Am I over reacting?

Posted by: Barbara
01/03/07 at 4:21 pm

Hello all, I do hope that you can advise me.

When I first met my husband he was serving in the British Army and I had my own house, job, car and all the things that being independent brings.  I gave up all of these to be able to join him in his postings abroad being Belgium and Saudi Arabia.  Now, 6 years on, he is retired from the MOD and we are back in the UK for good.

We jointly decided that we would run a B&B business together.  This turned out to be a combined Tea Room/B&B.  I was openly very concerned about the Tea Room side of the business because my husband had never cooked in his life!  Meaning that that side of the business was all down to me.  He convinced me that he would employ somebody to help in the kitchen.........this lasted a few weeks before he decided that the Tea Room did not make enough money to pay her wages.

I am now solely responsible for not only all the food prepared in the Tea Room but also the breakfasts for all the guests that stay!

Needless to say, I am not happy about it.  But that is not all!  The following is a list of my gripes............

Even though I have tried and tried to show him how to prepare the simplest of dishes from the menu he shows no interest and will only fumble through if I am not there....which is very rare.

He spends far too much time 'front of house' chatting to Tea Room customers or guests, obviously enjoying the social side of the business. 

He seems to always be there first to cash up in the evening and is always the one with his hand outstretched when guests are leaving after breakfast

He openly admits to wanting the accounting side of the business to himself, even though I am a part qualified accountant!

He is always the one to go to the bank and the account is in his name only.  He says that I have only got to ask him and he will give me cash or I can use the only card I have, the credit card.

When I became suspicious about his behaviour over his handling of business monies and looked into 'Microsoft Money' where the accounts are analysed, I was disgusted to discover that he had a category named 'Barbara's expenses' where he listed everything that I spent that he considered personal.  He has no such account for himself.  I challenged him over it and he has locked me out of the computer!

Naturally, I was horrified that he would do this as I am supposed to be the business partner and consider that I do the majority of the work in the business, I would say that it is approx.  60/40 and he has admitted that the business would fold if it wasn't for my efforts!

The rows have now become intolerable, we are sleeping separately and I have been seriously considering divorce.  The trouble is that I am now 57 years old and I don't know what the future holds for me.  My husband is sitting pretty with a very nice pension which he has made perfectly clear is his alone......is the fact that his pension paid into the current account the reason he wont let me share the account?  I wonder?

There have been various episodes in our 10 years of marriage where he has demonstrated his meanness towards me.  He has always been very generous with himself and never goes without.  I have never gone without either, but I've always had a very careful nature and I've never abused the fact that he has always had a high income (now a 25K pension), however, I've always had to ask him for anything that I may want.

I have now given him an ultimatum that he should either give me access to the account where the monies from the business is banked, or pay me the minimum wage to work in the business and I will take on all my personal expenses myself.

He has responded with the offer of an 'allowance'!  Personally, I find this quite patronising as children often receive 'allowances' don't they?

I could go on, but I feel that that is enough to begin with.

Please help soon as he is waiting for my response.

Thank you.

Barbara