Dear April,
My husband and I have been married for nine years now and we have a five year old son. I have been very concerned lately because we are in a desperate financial situation and he is not facing it full on. I nearly left him a year ago because he was keeping a pornography addiction from me. During the troubled time last year, I also lost my job. So, now everything gets blamed either on his anxiety (he is being treated for it) or that I’m just to frustrated to see things clearly. We have borrowed money from his parents just to pay rent, we are behind on our power, cable and garbage bills, plus we have huge medical expenses. I just don’t know how to help him understand how bad things are. Sometimes I think his anxiety (he REALLY has a hard time with changes – big or small) gets in the way, but I don’t want him to feel that it’s okay to use his anxiety as an excuse. I just want him to be able to look at our current situation, rather than the one he has pictured, because we can’t keep on this path.
Signed,
Money Troubles
Dear Money Troubles,
I’m sorry you’re in such a rut, but this is more complicated than just money. First of all, I don’t think you want your husband to just look at your problems. I think you want him to solve them completely – and I think that he wants to solve them, too, but he can’t. So instead of just admitting his failure, which is multiplying exponentially the longer this mess sits, he’s in denial. People use denial when something is too overwhelming and horrible to face. Death is a common place where you’ll find denial. Sometimes you find it in cases of abuse or trauma like crime and war. But lots of people do what your husband is doing — they get overwhelmed by their finances and stick their heads in the sand because they don’t know how to fix it.
Your instinct to bring attention to this problem is understandable, but you have to remember that you’re dealing with a man, and men want to be your knight in shining armor. They flock to women who make them feel good about themselves, so you have to be gentle here — and tactful. You want to correct the problem, but not at the expense of your man’s self worth and self esteem. If he feels your anxiety as criticism, it’s going to hurt the relationship in a way I don’t think you intend. So you have two issues: the money, and the way to approach this problem with your husband, who you’re looking to fix this for you.
My suggestion is to take a fresh approach to this old problem that didn’t happen overnight in your marriage. Come to your husband with three (and only three, so as not to overwhelm him or yourself) ideas for making things better TOGETHER. Remember that you don’t have to fix this problem overnight — in fact you probably can’t. But you can make small dents in the problem each week, and sometimes taking baby steps will make you feel like you’re accomplishing SOMETHING and accomplishing SOMETHING (even if it’s small) will help you move towards a more positive approach to a big problem. And by taking cumulative small steps, in a positive light, you’ll begin to fix the problem until it’s completely gone.
Sometimes it’s hard to accept that you and your husband can’t be everything to each other. And in this case, it might be better if you took your own feelings of anxiety and depression about your finances to a friend or family member so as not to dump on your husband, and tried to just work with your husband on solutions without emotion, so you don’t drown each other in emotions and keeping each other from seeing solutions.
