227 : The Financial Tie that Binds Us

I envy those people that don't stress about money.  I think I have stressed about money for as long as I can remember.  I've never really had a problem with money - I work hard, I save.  But I always seem to have that overall worry that I won't have enough.  This dates back to long before I was married, before I even met my now Ex husband.  When I was married, this was always a point of stress within our relationship.  Not my stressing about money, but just the topic of money in general.  Money was always tight.  My Ex, who I believed at one time to be very smart with money, was a career changer who was constantly feeling behind.  He placed so much of his personal value on his professional/financial success.  I did not put this pressure on him, he put it on himself.  I wanted us to build our life on a solid foundation, just as my parents had.  So I worked diligently towards that while trying to be patient with where my Ex was, knowing his success would one day come.  And the day did come eventually.  He hit his first contest at work, which should've been the foundation we were yearning for.  The problem was, that right as he achieved this goal was when he told me the relationship was over.  Funny coincidence, right?  I think that was the part that hurt the most.  I had been so supportive.  So patient.  I felt like the world was full of so many woman that were focused on superficial, materialistic things and I was not that person.  I saw the true potential in my then husband, and believed in his ability to be successful.  And I was right.  I was just wrong in that after I had stood by him through his professional endeavors, I would be the first person he walked out on when he tasted success.  I take it back, that is not so much what hurt the most, but what infuriated me the most.  I was too trusting. Too patient.  And far too supportive.  This would most definitely be a source of sensitivity in my next relationship- I would not consider being with someone that wasn't established in their career and certain of where they were going.  I'm not saying that to be closed minded, I'm saying it because that was now a trigger for me and I felt it was important to identify those.  So, knowing all of this now, I'm sure you can appreciate how shitty it was that I still had to deal with my Ex on financial matters quite regularly.  Like weekly.  Sometimes even multiple times a week.  He had been pretty generous in our divorce agreement considering how little he had to begin with.  I assumed this was due to guilt, but I still willingly accepted it.  But there was only so much he could truly do.  For instance, when he 'miscalculated' his bills the other month and left me $600 short, then I was $600 short.  He promised to get me the money and while I was firm that I would hold him to it, if he didn't have the money, then he didn't have the money.  It could be months before he would pay it all back.  And then more recently he had some 'fraud' on his account, making him unable to access his funds while the bank investigated it.  This once again, left it on me to cover for him, which only meant my account would now be overdrawn and I would be charged the fee from the bank.  It was so annoying.  He also made comments to me about how much money he was giving me.  This was true, he was paying a lot of his overall income.  But it wasn't for me personally, it was for his children.  What was he thinking I was doing with that money?!?  I wasn't living some lavish lifestyle.  I was paying for an apartment on Western Avenue so that his children had a place to live.  I was buying groceries for 2 growing boys.  Okay, so sometimes I treated myself to a bottle of wine and a movie OnDemand, but come on, I was working, too!  I suppose I was lucky that I even got to collect money from him because not everyone was able to do that.  Dealing with financial matters with an Ex just sucked, overall, just like dealing with an Ex in general sucked.  Yet we'd be connected this way for many MANY years.  Hopefully it would get easier in time.  It had to, right?