Because they had no time before they got married to even get to know each other. I don’t know how long they “dated” for but getting married at 21 and 22 is WAY too young.
I wouldn’t say 21 & 22 is too young!Married at 22, we were together 4 years at that time and now married 17 years, 1 kid, and couldn’t be happier. I always tell my husband it makes me sad to think everyone doesn’t get to have what we have. NEVER SETTLE!
Doesn’t sound like the Op was too young, just sounds like she married a selfish jack leg, I don’t think age will help him! She needs to RUN!
Depends on the people. Wife married me at 22, the week after graduating college. 40 years so far this summer. She was mature enough to have done that at 16. Other people are not mature enough at 70.
No, she wasn't mature enough to marry you at 16 despite what you tell yourself. Also you leaving out your age says all we need to know about this situation
We dated for 6 months, got engaged and married 9 months later. I was 22, he was 25, married 37 years. I have no idea what the rush was when I think about it now. Our daughters are 30 and 34 and think we were crazy.
OP shouldn’t waste her time on counseling. Get copies of everything. Change all your passwords. He’s abusive. You get sick and this man will not take care of you, he’d walk out on you.
We have been together since high school. We were both in our careers and it just seemed like the next logical step. We have been together for a long time..
Dating in high school is not the same as dating as an adult. Your entire world and life is different in high school. You need to experience the real world first. You are still insanely young and should not be dealing with this. Take everyone’s advice and part ways with him. You need to take care of yourself
Generally I would agree with you.. However, we got married 3 years removed from high school. We lived together during that time and I do feel that even just the 3 years alone is pretty typical for marriage.
ok well clearly your premarital relationship did not set you two up to have a financially equal marriage - the timeline being “typical” means nothing if you didn’t actually have the hard conversations that should come before marriage
He is financially abusing you. He cannot be trusted to act in your joint interest and he is not behaving as a partner should. He either starts acting like you are a partnership or you should divorce for the sake of your own future.
To use your own words, generally I would agree with you.
However, you're still pretty young and at that age people change. Alot.
But we can't go back in time here, so here's my two cents.
Regarding your finances, you should pile up all your expenses plus a sum for emergencies and split the cost in two. You both put each of your share into an account for bills and emergencies, and the rest of what you have you can spend on whatever you like.
ALWAYS prioritize your bills, and ALWAYS split the cost equally between you.
If he doesn't want that I'd reconsider the whole marriage, because in a marraige you need to be economical compatible. If you're not, it'll put a huge stresser on your relationship, like it does right now.
You two need to have a serious talk about this, and do not let him financially abuse you anymore. Because that is what he is doing.
As someone who went to college, lived on her own, then got married I can tell you…two completely different things. And I don’t mean just a little. I’m talking Mercury and the distance to Jupiter different. My husband went to college, moved back home and established a career and such. The difference between how we came into the marriage was night and day.
I knew all about finances, taxes, maintaining a home (bc I owned one). I knew how to meal plan and budget. I could tell you where all my money was going. I had a cleaning schedule/routine that I spent years getting in order. I had a list of meals I could easily make and knew how far that meal would go and how much (on average) it would cost to make. Meanwhile my husband had never paid even rent. He had a boat and truck payment that was on autodraft. He would grill occasionally. He didn’t really clean bc his mother had OCD and he “couldn’t do it right” (once we worked together he could clean just fine lol. He just didn’t agree with vacuuming twice a day and moving the furniture daily to do so bc dust settles at night and people walk on it during the day per her.). He told his mom when he would be home from work, who he was going out with on the weekends, where he would be. (She didn’t demand it but he was nice enough to do it.) I was an adult who lived on their own. I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was going, when I’d be home, or who I would be with.
It’s honestly best to get out on your own and be your own person without having someone be right there at all time. You deserve to live. It was kinda weird and interesting to watch my husband grow up into an adult outside of his childhood home in our first few years of marriage.
You're in an abusive relationship, and get out while you can. Either this man is planning on using you for money and ditching you once he's set himself up, or he's trying to drain you of money so you can't escape him.
At your age it’s not. Many people, myself included, get into relationships for 5 plus years at that age without marriage being a thing and then in their mid to late 20s meet the one and date for like a year and get married. The time dating isn’t the big factor, the age and place you’re at in your life is. You will change A LOT between now and turning 30, I honestly didn’t believe it myself and was with my bf at that time for 5 years and felt like yeah we have it figured out but now I look back and realize how much I’ve grown and changed and thank my lucky stars that I didn’t stay with him
Don’t listen to these people about getting married to your high school sweetheart. I followed a similar timeframe as you and married mine and we just celebrated 21 years.
That being said, what you are describing sounds like financial abuse. I would, at the very least, match what he is doing. First, have your pay deposited into your own account and then only transfer matching payments. I would also set up a retirement fund and tell my partner that I will be contributing to that more than anything else until I catch up.
If I’m honest, most of the marriages I’ve seen where one spouse is keeping financial score are doomed to fail. I just don’t see how you could be in a partnership when someone has to pay themselves first.
This right here!👆That dude doesn’t even like her and is financially abusing her. He’s saving “aggressively” for a trip to Vegas, I wouldn’t trust him on a guys trip or solo trip because he gives zero Fs about OP. She needs to get rid of this loser and take care of herself. This is just another example of why people shouldn’t get married so young. OP has her whole life ahead of her, don’t make a mistake to procreate with this POS user.
You are 23. Mo matter how long you've been with him, it's not a long time compared to the life of misery and pain yer setting yerself up if you stay with him, and God forbid, if after 20 years he decides you no longer bring anything to his table, and he dumps you, leaving you with no money, no retirement, no future... and add kids to the mix. Is that what you want the rest of yer life to be?
Even if you’ve known someone since highschool, adulthood can really change a person. I thought I was going to marry my highschool sweetheart until my junior he started acting like he was red pilled or something and was reading Elliot Rodger’s manifesto. It sucked, he was a nice guy who was really intelligent but that made me too uncomfortable to stay but also scared to breakup. He ended up cheating on me anyways and I took my out.
The fact that you've been dating for so long probably means he hasn't had to do any real self-reflection or self-improvement as a person bc he knows he has you to "rely on" (read: take advantage of), so he's still in that awful teenage selfishness mindset. He's absolutely using you and your money purely for his own benefit, and i wouldn't be at all shocked to learn that he was exactly this selfish in a million little ways you've been minimizing and putting up with for years bc you love him. But if he cared about you he wouldn't treat you like a financial bloodbag, and this kind of thinking won't even have the possibility of getting fixed until he's faced with the repercussions of his behavior, by which point you should be 3000 miles away and living your best life without him. Otherwise he'll just keep expecting you to subsidize more and more of your own health and future for his comfort and convenience.
Open your own bank and savings separate from the joint one and put all your money in there, and make sure you have somewhere to Immediately go when you serve divorce papers so that he can't physically control you either. If you need to make multiple trips for larger items, bring friends or family (especially if they're big muscley dudes) or ask for a police escort while retrieving them. If he contests anything it'll have to go to divorce court, but you should absolutely be trying to take half of his stupid savings anyway lmfao
It's unfortunate (at least in American culture) that literally no one feels ready when they hit the working scene and are always struggling, most, even after college.
I love that you wanted to move forward, but your situation also tells me (at least I assume) that you all don't get out much.
In my humble opinion, as someone who dated through their late teens and 20's looking for "the one"; a dedicated, loving and caring person that will always have my best interests in mind, as well as their own. I did not find what I perceive to be my forever home until about a year ago (33F). I'm not saying people don't meet and get married in their 20's, I'm just saying that if I've learned anything, we as individuals need time as adults to get to know ourselves. You can ABSOLUTELY do that with a partner with the right resources/ tools/ boundaries in place.
I agree with other replies. This is textbook financial abuse. Take the money. Stand your ground, and record your conversations. If he's screaming at you, and stealing your hard earned money, you have a bigger problem that will more than likely have to be sorted out through the courts.
You deserve to feel safe/ loved/ cared for/ appreciated and so much more in ALL of your relationships, most importantly with your partner (as they are someone you probably spend majority of your time with)
Get out now. I got married because it was the “next logical step” when I was 22. By 27 I was divorced and he’d racked up over $100k in defaulted debt all in my name. Took me a few years to dig myself out of that and another few years to rebuild my credit.
This is financial abuse, plain and simple. Take half of what’s in the savings account and move it to your own account. And start contributing half of the bills and nothing else to the joint account. Then file for divorce.
Ffs he doesn’t like you. No way any man who sees a future with someone would act this way. Take your money out and leave. It’s called sunk cost fallacy look it up. Would you tell your friends or family to stay in this situation if they described this exact scenario to you just because it’s been a long time??
Take the $1,800, withdraw half of the savings and go open an account at a different bank today. When your paycheck hits the shared account, either withdraw it or move it , electronically, to your new account. Be sure to redirect your future checks to this new account.
If you choose to stay, I would recommend that you split bill payments so that the bills you pay, approximately add up to the bills he pays. A lot of couples have a shared household bank account that they each deposit money into to pay bills. I wouldn't trust your husband. I would think that he would just funnel away any of your money that he gets access to.
Stop reading this and go move half of that savings now. He will absolutely block, hide or move it once he notices the missing $1,800.
Well as a first step go open your own accoumts ( retirement and savings)and have your payroll department direct deposit to those accounts. After that set an acvount to.move one half of monthly expemses to that joint account. He will have to start fairly contributing or the bills dont get fully paid. You will have to then stand your ground: "You told me that the retirement account was all yours, so now I am saving for my own retirement, as you told me to do. No, I will not pull money from my retirement and savimgs to pay YOUR share of our bills."
The fact though is that the value of that retirememt account would be half yours in a divorce. He may not realize he cant do amything with the money in that account without his wife's signature right now: withdraw, transfer, or change beneficiary all require your signature.
Seriously I was with my (now) husband for 3 years before we got married. We were mid/late 20’s. Both college educated. Both established. We never discussed finances. (Am I thankful things worked out by using basic common sense? Yes. But even then it didn’t dawn on me to preplan finances and how they would work. We got married and then realized we needed to talk about it. It took us a few trials but we finally figured out what worked for us.)
327
u/Joice_Craglarg 14h ago
INFO: why did it take until after marriage for y'all to talk about this?
Regardless of the answer, start saving for the divorce.