Should I kick out this lazy, moaning sponger?
DEAR BEL
I FINALLY got divorced five years ago after 15 years with a vile man.
Then I soon met what seemed like the perfect man and everything was great until six months later. He started to change. I no longer had contact with friends and he was always checking up on me. He had moved in and then stopped paying towards anything, though he’s a much higher earner.
It all got too much — being put down by him, too — so I made him move out. That was extremely hard, as I was still in love with him.
We got back together and he promised he had sorted himself out. But all the same things began happening.
We then split again and didn’t see each other for 16 months. I then got a surprise text telling me life was great, he’d got counselling, paid his debts off and the only thing missing was me.
We talked and got back together. I explained I can’t go through any more heartache and we should take things slow. He agreed. Of course he was just saying it to get me back.
A month later, he pushed to move in, saying he could pay me rent. He said if he couldn’t move into my house (I pay the mortgage) there was a worry we may drift apart. So again he’s moved in.
At the moment I’m earning only around £10,000 a year (due to Covid-19) and struggle to make ends meet. I work, cook and clean. My youngest child is 14 and my middle child goes to uni. My eldest child is with her partner with my two grandchildren.
He still asks who’s texting me. Still places bets on football. He pays £650 a month towards costs — no more. He’s out everyday on his boat doing nothing. He hasn’t paid his debts off like he promised. He comes home and gets fed, then tells me he’s tired and lounges watching TV while I clear up.
He finds fault with my kids. Always seems to put himself first and moans he’s not appreciated.
He says I’m not committed (when in actual fact it’s me who holds everything together) and tells me I’m not paying him enough attention.
I don’t actually see what this guy brings to my life.
Am I getting the rough end of the stick or is this normal — and it’s me being the selfish one? Why do I feel guilty?
KAREN
Why indeed do you even think of feeling ‘guilty’? I find your closing question the most bizarre thing about a disturbing letter from someone who is in danger of repeating a pattern — if that process hasn’t already begun.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that treatment endured during an appalling marriage has left you with such low self-esteem that you are once again accepting the role of guilty victim.
your original letter was over three times as long, so I need to inform readers that the marriage involved marital rape, bullying, control, infidelity and economic dependency (yours). you wanted an amicable divorce because of the children, but ‘he had other ideas’.
When you met this new man you thought him ‘perfect’ and quickly fell in love — even though he showed his true colours after just six months. he became possessive, controlling over your texts, and freeloading, too.
you still loved him, but asked him to move out. Then the whole thing happened again.
And now a third time. I feel like throwing down my invisible tennis racquet in frustration and shouting: ‘you cannot be serious!’
In your original email, you listed all this man’s transgressions carefully
numbered, as if you had spent some time thinking about them and felt better just setting them down. Yet you can still ask if this situation is ‘normal’.
It makes me wonder what sort of relationship your parents had, as well as the experiences of friends while you were growing up.
Can it be that at no stage in your life you were exposed to a real ‘normal’: two people living together in mutual trust and respect, doing their best for each other, knowing ups and downs and surviving them, helping each other and being kind? I feel so sad if you do not realise that is how most people try to live (even if they fail).
So what is to be done? You mention that he seems to pick quarrels with your children while hardly seeing his own and that he might be jealous of your family.
Well, this would be enough to ring loud warning bells to me. You have a 14-year-old who is about to go through a very testing time of life, even without the total disruption to education caused by coronavirus and the lockdown.
Do you think it will help your child (and the others) to watch you having your spirits ground down by a useless, moaning, lazy sponger?
You use the word ‘selfish’. Well, I’m afraid too many parents continue with new relationships that are ultimately damaging to their families — and, yes, that is where the selfishness lies. I don’t even think you love this guy any more. How can you when you list his faults with such ease?
In this so-called relationship, you have been just like the person who walked down the same street three times and each time failed to notice the workmen’s ‘danger’ sign, so tumbled into the hole in the road. So what now?
If I were you, I would pack his bags and dump them outside. Then find a new route onwards.