WTF is this behaviour?

[SquirrelsAreNuts]

For background, DH and I have a combined income of about £150k but he earns way more than I do. I have a minimum wage term-time job because I do all the childcare for our DC and DSC. We also live in one of the most expensive parts of the SE. Wouldn't be my choice, but it's so we can be close to DH's DC (my DSC).

We're comfortable but not rolling in it. I mention all that just because what triggered this thread was money, but it's not really about money IYSWIM?

We've had next year's holiday reserved but not paid for since the summer. It was coming up to the time we have to confirm everything and start putting deposits down and booking flights, etc. DH has been fully up to speed on all these plans, the timings, the costs, everything. I've managed the admin but have kept him informed of all the details at each step. As far as I was concerned he had signed off on all of it. I don't know what more I could have done, which is why I'm baffled.

Last night DH and I sat down together and spent about an hour searching the best flights in terms of price and time and figured out the most cost effective way to do it was fly out to one airport on a one way ticket and fly back from a different airport on a one way ticket.

We booked the outbound flight together and then he lost interest and went to sit in the front room. So I carried on and booked the inbound flight on my own (but with his agreement, I thought).

Once it was done I went into the front room and told him I'd booked the flights back and he started freaking out. Saying that now we're committed to the holiday cost and he didn't realise it was going to be so much. How much was I going to pay towards it, etc, etc. I was floored. What did he think we'd just been doing? It was such a weird reaction from him I didn't know how to respond other than WTF.

He freaked out so much he insisted I cancelled the whole thing. So this morning I've wasted a load of time cancelling the flights and trying to get our money back. The kids are going to be so upset.

He sort of has form for this. In the past he's agreed to having work done on our house (which is a fixer upper). Has let me put in a load of time and effort contacting builders and getting quotes, etc, only to say no to everything at the last minute.

I feel utterly powerless in this relationship in terms of finances. I don't think he's being controlling as such, it's more his extreme anxiety at spending any money. But the net effect on me and the kids is the same. House and garden is crumbling around our ears and we never go anywhere.

For the first time ever in our marriage I am wondering what it would be like to leave him as this latest holiday reverse ferret feels like one too many. But the thought is terrifying. I'm sure if you asked him, he'd say I'm a wasteful spendthrift who just wants the high life. But to him, the 'highlife' is putting the heating on, or having the dishwasher on anything but Eco setting.

I haven't been able to stop crying this morning but I can't put my finger on why. It's not just the cancelled holiday. It's the weird behaviour - letting me do all that organising and spending an hour booking flights with me then completely changing his mind - I don't even know what to call it.

Do NOT continue to give up your earning power for a man like this.

This is very, very good advice. Prioritise looking for a new job/undergoing training; it might not be easy but you sound like a smart person and you WILL be able to do it.

You mustn't entrust your financial future to him

💐

Apologies - posted twice

A person doesn't necessarily need to be intentional or cruel in order to be controlling or abusive. My mother is one of the kindest people I know but also incredibly controlling because she has a complete inability to consider other perspectives or ways of doing things.

You've fallen into a trap of being controlled for a prolonged period of time because you've not been able to just assess the effects in isolation from the intent.

Put your foot down, live as you want to live. Get a better job, leave him to pick up his slack. If he doesn't want to spend money then you go on holiday with the kids and leave him at home.

You once had the same earning potential as him, don't lose track of who you were before you met him. Stop sacrificing little bits of yourself to him.

BTW his little Amazon gifts to himself would drive me into a rage if he then was nitpicking on every other little family wide expense. He either lives a fully ascetic lifestyle with no personal treats OR he allows everyone in the household to have the same standard of living.

Oh, no, that's not how it works - she uses it for everything, so the limit gets increased, meanwhile he uses his for nothing, so the limit is never high enough - it's a little self-fulfilling merry go round.

(my one piece of satisfaction when I ended it with mine and he ran off to a hotel to spend Christmas with the woman he'd been sleeping with was cancelling his companion card on my account 'but how am I going to get food?'. Well, you're a grown man with bank accounts, I'm sure you'll figure it out).

Whether he’s controlling or extremely anxious it amounts to the same thing, he has the last say about family money. This is who he is and you either accept it or push for a change in the status quo and if the push doesn’t work, are you prepared to jump?

If I were you I'd go quiet. He's probably expecting you to react, especially if that's what usually happens. Don't rise to his bait. As I said earlier, take your time to think through what he did yesterday, what he's done in the past, how you feel about it and how it affects you and your children. Then you can start to think about what you want for your future.

I'll put money on him trying something else if you don't react as you usually would. That'll be a good test.

How is he like this with things that affect you as a family, but at the same time he buys Amazon crap every day? I'd be so done with that. Utterly ridiculous and unattractive.

I'm wondering if this frugality might actually be a form of OCD.

Other people grow up in households where money is tight and don't react like he does. There's something different here.

My DH was under absolutely no illusion that if I put myself at risk physically and mentally to have children, I was not becoming the default parent, going part time or letting my career take a back seat. We’d been together for 9years before having DD and he had proven his ability to do everything necessary several years before that.

I stuck to it. There was no element of parenting or domestic duty we didn’t share except expressing breast milk. Neither of us has ever worked part time. I did freelance work whilst on mat leave. I saw far too many women fall into the trap of becoming housekeeper and nanny for feckless men.

My dad used to do this, miserable childhood as a result. Aspergers i believe

The more I read the more I think he sees it all as his money. He resents spending it on the family.

Can’t be if he manages to hold down a £100k+ job.

Hmmm. Hates spending money on food, except for whatever is for his own lunch.

That’s communication if you like.

Some high-earning men manage to communicate at work because it benefits them in their view but come home and act like their wives should be grateful to have a roof over their heads. OP's husband sounds like one of these men.

He sounds stingy. Happy to go along with whatever it is until crunch time. Then he freaks out because he knows you'll back down. Just doesn't want to say no to start with, perhaps he doesn't like confrontation.

Book another holiday OP, but this time don't include him. What a prick.

Your last 2 sentences here are very illuminating. He’s happy to spend loads of money on himself but not on you, your kids or the home that you and the kids live in, nor on the holiday that you & the kids would like to go on. He’s very selfish.

At the risk of repeating myself, he needs therapy. He can't change the way he thinks/feels/reacts to money because the emotions linked to it were hard wired into him at a very early age. It's a bit like telling an agoraphobic to stop being silly and to just go for a walk. Can't be done.

OP. My one regret, and bear in mind I took a good year to prep to leave my ex, is that I hadn't started squirrelling away cash earlier.

Knowing that there's a few grand in actual cash tucked into the back of the sofa (I undid a zip underneath and tucked it under the cover. If your sofa's on the way out, that's probably not the place for you!) really helps. It means that you know that if he becomes difficult, you can literally pick up the kids and go for a little while. You know you can pay the bills if he stops. It's my number 1 recommendation.

This is financial control and abuse, as you seem to have NO idea about family finances or access to family finances. The fact he has all that inheritance but hoards it while you have to pay for a holiday from your minimum wage salary - so no joint account. You have no idea what he actually has in savings. He uses your past debt against you from when you were 18, when you'd been escaping an abusive home.

You keep saying you can't see him as abusive, but he really really is.

Oh you big meanie 😉

TBH I’d get a new job and tell him he needs to pay for the childcare.

I’d want to see how much he has spent on his hobby in the last year and how that compares to the cost of the holiday.

He won’t want to pay for joint therapy, tell him it’s far cheaper than a divorce.

I think it’s time to draw your line on the sand and insist that it’s all joint finances where you both have transparent view of them.

Bully for you , I was with my ex for 10 years before I had my first child. It was only then that the real him started showing up

Did he assume you were paying for the whole holiday because you booked with your card? Was he happy with that until he realised you wanted him to pay the rest?

He's excessively mean with money but that doesn't explain why he didn't say no in the first place.

You seem afraid of his reactions which must suit his agenda well.

I haven't seen the post(s) where OP has disclosed about prior debt, but this should not be held against her anyway considering she was 18 at the time, or so another post stated. If the house is mortgaged or owned outright is your name on it OP?? You really do need to find out exactly what assets he has and via legal routes if necessary. It could be an illness or it could be just greed and I have known people in the past - ex friends or colleagues to be like this - greedy. (never any partners as I cannot abide greed and have been lucky). Some of the friends or colleagues as much as I liked them, greed really put me off them and I would eventually end the friendship. You know the ones - last to walk in the pub to avoid buying the first round, into the loo when the next round(s) come up and then a sneaky departure when everyone has bought a round, some a few rounds. If someone tells me they can't afford to come out or join in a round, I will buy for them, I just hate people who take take take and are not even embarrassed by it. Some of the men I have worked with relished in their nicknames for being greedy rather than die of humiliation. I could never be beholden to any partner for money or living expenses or a home. If I was OP, I would be putting my name down for Social Housing as I cannot see this lasting. If he didn't spend on himself I may think he was being overly cautious but OP says he spends on hobbies in one of her posts. Not sure if this is expensive hobby but there is her counter argument for when he raises the cost of this or any other holiday or expenditure that partner makes/wants to make.

Op was in debt due to leaving an abusive home when she met her husband, and he uses this as a reason to call her untrustworthy wrt money

This. I would have wiped the floor with him some time ago. How dare he allow his kids (and you) to live like this under such financial tyranny when he has a decent salary. And all the poverty trauma excuses are just that, excuses. He is a shit, controlling and abusive. I would get back to work full time asap, save, go on holiday and days out without him. Leave him to his hobby and his bloody pot noodles.