- Date posted
- Yesterday
Supporting my Partner
I just started on my ROCD journey. My main issues is comparing my partner to other men, finding faults, and blaming myself constantly for being a bad partner because of these thoughts. He has been supportive through it all. Some brief explanation- he is very much so a “I don’t ask for help” kind of person. He has his own demons and I finally convinced him to talk to someone, even just a friend about them. One of his demons is he does not want to be a financial burden. He is not good with finances and I am. He has been managing his debt whilst trying to pay for a ring to propose to me. Yesterday he asked me for help, and I spiraled a bit. I’m terrified of financial insecurity and I also have previous trauma from letting family borrow 40k for a car. My immediate response was just “I’m scared”. His pride slammed the door on him and he backtracked immediately, apologizing and saying he would handle things. He threw up twice at work from anxiety and his own spiraling and was sent home. He thought I was going to break up with him. And to be honest, I did to for a little bit there. We met last night where I had him print all his statements from the last 3 months out and let me have full control over looking through it all. God I love this man, but he has a small spending addiction. There would be times he spent almost 600$ in just 15 days on eating out, energy drinks and… ai stories… I don’t even know about that one to be honest. I laid it out to him fully. He’s around 9k in “bad debt”. If he only pays minimums it takes 23 years. At the start of this conversation he really seemed to get it fully. But as we went on for hours through his statements, he just started laughing at his own purchases. I felt a bit put off but also I think he will fix his behaviors. We set a game plan in motion and I’ll be holding him accountable by sitting down and going through statements every month. Ring is on hold, because I cannot say yes anyways to someone who has not changed their behaviors. That’s a long explanations I suppose. Currently I feel good, I feel like there’s a plan and I feel like I’m keeping ROCD separate from this financial issue. But I also know that once something else inevitably pops up and I start to spiral, I’ll use the financial issues as another jab. I’m just not sure how to be a supportive partner when I also need support in some ways.