Dear Jody
Q: My partner, "Sammy," and I have been together for three years, but just moved in together last February after our ceremony on Valentine's Day. We have been very happy with this decision.
Since our commitment ceremony, I've been trying to get Sammy to look at combining our money to pay our bills and plan for the future. We are both very committed to our relationship and feel that it is solid. Both of us want a long-term, monogamous relationship. Sammy has a professional job and so do I. We both make pretty good money. However, Sammy was very evasive about actually sitting down at a particular, planned time and looking at our financial picture, though agreed on occasions that it would be a good idea to do this.
Finally, I pinned him down, almost literally, to get this done. Before, he always figured a way not to get it to happen. So, I set up a time for us to supposedly do something else, and then I told him what my real mission was. It pissed him off, but I finally found out why he has been putting this off.
First let me tell you that Sammy collects these dolls. He has tons of them; it's his hobby, I'd guess you'd say. What he does is, he sends off pictures of woman that he wants a doll made out of, like maybe Miss Argentina or Miss Japan, or whoever. The doll maker makes a replica of that person. Sammy even specifies exactly what he wants them to be wearing and the hairdo. Once he gets his dolls, he puts their picture up on a Web site. Other people are into this too, and they even have contests as to who has the coolest replicas. It's quite an underworld of doll collections.
As you can imagine, getting these dolls made to specifications costs money. I knew that he collected these dolls, but frankly I had not given a lot of thought to the cost of doing this. I'll tell you that it is a very expensive hobby. It gives Sammy a lot of pleasure. But strangely, the pleasure is more in the Internet contests than the dolls themselves. He puts the real dolls in boxes and stores them away, so it's not like he has them on display to look at. I find this very strange, but whatever.
I want to make it clear that I'm not against what he does; to each their own is pretty much my way of looking at it. Also, Sammy has a right to spend money on his hobby – that is, in my mind, if he can afford it. But what I am really upset about is that he has collected them to the tune of $66,544.03. This doll debt is all on his credit card – unpaid. I guess that he has actually put even more money than that into his dolls, but that's just what he currently owes. He even ordered one that he had been working on for days the day after his big financial exposure.
Sammy doesn't own a savings account, retirement plan, a computer, a car, furniture, a camera, or a home. But he sure owns dolls stashed away in boxes in our storage unit. This is one of the reasons I wanted to combine things – beyond just having a car, savings account, retirement plan, furniture, and all other things that I mentioned. Sammy has dolls and a humongous debt because of them.
I'm still in shock! I have spent my life trying to be financially responsible and I find myself hooked up with a guy who has done the opposite. I love him and want to stay with him, but I feel like I just fell into a deep financial hole by just being with him. I've been depressed and feeling hopeless since I found this out. It's like my dreams for home, vacations and other good things in life have gone packed in boxes in the storage unit. Is there any hope?
My Life: Going to the Dolls
A: Only if Sammy is willing to turn things around and buy into your dreams, or at least some of them. You haven't mentioned what his reactions were to how all this affected you; that is the key, here. I have three possible scenarios:
If he wants to change things, then I'm sure you can come up with a plan to get the card paid off. This sounds like addictive behavior, so you and Sammy may need to approach this problem from that perspective, like taking away credit cards so he can't do it anymore, along with some mental health counseling.
If Sammy is not into changing things to gain some financial security, and be a financial partner with you, then you will need to go it alone, financially. The problem with this set up, for you, would be that you would be footing most of the bills, putting out money for vacations and having to come up with all the money to buy the home. You will have to be willing to do that in a manner that doesn't destroy your relationship – like not being upset with him because he doesn't carry his weight in the financial picture. That topic could supply a lifetime of fights.
The third alternative doesn't have Sammy in the picture. I hope that you both can avoid this one.
