My [37/F] husband [38/M] of less than a year (but together 16+ years) is cheap and I can't get past my anger about it

Hey there. I think a lot of things are going on here, actually. There is the wedding issue, the distance issue, and your now-solo-life finances issue. The wedding thing seems a little nuts, and I get to that last.

The easiest thing to handle is your bills. It sounds like you need to downsize. There is no need for you to be paying for a lifestyle for two when you now live mostly on your own, and he is paying for his own living expenses as well wherever he is. This may be your dream house, and I assume it is if you held on to it, but it sounds like the bills for one are just too much.

The distance issue is a big one, and as someone who has spend years in a long-term, long-distance relationship (we now live together) I know that resolving conflict in any way other than face-to-face can be really challenging. When are you guys planning to reunite? And if there is no plan for that right now, what is the intermediate plan for staying connected?

The wedding money situation just sounds bizarre. If this is something you are so angry about you feel it will poison your relationship with your husband, then you need to tell him that and in that way. That if you don't resolve this, it will eat away at your relationship until it is gone. A Defcon 1 situation. I would, however, wait until you are spending some time with him in person to talk about this, as it might be the most important talk you ever have with him over your relationship.

I have had some money conflicts with my partner as well. I was 100% against combining finances because I believe it bring only strife to a relationship. However, not combining them also brought a lot if "this is mine, this is yours" strife, like you are talking about here. Our compromise was to have a common account that is for our common expenses (groceries, rent, utility bills, eating out together, household repairs, etc.) that we both contribute a designated amount to, and the rest of the money is ours to keep. This has really stopped a lot of the fights we were having that sound like the conflicts you are having with your husband.

/r/relationships Thread