When we were engaged we did a couples session with our pastor who married us. We discussed what we’d do with finances and agreed we would combine our accounts and use the joint account for bills, etc and then both have our own spending accounts for fun.

This has not happened. I was a full time employee at the time and made a decent amount of money. We got married, I got pregnant within a month. I worked up until the day my water broke and gave birth 1 month early after a very complicated pregnancy.

Postpartum was hard for me and my daughter had a lot of health issues, so I didn’t go back to work until she was 3 months old. His mom watched her and I worked 3 days a week. Things went awful with his family watching her and eventually we decided I would stop working because my husband made more than enough to support our family.

I have brought up adding me to the account once or twice a year since then (kid is 3 now) and am always met with a defensive, rude attitude. He doesn’t want to add me. I used to have to ask him for money to pay for groceries (still paid from my account he would just transfer the amount I needed), gas, or anything! He would occasionally randomly send me a bit of spending money. I am extremely responsible with money. I do not shop for clothes except once a year, I buy makeup twice a year. I like to take my kid out to the indoor park or museum every now and then and we enjoy going out and getting a coffee and cookie together once or twice a week. He is not concerned about my spending, it is something else. But when I ask him, he cannot give me an answer as to why he wants to keep our accounts separate. I feel like a teenager asking my dad for money when I need something. It’s degrading and disempowering. I’ve told him how it makes me feel, but it is always a fight and nothing happens.

A year ago, I got sick of it and started my own business. I’ve been hugely successful and I’ve used all the profits from my business to support the day to day life of me and my child. It’s been really good for me. But it still bothers me, if something ever happened to him I’d be screwed. I have a couple grand in my account while he has 40k. It also still bothers me how he feels about us combining accounts.

Yesterday he made a comment about money I spent out of my account that it was “my money” (aka his money) and it pissed me off. So we ended up fighting again about him not adding me to the account, his one defense being “lots of couples do this”. Like ok, that’s good for them but that’s not our situation and not what we agreed to before getting married. He said if I ran out of money I’d have to choose to stop doing the extra things we do….all while he is buying Nixon watches and getting new tattoos!? Wtf!!!

Ugh I’m just at a loss.