My husband and I are about 50. We’ve been married for about five years. We both had previous marriages. I have children from mine, he does not.

During our courtship, he bought me gifts, took me on nice trips, sent flowers, and filled my car with gas regularly. We married in the fall of 2020 after several months of lockdown. I believed it was going very well. 

Shortly after our marriage, my job changed, and I decided to take a much lower paying job to get out of the toxic work environment. He agreed and stated he supported this situation. He makes over $100,000 a year. I had accrued a significant amount of debt prior to our relationship and leading up to the wedding. As my income was less than half of what it was before, I was only paying debt and my personal expenses. 

During this time, my husband and I planned a move to a nearby metropolitan area from the small city we lived. This move allowed him a more secure but lateral financial position and allowed more job opportunities for me. I have two degrees (in fairly useless studies).

My husband’s expectation is that I should make an equivalent amount of income that he does. I work in education; I enjoy my work and qualify for student loan forgiveness. I am not financially motivated in the same way. He was very motivated to buy a home. We rented a nice home for slightly more than we paid for a small apartment before. Within a couple weeks I secured a job in the nearby school district with higher hourly wage than my last job, but still not as much as the one before. Then I applied for an even higher paying job. I was very unhappy about the change but hoped it would ease my husband’s growing resentment and contempt for me, because he was paying for so much. He rarely mentioned the financial strain but withdrew more and more. I still was not paying for any of our joint expenses and accruing additional debt.

Two years ago, be bought me purchased a very nice anniversary gift and vacation. As we prepared to leave for the trip, he blew up spouting every reason he resented me and what a financial burden I was. I applied for two other higher paying jobs in the same place, which I did not tell him about, and I did not get offered the positions. I began to really enjoy my job; this seemed to agitate him further. I began to plan an exit from the marriage. We did a brief set of counseling appointments. 

Earlier this year, I asked him if we should part ways at the end of our lease, and he was shocked. He said if you want out, go. I said I needed money to leave and start a new life, and he could have everything else (cars, household items). We had not purchased any real assets or property. He agreed to giving me a lump sum with the understanding that I would make no further claims to his assets and I use some of the sum to pay a debt consolidation loan he was a cosigner on. 

I walked away with some cash but nothing else. Within days of the payout, he bought a home; I moved into a small apartment and started over.

We have been getting along incredibly since the split. We have dates and sex regularly. Occasional sleepovers more intimate and honest conversations than ever. As long as he is not responsible for me, and I don’t have to count on him, we seem to do great.

What are your thoughts on the relationship working in this way, but without the partnership we promised?

– Honest Conversations