Oh @Headspangle I'm so sorry.
I have just caught up on your posts from the last week or so, up to today's post about relationship counselling.
Honestly, as I wrote before, it's like looking in a mirror.
I know to normal, intelligent people it seems unbelievable that such debt could accumulate without there being a reason but I promise you it is possible. That was my situation with my (now ex) H.
It can be one of two things
- A genuinely chaotic individual who is not financially literate in the sense of not getting income / expenditure and how easily spending can accumulate
- All of the above but someone who weaponises it as a form of control, power, own demons around money and its significance that impact their ability to plan, discuss, agree and be reasonable about it (e.g. limited money in childhood so they think they are 'entitled' to spend / buy nice things, regardless of income or other priorities (like family).
The first is still very hard to do but is possible to manage, often it's accompanied by genuine bewilderment ('where is my money going?') and a lot of remorse. With discussion, the other party can often take over managing the money and the person who is rubbish at it contributes in another way.
The second - there's no resolution, in my view, and in my direct experience. Financial control is often seen as abusive when it is about controlling someone's access to money e.g. not letting them have any. But it's a particularly insidious form of abuse to spend recklessly and in an unexplained manner, refuse to account for it and literally drive the other person mad with their refusal to discuss it, to accept certain conditions, to respect the boundaries that are set. I lived this. I will never forget it. All my budgeting and checking and planning - and he would drain our money in all sorts of insane ways but always, always have some mental explanation as to why it wasn't his fault, it was really mine, would have some future plan that would make it ok, would go around and around in circles never getting to the truth until I was demented.
It's awful (we are divorced now, a nightmare process, and he is meant to split educational and medical costs with me, and he still does it. Sometimes he just doesn't pay but more often he'll pay a certain amount - but then decide that that same amount of money is to cover, say, 4 separate payments. My head hurts just trying to engage with him. Or he'll get indignant he has to pay anything as 'he has no money', 'his life is so hard', and he may have just been on a two week trip abroad.
Back to you OP, please don't go to counselling. It's pointless. He is not interested in changing, and what he will likely do is pretend to be, and waste more of your time and money.
I'm really sorry but there is no way of fixing this. It's over. You need to focus on getting yourself organised in whatever way you can, and moving on from him, and limiting the harm he is doing. Happy for you to DM me.