i'm kinda sad now.

I found out my wife "stole" from me this month.

She doesnt get her regular paycheck from her new job, until another few weeks. I knew she was hard up for cash... saw some check-bounce notices from her bank in the mail. so I asked her if she needed any help.

She said NO, it was just a tough month, until her check comes in.
Now I found out, she wrote some checks against our joint account. Without telling me. Without asking. After turning down my offer for help.
Then she took the money behind my back.

When we were together, and had budgets, with a separate account for her to write checks against, she would "accidentally" use the wrong check book, when she needed more money than was in her budget. habitually. She never owned up to what she did as deliberate.

I guess I shouldnt be surprised now at her behaviour, then. But it still hurts me.

would it hurt her so much, to actually ask... and then maybe be just a little grateful that I am willing to help her?

rhetorical question, I suppose.
nor am I looking to be flooded with "OMG you still have a joint account CLOSE IT NOWWW!!!!!"

I'm just really sad right now.

I want to confront her about it. but it wont do any real good, and will only make negative emotions between us. She wont have to pull this junk any more when she has a regular (and reasonably large) check coming in soon on a monthly basis.
So I guess I wont bring it up, so that I wont give her any excuse for negative vibes against me to reject some positive things that I may ask for soon.

I'm just so sad at being lied to like this.
She even backdated two checks to a housekeeper over there, to pretend she didnt write them this month.
I'm not an idiot. I can count. I can see the order of the check numbers, and that they couldnt possibly have been used longer than a month ago.

sigh.

i'd really like the lies to stop.
and i'd like her to not view asking me for help, as a "cardinal sin" against herself.

I am sorry this happened to you. What proactive steps are you taking to prevent this from happening again? Can you recover from this loss?

L.

once my H "found it in his heart" to lie to me about the affair...it seems he was able to then lie to me about anything and everything

AND HE HAS!

it's as if he hates me so much that he can't tell me the truth about anything....like that would somehow be WRONG in his crazy mind

he lied about so many things but this will give you an idea of how bad it was

as unbelieveable as this sounds.....my small pair of scissors were missing from the bathroom and i asked him if he was using them (he had moved into the extra bedroom and i thought maybe they were in there-and of course i didn't want to offend or anger him by entering "his" space <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />)

he looked at me like I was crazy! like i had three heads or something! and said that he didn't take my scissors

the next day they "magically appeared" back in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom right were i wouldn't have missed them when I looked

WHY would anyone lie about something like that?

because they are CRAZY and have decided that we don't matter and aren't worthy if the truth! that's why!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Are you sure?

Some people with budgetary problems tend to spend more than they make on a regular basis. Give them more money? They spend more.

You painted this as a "regular" or "habitual" thing. I wouldn't rest too securely in her not doing it again just because she makes more. I would wager that her expenses will increase to keep up with her income and she'll need to "borrow" from you again.

Take Orchid's advise and make an effort to protect yourself from this in the future. Perhaps you should secure the checkbook (and extra check registers) so she doesn't have access to it without you knowing.

Blessings

Call the cops have her arrested. If you can't do that confront and get a hold of her OM and make him pay. Make her life real interesting. Or you could take an ad out in the paper what the heck nothing ventured nothing gained. Also cut off her cash flow immediately. If she asks tell her Nope YOU MY DEAR ARE SOL! Get it from OM!

Does this sound characteristic of an ADDICT..a DRUG FIEND...as we've been talking about on another thread??

So TYPICAL of a WS unfortunately....

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

It's not about the money. the money doesnt matter. If she had asked me for it, I would have gladly given it to her, and more.

I'm just hurt that she took it, rather than asking for it.

Techie:

I, along with many others here, empathize with your hurt.

I found it helpful to EXPECT such behavior from my WH.

What you are observing and experiencing is a WS...

So sad to say, this is no longer your wife.

She is gone from you right now...

yeah, I'm sure. She would dip into joint funds, while we were a "single income" family, and she was home full-time taking care of our infant children.

When she gets starts getting paid herself again, she will be getting a check almost as much as mine. So she wont be short on money.

YOU..."Hi. I see you took funds out of the joint account."

HER..."I thought you would not mind since you asked me if I need help before my check gets here."

YOU..."Yeah, I know, but you said no to my offer. This missing money came as a surprise. Please, no more moving funds without a discussion first. Deal?"

Thanks Mimi

Pep: yeah, there's ways I could handle it with less confrontation. but since she's a total "conflict avoider", and HATES ANY kind of confrontation.... it just aint worth it <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

No concesquences = No motivation to change behavior.

If you say nothing about this then she will take it that you "don't mind" her doing this and will take it as permission to continue doing this in the future.

I really liked the way Pep put it. I'd go with that. It MIGHT get her to tell you before she does it again.

In my opinion it is a mistake to be a conflict avoider(CA) just to appease the CA in her.

Pep gave an example of a non-threatening, non-attacking way to communicate with her on this subject.

Don't confuse Plan A with becomming so afraid to rock the boat that you lose her respect.

I am seeing a common theme on the board where men are forgetting that women don't respect men who they can play...call it CA or whatever you want.

And to bring up Ark's excellent thread, on the flip-side a man will not end up long term with a woman who doesn't make him want to be a better man.

Don't make anymore deposits to that account. Go get your own. Move all the $$ you can to a safe account.

L.

Got it.

No "Thou shalt not..." is allowed.

And you really want to recover THIS sort of marriage?

Deciding what IS and what IS NOT "worth it" IS your right. Choose "wisely" grasshopper before all that is left is barren wasteland because no one wanted to "confront" the problem.

Techie,

I’ve been following some of your posts and on this one I had to pull my Super Plank out to smack you about the head and shoulders for a real good flogging.

Let’s get something straight ok?

Eave said:
[color:"blue"]“once my H "found it in his heart" to lie to me about the affair...it seems he was able to then lie to me about anything and everything

AND HE HAS!”[/color]

This sums it all up pretty much.

Think about the shuffling of boundaries that your WS has been through to this point.

She has moved the boundary, incrementally, from one perversion of high moral acceptance to another until she was in a full blown EA/PA with an OM right?

What makes you for a second think that anything short of hitting the “redundantly protected” nuclear red button on moral obliteration would not allow her to justify doing anything short of that?

Would you expect anyone that was capable of robbing a bank to feel remorse for a misdemeanor?

I think I see you nodding your head in appreciative understanding.

What you need to do is establish your OWN PERSONAL BOUNDARIES.

These are no-compromise common sense lines in the sand that will trigger a response from you once they have been breached.

This will enable her to find herself suffering the full and complete consequence for her actions.

You keep plan A’ing while doing this but you DO NOT compromise yourself morally.

It may seem counter intuitive to you right now, but this is the only way to live your life and not be an enabling doormat.

So, eliminate her ability to kick you in the nuts by securing the power over yourself that SHOULD BE YOURS anyhow.

This means you establish your boundaries and do things like establish another checking account that she can not rip you off with.

Yes it is morally theft if you are looking for validation.

What she is/has been doing is taking something from you without your consent and her rationalization is that it is “both of yours” because her name is on the account also.

Legally she may be correct.

Take back the power over yourself. In the end you will feel better about yourself.

She will respect you more also.

Respectfully,

Just a note from my history.

I found it astonishingly easy to remove my (then) wife from our joint account. It took about 5 minutes at the bank. Her debit card was canceled. Her name was off the account. Meanwhile, I laid hold of all the checkbooks and made them physically secure.

After that, I gave her a monthly check to use for groceries and whatever we needed for the household.

Yes if felt somehow wrong to do it, but it helped me regain control of our finances.

I did that after she had signed up for thousands of dollars worth of dental work and plastic surgery. I also called the plastic surgeon and told his office that we were on our way to divorce and I was not going to pay for any proceedures she had done - and that she had limited financial resources. The dentist was an old friend of mine. I called him at home and put a stop to the $4000 (cosmetic) job she had scheduled with him.

-AD

_AD_:

I don't consider myself a feminist, but this is just so frustrating. A woman cannot "cut off" her husband this way. Banks would not allow a woman to change the account without her husband's approval. You and techie are lucky to be men and have this option available. I wish the laws were more fair.

That said, I agree that techie should consider separation of finances. Lots of happily married couples live this way, and it would remove that particular stress from their relationship. Techie has mentioned that it's not about the money- what bothers him is that he offered and she refused (then took the money anyway). If they just handle their own bills then the issue would be removed completely and they can focus on more important things.

Techie: congratulations on your pleasant interaction with your wife last night. I hope it means a step forward for you!

Saturn,

To clarify. It was I who originally opened the account (way back when I was in college) and added her onto it shortly before we were married. It was not because I was a man that I was able to remove her. It was because for that financial institution (and probably all of them), there is one name that is "primary" and is the "reporting SSN" for the account. Since I was the primary account-holder, I was able to remove a non-primary accountholder on my own initiative.

And... as I wrote, it was not something I did lightly nor comfortably. It simply needed to be done for my (and indeed our) financial security.

And... I was the only person who had ever made a deposit to that account.

The power to close the account or remove somebody is really not such a big deal in light of the fact that any joint-account member can withdraw all the money. Since I had my paycheck directly deposited there, had I not been able to remove her, I could have removed all the money and started taking my pay by check or by deposit to a different account. Had she then persisted in attempting to draw money from that account, it would have caused credit problems for both of us.

So, Saturn, if you want to be able to "cut off your husband this way", just make sure that you are the primary account holder on any joint accounts you have. And, in any event, you would be able to withdraw all the money if you found that it was neccesary in your situation.

And... I had forgotten until just now, that during our marriage at one point, she wrote a $3000 check on my personal account (forged my signature), to pay the long-distance phone bill for calls to OM while he lived in eastern europe.

-AD