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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Choice_Evidence1983 on 2024-11-16 05:00:06+00:00.

I am NOT OOP. OOP is u/atlaslady

My boyfriend’s [26M] optimism and immaturity almost destroyed me [25F] financially. I cut him off and now he feels abandoned. Is there any hope he’ll grow up or am I being the immature optimist now?

Trigger Warnings: job loss, emotional abuse and manipulation, financial fraud/exploitation

Original Post (unddit): August 11, 2016

My boyfriend and I started dating in July of 2014. He is the biggest optimist in the world and lived a pretty cushy life as the only child of divorced parents. We both lived separately and had jobs that covered all our bills and then some; he bought an expensive sports car, gaming computer, and purebred dog (important later). He was in school, while I had graduated a year before and started work at my first big kid job. Life was great, and the first six months were some of the happiest times of my life.

The first week of January 2015, he was wrongfully terminated from his job - a new supervisor was on the warpath to replace everyone on BF’s shift with his friends and waited until the new year, after the holiday rush was over, to start cleaning house. Government sided with BF during the unemployment claim, and BF started receiving benefits. He decided to focus on finishing school instead of looking for more work.

This where the cracks started. He was supposed to graduate that May, but he failed a class and couldn’t, so he had to go to school in the summer. In June, his savings ran out and he could either afford his car payment and insurance or rent. His lease was up at the end of July, so I agreed to pay his rent and he could move in with me in July and finish school.

He found out weeks before he was supposed to graduate that he needed one particular elective to get out. He had to go to school that fall, too. I demanded he get a job to help with expenses, as I wasn’t planning on having to support him for so long. A month or two, fine. Six months? No.

He got a job as an insurance agent for an extremely reputable company at the end of July. Turns out this job is commission-based… being the optimist he is, the manager’s talk of being able to make unlimited amounts of money drew him in. I paid for him to take the certification tests he needed to work, and he started trying to build a client base selling structured financial products. He made and makes nothing. He’ll have a $700 payday for a small close, then nothing for months. He’s out there busting his ass every day, but building a financial client base from scratch without any family privilege or existing networks is ridiculously hard.

In Sept 2015, we downsized from my fancy downtown apartment to a POS house on the edge of the ghetto. I paid the security deposit and double rent at both places for a month as that’s how the lease overlaps worked out, totalling about $3500. By November, my savings was almost gone and I had to liquidate shares of my family trust (on which I took a penalty, as my grandfather did not want us to access it before age 25) to get us by. By Dec, I had $300 in savings and nothing left in my family trust. I had spent about $17k since July supporting us, his job (he needed money to take clients out for lunch and coffee), his dog, and my dog.

Since September, we had been having recurring fights about money and chores. I expected him to pick up 90% of the housework as his way of paying me back. He never shaped up on either front. He just kept repeating to me the same things that his manager said to him to draw him in: “It’ll get better. Everyone struggles at first. If you hang on, you’ll make it. Once I make it, we’ll be rolling in it.” Every time we had a fight. Every. Time.

Two weeks before Christmas, we had this fight again and I demanded he do something other than feed me bullshit inspirational quotes. I left the house in a rage and drove to buy cigarettes. I was thinking of who I should text and ask to crash for the night when I got angry. Fuck no, I’m not crashing on someone’s couch while he lives on the house I pay for, sleeps in the bed I pay for, and eats the food I pay for. I returned home and gave him 10 days to pack his shit and get out. He moved into his Dad’s house, and I spent Christmas morning chilling with my dog and returning his presents online.

We started hanging out again in January of this year, and things seemed to be going well for his business, enough for him to consider getting an apartment. I told him he could move back in and if we couldn’t split expenses evenly at first, he had to get serious about doing chores and sticking to my budget. It was fine at first, but by April, he wasn’t doing any chores and I was back to paying 100% of his and his dog’s living expenses. He also was about to not meet quota for that quarter and asked to me to sign up for a policy and then reverse it after quarter-end so I’d be reimbursed. I lost my shit on him. I work in capital markets, I can’t afford to commit financial fraud for him. I told him I’ve sacrificed enough for him, he can’t come for my integrity too. (Bonus: the friend who he did rope into doing the reversed policy still hasn’t been reimbursed, 5 months later.)

We had another blowout fight, and he majorly stepped up on the chores front, which has sustained to this day. Money was still touch and go - when he didn’t get paid, his fancy car ate it up every month. He landed a big case in May, and paid his half rent in June for the first time, and offered to pay all of July, which he did. By the second week of July, he was completely broke again, and told me last minute he couldn’t pay August rent. I had to scramble to get the cash needed in one account to send the check. He couldn’t afford to pay for his half of groceries like he promised either, so that was a scramble too.

I’m so sick of this. I work an incredible job for my age, paid off all my college debt 8 months after graduation, and own my car, yet I’m living paycheck to paycheck supporting him. There’s always something, even if it’s a legitimate something, that keeps him from paying his half. It’s been a fucking year and there hasn’t even been marginal improvement. His job is meant for filthy rich trust fund kids who can afford to be this broke while they build their client base. I admire his optimism but he’s not suffering for listening to it… I am.

I have enabled him far too long and after the most recent fight about money, I realized he is too immature to be trying his hand at this job. He complains when he meets with clients that spend their money on cars and trips and toys instead of buying a policy from him, when he blew his money on a car and a gaming PC when he had a steady-paying job. He has no problem having regular, circular fights with me yet won’t ask his parents for help because “that would be awkward and I don’t want to lose [his] father’s respect”. He’s hurt that I don’t trust his promises when he’s barely kept any of them, from his graduation date to his bills to chores. He is too immature to see the larger picture, and because I’ve been enabling him to a fault, he has never needed to because the consequences don’t fall on him. They fall on me.

Last night, I told him I’m not renewing the lease and am moving out by myself. He followed me around the house pleading with me and asking me questions… “How do you feel about me? What about us? Where will I go? What will it take for you to let me come with you?” Questions I have answered every. single. fight. Questions HE needs to answer because it’s his fucking life. I refused to answer them again and went to bed. He stood in the doorway and said that stupid Marilyn Monroe quote about not deserving people at their best if you can’t handle them at your worst. I said he was totally allowed to feel that way and walk. He shut himself in the computer room and slept on the couch that night.

I can’t believe he feels like I’m abandoning him after all I’ve done. He doesn’t understand how hurtful it is when he tries to pay his half of rent and bills by spouting off platitudes about struggle and success. It makes me feel so fucking disrespected and I have told him this every fight. And despite having this fight regularly, it’s like he’s not even listening to me. Why would he? I haven’t made myself worthy of respect by being his financial doormat and not sticking to my boundaries. At this point, I feel he is using me as a safety net. He knows I won’t let him or his dog starve so he doesn’t make himself care about coming up with the money for food.

He is deluded by his optimism so much so that he breaks every optimistic promise he makes to me. He talks about how he thinks a client will buy an expensive plan, but then they get the cheap one and now he can’t pay rent. He talks about how he met loads of people at a networking event, but only 3 call him back and he needs money to take them out. He says he’s set to get 40% enrollment on a corporate contract, but only gets 11% so he can’t pay for groceries this week. I used to think he was lying to me, but now I see he’s lying to himself. He hasn’t matured at all and grounded his expectations in reality because I’ve been standing in the way of it. Because of this, I don’t trust him to give me a realistic end date to supporting him, because he’ll prob…

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