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coffeebuzzI've been in relationship with J for a little over three years. I'm nearly 53, and he's 56. Both divorced -- him twice, me once. Neither of us have ever had kids, our parents are gone, and we have no living siblings. We actually met some 20 years ago in Ohio as colleagues in a volunteer organization, then lost touch for many years. He looked me up on Facebook about 4 years ago, when I was still living in Ohio. I was already planning to move to Maryland at some point -- it just seemed like a pleasant place -- and he happened to be living in Annapolis. As we rekindled and developed a closer friendship, he offered to help me move here to Annapolis and give me a place to stay with him and his (female) housemate in their large rental townhouse while I got my feet under me. During the several months of prep time it took me to arrange to move, including finishing a contract position I was working in, things began to move in a romantic direction between us. On the day I arrived in mid-April of 2014, he offered me the option of my own room which he’d already furnished for me, or sharing his room as his live-in girlfriend. As we'd already become romantically and sexually involved, I opted to share his room. He told me he loved me and that he was thrilled by the direction things were taking between us.
I made it clear up-front that if we were going to be serious, I would eventually want us to marry. Although he was leery of marrying again, he said that for me he would actually be willing to consider it as long as we took financial precautions. (His second wife took advantage of him financially in their divorce.) I told him that was absolutely fine with me. Let’s face it, prenuptial agreements make a lot of sense in this day and age.
At the time, J had a job he absolutely loved doing sales and marketing for a well-known consumer goods company, was nearly debt-free, and earned about $100k annually. He worked from home 90% of the time and had great benefits, a company car, and all kinds of perks. He was very happy and quite proud of what he'd accomplished for himself in his career, especially given that he'd had some rocky years in times past. By contrast, my savings were depleted, and I had nothing except my skill-set, determination, and a fierce desire to carve out a new and more satisfying life in new surroundings. My career is in office administration, project coordination and customer service, and one of the reasons I'd chosen to leave Cleveland was due to the extreme shortage of good-paying jobs in my field. I'd been stuck earning about ~$30k -- and sometimes less -- since 1999, not counting the four years I'd taken off work at one point to care for my elderly father who suffered from dementia and other issues. I was truly attempting to start over, and J knew that and wanted to help.
He introduced me to his lively circle of friends, integrated me into his social life and activities, and supported me in my job search and long-term career goals. I drew him into my hobbies and interests as well. But the job market wasn’t as cooperative, and rather than finding a decent-paying direct-hire job within the first couple of months as I’d hoped, what I wound up with instead was a string of temporary positions through various employment agencies, all paying between $10 and $15 per hour — no more than I’d been earning back in Cleveland. Given that the cost of living in Annapolis is nearly twice what it is in Cleveland, I was pretty frustrated. J was encouraging, but he could see that I was becoming impatient with the way my skills and more than two decades of experience were being undervalued at work. I even had temp gigs where the companies wanted to hire me permanently, but at a lower wage than I’d been getting as a temp. Excuse me? No.
About six or seven months in — so, November 2014 — the word was passed down that a major shakeup in J’s company was coming just after the first of the year. Nearly everyone’s job would be on the line in sales, and while those who were cut would receive severance, it was recommended that everyone get a contingency plan in place. Kim, our housemate, was already planning to move closer to her workplace and rent an apartment with a friend. That left J and me to figure out our own plans.
J decided to purchase a house while he still had the job, reasoning that if he were to be unemployed for longer than a few months, being evicted from a rental unit is a much shorter process than having one’s mortgage foreclosed. The decision was his alone, and I respected that given that it would also be his own credit on the line. Owing to my difficulty in finding work and to having depleted my resources during my years as a caregiver, my credit rating was and remains too low to have involved me in the financial paperwork of whatever we did.
He was certain he could find a suitable house with a mortgage that was equal to or less than our monthly rent of ~$2400. He had split that rent roughly 70/30 with Kim due to the disparity in their income, and when I moved in my contribution was initially set up simply to cover my share of the groceries, the cellular bill (J and I combined our plans) and to pay him back for some big-ticket work he’d had done on my vehicle to enable me to drive from Ohio to Maryland. In our new house, he said, we would share expenses fully and base the split on our relative earnings. At this time I was working a supposedly temp-to-hire position for the State of Maryland, but only making $10 per hour. I’d taken it having been told it was a prelude to permanent hire at much better pay, so we both figured I’d be earning reasonable money by spring.
Off we went house-hunting. J wanted to choose a house we both would like, at a budget he personally set. We were working under a deadline, obviously, so eventually the time came when we just had to pick the best of what we’d seen. Just before Christmas, he closed on a three-bedroom townhouse on the outskirts of Annapolis with a $2100 monthly mortgage — not including property taxes and HOA fees. Summertime photos showed it to have beautiful rosebushes that reminded him of the prize roses his father had grown. The two small bedrooms were really too small for anything much more than a futon or a twin bed, but would allow him to have a home office and me to have an office/library/sewing room. There was a two-car garage, a first-floor rec room, all new kitchen appliances, a fireplace, and a deck. The master suite would be ours for sleeping, and we would furnish and decorate the whole house together with items we each owned. I had got rid of most of my furnishings upon leaving Ohio except for a dinette set, a rocking chair, a bookshelf, a cedar chest and a couple of reproduction colonial desks that had been in my family for three generations. But between the two of us we still had plenty of stuff. Too much, in fact.
We moved in over New Year’s. A week later, the axe fell: J learned that his job was one of those to be eliminated. As it turned out, something like 80% of the company’s sales force lost their jobs, with a select few being offered the “opportunity” to reapply for their positions or similar ones. Through networking with those who did not get rehired, we later figured out that the vast majority of those let go were over the age of fifty and above a certain level in pay. This appears to have been a purge of older, more expensive talent. J received a generous severance package, and would be carried on the books as still employed until the end of January.
Crunch time! Now we had to replace the company car he would be losing. Our only other vehicle was my nearly 14-year-old Cherokee, which I had purchased secondhand for Cleveland’s snowy winters. It was a gas hog, and despite the rebuilt engine and transmission J had paid to install, we knew it wasn’t going to last forever. With both of us working we needed two vehicles. So we bought the then-current model of the company car he’d been driving, as that at least was a known quantity for reliability. $350 a month, bam. A couple of weeks later, J called me at work to ask how many payments were left on the Cherokee. “One,” I said.
He asked if I’d be willing to pay it off and trade it in on a newer vehicle so we could have two we could most likely count on. I said sure, and made the final payment with my next phone call. That night we went back to the same dealership where we’d just bought a car, and purchased a three-year-old SUV using my venerable but newly-paid-off vehicle as a trade-in. Another $350 car payment added to the budget, but at least now we wouldn’t have to worry what was going to break next on my car. I agreed to handle that payment out of my own income. After all, I’d been told that by spring I’d be a regular employee with a higher pay. We’d be okay.
A couple of weeks later I found out quite by accident that my job with the state was in fact budgeted solely as a permanently outsourced position. I could work there for years but I would never receive a raise or benefits, nor shift to being employed directly by the department in which I worked. My employment agency contact had pulled a bait-and-switch on me. I was livid, and immediately began sending out resumes left and right again. I also called my agency and told them they really needed to work on finding me something else, although I would remain in my current position until they did or until I found something else on my own. I called other agencies for which I had worked in the past, or with which I was currently signed on, and began beating the bushes for better work. Higher-paying work. Permanent work.
Meanwhile, J was only unemployed for about a month. He took a 20% pay cut to join a different company, in a position unaffected by his non-compete agreement with his previous employer. We’d be okay, we said. I would continue paying him a percentage of my take-home pay to cover one of the car payments, and my share of phone and other expenses. It didn’t leave me with much and I had to let a few other things slide for a while, but we’d manage. I could get back on track as soon as I found better-paying work.
We began to squabble over money, over the still disorganized house (which, now in 2017 we still are trying to organize), over the piles of boxes we had not yet unpacked. We still went out and did fun things to forget our troubles for a few hours. J engaged regularly in “retail therapy”. (He has always loved to shop.) We stopped having sex just after Valentine’s Day — our first Valentine’s day as a couple. We’d been together for ten months. J said he just wasn’t in the mood. Just wasn’t feeling it. Nothing personal, but he didn’t want to have sex. He was sure we’d come back to it when things settled down a bit. The stress of his new job, the added burden of home ownership, all of it would eventually shake out.
By March we were arguing a lot. Don’t get me wrong; we still kidded around a lot and we still enjoyed each other’s company — most of the time. But the only kisses I received were a peck on the lips at bedtime and another when I left for work in the mornings. Gone was the cuddling, the hand-holding, the physical affection. I could get a hug if I initiated things, or another peck-kiss. But that was it. And I was the only one initiating I-love-yous.
It was a living hell. I am a very affectionate and demonstrative person, and I happen to have a robust sex drive. When times are tough, my impulse is to take comfort in my partner and to attempt to give that same comfort in return.
I was still working my assignment at the state, but that had become a source of stress and unhappiness for me, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could put up with it for a paltry $10 wage. Our busiest season was coming up, and coworkers had already warned me that our direct supervisor could be counted on to make us all extra-miserable during that eight-week timeframe. She was an unholy terror even on good days, and everyone was afraid of her. Our office had become a revolving door of people who would come to work for two weeks, decide they wanted nothing to do with her, and quit. I was barred from applying for any of the open positions due to my agency’s contract (which has to be one of the stupidest arrangements ever) but by this point I knew I wouldn’t want to stay there anyway.
Things came to a head one Monday morning when she told me three times in two hours to do this or that given task and then subsequently berated me, with bonus profanity, for doing said task rather than something else while she drank coffee and did her nails. I finally picked up my IN basket, set it on her desk, and told her she could bloody well do the work herself. I then walked next door to the department head, one of the nicest guys in the building, shook his hand and told him it had been a pleasure to know him but I was leaving. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.
I called my agency from the car, then called three others with which I was associated. By the time I got home, I already had two interviews lined up for the middle of the week. Just for temp gigs again, but at least it was work. Sadly, both turned out to be duds. One assignment evaporated before the interview due to an internal hire, while the other was for a project whose start date got pushed out six months.
I tried to pick up some freelance writing and editing gigs, things I could do from home. There wasn’t much, but it had to be better than what I’d been doing. Our arguments became more heated. I turned down a couple of offers that would have paid me just over minimum wage to drive two counties away for temp-to-perm entry-level work. I have a college degree and twenty years of experience at this, I thought. Why in hell should I settle for an entry-level job, especially if half my paycheck is just going to buy gasoline? Not only that, but in both cases the same agencies offered me these while they were also trying to get me lined up for other positions that would pay much more. Thing is, if I took the lower-paid job, I’d lose out on the higher-paying ones if they subsequently came open, due to the way the internal operations of the agencies worked. If I wanted the better gig, I had to wait for it. And anyway, I was lining up other interviews on my own.
So I waited, while J railed at me for being too picky. “You have to pay your dues before you can get a job you’ll like,” he explained to me, as though I were some eighteen-year-old kid fresh off the fry line at McDonald’s and wondering why she didn’t already have stock options and a corner office. I reminded him that I was fifty years old, had been working since my teens, and had already paid plenty of dues.
“I am trying,” I said, “to avoid getting mired in another low-wage job that won’t help either of us in the long run. I have three more interviews next week, and I can’t go to them if I’m stuck on the other side of DC working for peanuts. Wouldn’t you rather I interviewed for the stuff that pays at least what I was making in Cleveland?”
“You keep saying that, but you haven’t been hired yet.”
I quelled the urge to roll my eyes. “When it’s me and a dozen other candidates or more interviewing for the same position, I really can’t guarantee they’ll pick me. But I can guarantee they won’t if I don’t even make it to the interview.” Sigh. “Look, I don’t think either of us expected it to take this long for me to find something decent.” (Those of you reading along at home may recall this post I made around that time regarding my job search.)
An opening came up within the company he was working for. It was even work-at-home like his job, an assistant position. The pay was better than anything I’d been pursuing, and I already had an office set up in one of the small bedrooms, J said, so I should apply for it. He got me an interview with his boss, carefully sidestepping the fact that we lived together. After that I had a second interview, this time out of state in the regional office. But after that, someone twigged to the fact that we were partnered, and we were told that a recently-instituted company policy prohibited my being hired if I were married to or partnered with someone who was already an employee.
I took short-term temp gigs after that to stay afloat, but kept applying for other jobs, especially concentrating on things I could maybe do remotely. Because we were fighting again, I began to resent being expected to give J the bulk of my pay, especially when it left me so little to work with in paying my own personal bills. I began to hold back more of my income. He didn’t like it and went on at length about how it wasn’t actually about the money, but that money was a symbol of responsibility, and that I wasn’t taking my responsibility seriously.
“You do know I have responsibilities beyond just you, right?” I asked.
“Well, you aren’t taking care of those either. Can you tell me all of your bills are paid and up to date?”
This time I did roll my eyes. “No, and part of that is because I haven’t had the money to do that.”
He didn’t budge. “It’s all about money management,” he began.
I cut him off. “I can’t manage what I don’t have.”
“Only irresponsible people pay their bills late.”
“You’ve told me about plenty of times when you were behind on your bills too,” I reminded him. “Including when we first met.”
He scowled. “Yeah, but that was a long time ago. I got caught up and I stopped having that problem. You should try it.”
Seethe. “What. The. Hell. Do. You. Think. I’m. Trying. To. DO?!”
We nearly broke up at that point, but we pulled back from the brink. I suggested we should see a counselor, but he balked. I tabled the notion, then brought it up a few times in subsequent months. We were struggling with communication, and I’m sure neither of us felt heard or respected. I know I didn’t. My solution was to try to talk things out and reach an understanding. His was to withdraw from me more and go into a funk, then make a few new rules for me to follow as if that would solve everything. After a while the rules began to contradict each other and I told him so. “I can’t say or do a damn thing anymore without it crossing some line you’ve drawn. I don’t want to live like this.”
By this time he’d been with his new company for a little over a year. A friend of ours kept hinting to me that an opening was coming up in her office at some indeterminate-but-hopefully-soon future point and that if I were available when it finally did, she really wanted to get me hired. She even gave me a rough idea of the pay range, and it was way better than 90% of the jobs I’d been applying for. All I had to do was hold out until things shifted in her office and then get her my resume ASAP. So I kept working temp gigs, and kept an ear open.
The shift finally came that summer, in early July of 2016. I heard from H and got her my resume. At the same time, J got bad news: He was being downsized again. This time the severance wasn’t nearly as good. In the space of a month we went from J having a good-paying job and me doing low-wage temp stuff to him being unemployed and me starting a new job with better provisional pay than I’d had in two years. After three months I was fully salaried, making way more than I’d ever made in a single full-time job and with benefits. Meanwhile, J took a job that was almost entirely telesales, commission vs. a draw of $500 weekly, but at least with benefits. Suddenly I was earning almost twice what he earned, although he at least had the possiblity of more if he sold enough to out-earn his draw. Then again, my job also included a bonus structure.
You would really have thought this would help, right?
Yeah. Me too.
I’ve had a steep learning curve, but it’s been invigorating at least most of the time. And I like my job. Meanwhile, J found himself spending 8+ hours a day in an office run by people with advanced cases of craniorectal inversion. A veteran salesman with 35 years of experience, he’s been almost the only person actually racking up any sales, yet the PTB keep hassling him over methodology — namely, they wanted him to do it their half-arsed way that didn’t work rather than the way he was doing it which did. So he was miserable and frustrated, and I was quickly miserable and frustrated on his behalf, because the man does not deserve that kind of crap. And still, because of their half-arsed ways of handling things, he has never yet out-earned his draw, not in the ten months he’s been there.
We kept plugging along, but by this point if I said anything more complicated than “Good morning,” J would take it as an attack and go on the defensive. He became convinced that he always knew better than I did what I had said or done. And whatever he thought I’d said or done usually resembled reality about as closely as a pumpkin resembles a penguin. After a while I began to get defensive too, because of everything. Strange how that works. (Have I mentioned we still don’t have sex, despite my still asking?)
So we did a lot of fighting and arguing, usually about the same old things, with money being a regular feature. By now it's been a year since J was downsized the second time. And a year since I first started my new job. I’ve been giving J two grand — about 75% of my take-home pay — each month, by his request. It’s basically the same amount as the mortgage, although I know it’s divided out over several bills. I’m still not catching up all my own older bills, because I’ve been told that the first and foremost thing is to keep the mortgage and car payments paid and the utilities, phone, etc. paid or at least not too far behind. I’ve taken over a couple of fun things that we both use, like satellite radio, and paid them out of my own personal money. (I do get to keep some of my pay, enough to take care of a few things. Some of it still goes back to the house or to other shared expenses. Well, that’s life.) J still engages in retail therapy from time to time while insisting that we are broke. And things have been that way for the past ten months.
Yeah. Now, to be perfectly fair, I do understand that everyone needs their outlets, and as much as I need to have a bit of my paycheck for things I merely want rather than need, if only to maintain some level of joy or at least sanity while I’m busting my arse, so does J. If he wants to go to Kohl’s or Target and buy a new shirt or a gadget for the kitchen or the CD of a Broadway soundtrack, that’s fine by me. But what he doesn’t get to do is gripe about money at me every other moment when I’m a big part of why we still have a roof over our heads.
I mean, I didn’t bitch at him all the time about money when it was disproportionately on him. Now that I’m in a position to really and truly help shoulder the load in a genuinely meaningful way, and I’ve been doing so, shouldn’t I be entitled to some respect in return? Yet he still wants to bring up a year and a half ago when I wasn’t earning much and I wasn’t paying him enough and yes, admittedly I didn’t always give him what I said I would back then. Dammit, that’s a year and a half ago, and since then I’ve fixed that shit. He complains that he can’t trust me, but that’s BS.
Seriously. I mean, I know he’s drawn out most of his retirement money, and any other cushion he had. He still owned the house he grew up in, back in Ohio, and he sold it to a neighbor there last summer in a private deal because after his niece moved out of state there was no one living in it anymore. He gets $500 a month from that guy. I helped him clean out the house. That had to be heartbreaking for him; I could see it. He’s had to go back almost to square one, and I know that’s been a major blow to his self-esteem. How could it not be?
Only irresponsible people fail to pay their bills on time.
No, what happens is that Shit Happens, sometimes even to the most responsible people on the planet. Often through absolutely no effing fault of their own.
So now he’s had a bunch of interviews over the past several months, and he’s received a job offer. He starts next week. It’s a one-third pay cut from the job he lost a year ago, and half the pay of the one he lost before that. It’s half of what the mortgage and car payments were predicated upon. But it's twice what he’s been making in the Stupid Job, and it means that between the two of us we can actually manage things with a little room to spare, to build some cushion back up. To have a little fun, eventually. And eventually, maybe, some room for me to finally start getting myself out of the hole I wanted to start digging out of two years ago. It would be nice to have a decent credit rating again someday before I die, you know?
So naturally as soon as he had the offer in hand, he decided to tell me he doesn’t love me anymore and wants to end the relationship. Never mind that he won’t be making enough to keep everything paid singlehandedly. Oh, he has some crazy idea that he can get his mortgage negotiated down to something he can afford on his own if I move out. Yeah, they’re not going to do that when the mortgage is already two months in arrears. And sure, I’d keep one of the cars as long as I continue to pay the payments on it. But honest to God, here’s the thing: This area is effing EXPENSIVE to live in. He can’t afford this place on what he’ll be making. And I can’t afford to live in a safe neighborhood on what I make, even though it would be damn good money in a lot of other parts of the country. I don’t work in those other parts of the country — I work here. So I have to live here.
Between the two of us, we have a prayer financially. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, the light I’ve been hanging on waiting for over these past months. And despite everything, I still genuinely do love him and want to be with him. I mean, come on. We’re both in our fifties, for cryin’ out loud. We’re not children. We need a little maturity here.
He says, “Sure, we can stay in this house together and be roommates. I still like you, still even love you as a friend. But we can’t do it forever, and you’ll need to figure out where you can go.” Umm, we have one functioning bedroom and it’s going to be a few years at least before either of us is in a finanical position to live solo again. Here, I’ve even run the numbers (and I did and I showed him and despite our both being numbers people he just blew it off). And then he goes and acts like he’s still my best friend or something.
All of this long, drawn-out, probably TL;DR thing is by way of saying, if you’ve read all the way to this point: What’s your take on all this?
