A reader writes:
I am not a man who writes letters. My wife is the one who reads your site, and she said if I was going to keep telling this story to every man at church who looked worried, I might as well write it down once. So here it is.
I run a small electrical business. Mostly house wiring, some commercial jobs when I can get them. Me, one full-time man and whoever I can hire when a big job comes in. We bought our house nine years ago, three bedrooms, not fancy, on a scheme outside Mandeville. The mortgage was in both our names but I always handled the payments. That was how my father did it and that was how I thought it should be. My wife works at a school office. Her salary went on food, the children’s things, the light bill. Mine went on the mortgage and the business. That was the arrangement and neither of us ever really talked about it.
Two years ago I did a big job for a developer. Wiring for eight townhouses. I bought a lot of the materials on my own account because he said the payment was coming. It came in pieces, then it stopped coming. I kept thinking next month. I paid my worker because he has children. I paid the supplier because I did not want my name spoiled. The mortgage was the thing I let slide, because the bank felt like a building, not a person, and I told myself I would catch up.
The first letter from the bank came and I read it in the van and put it in the glove compartment. Then the second one. By the time there were four of them I had stopped opening them properly. I would just look at the top to see the amount and put it in with the others. I was not sleeping. I was short with the children. My wife asked me more than once what was wrong and I said work was stressful, which was true, just not the whole truth.
What I was really afraid of was her face. I was supposed to be the one who handled it. If I told her, I would have to admit that I had failed at the one thing I was supposed to do. So I did what a lot of men do. I carried it by myself and I told myself that was being strong.
She found them the week before Christmas. She was looking for the van registration because I had asked her to renew it. She opened the glove compartment and there were seven letters from the bank, the last one talking about further action. I came home and she was sitting at the kitchen table with them spread out in a row. She did not shout. That was the worst part. She just asked me, very quietly, how long I was going to wait before I told her we might lose the house.
I would like to say I apologised straight away. I did not. I got defensive. I said it was my business to handle and I was handling it. She said, “This is not handling it,” and pointed at the letters, and went to bed. I sat in the living room until about three in the morning.
The next day was a Saturday. She made breakfast and put it in front of me and sat down across from me and said, “We are going to go through everything. All of it. The business account too.” And we did. It took most of the day. She had a notebook. She wrote down every figure. There were things in there I had not even added up for myself because I did not want to know.
On the Monday she took a morning off work and we went to the bank together. I had been dreading that meeting for months and it was nothing like I imagined. The officer was not unkind. She asked us questions, explained what the options might be, and told us plainly that coming in earlier would have given us more choices. That stung, because it was true. We ended up on an arrangement to pay back the arrears over time. It was tight. It still is, a bit.
My wife also made me call an attorney about the developer. We have not got all the money back and maybe we never will, but at least now it is being dealt with instead of sitting in my chest.
The hardest change was not the budget. It was the talking. We sit down now on the last Sunday of every month, after church, with the statements. Both accounts. Business and house. She reads them, I read them. At first I hated it. It felt like being checked on. I would get irritable, and she would say, “I am not your supervisor, I am your wife,” and I would have to sit with that. Over time it stopped feeling like an inspection and started feeling like two people carrying something together. Some months she notices things I would have missed. One month she stopped me from taking on a job that would have tied up money we did not have.
I have had to ask God to forgive me for a lot of pride. I thought protecting my family meant keeping the bad news away from them. What I was actually protecting was my own picture of myself. My pastor said something to me that I have not forgotten. He said the man who carries everything alone is not the head of the house, he is just the loneliest person in it.
We did not lose the house. I know people who did. I do not think I am cleverer than them. I think I had a wife who opened a glove compartment at the right time, and a God who was more patient with me than I deserved.
If you are reading this and there are letters somewhere you have not opened, open them. Then show them to the person you share your life with. It is the most frightening conversation and it is also the one that starts to fix things.
— Winston, Manchester
Editor’s note
Thank you, Winston, for your honesty. Two things stand out. The first is how often money trouble grows in the silence rather than in the numbers. Lenders, attorneys and advisers generally have more room to help when problems are raised early, and a spouse cannot help carry a burden they do not know exists. The second is the pattern you and your wife built afterwards: a regular, shared review of every account. It is simple and unglamorous, and it changes the atmosphere of a marriage. Scripture says “two are better than one” because “if they fall, one will lift up his companion” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). That applies to bank statements too. If you are behind on payments, please contact your lender and seek qualified advice as soon as you can.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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