So I need to vent a bit (as if you can't already tell by the title )
My fiancé and I have been together for over 8 years now. He proposed when we were together around 3.5 years, so it’s a long engagement. I’m not in any hurry to get married, and neither is he. We’ll do it when the time is right I suppose (now that I’m losing weight, I’m more inclined to wait until I’m at goal and maintaining so that I can feel good about wedding dress shopping).
Well it was just his 37th birthday, and I realized that this past year and maybe a bit more, he seems really focused on recapturing his childhood. He’s a big Transformer’s nut, and loves to get all the collectible masterpiece toys, and look for the original toys he used to have as a kid, etc. I get that this is a passion for him, and I grudgingly accept that in every room of my apartment there are going to be robots strategically placed so that he will find them while doing some boring chore and get distracted.
As he gets more and more focused on this hobby, however, he’s losing touch with the things that are really important. Like being an adult, and being responsible. He made a small effort to lose weight which turned into excuse after excuse as he went back to his old eating habits. His truck needed to be inspected back in 2010 (it needs about 2k worth of work, including a new windshield and a bunch of engine stuff for it to pass), which means that if he ever wants to drive somewhere in the daytime he takes my car (with or without my permission). He keeps claiming that the website to update his registration keeps getting an internal server error, so again he continues to take my car for things because he doesn’t want to get a ticket for out of date registration (which in turn will also then be another ticket for the out of date inspection). He only cleans or does any chores when it benefits him (like if he wants to make food for himself, he’ll clean whatever mess is in his way), but then leaves the mess he creates for me to clean up. He obligingly will offer me some of whatever he’s cooked, knowing that I’ll turn it down because it’s not something I would eat on my meal plan (and I feel angry when he does this….why can’t he cook a meal that I can actually eat? Why am I the only one who can seem to cook on the healthy end of the spectrum?).
When I calculated the cost of what he spent on his hobby this year alone, he could have not only paid for his truck to be fixed, but he could have paid for our annual Las Vegas vacation, which we didn’t go on this year because he said “we should save for the wedding”. I have to remind him numerous times to pay the bills he is responsible for, but if I ask him when the release of the next masterpiece collectible will come out, he can tell me the date, the toy, and all the little special details that justify the cost of it being over $100.
I love that he is still a big kid, I don’t want that to change. I love that he is a gamer, I love that he is soft-hearted, I love that he is caring…but I don’t want to be his mother. I want him to accept the responsibilities of being an adult, I want him to understand that sometimes we have to do the things we don’t like before we can do the things we do. I want him to move past the mentality of “I can buy whatever I want, it’s my money!”, and realize that the money he is spending needs to go to the necessary responsibilities before it can be spent frivolously. I don’t want him to balk at spending $30 on chicken breast, frozen veggies and rice that will feed us for a week, and yet have no problem dropping $60 on 3 Delmonico steaks and a few cans of sliced potatoes that he can fry in a pan of butter which will feed him for one day (quite literally he will eat 2 steaks during the day, and take the third for lunch on the night shift).
I appreciate you gals and guys letting me vent! It feels better to have typed this out and gotten it off my chest. I’m in this odd middle ground between happy and unhappy, and I’m trying to do what I can to get the scale back towards the happier side of things. I know I need to talk to him about these feelings I have…it won’t be a fun conversation, that’s for sure. I’m wondering if this is some sort of mid-life crisis type of situation? I honestly don’t see him growing out of it, though…at least I should be happy he isn’t looking at buying some Knight Rider replica for a new car instead of something practical. At least, I sure hope he isn’t looking for a Knight Rider replica…ugh /facepalm