GAH! Love the baited statements
 

As a refresher to myself and to those who deal with the baited statements, I thought I would share here 2 things my AH wrote in an email that I KNOW he wanted a response from:

FYI: we are going back and forth discussing finances and he wants to take over some of the bills, not because I do a crappy job, but because he wants to start being more involved.

Anyway, here are two things he wrote in the past 2 emails:

"In an attempt to reclaim a shred of my manhood, I would like to start taking over some of the bills....."

"As you know, anything with my name on it is going to impact my credit. I'm sure YOU have steadily built your credit over the years and blah blah...."

So, I believe that both those statements were meant to get me to react in some way. I no longer react. I also don't agree with this whole financial thing he's trying but I'm willing to turn a few bills over to him since these are usually more set in their amounts each month.

He also stated that he wants to start writing checks for things since he can float the checks! Ummm, what I want to point out is that you can set up your online bill pay for whatever day you want in most cases. Why pay for a check and a stamp when you can just pay the bill electronically or push the payment back if necessary (without penalties of course). I don't understand the whole 'floating check' thing!? If I want the mortgage payment to come out on the 5th, instead of the 1st, I just change it online.......

Too bad he doesn't speak the same language as me. You know, the one called common sense and reality? Sorry, that was mean......you all know what I'm getting at here.

So, let's talk about how the addicts/alcoholics bait us with statements and how we can best handle these things moving forward? At some point I'm going to have to talk to AH about this stuff as we move forward. There is no compromise or talking sense to him, though, so what to do?

For God's sake don't let him take over anything important, like mortgage or car insurance!!! Electrical bill and such, doesn't matter if those are a few days late.

And that passive-aggressive horse manure makes me stabby. Go cry me a river, you sad, sad man.

Check kiting is a form of check fraud, involving taking advantage of the float to make use of non-existent funds in a checking or other bank account. In this way, instead of being used as a negotiable instrument, checks are misused as a form of unauthorized credit.

You are absolutely correct Liz, in this day and age you can pay your bills online with a preselected date.

not sure what he is thinking here.

but i would not want my name and credit attached to this type of transaction.

My loved one was shocked when it was not just taking over the bill but setting it up to be in his name etc. When he expressed interest about this (with similar wording) I allowed him to choose what he wanted to take over after giving him "choices" I was comfortable with and I said he was free to once he got all the records etc changed.....then he could let me know.

I did this with chores (finally) too. I don't know if it helped him, but it was a few less things for me to worry about.

Sounds reasonable.

Not sure what "GAH " means, but if he is sober now, a bit of responsibility and reality is not a bad thing.

Might even help you let go of trying to be controlling of everything.

This is what it means, hawks... :gaah

:gaah The language of victimhood, "I want this because you took it away from meeeeeee."

He wants to build his credit while kiting checks...OMG...that's just...something.....

I would be very careful with this, as someone said, it's an actual crime to kite checks.

As far as not falling into the trap of his manipulative words, good for you! My X says crap like that too sometimes, just rise above it, it's not worth it!

Ugh.... reclaim a shred of my manhood... as if you were the one to take it away from him. Nope. Sorry. He did that to himself. He's still playing the victim, when in fact he has victimized you.

Im sorry you are going through this. it stinks.

He's not sober, Hawks. The reason we are in a financial pinch these days is because he wasted too much time playing tennis in the AM, spending time at the country club in the afternoon, and spending his work trips on a binge drinking trip for days on end.

I should have seen the financial derailment a while ago, but I buried my head in the sand on this one. I knew he wasn't putting in 100% on the job. He is in sales and we lived off his commission and now his commissions have dried up and we are down to using savings to keep up the lifestyle. It's time for me to re-evaluate the finances and see what I am willing to turn over to him for control.

He now has revealed that he wants me to inform him of my spending so that he can better manage the accounts. I've been managing the finances for 6 years now and all of a sudden he wants to jump in and take over everything???? He claims it's not manipulation, who knows....

As for the floating checks.....that is weird because he's always been extremely paranoid about his credit and about finances and he doesn't ever miss a payment. He would freak out on me about $5 in interest charges because $5 is a lot of money. I'm not sure what he means by floating checks but I think he just wants to time things better. I don't think he understands that we are just having to dig into savings and that's just the way it's been for the past 9 months. He slacked off at work, I spent too much (my irresponsibility), and now we have to tighten our belts. It's as simple as that.

Liz, I'm sorry, but I seem to have lost the thread of what's going on with the two of you. I was under the impression you were working toward a divorce? Why are you returning control of the finances back to him?

I'm sorry if I just lost track, but I'm a little confused.

In the earlier days I felt like I had to defend myself & explains things when comments like that came in.
Now I have enough control to ignore the personal remarks & respond with calm factual replies not including any personal remarks at all.
So I guess what I'm saying is they never change but we can take our power back.

I do my banking online, but do not set up automatic payments. I know some people that probably do not have any idea how to pay online, much less set them up. Maybe he is more comfortable with physical payments?

We are, but he seems to think that getting control of our current situation will help regain his 'lost self' and prepare him for carrying two households. He doesn't HEAR me when I tell him that I will be taking over MY car payments. He appears to hear me but a week later he's telling me he wants to pay off my car and doesn't want to have that debt on OUR balance sheet. His words to me at one point were, "I dragged you all the way out here. I made you leave your family. The least I could do is take care of you for a few more years."

He says that since he will have to pay alimony and child support that he needs to better understand our financial situation. He wants to be prepared and wants to find out just how much tennis, tutoring, gas, etc are running us these days.

Honestly, I'm just going along with it. There is no talking sense to him. He doesn't hear me. Maybe, just maybe, he will hear me when the divorce papers land on his desk. I don't even engage unless I absolutely must respond because I feel like he lives in a very different reality than I do. He also claims that by taking over the finances, he is helping me and relieving me of such an awful burden which must have been so difficult for me all these years. I never complained, not once, about paying the bills. The reason I took over the bills years ago was because of his whining and stress related to the bills, in general. And, now he wants it back.....

I don't trust him. I don't believe this "regaining my lost self" crap. I don't know what is REALLY in it for him, but something is. Just a feeling, from seeing a lot of connivers in my time (not just people I've been involved with--remember, I prosecuted an awful lot of crooks for things like fraud, too). He's got something up his sleeve. Call it a hunch, but this smells.

I'd feel better about it if you had someone come in and audit your finances before he gets his grubby paws on them. Get a snapshot of how things are, right now, before he does whatever it is he plans to do.

He's not interested in the least in help you. He only wants to control you. The way to do that is financially. That has been the sticky point all along. When are these divorce papers supposed to land on his desk?

Oh this is actually kind of similar to my stuff and I dealt with similar stuff when my husband was drinking but the squabbles over the finances were last year when the drinking was REALLY heavily. It was also accompanied by talk of me stealing his "man card" which to be fair, I wasn't treating him like man of the house/husband/father, which of course was hard to do when I was doing all of the work of a husband and wife and mom and dad, victim crap on both sides…I digress.

My experience with this was that my husband never seriously wanted to take anything over, he was feeling hurt, out of control and emasculated. How better to hurt me than to take away some of "MY" things, finances would be one of them, he could have taken over the laundry instead or the dishes or grocery shopping but noooooo finances are much more easy to burn me with and hell, it sure does seem easy until you actually have to do it and well. I started telling him that he could take over a bill or two AFTER we sat down and talked about budgets and how we would start to hold one another accountable and stay within our allotted budgeted amounts. In fact, I thought it would be best that we get together and cut up all of our debit and credit cards and we'd both just stick to a modest cash budget from now on. It really would be the easiest way for both of us to be involved and stay on top of things and then we'd get together once a week to talk about how he was doing with the bills and where we were at with our budget.

He never asked again after that. He also doesn't say jack to me about our finances anymore.

Post Script note: Since he's been sober he has again told me that he would like to contribute more around the house because it makes him feel like a member of our family, rather than a guest. He's in charge of trash and cleaning the bathrooms now when he's here…and I don't critique how he does either of those tasks. :)

The one thing I do know for certain, ( from my own personal experience) active alcoholics are not cut out to be in charge of the finances, yikes!

I too, see this as a form of control, the one who controls the purse string, pretty much has control.

In saleman language, I see a" bait and switch" tactic on the horizon.

Protect YOU first.

If he really wants to help and improve his credit at the same time, let him open a credit card account with a monthly limit in the amount he is willing to spend - and give you the card. He pays the bill, you control what it covers without being exposed to him holding you hostage by not paying a bill for something you depend on.

Desiring more responsibility/credit (privilege)+premeditated illegal act to achieve said desire=DEAL breaker/no go! 'Nough said!