the situation at hand

[threeplusfire]

Last night was weird. I helped take care of drunk people, including our hostess who fell into the shower. All in all not a bad little party. I was in a horrible mood, after the last hour of work. One of my moronic coworkers was having a very loud and inappropriate conversation in the middle of the office about how gay people go to hell. I spoke to my supervisor, and he was quite understanding about my distress. Cowboy has promised to take the situation in hand and try to prevent any repeats.

Anyhow, after the party I started talking to Alan about the license problem. I learned that he may have unpaid tickets that will cost a large chunk of money. Right now we don't know, but this will be cleared up on Monday. There is also a large debt to the power company that needs to be taken care of as soon as we can. It's an old thing, which was not entirely under his control. We're not in any danger of losing power or anything like that. I just don't want to have the specter of debt over our heads.

Debt is a personal war with me. I have made it through college, three vehicles and many upheavals without acquiring any debt at all. I take enormous pride in this. So I am understandably anxious about clearing my husbands accounts. It's something we will work out together.

The upshot of this would be that all travel and large purchases have been cancelled for the time being. I can't make plans until I know what needs to be paid, and what our payments plans will look like. At the moment, I think I have enough money in the bank to clear a large portion of this, but I don't want to leave us completely flat broke.

I'm hurt by this, mostly because I had no idea until last night. This is an issue my husband and I must also work out. Understandably I am upset because I feel like I've had something taken away. This trip was a happy goal to work towards, and was meant to help alleviate my recent unhappiness. I just don't know what to say.

I want to thank everyone who has commented and expressed their concerns. I'm okay right now, just a bit depressed. It will get better once more details are set into place. But thank you all, for taking the time to click a comment link and say a few words. It helps, and reminds me that I have many friends both in the waking world and the wired.

Comments

[a311renegade.livejournal.com]

Someone should set him on fire! Sounds like this troll in the gay boys community that has been talking that same smack!

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

This girl at work is so evil, she was kicked out of the state of California. What kind of crack ass shit do you have to do for that?

Re:

[a311renegade.livejournal.com]

Oh... I didn't realize it was a woman that was talking all that smack. Someone should have just walked up and slapped her. How exactly DOES someone get kicked out of California? Weird.

Re:

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I was so so so tempted. She's this tiny creature, and looks oh so innocent. But she's really evil and used to work for some big name televangelist.

It's bad enough she did something so bad as to be kicked out of a state, but out of California? That's where all the hippies and crazy people like Arnold live! :P

[warhol.livejournal.com]

So.... I think you're right to feel upset that you didn't know about the debt issues in advance. People should reveal these things to their partners -- it's a serious part foul to have your partner find out about nasty secrets after the fact. But at the same time, it's hard to admit your past mistakes. So be upset for a little while, just don't hold a grudge for long. Realize that a few hundred/thousand bucks isn't going to cause you any long-term unhappiness.

But another thing: when Kristen and I talked about being lovers and marrying our fortunes together, we agreed that past debts were private matters. She's not responsible for my student loans, and I'm not responsible for whatever she has. Why should you be obligated to pay for his old tickets and things?

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I understand that part of the reason he didn't tell me about any of this was because he wanted to deal with it on his own, and because it was all tied into a very bad past relationship. I'm pretty much over the initial anger/upset thing now, and we had a long talk last night when I got home.

The thing is, with the way our finances are at the moment there is no real way Alan could possibly pay for these debts. I can't stomach the idea of living with these things lurking where they make it imposible for him to get a license, or to ever get power hooked up in his name. Because I'm the one with the bank account where our savings go, it's going to have to come from there. I've already told him though that his year end bonus check will go towards clearing out these debts before I apply any of my money to the problem.

[calledmara.livejournal.com]

Two other sets of friends of mine have had problems when they've combined finances.

My friend Sara refused to marry Dave until he had taken care of his living-beyond-his-means credit card debt because she didn't want to assume the responsibility. (They did get married and have been for a few years) I can understand not wanting to have to deal with that, especially when you've been "good" and they got to enjoy getting that debt.

My friends Jude and Jen are in the process of combining their finances, even though they have drastically different spending habits and differing debt. It's frustrating even from afar.

I guess what I'm saying is it sucks, but it seems something everyone has to go through so try not to let it get you too down.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it seems the hardest thing about being married is adjusting habits to accomodate another person. I would just like to fix this stuff now, so we don't have the problems my parents did. They had a lot of credit cards debts, and it was a huge stress on their relationship. Sometimes, money just sucks.

I think though we'll get a balance between our habits though. Alan's so much more zen than I am, and that helps when I'm being super uptight about stuff.