Greed and constantly wanting more was my partner’s ‘default setting’. On several occasions he would complain about money and what I was spending it on. Every single time this subject was brought up, I asked him to take charge of the finances, because I was having to pay the mortgage, all the bills, food, clothes, all house and garden maintenance (because it is a large house on three quarters of an acre) etc. plus keeping a contingency fund for emergencies (which would always crop up through his debts or something more he wanted.) He put money into my account for his half of the mortgage and bills each month, but nothing more.
Whenever I suggested that he take over the finances, he would immediately say that he didn’t want to deal with them because he didn’t want the responsibility. All the time we were together, he was literally a ‘walking contradiction’. Even telephone calls to his bank or any other organisation had to be handed over to me because after about five minutes, he would lose patience and start shouting. The phone was always handed straight over to me so that I could deal with any matter in a calm, patient manner.
He had been badgering me for weeks to buy him a motorbike which he wanted the seller to deconstruct for him so that he could rebuild it to his liking. As usual, I gave in, and used the contingency fund from my bank account to give him the money. When it arrived, deconstructed, as he had requested, he had no idea how to put it back together. I had asked him why he wanted it to be disassembled, but he said he knew what he was talking about, so it would be fine. That was another waste of a thousand euros which could have been put to better use, such as some of the debts he had accumulated that I had to pay off for him.
A few weeks later, he spotted another motorbike he wanted and kept nagging me to buy it for him. He went on and on over the next couple of weeks and I really hadn’t enough money to pay for it.
One night, whilst my youngest daughter was still living with us, both she and I were sitting in the living room watching TV, when he burst in, in his usual abrupt, angry, manner and said “Are you going to buy me that bike, or what?!!”. This was more of a demand than a question and I was upset that my daughter had to hear it. That night I went into the other TV room and said that I would try to find the money to buy him the new bike. He barely acknowledged my answer and point blank refused to talk about the previous motorbike I had paid for. So as usual, he got what he wanted. I put his new motorbike on my bank account which by now had a large overdraft. This was very stressful as I had to keep working more and more hours just to keep our heads above water.
He was always telling me how ‘skint’ he was (even though he was on a good teacher’s salary which also paid him through the school holidays, while I had to go on Social Welfare during school holidays, which is standard when teaching adult education and special needs). So I found it bizarre that when I bought him a new motorbike, he then proceeded to buy himself lots of helmets, motorbike clothing and gadgets to go with it. After that, he was always buying himself top of the range tools and machinery for his man shed.I never once asked him to buy me anything and at that time, Christmas was coming, so as usual, all the present buying was left to me.
Selfishness came as standard to him and he never once considered how any of it made me feel. I felt like his personal ‘walking’ ATM by this point and had given up trying to make him see things from my perspective. It was so depressing to feel so used and unappreciated. No matter what I did, it was never enough.
Drag Me Down Blog 