After you read the story let it marinate for a while. I hope you don't experience hysterical evil laughter at midnight like I did. TheCount promptly called me evil, but I couldn't help it. It's not a funny situation at all, but I could not stop laughing. It's more like an incredulous laugh, like, did they really just do that?
Over the weekend my parent's went to the beach for a close friends cookout. There is always another couple that comes to all the events, my mom is quite friendly with the wife, let's call her Sue. Sue is married to Tom, they've been married for years and have a few kids together. Tom hasn't paid the mortgage since January. He's gainfully employed and the couple isn't in debt. It's not like they have an unhappy marriage, Tom just likes to enjoy life. If you call him and say, "hey man, let's fly out to California so we can see our Football team in their opening game," he'll be right there ready to go. Now during this year, Sue has repeatedly told Tom, "I can't live like this, you need to do your part, I'm going to leave, you need to handle your business." Tom's behavior never changed and he never paid the mortgage. This Saturday, Tom came to the beach cookout and brought his jet ski so everybody could have fun. He kept calling his wife, Sue, since she was supposed to be coming. Sue never answered the phone. He kept asking if anybody knew where Sue was, nobody knew anything. At the end of the night, he goes home and finds that Sue has packed everything up and moved her and the kids out. The kids start school today and she already has them enrolled in their new school and everything. Want to know the kicker? Everybody knew where Sue was and what she was doing. Everybody at the cookout knew but him. Did I mention his kids were at the cookout?
Now, I have two questions. 1. If you were Sue, how would you handle the situation? Your kids are about to start a new school year, it's been 9 months since your mortgage was paid and you refuse to let your kids come home from school one day and see all their stuff on the lawn. 2. If you were at the cookout, and you knew what Sue was doing, would you tell Tom?
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4 comments:
wow, I don't think I need to allow that to marinate to answer. It's pretty simple if you ask me, Sue (as many women do) was looking towards the future and preventing any major disruptions in her children's lives. Parents are forced to make those hard decisions prevent long term effect on kids. They tell you not to steal, so you wont wind up in jail, they tell you not to use drugs or alchol cause you could wind up addicted, in jail, homeless or worse cause of said addiction, they tell you to go to school and do good so you can get a good job. Having said that to answer your specific questions:
1. I would have done the same as Sue, start planning and putting things in place to prevent the inevitable, my kids belongings on the lawn and them having any emotional effects from that.
2. This one is tricky, if I were friends with Tom first then I probably would casully mention it. But if I were Sue's friend, then no mentioning.
And really, who neglects to pay their mortgage on purpose to be able to run amuck, I mean if you are single with no kids, then cool you could chalk that up to youth and/or wanting to experience life and/or take risks (which still doesn't make sense), but it is not cool at all to drag your wife and kids through something like that. The uncertainty of not knowing when the sherriff will show up and promptly tell you to vacat the premesis is not a good look.
I agree with 808...
But as a mother myself, my kid comes first and him not paying the mortage gives him (and me) nowhere to live.
I stay planned up at all times. You never know what my happen.
I probably would have left, but I would have told him. She put everybody in a bad position so she could sneak off, and that wasn't cool. If you're woman enough to leave, be woman enough to say so.
WOW ok this would not have been my course of action but I can understand her frustration. They really needed to have a conversation about finances! Perhaps she could have reorganized the responsibilities and taken over the job of paying the mortgage. Then she could give him spending money out of the money left over. If nothing else was wrong in their marriage they may get back together again. If he pleads and begs enough she will probably let him into the new place and he wont be paying rent their either..yikes. I hope it all works out well.
PJD
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