicking him choosing a premium product that’s £1 more expensive and now he can’t even have that little luxury. Sounds like the straw that broke the camel’s back. He shouldn’t have called you names and talk down to you, that’s not acceptable. It sounds like he hasn’t dealt with it all. TBH if it was his inheritance and he put you on the deeds so you can benefit from it down the line, but you squandered it to help your ‘friends’ who clearly couldn’t handle their own finances, and your husband did not agree to you giving them money in the first place, I think it’s understandable that he’s angry. Especially that these ‘friends’ went NC after they took your money, and they didn’t care about the massive lurch they’ve left you in! If you have been feeling really bad and guilty about it and needed counselling, he probably didn’t want to risk having a go at you and expressing his own frustrations. Why didn’t he get counselling too?
I can understand how you feel as I’ve made a couple of bad financial decisions in the last 5 years, costing us 5 figures. My husband consented to everything though and we talked about it a lot because I felt awful and really stupid. He said we did our DD and it was a business decision that didn’t go to plan, but I still felt terrible (still do). I’d have much rather given that money to charity than to scammers.
I’d have a series of honest conversation with him and express assertively how I feel about 1. Losing all that money 2. Your friends’ betrayal 3. Your own guilt and how this may not have allowed space for him to express how he feels 4. His outburst after the supermarket scenario 5. That he was actually right, you shouldn’t have given money to your friends and you are very sorry about losing the money, this was not what you expected from your friends, express that you were naive and this not only cost you all that money but you also lost the person you thought was your best friend! 6. As sorry as you are, unfortunately you can’t change the situation, and in order to truly move on and put all this behind you, it’d be great to talk it through, however long it takes.
And finally, you need to forgive yourself, as hard as that may be, you are a nice person and you tried to do a good thing, your intentions were good but your friend was a user! No real friend would ask or accept anything from you that’d jeopardise your financial security! Lesson learned!
Be kind and gentle to yourself, you’re a good person! Xox

@ForGentleBeaker I would disengage from this thread now as it will just keep repeating your financial decisions from a decade ago.

Lots of people have suggested marriage counseling. I think that's how to take this forward. You both need to be at peace with what happened otherwise it will keep cropping up every time you are in a financial tight spot

FGS OP: do you have a job? when did you start working to try to secure your family's future?

When you make a huge mistake with massive long term consequences that undermines the very stability of your marriage and fundamentally calls into question your judgement as an adult, you should feel depressed and anxious!

It’s a terrible situation and dark, difficult to bear feelings are absolutely part of that.

Since when are we all supposed to be happy and at ease all the time? Being a human being is bloody tricky. And being stupid is painful.

Who said it wipes responsibility? You can suffer ill mental health, have treatment and still feel responsible. OP brought that info up as another poster accused her of not feeling guilty about it.

Actions causing emotions does not eradicate the presence of a mental health issue. You may personally feel less sorry for someone who suffers mental health issues due to their own actions, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

@OnTheRoof you are right… him refusing to have any conversation at all is clearly not sustainable whether they stay together or not. just thinking though what if… and may not apply… he’s really affected still to the point it’s too hard given impact to discuss!? Personally love to talk it out, but for worst things DH my end just can’t or won’t. He’d rather and only able to stick head in sand…

Wow you're an amazing friend. You did what you thought was right at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Who knows what else could have happened - you may have ended up with problem tenants and had to sell anyway etc.

Your kids will benefit from your kindness. Your husband sounds like he is letting his anxiety get to him. He may well have been annoyed etc but didn't want to burden you when you're beating yourself up.

Be kind to yourself now, you deserve it.

What does that have to do with her mental health issues as being real or not or valid for treatment?

Going forward I would also reframe how you talk about your 'friend' - she's a con artist/ thief.

No doubt if OP did that then posters would accuse her of passing the buck.

You call it “mental health issues”, I call it an entirely normal human response to a catastrophic misjudgement.

Did you pay back the family and friends you "borrowed" from?

Wow. I’m not surprised your h feels annoyed/angry/resentful. You cost your h his inheritance!!

I’m finding it hard to imagine how the loan to your friend got so out of control. How much did you lend her that you got loans from multiple banks?

Your kids will benefit from your kindness.

How exactly are her kids benefitting from OP giving away money she didn't have? That's not kindness. It's naivety at best.

So saying pinching penny is nasty. Ok then. Couple counselling? Who is going to pay for that? Her dh has worries about his job.

Op put her dh is in this great stress, I don’t think any advice will help if there is no self reflection.

I think this would be an incredibly hard situation to move on from, especially losing an inherited property that you yourself have not contributed to. I bet his family bring this up from time to time! they must not be pleased, I think something like that would have ended most relationships. Moving forwards it will be incredibly difficult to move on from his outburst unless he forgives you, which I doubt he has. Honestly few people really could.

This is gatekeeping how worthy one is of having a health issue. That isn’t how human health works.

You haven’t told us what you did?

and I mean I get it his point of view. We had the same happen to us with our first property in London and I feel sick when I think about what it’s now worth and how stupid we were to sell it when we did.. my husband has also made lots of stupid financial decisions of his own, and while I try and get on with things and love him dearly, sometimes it does all come to a head and I do let rip at how fukcing pissed off I still am about it all.

She said it was a cash flow problem and I had no reason to doubt her and she repaid me. She asked again several times for money, and I used my savings. She latter told me the extent of her financial difficulty but assured me it was temporary, so I borrowed from family and friends to help her out. When my friends asked me to repay their loans I couldn't

I'm staggered. This is a whole new level of stupidity and selfishness. You risked your family and friends' money for this person?

I honestly don't know what to say. Not only should your DH have been furious, so should the people you borrowed from. I don't know what reason you have for borrowing from them, but I can't believe that they made loans to you for you to loan to your friend.

Not really, I’m just trying to suggest that it’s not necessary or wise to pathologise uncomfortable and difficult feelings of known aetiology.