Posted by:
formerrlds
(
)
Date: August 24, 2014 07:43PM
I have been in a relationship for just about five years. We are both in our late forties. My partner is in the national guard and also holds a civilian job. She makes slightly less than I do except when she is deployed on active duty, which happens every five or six years.
She was deployed four years ago and at the time she received her orders, we had only been together a few months and had lived separately. We discussed what to do, and while I had been clear about the fact that I did not want to live together as a permanent arrangement, I agreed to do so temporarily so that she would not have to pay rent on an apartment that would be unoccupied for thirteen months.
So she put most of her stuff in storage and moved in with me until her unit left for the Middle East. During the deployment, she gave me access to her bank account and I did a terrible thing. I spent nearly ten thousand dollars of her money. I confessed to her a few months before she returned home and she said we would work things out when she got home.
I did not have ten thousand to give her, so I worked out a deal with her that I would pay the house payment, condo fees, and utilities until she had paid off the expensive vehicle she purchased while she was deployed (it was half paid off while she was overseas, through automatic deductions from her active duty pay). I put her name on my house as security between us.
She has been home nearly three years and the vehicle should be paid off in another nine to ten months. We each pay our own cell phone bill, credit cards, and car insurance. She buys most of the groceries, and has also helped me financially when I was having problems keeping an old car on the road (I recently traded it for a nearly-new one that should cost me a lot less, both in repairs and gas mileage). In all that's probably amounted to another three to five thousand over the years.
In the last three years I have realized a few things. In her last relationship (which lasted sixteen years), she had the same kind of deal with her previous girlfriend, who was older than her, made more money, and paid all the living expenses. My partner's money in that relationship was basically "pin money," so she is not really used to having real bills and seeing her paycheck eaten up with them. During her regular military years and on tours of active duty, of course, the military pays for all her expenses like housing, food, etc., so she has been living a sort of surreal life for the last quarter-century since she enlisted.
I will be the first person to admit that I am awful with money. I have two bankruptcies in my past, and have never been able to really stick to a budget. But I have a home, a good job, and I have never in my life drawn unemployment or assistance. And I have been living independently for thirty years, since the age of 19, and can count on the fingers of one hand how often I have had to borrow money from my parents (which is more than I can say for several siblings, haha).
When she came back from the Middle East, what can I say? she was different. Even though she was not in a front line type area--her work in the military keeps her on the forward operations base where the enemy might toss a grenade at the wall now and then, but it's not under constant bombing or anything like that--I realize that serving in a war zone is still very stressful and I was ready to deal with that. What I was not ready for was the way our relationship changed.
First, she came home and I got herpes a week later as a result of oral sex. I'm not accusing her of straying (neither did I, incidentally), but her attitude since I was diagnosed basically makes me feel like a leper. She has not kissed me, other than the peck-on-the-cheek type kiss, in nearly three years. She complains about my breath, which no one has ever done before and which she did not do before she was deployed. I brush my teeth, I'm not a yuck mouth. :) She gets annoyed when I don't want sex, but when I am in the mood (which I will admit is not often because how aroused can I be by someone who finds my breath disgusting and won't really kiss me?) she never is.
She constantly criticizes my cooking. I will admit I am just a middle aged fat girl who cooks meat and potatoes, but I have never had anyone do that, and it particularly bothers me because she does not KNOW how to cook, yet she feels qualified to tell me I'm doing it wrong. She lives on protein whey powder and restaurant meals when she's single.
She is always bitching about my driving, even though she insists that I drive almost everywhere because she doesn't want to keep gassing up her own vehicle (mine is smaller and gets better fuel efficiency). This morning we went to breakfast and shopping and I realized after a few minutes that since climbing in, she had not said one word other than, "Get over! you're in the other lane too far;" "Be careful! the guy ahead of you is slowing down," and "Why do you always try to parallel park when you're no good at it?" Mind you, she herself does NOT KNOW HOW TO PARALLEL PARK. lol She freely admits this, yet she wants to tell me how I'm doing it all wrong.
She BARKS at me all the time. I have told her more than once that she may be a drill sergeant but I'm not in her damn platoon. LOL Sometimes when I get really upset I yell back at her or cry, but I know neither of those are solutions. She really doesn't see how hurtful it is, I guess. No one has ever yelled at me like that--not even my parents when I would mess up as a child. Even when my parents got mad at me they never had a tone in their voice like they HATED me. That's what she sounds like when she gets mad. She has apologized a few times, but she still comes back and does it again eventually. She has never hit me or even raised a hand, but words can hurt too.
I am obese--bordering on morbidly, although you wouldn't think it to look at me because I am tall and I carry it well. However, SHE knows it and even though she is thisclosetobeingkickedout of the military if she herself doesn't drop ten pounds, she makes excuses for why she doesn't go to the gym and while I don't jump her about them, she is never shy about telling me why *I* should log more gym time. She doesn't exactly criticize me in so many words for being fat, but she's always chiding me not to eat so much and telling me what foods I shouldn't eat, as if I don't know that after having been fat for forty fucking years.
I have pets. They were here before her and I have never made any bones about the fact that she will go before they do. She cleans the cat boxes because she says I don't do it often enough and the house smells. Nobody else has ever told me my house smelled. I let her do it, frankly, because I'm sick of being bitched at and at least if she makes cleaning them her job, she can't bitch at me about it. One less thing to be bitched at about.
At the beginning of the summer I was annoyed one too many times and told her she needed to move out. I promised to help her and said she could still eat her meals at my house if she wants to. She is supposed to close on a condo unit on the next block from me in a few weeks. The seller is a friend, so it was an opportunity for us to help the friend AND help our own situation.
My partner is very enmeshed with her mother, and in fact mom seems to be the only friend she has because no one else other than military or civilian job people ever call her and she never has friends over. My friends have become hers, some reluctantly because they have taken me aside to tell me they don't like the way she treats me. Her mother was very upset about the money thing while my partner was deployed (which I fully understand her being, and in fact I apologized to her mother the same as I did my partner for my actions). She also feels that I have taken advantage of her daughter's generosity, and maybe I have, but mentally adding up the numbers, I have paid her living expenses for three years now and that adds up to at least twenty grand and more likely more, so it's not as though I haven't recompensed her for my misdeeds.
What's my problem? I feel GUILTY! I still feel guilty for taking her money while she was gone, and now I feel guilty for standing firm about wanting her to move out. I worry that she won't be able to make it on her own. Several of my friends are urging me to just break up with her and get it over with. I'm not really sure that I love her. I *know* I don't like her a lot of the time. I feel like a permanent target for her criticism (I'm oversensitive in that regard because my late mother was also very critical of me and I still remember with a wince some of the terrible things she said to me without realizing how much they hurt). But when times are good, it almost seems worth it. Almost.
I'm sorry this post is so long. I debated whether to even put it here but I just need some input. I'm grateful for any I can get. The friends who are aware of the situation are too protective of me to be very objective, which is why I'm bringing this here. Thanks.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2014 07:50PM by formerrlds.