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.

He could have done that regardless of the rise in value. He didn't want her to make the load in the first place.

Calling someone a jumped up bitch is nowhere near as bad as what you did, its absolutely disingenuous for you to frame it like this.

I could never get past what you did. I dont see how the marriage can survive. Sorry OP, what a terrible burden you have to carry 😔.

His comments pale into insignificance relative to the financial damage your irresponsible actions have caused the family.

What he said is of course not pleasant, but he’s clearly not been able to forgive you and the resentment must be eating at him from within. I’m not sure I would have been able to either.

It’s a massive thing for you to expect him to sweep under the carpet, especially as it appears you’ve not made any significant moves to improve the family finances in the intervening period.

How remorseful do you actually feel and how have you demonstrated that to him with real action over the years?

Yes. This is spades! You should have been working every day to compensate for what you lost. Not reducing your circumstances to a single income family

He has become anxious about his job and financial security. That's the only difference I've seen in the past 6 months.

What are you doing to alleviate the stress about the family financial security? Apart from saving £1 on a product?

You say you were a SAHM when the children were young, are you now working?

I can fully understand his resentment, you didn't listen to him over the loan to help your friend and then when it, as predicted, blew up in your face he had to sell the property to save your family from financial ruin.

The whole situation is on you, you say you had no money to help your friend so why did you take out a bank loan knowing full well you personally could not service it? Blaming it on hormones due to pregnancy is not an excuse, your husband did not agree, gave you advice against it you disregarded this and went ahead.

To be honest, as with others I am surprised he did not divorce you at the time, you betrayed him.

Where do you go from here, you say you can do nothing - yes you can you can step up and take responsibility for the financial situation you caused and do everything you can to alleviate the stress and anxiety. Or you could divorce.

Do you work, @ForGentleBeaker? If so, full time or part time?

Can you work more or get a better paid job to take some of the burden off him now?

He had a right to be angry, but at the time, not now when it is all far behind you. But if he is now starting to worry about finances, you can see why it is back in is head again "if only". It does sound like he is now starting to resent you for causing the loss of this house.

That aside, he can't continue treating you badly, so I think he needs counselling then maybe you have some together, to put it behind you once and for all.

Your DH is right and you should never help people who are in debt because they never learn the lesson. They ended up losing everything anyway, just delayed, and you also lost out as well. It was a very expensive lesson for you to learn and very hard for your DH who was right in not wanting to lend money.

For anyone else reading, never ever take out a debt in your name for somebody else, as you are the person liable to repay it, and I have seen it too many times, where they cannot pay, and the lender is stuck with paying it back themselves to the loan company.

You can bet your bottom dollar that the OP had no agreement with this "friend" in writing, so that there is no proof that the bank loan she took out on their behalf was meant to be paid back.

I wonder if the "friend" went bankrupt? If that was the case, even if there was an agreement with the "friend", it would have been an unsecured loan; and upon the friend's bankruptcy, OP would have been lumped in with all of the other unsecured lenders/creditors - who generally get fuck all of their money back in a personal bankruptcy situation, at most a couple of pence to the £ loaned. The OP would still have been liable to her own bank for her own full amount of debt, regardless of the friend's bankruptcy.

Do you even love him OP?

I would feel deeply hurt if my partner squandered money on a friend, making me lose my house and then not allowing me to have something in supermarket that cost £1 more than the cheaper brand.

Is he allowed anything?

How much contempt is it possible to treat someone with?

I would find it really difficult to forgive you OP after your attempt to help your friend.

He shouldn’t be calling you names though.

If I were him I would end this relationship if I couldn’t live with the resentment.

I also cant believe how vile your friend is...you say this happened years ago and she hasn't paid you back? Knowing your husband lost his house over this and your friend has just carried on with her life without trying to make amends financially??... with friends like that, who needs enemies eh?!

Honestly, if my DH did something so financially irresponsible we had to sell a property to recover, I would divorce him. There's just no excuse for you to put your family finances at such high risk without it being a mutual decision by you and your husband together.

I think you're being very dismissive of how significantly you screwed up, even your thread title is so misleading - your DH isn't angry over £1, he's angry (justifiably) that you fucked up your family finances completely.

Should he be being verbally abusive, no - but you know full well its not over the £1, so suggest you need to sit down with him (when calm), really own your stupidity and talk about how/if he can move forward and past it.

So lots of people saying I’d it was them
they would have divorced the spouse.
So imagine your in this scenario. Your spouse takes out the loan (in their name only), friend doesn’t come through and you are left to pay it off. Your only option is to sell your flat. At this point you say I want a divorce. Does the divorce protect you from any liability for the payment? Would it remain solely your partners problem?

And it’s not an argument over a £1 is it?

It’s over hundreds of thousands.

This is a wild thread. I don’t know anyone who would take a loan out for a friend causing the loss of a London flat! Then post about £1 as the issue. The OP hasn’t said how much she borrowed.

Team DH. I would never forgive you for this. You were in no position to provide a loan to this friend.

It wasnt a friend, it was a user and op was a fool.

The issue here is his. He chose to sell the property to bail you out when you got into debt supporting your friend. It's irrelevant whether you were right to do that or not (that's a whole different discussion). He chose to bail you out. He is now harbouring a long standing resentment toward you. He is of course allowed to feel regret, sadness and even anger that things went that way, I think most people would be pissed off that their spouses actions lost them an opportunity. However, it's not healthy to keep on feeling that and to have such anger towards your spouse. He need to get some counselling of some sort to decide if he can come to terms with it and let it go and move forward or whether he is unable to ever really forgive you. He is unlikely to figure this out on his own just quietly seething away so it is something that now you've seen it needs unpicking.

An aside that could actually be worth it’s own post.

There are lots of posts telling OP that she should not have been a SAHM and should have gone back to work to earn back the debt.

The costs of sending children to nursery (in London?) are astronomical. Put aside all the invisible household labour I’m sure she completed, this is a huge financial contribution.

I fucked up financially some years ago and we would be in a better position if I hadn't BUT I have worked my arse off ever since to earn as much as possible to mitigate things.
Me and DH talked in through and agreed that if we moved on then we moved on with no resentment on either side (he made mistakes as well) and we have. If he threw any of it in my face or used it to punish me we would have had to split up.
Maybe its just not coming across here OP but you don't seem to feel very guilty about any of this or be taking responsibility, I imagine that could be pissing your H off

The point of that poem is that nobody could meet all those requirements.

"Grow up" over a loss like that? He's angry because he's immature?

Nope. He had (unwisely as it turns out) placed the OP on the deeds of the flat. Therefore if she defaulted on the loan, the bank could come after it.
He sold and paid it off as a preemptive measure

I didn’t say he was or thought he was. A poster asked what the Script meant in this context and I told her.

Can you try to refrain from swearing at me for no reason?

Did your DH know about the loan when you took it out or did he only know about it when you defaulted? If it’s the latter - I would have divorced you there and then. Also are you still friends with the people who owe you money?

Did he choose to sell the house though? Op name was added to the property when they married...if she had been made bankrupt over the loan, or had assets seized, would they not have taken the house anyway?

I question how much choice the husband had at the time.