I am in my second marriage. My husband is a wonderful man. I am not sure how to handle what I am about to explain. In the first year of our marriage I have been laid off and had a baby. My hubby asked me to stay laid off to take care of our childrem. I complied. My unemployment ran out. I asked him to begin saving money and getting small things done to my car incase anything happens. I even wrote him a budget. He wouldn't take any of my suggestions. He said, "we don't have enough money." Then his car breaks down, the frame on the car was bent. No need in fixing that! Now he is using my car. Now my car has been breaking down, no money to fix it. We need to move, no money to do that. I asked him last year to put away money so we could move. He did not. I even suggested that we move before our new baby arrive (this was last year). He said no because he was tired of moving. After the baby was born he realized that we should have moved. He has waited until the last minute to do things, and it has hurt us financially to the point where we (me and my husband) were not eating enough so that the children could have food. What is going on here? He constantly wants sex too, but with all the stress what wife would want to do anything. The last straw for me is that he wanted to visit his brother. His brother molested him as a youngster and he didn't tell anyone about it and refuses to tell his family now. I don't want my children around this creep. He believes he has changed, well, the guy has been in jail off and on for various reason. Would you want your children around anybody like that, family or not? As a wife I feel like I should be able to trust my husband to take care of certain things especially since I am not working. I take care of the house, the children, and am homeschooling, and do a lot of freelance work from home. Sometimes I feel like this is my fault, maybe I am not supportive enough. Sometimes I feel like I let the small things bother me, but I have never been the type of person to not have things in place. I have told him what I needed, still he doesn't do it. I ask for him, I voice my opinions. What do you do when you do all the right things and it still doesn't work? Anyone else going through this? If you can offer some advice please help.

Hi MM, welcome to Marriage Builders. These are not small things at all. As you have learned the hard way, all of these unresolved issues are causing great damage to your marriage.

Every marriage has conflicts every day, but what differentiates a happy marriage from a bad marriage is the ability to resolve those conflicts. Since the conflicts will never go away, the solution is to learn the skills to negotiate decisions in a way that complements your marriage.

The solution is to adopt Dr Harley's policy of joint agreement, which states that: "Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse." The Policy of Joint Agreement
Of course, to achieve this, you have to learn to negotiate, which is explained here: Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation

The article below gives you a plan to resolve conflicts:

How to Create Your Own Plan to Resolve Conflicts and Restore Love to Your Marriage

It seems like we been discussing this to no end. I am not a nagger. He always asks me to remind him of things because he forgets a lot. I do but it goes in one ear and out the other. I reminded him ever month for a year to fix my car. I have even asked him to get a joint account with me for two years and he always promises to do it. When I remind him he says he doesn't have time. This behavior could end a marriage.

People tend to follow through on agreements they are enthusiastic ABOUT. The fact that he doesn't follow through indicates he is in the habit of just agreeing to things he doesn't want to do in order to keep the peace. THAT is part of the problem. If he would agree to stop doing that, and agree to be radically honest about your proposals, you would have a chance to resolve the problems to both your satisfaction.

I would read the articles I posted above and introduce him to a new way of resolving conflicts. The first step is to learn the program so you can explain it to him.

Wow! It's weird that he would not be interested or enthusiastic about getting the car fixed or saving money to move. These are things people do in life. Now that you pointed out that he is not interested he is more interested in playing music. Maybe I need to do the budget and saving on my own but I need access to the money to do that. Oh boy! We will see how long this goes.

And maybe that is the answer but the point is that you both should be enthusiastic about it. In my marriage, my H does the saving and bill paying. His music would also be subject to the POJA.

I have offered to it in the past however he said he had it all under control. He has come to me and asked for a budget or a way to remember things. I guess my method of sticky notes and calander reminders were not enough. I left these parts out but. I will try to find out what he likes to do other than music.

When using the POJA, you would continue to negotiate until you found solutions that suited you both. You don't just stop when one bad idea is fielded. You keep brainstorming until a suitable decision is found.