Here's What I Think Caused My Divorce

My wife and I made a deal shortly after we met. She loved to manage money, so we put her in charge of that. We were then going to do the Dave Ramsey Program. We were going to get out of debt. We set a 5 year plan to get out of debt.

And I was serious about this. I told her I would give up golfing and collecting baseball cards. I said I'd live on $30 a month. It might even have been $20. That's all I figured I'd need. And, in five years when we were out of debt, I could start doing the things I enjoyed again. I would start golfing and collecting cards.

I am also a home boy. I love my house. I spend lots of time in the house. I wanted to decorate our house and make it look nice. I wanted to fix the yard and make out home look nice. But, so we could get out of debt, all of this was put on hold. So, we lived kind of in a dump.

So, the plan was to get out of debt, save money, and then restart our lives when we figured we could afford it.

But, that never happened. Five years turned into 15 and then 17.

And here's why. 

The next winter she said, "Do you want to go to Florida?"

I said, "Can we afford that and still get out of debt."

She said, "Yes!"

I said, "Then, okay! Let's go have fun."

Well, the same thing happened the next ten years. Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me three times, fool me four times, fool me five times, fool me ten times. I'm an idiot.

It got to the point if I said no to a vacation she gets offended. Like, I said yes so many times she just expected it.

So, the word no never got said. And here we are 15 years after staring the Dave Ramsey program. We've gone on vacation every year almost, and we have a huge debt. Now it's I can' golf and I can't collect cards. I can't decorate the house. It's no longer something I'm doing willingly anymore. Now I'm being forced to not do anything. And any time I went to the store to get something, she got mad at me. I was being selfish.

Like, something was going to come crashing down here. So, this is what I think created tension in our marriage. To her vacations were important. To me, you only go on vacations when you can afford them. But, she always got what she wanted. And, so, this lead to tensions.

Finally, when I called her on it, it lead to arguments. I was unhappy because I figured if we just quit going on vacation 2 years we could save up. We could have an emergency fund. We could stop living paycheck to paycheck.

But she didn't want to give up her vacations. Finally, in the past year, we went on a vacation. And there was constant pressure. She refused to talk to me. When I did talk to her, she argued with me no matter what was said. So, to keep the peace, I'd just keep my distance.

I always prided myself on the fact that we never fought about money. But, in the end, it was money that caused our divorce. I am he peacekeeper. To keep the peace, I kept letting her get her way. In the end, my peacekeeping destroyed the marriage.

So, how did my standard of living double after I got divorced.