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Over the past few days I have noticed a lot of discussion in the comments about money, namely some assclown/Mr Unavailable having borrowed money from you and now that the relationship is over and you want him out of your life, you want his money and you want it back now.

I will cut straight to the chase though and be blunt:

If you do not have a committed relationship with a healthy foundation, you don’t lend a man money. In fact, if you have a penchant for loving inappropriate men and fannying away your time and energy on poor relationships, romance and finance should not enter the equation. Ever.

Of course as an ex assclown and Mr Unavailable lover I have my own experience of money foolishness and more than eight years on, I am still over $2k dollars out of pocket. Did I want the money back? Of course I frickin’ did and Lord knows I tried to get it back initially but eventually a harsh reality kicked in that said that I wasn’t going to see that money again and that pursuing it was futile. It’s not like I didn’t need the money but there came a point when I had to get real and let go because the frustration consumed me and it didn’t change the fact that not only wasn’t I getting it back, but that I had been reckless and irresponsible with my money and had known it was a bad idea at the time. He is and was an assclown but I was a fool with money and that was the last time that I placed myself in that situation.

My biggest problem with women lending men money is, whilst I agree that often these men are chumps, no matter how wonderfully you perceive the fact that you lent him money, you invariably had ulterior motives or at the least great expectations of what you lending him this money meant; motives and expectations that are rarely communicated to the man in question.

Here are the most common scenarios:

You lend him in money because you believe, assume, and expect that you lending him that money and him accepting means that you will now be in a committed, serious relationship with each other.

If you are not in a committed and serious relationship that you BOTH recognise that you are in and are not afraid to state this, why the hell are you lending him money?

You offer to lend him money even though you don’t actually have a relationship with him or if there is anything, it’s fragile. You think you’re being helpful and that he should snap off your arm for it, but the expectation is that if you give him the money and he accepts it, a relationship will now exist, or if it’s fragile it will go to stable.

This is where I shout ‘Have you lost your damn mind? How desperate are you prepared to be?’ You are BUYING your man and putting the noose of unfounded expectation around his neck…and your own.

You lend him money even though you don’t know where you stand and there is possibly the existence of another woman or women. In competing to slide into pole position and ‘win’ him, the expectation is that if he takes the money, you will now be #1.

Oh HEEEEELLLLLLL NO! You are BUYING your way to the top. What do you intend to do? Keep throwing money at the problem? What will you do when you invariably discover that you’re not the only women he’s either borrowing money from or already owes money to and you’re all like his sexual creditors looking for your chunk of change?

You lend him money because you think it will allow you to have more control over the situation, after all, surely someone who borrows money would realise not only how generous and great girlfriend material you are, but would quit any form of bad behaviour because it would show their ingratitude. As a justification for believing this, you’ll tell yourself if someone did the same for you, you would demonstrate how grateful you were and recognise the love.

Control is an issue that many women do not realise is a problem of theirs, but trust me, it is. We control with doing things and expecting to be rewarded back with exactly the type of relationship we want, from men who are incapable of giving it to us. When we have money, we tag ourselves as generous and shower him with it because we assume that he will be ‘grateful’ and come to heel, instead of him thinking that we’re a complete controlling pushover to be taken advantage of.

There are appropriate and inappropriate things to do in relationships and what you do should be governed not by the type of relationship you think you’re in or would like to be in, but the one you’re actually in.

Your decision to lend any man money must be evidence based and whilst I don’t want you to pretend to be a bank, if you care that much about the money in the after event, you’d better start learning to care about where you spread your finance before you part with the money.

If you were a bank, just like your emotional investing, you’d be described as lender that uses poor criteria for determining whether the loan is appropriate and viable.

No matter how nice, kind, financially savvy and benevolent you believe yourself to be, you are being a fool with your money and that’s not his fault, it’s yours.

You don’t lend money to a man who barely shows up for the relationship.

You don’t lend money to a man who is not actually yours.

You don’t lend money to a man who is unsure about whether he wants to be in a relationship with you.

You don’t lend money to a man where there is ambiguity about what the status of the relationship is because if you don’t know where you stand, you shouldn’t be making the offer of money.

You don’t pretend that you don’t have expectations of what this money means to you because it is foolhardy to pretend that you are not expecting a reciprocal reward. Otherwise, why not go to a poor area and throw your money up in the air and see who catches it? You’d be better off.

You don’t disguise your desire to get things under control by putting your money down on the table.

You don’t lend money to him and then keep your expectations to yourself.

If he was treating you like shit before he lent you money, why should this change after he has taken it?

And don’t dodge the bullet on this and say that people are seeing a negative side to your behaviour. It’s not because I or anyone else is seeing something bad about a wonderful deed – it’s because there has to be a negative side to your behaviour because you didn’t recognise how inappropriate it was to not only emotionally invest into a poor relationship situation, but to then lend or offer money as well.

There has to be a place where you draw the line and your self-respect and some level of relationship smarts kick into place, because this is another example of doing and doing and doing to win over a man who doesn’t deserve it, only there are financial consequences and the result is that at the least you will be left emotionally out of pocket by these men anyway, but in the worst case scenario, you’ll have a financial tie between you both that may not be severed.

When you lend money, the terms must be clear, explicit, and communicated and this is where the silence likely occurred between you both because like many things about being in poor relationships, it’s likely you’ll have been afraid to broach the subject of the terms.

However, if you’re afraid to ask when and how you will get your money back, you shouldn’t be lending it.

What you assume is not what he assumes and if he already lacks integrity in other areas, why is he suddenly going to be a man of integrity with your money? Much like every other area of your relationship, you cannot project what you think and feel on him because you are not one and the same. Just because you believe you would be grateful, or believe you would pay it back in regular instalments, or believe that you would recognise how this person loved you, or believe that you do your damndest to return the money all in one go after the relationship ended, doesn’t mean that he shares the same views or attitudes. If you were on the same page, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.

If money is being discussed, it should be a case of discussing how long the loan is going to be for, how it is going to be paid back, and what will happen in the event that, heaven forbid, the relationship does not work out. Will the instalments still continue as is, or will he be expected to pay up in full?

In fact, it would help to clarify if he is in a position to pay the money back and don’t ever utter the words ‘Take your time’ or ‘Don’t worry about paying me back immediately’. Whatever the terms are, especially if the ‘deal’ will be coming to an end early should the relationship end, this must be communicated up front, not assumed. The worst that will happen is that you don’t actually have to lend him the money although you may discover you serve no further purpose…

If you haven’t done these things and the relationship ends, you need to broach the subject asap in as unemotional and calm a way as possible because anything else will come across petty, manipulative, and bitchy even though you are entitled to be pissed off but you must acknowledge your accountability for this situation and recognise that you didn’t have to be at this juncture as you added complication to an already bad situation.

I get it. You did someone a favour and it backfired and no matter what your motives or expectations were behind it, it is horrible to feel like you’ve been jacked from all angles.

The relationship is over and you want to sever the ties but you may not have a legitimate reason to change the goalposts and he may not have the means to meet your demands, or may just claim that he doesn’t.

Short of going the legal route, which is a bit like closing the door after the horse has bolted, you either need to suck it up and take the payments in as un-intrusive a way as possible, or you may have to accept the bad debt and get out now before you end up any further out of pocket, that’s both mentally and financially.

But what you do learn after this is not that there cannot be money in relationships, but that money is something that should never be a part of relationships that don’t exist, barely exist, or already have a whole host of problems because mo’ money, mo’ problems and you’re trying to plug a gaping hole in your relationship dam that cannot be filled.

Your thoughts?

 

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