My wife and I are both professionals in the south. I make in the low to mid 6 figure range. My wife homeschools our kids. She stopped working 8 years ago to homeschool. The problem is financial infidelity. We were doing ok with maxing out our retirement accounts and we had about 100K in the bank and paying off our school loans and the house- we have 7 years left on this. I got a raise and didn't tell my wife in 2017 and wanted to invest in Tesla. I got a $100K loan and invested $70,000 in Tesla - I also had a screenplay that I worked on and I got a lot of help from a lawyer to work on the screenplay. I sold all the Tesla stock to work on the screenplay project. I got more raises without mentioning this and got a $100,000 loan a year ago- this was to turn the screenplay into a graphic novel and then sell the graphic novel to great acclaim. - My wife found out about the loans and I told her what was going on. She is very hurt. I was wrong in not telling my wife about wanting to do the graphic novel. I would still like to get the graphic novel done. My wife would like to take the money to pay off her school loans which I recommended we do. What do you think?

Welcome to MB.

You should repay the loans and do nothing else until you have reached mutual, enthusiastic agreements on first, borrowing money at all, and second, how to spend it.

Suppose you tell this story all over again, putting in the shocking details that you minimised or left out?

How much money have you borrowed and spent over the years, including using your retirement accounts, without telling your wife?

And what's all this about lying to her about the business? Promising her one thing and then going to your business partners immediately to reverse the promise?

In response to your inquiry. I have ended all ties to project. It was only the two loans. Never touched retirement accounts or anything else.

With working marriage builders books and assignments it is clear POJA daily is a necessity.

That is true for all of us although practice makes it faster and easier. When I was first married the decision about where to go on our first holiday took three months of (enjoyable) conversations. Now we can generally make decisions together in three seconds. Once the trust is there it often takes little more than 'how would you feel if I' . . .

Two heads are always better than one.

I think you need to stop hiding the truth from your wife. This can destroy your family and the trust between you.