I love my husband but I don't respect him

[boltnrun]

I think he needs to put the tip money somewhere where it's not so accessible. An envelope? Easy to grab out of. How about into an account with no debit card where he'd actually have to drive to the bank to get it? Or a safe deposit box where he'd have to drive over with a key?

 

I seldom carry cash because I tend to spend it. I'm reluctant to pull out my debit card, so money doesn't get spent the way it would if I took $20 out of the ATM. The whole $20 would be gone in no time if it were in cash form.

[abitbroken]

- He says he wants to have a kid and buy a house, but doesn't seem to make much effort to make those things happen. I spend my incentive pay from my job on our debt, savings, car maintenance, birthday gifts for family members, etc. He spends his tip money on pot, food, and covering the insufficiency of his regular paychecks. We had already agreed that his tip money would go to debt and savings, and he could keep a small portion of the money to spend. But it doesn't work out that way, and I don't want to just demand that he turn it over to me. But I am so frustrated with having to be the one to always keep us on track, disciplined, and working towards our goals. So I have started spending some of his tip money too, he is fine with giving it to me to buy stupid stuff but he doesn't want to put it toward boring important things like paying down debt or building our savings.

 

I feel like I've grown up a lot in the time that we've been together and he hasn't. I read something once where a man complained that his wife wasn't the girl he fell in love with, and asked what happened to her. The response was that the girl his wife once used to be had to go away so that he could continue to be a boy. I feel that way. I wish I could just not give a hoot and sit down to play video games, but I have goals! I know I'm not perfect, nobody is. But I am getting so frustrated with his lack of maturity. What can I do to make things better? As I said before, I have no interest in leaving him, and we do get along really well still. Most of the time our relationship is peaceful and happy, but these issues keep nagging at me and I am getting more and more frustrated. Please help!

 

TLDR: my husband and I have a great marriage overall, but I am frustrated by his immature behavior and wondering what to do about it.

 

you are not satisfied about you marriage overall -- you seem satisfied with very little except the fact that you get along as far as maybe similar humor or can have conversations. He is a 'cool laid back boyfriend" but that doesn't make a good husband.

 

I think being long distance, you did not really know this guy well before you married or did not really analyze what being married to the laid back pot smoker would be. I looked back and your last previous thread about relationships was about approaching your boyfriend about an open relationship because you had your eye on someone. Was he the boyfriend, or the one you had the eye on? or someone different?

 

How much debt can you possibly have after only 1 1/2 years of marriage?

If works a job like in a restaurant and gets tips, its totally reasonable to use your tips to make up for your insufficient wage. Afterall, a lot of waitstaff makes $2.50 an hour plus tips and they are supposed to claim tips. So thinking that all of his tips have to go towards debt is not totally 100% reasonable. There is gas money, maintaining the car to go to and from work and more not covered. But yea --- if he is buying POT with his tips ---- then its a problem...But wait you married the laid back cool pot smoking boyfriend...and expected him to change?

 

I think that's the bottom line - you may have expected that he would change and he is not changing --- he's just relaxing a bit more.

 

And btw, if you want babies --- lots of people who smoke pot - particularly men, develop fertility issues. Just fyi. he needs to quit.

[abitbroken]

Looking at it from a more relaxed point of view now, I can realize that we have had things like this happen to us in the past. And it does put us in a bad cycle for a while where we both spend some money irresponsibly, I stress a lot about money, and then I channel the stress into renewed discipline with money, we get back on track, and everything is okay again. I guess I forgot that we have been through this before and we got through it then so we can do it again now.

 

People say "happened to us in the past" when they have been married 10 years and are talking about 4 years ago--- there is not much "happened in the past' when it comes to a marriage that is less than 2 years old, you know? It seems that you will become his parent as the only way this marriage will work and he could feel resentment and that is why he is not putting his tips away like he says he would.

 

I agree with your dad to not sweat the small stuff -- but small stuff is a hubby that is not a cook making you brownies as a sweet gesture and he burns them, or someone breaking a vase, or someone getting into a fender bender. When there are things that are deep core issues -- its not small stuff -- no, you shouldn't "fight" about it" but recognize that its a major divide. Money, sex and kids are the top three reasons people divorce. Just keep that in mind - don't gloss over this issue as small stuff

[catfeeder]

Catfeeder, thank you so much for your amazing and detailed input on what we can do to compromise and make things work on issues like money and cleaning. Some of those things we were already doing, like the split bank accounts, but a lot of your suggestions were new to me and it gave me a lot to think about. I wonder if you can give input on the tip money issue?

 

We already have our bank account set up into his, hers, and ours. Each time we get paid, I take the money necessary to pay our bills from each of our checking accounts, put money into savings, medical expense savings, etc. Whatever is left over is ours to do with as we please. I always try to split it evenly, so that we each have, for example, $100 to spend however we want. My husband pays for WoW out of his spending money, for example, so I never get mad about him wasting $15 every month on a video game. I spend $20 on a gym membership out of mine. We often buy food for ourselves or go out to eat together, stuff like that.

 

Because my husband's direct deposited paychecks are sometimes quite small (the amount can vary from being higher than my paycheck to being about half the amount of mine) we had agreed on using his tips to make up the difference if his paycheck isn't enough to use then bills. For whatever was leftover from his tips, we would apply some to debt, some to savings, and he could keep a little bit to spend however he wanted to. This meant that he got more spending money than me, but I don't earn tips and he often offers to pay when we eat out together, so I figured it all worked out pretty evenly.

 

He used to be really good about putting his tip money in an envelope until payday, at which point we would divide the money up as we had agreed to. But he has been getting gradually worse about just taking money from the tip envelope to spend before the next payday. To me, that is quite irresponsible. If he spends a bunch of tip money before payday, then gets a $400 paycheck, then there might not be enough tip money left to cover the deficit. That means that I have to take more money from my paycheck to cover the difference (or pull from savings if I can't cover the whole difference). Then we end up with little to no spending money for the next 2 weeks. Or rather, I end up with no spending money, since he can continue to earn tips daily and continue to spend the money before he is supposed to.

 

This bothers me a whole lot more than the fact that I earn more than he does. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I can do about it? He also tends to use tip money to pay for the weed, rather than using his own spending money and having me give him a little bit to cover the small amount of weed that I will smoke from what he buys.

 

The more responsibility you take solo, the less husband will take, and that works against you. Pay your bills TOGETHER each month. Don't run the money around for him, have him designate the 'Ours' checking account as his primary auto-deposit.

 

When is the last time you've sat together to review all of your expenses and investment contributions to agree on a monthly total and a clear target for him to reach each week?

Whether he meets that amount through wages or tips is on him--but he needs clarity about it.

 

I'd ask him to work in FRONT of his target amount each month rather than behind it. Ask him to contribute his tip money toward his monthly total IN ADVANCE of learning his wage totals. This should put him into an overage the first month, which he carries as his foundational contribution the following month.

 

As long as husband contributes his weekly amount through tips up front, then you can promise not to comment on how he spends any overages. When he's involved in settling the bills with you each month, he's more likely to stay transparent about meeting his targets each week.

[WhiteLotus]

Hello everyone, I just wanted to post an update on what is going on right now. I talked to my husband about the tip money, he said he didn't realize it was hurting us so much. He said it would work best if he hands me the money and I can keep it somewhere that will be out of sight, out of mind for him. So that should work out great as long as we stick to it.

 

He also offered to pick up more hours at work, which impressed me because I hadn't made any mention of him doing that. I told him we'd wait to see how things work out with the tip money first, but thanked him for his offer and said that we could revisit that idea in 3-4 months.

 

So things seem to be going well so far! Also, abitbroken, you asked how much debt we could have after being married such a short time. We only owe about 2,500, most of which is from the loan we took out for him to go back to school. We also have two car payments, which is quite unfortunate, so about $250 goes to each of those each month. But we had 20+ year old cars that we finally were forced to replace, so it had to happen.

[Batya33]

I'm glad things are going better. I would talk to a doctor about the affects of secondhand pot smoke while you would be pregnant, its affect on his fertility and other affects on pregnancy and later a newborn -and he is going to be high while he's taking care of a baby?

 

He sounds like he has a lot of good qualities and would want to be a good father and has the foundation to be one but he needs to step up to the plate more and show you in actions, not words, that he is ready. And respect is essential if you want to co-parent with him, IMO.

[thealchemist]

He really sounds like he does have great potential. He works with you and seems to truly care about you. As long as he is willing to improve on things that need improving you are not in as bad as a spot as most people on here.

 

You can smoke pot responsibly as a parent. Just use common sense. The only difference in my opinion from someone that drinks any alcohol is that you just need to not be around while imbiding.

 

I have several lung issues, including asthma, because my mom smoked cigarettes in the car with me as a child. So don't allow any of that stuff obviously.