I have a dilly
of a pickle of a problem, as Ned Flanders would say.
Quick background info: “Dude” and I have been dating for the past six
years, since I was 17. We moved in together 18 months ago. Dude is a
kind, artistic, computer-geeky photographer; an amazing person
overall, and the love of my life. We are definitely headed down the
marriage path, and except for one problem, I couldn’t be more
pleased. This is the story of that problem…

Dude has worked for a branch of a national photography company for
the last four years. He’s an ace at what he does (photographing high
school seniors for yearbooks, et cetera), and has been promised raise
after raise almost since he’s been there. He is, however, absolutely
crappy at standing up for himself and asking for (long overdue)
financial rewards. Dude has repeatedly (read: 10,000 times) let his
manager put off talks about salary increases, and won’t stand up for
himself and his skills.

This is starting to affect my life (other than just being frustrated
at his inability to get what he deserves). He is unable to pay the
bills for which he agreed to be responsible, he frequently has zero
dollars when the next paycheck comes along, and I can’t keep paying
his half of the bills just so my name won’t get sullied, credit-wise.
As a receptionist, I make more money than he does, but not enough to
support two people and go back to school at the same time. Two cannot
live as cheaply as one when one is in school and working full-time,
and the other is paying loans and has a crappy car that sucks up
money like a vacuum.

He has helped me out several times when I’ve had times of hardship,
but this “time of hardship” has lasted a year, and only shows signs
of getting worse. Our current lease is up in a few months, and I don’t
think we should move into a badly-needed larger apartment if he can’t
cut the mustard, financially. The issue is totally not “make tons of
money or I’m leaving you.” It’s more like, “I need to take care of
myself financially, and I need you to take care of yourself
financially, or we can’t keep living together, ’cause, financially,
we’ll both be screwed.” Does that make sense?

My first gut feeling is that I need to tell him, “Look, get yourself
together by the time we move in August, or I’m moving on without
you.” And my other gut says, “No way. That’s too harsh. Just let Dude
work it out for himself. He’ll get what he’s been promised
eventually.”

Did I mention that Dude basically refuses to sit down with me and do
anything reasonable, like draw up a budget, or cut out unnecessary
things like cable TV?

So…I’m stranded. Please send help!

Future Mrs. Dude

Dear Future,

He won’t even sit down and draw up a spreadsheet for fifteen minutes?Yeah.Go with your gut instinct.Here’s why.

First of all, I trust you’ve already told him everything that’s in your letter (if not, you should — take him by the shoulders and shout it if you have to).He needs to know that it’s a big issue for you, that you feel like he doesn’t respect that, that you don’t want to worry about your credit rating anymore, and that it’s not about carrying him, because you can do that.It’s about seeing an effort from him to walk on his own.If you’ve told him all that, well, now you’ve got another problem, one that doesn’t have as much to do with money as it does with the fact that he doesn’t share your values and concerns.

That brings me to my second point.If the two of you don’t find a way to deal with shared financial issues constructively, you shouldn’t get married.That doesn’t mean that you should keep hectoring him about the raise — if he doesn’t care that much about the money, he doesn’t, and that’s that.But you do need to get clear on the priorities here and find a balance you can live with.A fundamental difference in your approaches to money stuff is not a small thing.

So, I think you’ve got two choices, but they both involve laying down the law.Your first option is to tell him — note the use of the verb “to tell,” versus “to ask” or “to discuss” — that he is now solely responsible for his own bills.Call the utilities and the cable company and whatever else, and get the things he’s supposed to pay for changed over to his name.If he wants cable, he can find a way to pay for it, because you won’t.If he wants to spend money he doesn’t really have, you won’t enable that.Explain that since he won’t deign to mock up a household budget with you, you’ve taken steps to protect your credit, which he obviously doesn’t give a damn about.

That’s a little passive-aggressive, and it’s going to start a fight, probably, but at least it’ll get his attention for once.The other way to do it is to hit him with an ultimatum.”Suck it up and deal with yourself fiscally, or I walk.”Mean it.Do it.He avoids this stuff now because, historically, you’ve always let it slide, carried him, covered the check.Stop doing that.Get him to hear you.Don’t let him take advantage anymore.I don’t love recommending ultimatums, generally, because a lot of people will just react all “how dare you threaten me” without really caring about where it came from or what’s at stake, but the bottom line with Dude is that he doesn’t seem to give a shit even though it’s really important to you, and you really can’t marry the guy if that’s the case.

I know you love the guy, but he’s not going to change, and you can’t go on like this indefinitely.Whatever you end up doing, set a deadline and stick to it; if he finds a solution, great, and if he gets that raise and it becomes moot, great.But he’s got to do it in the allotted time, or you will take action yourself, and he won’t like the results.

Sars,

So, there’s this guy — Drew. I met him three years ago
when we were both freshmen. I wasn’t attracted to him, but he seemed like a
nice enough guy, so we started to hang out. Over our first year at school, we
got increasingly close. We’d stay up late talking about everything. As time
went on, it became increasingly clear that he was into me, and I just wasn’t
feeling it. I told him I loved him (which was a really big deal for me), but
that I just wanted to be friends. He said he understood, and we went on as
pals. He’s a very talented musician and he would play me all these songs he
wrote, which he never showed anyone else; they were all tortured love songs,
and it was pretty obvious that some of them were about me. I was slightly
uncomfortable, but I loved him, so it didn’t really bother me that much, plus
it was nice to be so flattered.

After our second year, I went away on a work
term for the summer. I missed him, but it wasn’t agony or anything. I came
home on a weekend to see all my friends, but I had this overwhelming need to
see Drew and spent almost the entire weekend with him, and didn’t see anyone
else. On the plane ride home, I started thinking about why we weren’t together,
and the main reason was that I wasn’t physically attracted to him. I thought
about it a lot, and I had never felt like that about anyone before. So I wrote
him a letter saying that I wanted to be with him. He called me after he got it,
and we both agreed the best thing to do was to wait until I got back to school
to talk about it. So I waited, we got back to school, had a couple
conversations, but I didn’t bring it up and neither did he.

Pretty soon he was
ignoring me; I tried to talk to him, but got nothing. Shortly after that, he
started dating a friend of mine. I was extremely hurt and upset, and I couldn’t
even look at him. They broke up two months later, leaving her severely damaged,
and giving me another reason to hate him. My friend didn’t know about my
feelings for Drew, so I wasn’t mad at her, and we’ve since become very close.

Eventually, Drew and I started talking again. He apologized, and said that he
thought that since I didn’t bring it up immediately, I had changed my mind and
didn’t want to be with him. We fought a lot over the course of several months,
but eventually became friends again, ’cause what can I say? I love the guy, and
I’m a sucker for his poetry. I did tell him, however, that we could never be
together, because he dated my friend, and I really didn’t want to get hurt.

But…you can probably see this coming, but that didn’t exactly work out too
well. A random day in August, one too many glasses of wine, and we end up
in bed togther. It was actually pretty weird that that was the first time we’d
even kissed, given our history. After many conversations, I finally realised
that I had to try it out with him or risk regretting it forever. So we’ve been
together three months now; the first two were good, mostly because it was
clandestine. I wanted to talk to my friend about the whole thing before we
went public, because I felt like a bitch for taking her man. So that first
month and a half was great — secret meetings late at night and all that stuff.

But then everything changed. Drew’s kinda depressed. He’s got some weird
illness going on (some call him a hypochondriac — I really don’t know), he
doesn’t think he’ll ever get better, and he’s way preoccupied with it. He’s
been ignoring me for the past two weeks; I barely see him, and when I bring it
up, he gets upset and says that he hates hurting me. Throughout this whole
thing, he’s been the one who started everything. I was worried he’d treat me
like every girl he’s ever been with; he quelled my fears, said it was
different and that he loved me. He even said that he wanted to marry me.

I don’t deny that these statements are genuine, but he’s not the same. We had a
fight the other day; he said he wanted to break up for a while and sort his
own problems out, and then get back together when he knows he can be good to
me. He hangs out with his ex-girlfriend/my best friend constantly and barely
even talks to me. Today he called my house, just to talk to her, and didn’t
even say hi to me. I told him that if we broke up we wouldn’t get back together. He
said he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, and doesn’t want to lose
me. Since that conversation, it’s been the same.

I just can’t deal anymore. I’m
thinking I should break up with him, but I love him sooo much. And I know he
loves me; I just can’t handle being treated this way anymore.

Very, very confused

Dear Very,

Oh, so Drew wants to spend the rest of his life with you, does he?Well, bully for Drew.Funny how that depth of feeling doesn’t extend to showing you common courtesy or acting like a friend, at all.The guy doesn’t know what he wants, so he jerks you around with the “I want to marry you…someday” business and the silent treatment, and because it’s melodramatic, you’ve mistaken it for love.It isn’t.It’s an immature, obsessive jerkweed who writes reams of crappy free verse about the time years ago when his dad made him look at a dead bird and he shuddered in the wind of death and the cloudy sky and the leaves on the ground alone so alone we’re all strangers to ourselves blah blah blah, like, give me a fucking break, Walt Nitwhitman, because if you were really that tragic, you’d have a telethon already.

I have zero patience for these babies with chest hair who interpret Feeling Things Oh So Deeply And Also In Rhyme as a license to behave inconsiderately and misspell the word “abyss,” and you shouldn’t have any either.You can, should, and will do better than Drew, so tell that folkwad to get bent.

Dear Sars,

Not to be a drama queen, but I’m pretty sure I have ruined my life,
or at least a very important chunk of it. I have been fortunate
enough to date a really wonderful boy for the last two years.He is
funny and sexy and has been really patient and supportive of me.
I, on the other hand, have been selfish and manipulative and have
basically made everything all about me. Two weeks ago he said he’d
had enough, and he left.

I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve him, not without some serious changes
anyway, but I miss him tremendously and I really do believe that I can
change. He says he still wants to be friends, and he’s open to the
possibility of a relationship with me in the future, but he doesn’t
feel that would be likely because he doesn’t think I can change.How
do I prove I can be a good girlfriend if I’m not his girlfriend
anymore?

I know the simple answer is that I should give him space and time andfocus on being a good friend to him, but I’m worried that then
he’ll just see me as a friend, or worse yet, he may find someone else. I
really want to be with him. I feel like stupid Scarlett O’Hara in
last scene of Gone With The Wind because I’ve realized too late what a
wonderful thing I had. I’m not sure what the question is in all of
this, other than is it possible to atone for your past relationship
sins and start fresh?

Thank you,
I Can Change

Dear Change,

Well…yes, it’s possible.But not at this distance.

He left you.Period.You have to accept that that’s how it is now.It hurts, and it’s lonely, but you have to let it take.Don’t see him, don’t talk to him, don’t have anything to do with him at all for awhile, and whatever he said about getting back together in the future, ignore it.That’s just something people say sometimes.Consider him gone and start moving on as best you can.

While you go through the process of putting him behind you — Patsy Cline, inappropriate drunkenness, white chocolate, whatever — think about why you want to change.Mostly, it’s because you want him back, but that’s not going to work long-term.Changes you make with that motivation won’t stick.Instead, look at it from the perspective of becoming the person you want to be.Look at the relationship and find the things you could have done differently, tendencies in yourself that you don’t like.Evaluate.Work on yourself.

Let me give you an example.One of my past relationships ended in part because I tended to sulk instead of communicating my needs directly.I knew I did it, I knew I kind of sucked because of it, and I knew I had to get over it — not because I wanted to get back with the ex, but because I didn’t like thinking of myself as That Girl Who Sulks Because She’s Wimpy About Confrontation.I didn’t want to torpedo a relationship that way again, true, but mostly I just didn’t want to be That Girl, so I tried to work on becoming more direct and less passive-aggressive generally.

It’s not about proving anything to your ex.He left, and he had his reasons, and if those reasons had to do with you, then maybe you want to make a few adjustments, but it has to come from you.Learning from your mistakes so that you don’t make them again is great, but if you do it only to please someone else, it won’t stick.

[11/21/02]

Share!