[Two Pronged] His family spends my money

Jeremy Baer, Margarita Holmes

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'I am willing to give his family what they need, as well as support them financially even we don't have any pesos left in our account,' goes this week's dilemma, where other issues come into play

Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in 3 continents, he has been training with Dr Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer, 

My husband and I have been married 6 years and have a 5-year-old daughter. We live together with his extended family, his older brother with his two children. 

We both have good jobs and are well compensated. His brother has no work, his father, an auto mechanic, does not have a stable income. 

My own family is like his. My father s the only one raising and supporting the family now. Since I got married, they now ask me for some financial support.  I am very close to my family and they can’t hide their financial struggle.

In my husband’s family, we are committed to supporting their basic needs buying food, paying electric and water bill monthly, giving allowances to his siblings because they are still studying, and supporting his brother’s two children. This has been going on for the last 4 years. I receive a much higher salary than my husband. 

I love my husband; I feel that he loves me too, despite a past betrayal on his part. I forgave him, saw his effort to correct his mistakes.

I am willing to give his family what they need, as well as support them financially even if we don’t have any pesos left in our account. I love them like my true family. I have neglected my biological family because I prioritize them.

We have a housing loan and are currently completing the requirements. We are  scheduled to move in 5 months.

Despite all the sacrifices I’ve done to help them, I am hurt that they still accuse me of squandering our salaries.

For example: To pursue my daughter’s devotion, we spent more to join a talent search.

I even don’t get mad when they ask my hubby P1000 in front of me, Even if it is to buy nonsense. But they also often ask my husband secretly and tell him not to tell me.  

I am so sick of being hurt.  I can make overlook things once or twice, but I cant take it anymore. I have cysts on both of my ovaries yet still hesitate to have check-ups because of the expenses.

I don’t want any commotion even I am so hurt. I can’t even tell my husband because he loves his family so much. I don’t want to ruin their intact life. I told my husband twice but it seems that he can’t do anything. Maybe that is because he loves his family more than me. 

Sometimes, I think that he is just using me because I am earning much more than him. 

I dont want to be apart from my daughter but she loves her father very much and keeps asking us not to fight and not to separate.

It would never come to my mind that we will separate, but I want to go away. I want to go away from them. Im hurt so much. 

I admit having suicidal ideas but when I think of my daughter, I want to live. If I live and separate from my husband and daughter, it would feel like being killed. It also kills me when I am thinking how my daughter suffers having a broken family. 

Thank you so much and hoping for your advice soonest.

Christine 

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Dear Christine,

Thank you for your email. 

From your account it seems that in common with many other families, your financially less fortunate relatives on both sides have come to see you as the main breadwinner and principal provider of all their wants. Of course this state of affairs requires both parties – the earner and the spenders – to agree, at least tacitly.

Of the earners, some may get joy and satisfaction from helping, others may find it burdensome but inescapable given utang na loob (a sense of obligation), familial ties, etc. while among the spenders there will be those who are happy to be paid and not have to work, and others who find it humiliating to be a mendicant. 

Whatever the facts in your case, you cannot ignore the fact that you have allowed yourself to buy into this state of affairs. You bear some of the responsibility for the situation in which you now find yourself and it is important for you to work out how you got into this position before you try to extricate yourself. 

Specifically, you are troubled by 4 issues: you think you are over-supporting your husband’s family to the detriment of your own, you are fed up with the accusations that you squander money which implicitly your dependents think would be better spent on them, and you believe your husband loves his family more than he loves you and is remaining with you for your money. Lastly there is your daughter and her future well-being.

While all these are eminently valid concerns, ask yourself how you allowed yourself to end up like this. Why have you neglected your own family’s needs? Why were you not more even-handed between the two families?

As for the accusations of squandering, you have always been in the perfect position to combat the ingratitude of those who rely on you. You could have spoken to them, had your husband speak to them and even ‘rewarded’ their accusations by, say, reducing their allowances.

Then there is the matter of your husband. Of the plus side, you love him, and you think he loves you, despite previous misbehavior. On the minus side, you think he loves his family and your money more than he loves you. 

From your story, there is scant evidence of his love, but maybe you are correct in your assessment that he loves you. Now is the time to put him to the test. Let him demonstrate his love by supporting you in reining in the demands of his family and helping you establish a more equitable distribution of the available funds. If he cannot and/or will not, then it is time to consider leaving him.

This brings us to your daughter. If your husband fails the test, your ultimate sanction is to remove yourself, your daughter and your money from the scene. You seem to think that if you separate from your husband, you have to abandon your daughter, but give no reason for this (children usually stay with their mother, particularly if they have a good job) other than she loves her father. 

Why not educate her a little in the realities of the family dynamics at play? Explain it to her in age appropriate language of course. And remember that as children are keen observers of adult interplay, she will rapidly understand that a broken family who separate can be a big improvement on a broken family that stays together. 

One possible narrative to employ would be to allude to one or more of the following: Her father has feet of clay, he is an adulterer, he values his own family above all others and especially to the detriment of your daughter’s maternal relatives and he is happy spending not his but your hard-earned money. 

Should however you decide to stay, or leave her with him, you will be encouraging her to believe that this is the way life should be lived. 

All the best,

JAF Baer 

Dear Christine:

Thank you very much for your letter. I don’t know if you are aware of this, but you wrote your letter calculated for us to feel sorry for you, dislike your in-laws who judge you despite your generosity, discount your husband as an ineffectual, possibly manipulative husband, and to empathize with your daughter who (like you) is a mere pawn in this never-ending saga of “Daughter-in-Law-Taken-Advantage-of-by-Greedy-in-Laws-who-Don’t-Know-a-Good-Thing-When-They-Have-it.” 

It is also calculated to tell us what Mr Baer and I will inevitably say: “Leave your husband and his grasping family and make a new life with your daughter. 

If all you want is permission from us (see here, originally designed for sex therapy but now more widely used), then our responses definitely qualify.

If you want limited information, the second step in the PLISSIT model, Mr Baer has shared some, even in (but not limited to) his first paragraph.  If you need specific suggestions, Mr Baer has not been found wanting in that department either. 

My feeling is that what you really need is the final step in the PLISSIT model, which is intensive therapy. In truth, family therapy would be ideal, but let us not insist on something that is unlikely and thus liable to become yet another excuse for your suffering (“I suggested we all go for family therapy, but they refused (so it stopped there).” Definitely you can suggest this, but if they refuse, then go on your own. 

Should you go to therapy, you will discuss many issues, and one I hope you can focus on is your sense of agency. This means not only recognizing that, while your in laws may not have needed anyone’s encouragement to behave as they did, they would not have gotten so far so quickly had you not been complicit in many ways.  

You may not have literally told them to raid your bank account whenever they wanted to, but you did not put an end to it soon after it started (or after you realized your own family’s needs were being ignored, or after you realized your health was being compromised, etc).  So many times you could have said “enough,” yet you chose not to. 

Why kaya, Christine?

This is what therapy will help you answer. In addition, therapy will help steer you in the direction of changing what you feel needs changing and away from, once again, berating yourself for not having done anything before, thus derailing you from action.  

It is time to unshackle yourself from the role of martyr wife, Christine, and embrace the new one: a Go-Getter, able to reach for what she feels is best.  

Good luck,

MG Holmes

Need advice from our Two Pronged duo? Email twopronged@rappler.com with subject heading TWO PRONGED. Unfortunately the volume of correspondence precludes a personal response.

When leaving a message on this page, please be sensitive to the fact that you are responding to a real person in the grip of a real-life dilemma, who wrote to Two Pronged asking for help, and may well view your comments here. Please consider especially how your words or the tone of your message could be perceived by someone in this situation, and be aware that comments which appear to be disruptive or disrespectful to the individual concerned will be removed.

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