CAROLYN HAX

ADVICE WITH ATTITUDE & A GROUNDED

alert. First-world-problem

My boyfriend and I live together and have always split expenses equally with small adjustments as needed. We both lost work during the pandemic. I called in favors and cobbled together enough freelancing and part-time work to keep my income steady. He decided he wanted to wait for something within his field and at the same professional level, so he was unemployed for months despite searching.

He finally got a really good lead and got to the last stages of nearly being offered the job, and then completely and intentionally dropped the ball. He simply did not respond when asked about a start date. He doesn’t have a good explanation why. There is no executive processing issue, no ADHD (which I happen to struggle with).

I have been carrying us both financially for months, including paying his car note and our entire rent, and this infuriates me. He cannot give a straight answer as to when he will start picking up part of the tab again or why he let a good job go. What do I do?

— Partner

Dear Partner: First, let’s put a dagger in “first-world problem” and its comorbidity, self-negation. I think we can all agree we’re not here to manage climate change, food insecurity and clean water access (except in our own conscientious ways).

You were shelling out your own money for someone else’s rent and car payment voluntarily based on the (actually or tacitly) agreed-upon terms of his being unABLE to do so himself. He changed those terms, unilaterally and without giving you due notice, to being unWILLING to do so himself. So for all intents and purposes, he just reached into your pocket and helped himself to rent and car payments.

This constitutes grounds for outrage in any world I’ve lived in, read about in reputable sources, or seen in a respected documentary. OK? So say so, exactly. “Since we are financial partners here, I deserved some say. If you weren’t going to let me have any say, then I deserved notice. Since you gave me neither any say nor notice, then I at least deserve an honest and coherent explanation. And I haven’t gotten one yet.”

I suggest you work out beforehand whether you plan to stay in this relationship based on how he responds. Months of unemployment can wreak havoc on people’s psyches, and it’s certainly possible he is knotted up inside about all of it, doesn’t understand it himself, and can’t articulate that for you.

But you are also under no obligation to keep waiting for him to hold up his end of the emotional and logistical partnership, and to keep paying for him while you wait. He gets to decide whether he works and where, but you get to decide where your limits are for how much support you give.