Skip Navigation

AITA for giving my husband an ultimatum after he refuses to help with bills?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/wtf_life_ on 2023-08-05 07:42:23.


My husband and I have been married for 10 years, together for 20. I’ve always been more motivated than him and finished my bachelors whilst he just dropped out of school and floundered a bit. I was young and dumb and begged him to finish school but never considered breaking up with him over it. He has had a few jobs, but I’ve been working on my actual career this whole time and am now in a great place financially.

It’s noteworthy that I bought my house before we got married (and that’s when he proposed). To be honest, he didn’t contribute anything financially since we got married but I can’t even remember what the excuse was back then. He got fired from his last big job a few years ago and went part time at a different company but was at least paying utilities (after we started seeing a therapist who put him in his place a bit). After he started at his new job, it came out that he had been cheating on me for YEARS and part of that was how emasculated I made him feel, etc.

We went to a new therapist who specializes in infidelity and were trying to move past it for the sake of our child. He did do a lot of work on himself and made substantial changes on his behavior at that point, but for other reasons I just wasn’t feeling happy and asked if we could separate. He was never financially able to move out on his own so we just separated within the house and did the best we could. During this time, he was trying to win me back and was so sweet and caring that after a year of us being separated, I took him back. Part of our agreement was that he would pay me a certain amount in “rent” to help out and make me feel less burdened. After that, I never once saw even a penny toward the amount he told me. It’s been excuse after excuse about how he cut back his hours to spend more time with us(but honestly he spends most of his time sleeping or playing video games) and I’m just feeling lost again. Every time I bring this up, he shuts down and won’t speak to me so the house becomes tense and I feel our child suffers.

He thinks I’m being a jerk for talking divorce again but I just feel that I’m being taken advantage of in the worst way. It’s also not like he’s staying home and cleaning or fixing up the house but nothing I say seems to help. Is this a hopeless situation?

0