My husband and I have known each other since college in the mid-90s. We have been married ten years.
I apologize in advance for the random thoughts I’ve put together. I’m trying to consolidate 14 years of rage into a single stream of consciousness.
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I grew up working from the age of 8. I’ve worked hard my whole life. It wasn’t an option for poor people to not work hard. In college, I often worked 2 jobs in addition to putting myself through school, paying rent and maintaining good grades. I incurred student loans that I worked extremely hard to pay off when I was 27. When I gave birth to my first child at the age of 31, I had 23 years work experience behind me. I was exhausted. When my job was liquidated when my newborn daughter was 5 weeks old, I chose not to apply for the new position (60+ hours a week) that was offered. I chose, instead, to allow somebody else to worry about the bills…for once.
My husband grew up the only child in a family of wealth. My MIL likes to pretend that the early years of her marriage were “poor”. I don’t see “poor” as having parents with millions of dollars. My MIL never worried that her mortgage wouldn’t get paid. Never worried that her child would go hungry. I’m sure it might have been tight, considering that her parents’ money was not hers, but she has held countless shares of stock in the “family company” that she made quarterly dividends from (the company is no longer owned by the family, but each family member holds tens of thousands of shares of stock). At one point when my daughter (now 5) was a baby, my MIL told the story of how in 1972, her husband (a banker) only brought home $524 every two weeks and that covered their expenses and a few extra dollars for a few necessities. I laughed in her face because at that time in 2004, my husband made almost exactly that same amount every 2 weeks and our cost of living was 5 times what theirs was in 1972.
My husband’s college was paid for by his parents. In addition to them paying for his college, and providing him with rent-free living and several vehicles he didn’t pay for or insure, they also kept him stocked in beer. For the last 2 years of college, he did work weekends for a small company that was associated with his career path and he hoped it would help advance his “career” (in the event he decided to get off his butt and pursue it!).
2 years after graduation from college, at the age of 25, still living with his parents, he was still working his part-time weekend gig for that small company. He was still spending his weeks trekking off on hunting and fishing trips, or big family trips with his parents; still spending his money blindly and not saving any. He grew up with the notion that any money he made was disposable income. The only reason he found new employment was because in 1997 that company relocated out of state.
From the time that I had been dating him for a few months, his parents started inviting me to join them on their vacations and get-aways (the 3 of them continued to vacation together until I put a stop to it when our daughter was 2 or 3). It was during these little trips (the few that I was able to go on, since I worked full time) that it was drilled into my head, by his mother, that anybody who gets greedy and tries to “get at” the money before the generation before them has died and left the money behind… will be cut out of the will or severely punished for their greed.
Grooming of the potential future daughter-in-law. Nice.
The sad part is that my husband believes he lives his life without ever considering “the money”. He believes he just lives his life and someday it’ll be an issue, but not today.
I call bullshit.
My husband has zero work ethic or career drive. ZERO. That tells me that in the back of that giant head of his is the notion that no matter how he underachieves, “the money” will be there to save him.
He spent his twenties and early thirties pissing away his youth NOT getting where he needed to be in his career. Instead of interviewing for jobs in his career path, he was concerned that any job he might get would “interfere” with the upcoming hunting, fishing and camping seasons, followed by holiday season travel plans he had with his family.
He made a lifestyle out of allowing others to foot his financial bill.
To my utter shock, this continued after we were married.
The first 5 years of our marriage, I supported him and our home by a 2/3 ratio with my well paying job. Obviously, had I realized his lack of motivation and put the pieces together earlier, we never would have gotten married. He has always maintained that he had a career plan, and that it takes years to acquire certificates, hours of experience, etc to forge ahead. I believed he was working toward that plan.
In December 2003, when our daughter was 2 months old and I was recently unemployed, my husband landed a job in his field. He turned 32 the day he left for training. His taxable income the first year: $8256. His income increased roughly $5000 per year after that. We blew through my savings by my daughter’s first birthday. Who do you suppose has supported this family and our home all this time?
His mother has supported us.
It turns me inside out.
The annual “gifting” of the small portions of inheritance money comes at Christmas with a huge display and “presentation” where we are required to get all teary-eyed and grateful with hand-over-heart and mouthed “thank you”s, and there are so many strings and innuendo, and CONTROL that it strangles me and suffocates me to the point of wanting to run away screaming.
At one point when my daughter was a toddler, I was telling my MIL that my daughter had gotten into my bathroom and had smeared my $21 bottle of face cream all over the place. My MIL immediately said “TWENTY ONE DOLLAR BOTTLE OF FACE CREAM?” That year, we got half as much money. I assume she thought if I could afford a $21 bottle of face cream, I didn’t need her money.
I learned my lesson: Never speak to my MIL.
So you ask why don’t I get a job and stop all this? I have, too. Mostly because in my field, it requires long hours, 50 or more hours a week I’d be away from home. I’ve done the research and found that in my area, quality childcare costs $1000 per month, per child. I’d have to make $2000 a month, just to pay for my children to be “warehoused” while I’m away. My husband is away from home for his job, for days on end. I cannot imagine what my kids would think if they only saw Mommy from 5-6 am and from 6:30-7:30pm. And then saw Daddy that 1 day a week he’s home. At that point, why did I have children?
I continue to let my MIL support us because she raised a son who has no drive in life. She supported him when he wanted to work weekends and not get a real job because it would interfere with his play time, even at the age of 25 or 26. She raised him to be the way he is, she can support his family when he can’t.
What is grating me is that at the age of 37, during layoffs last year, my husband didn’t have the seniority to keep his job. Instead, he’s back at a position and pay scale along side 27 year-olds. My MIL keeps saying “He didn’t deserve losing his job. This just isn’t fair.”
I disagree.
The people who got to keep their jobs are the people who spent their twenties and early thirties working hard, EARNING seniority. EARNING their position.
All those hunting and fishing trips with his father really paid off, didn’t they?
If one more person says to me “Oh, you’re so lucky that your husband can support you so you don’t have to work like the rest of us!” I’ll scream. He doesn’t deserve to get credit for something that monumental.
I feel an extreme amount of guilt for being ungrateful for the opportunity my in-laws are granting me. It’s been thrown in my face numerous times that I’m nothing but ungrateful and if I don’t keep my mouth shut, I’ll get us “cut off”.
So I leave my ungrateful rant to the anonymity and facelessness of the internet.
Please don’t judge me harshly. There is nothing you can judge me about that I haven’t already done to myself.
Tags: Rage
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