This Woman Is Just Realizing That She's Suffering From Financial Abuse

It can be really, really hard to see the issues in your relationship from the inside. It takes time, outside opinions, and the support of the people who love us to really make a move to get out when it’s required.

Or, in some cases, the support and encouragement of the tough love people can find in the AITA forum on Reddit.

To give some background, OP is a mother and business owner in her mid-twenties. Her business took off and her husband was able to stay home, help with her business, and also with the kids.

Sometime after her business started to succeed, he suggested they merge their bank accounts.

Throwaway because my main is obviously me. So my husband (40)m and I (25)f share a bank account. There are three kids in the house including my newborn (I didn’t take any maternity just kept working, I am also the baby’s exclusive caregiver, he does stuff for older kids)

A few pieces of information, I started a business about 5 years ago that ended up working out really well (don’t worry it’s a real service based business not an MLM or something haha), 3 years ago my husband decided he wanted to stop working and stay home with me so he did, shortly after that he wanted us to merge bank accounts.

I also want to put here only because it’s relevant that I bring in a high 5 figures that allows us to be comfortable where we live. We aren’t rich by any means but we aren’t struggling either.

Shortly after that he began imposing budget restrictions – more on her than him – and required her to record every literal dollar she spends outside of the budget that he sets.

FF another year he started making budgets, weekly ones and then ones to buy things he thinks we needs, various gear, tools etc. He also controls how much we save etc. If I spend any money it comes out of the weekly budget and I have to tell him and round up, even if it’s 1$.

So if I spend 1.58$ I spent 2$. Literally every single penny I put out has to be reported to him. It’s very stressful.

It also makes buying things for our kids hard because even though we have tons of money outside his budgets I can’t touch any of it, so I have to squeeze things they need into the weekly.

Recently she spent $20 that she forgot to record and he lost his mind over it, so she’s wondering how normal this type of budgeting is for other couples.

So last week I went out and I spent 20$, I came home and I forgot about it. He noticed and got really upset, he was like “this is unacceptable, why are you trying to destroy the family etc”.

About a year or a year and a half ago I got in trouble for spending a few times without telling him culminating in about 200$ of “missing” money, I had to sell some of my things to make it up. He forensically examined the bank account and didn’t find anything else I had spent without telling him but he’s still feeling very righteous in his upset.

So AITA? I know budgets are normal but I feel this is a bit much.

Also, just for funsies, she added this terrible edit about how she was only allowed two weeks off after giving birth and also that her mother had to basically pay her to come and visit so she wouldn’t be missing a day of work.

what I said about having to pay to visit my mom, basically she wanted me and my kids to come up for a weekend but she lives kind of far away so I needed to take one day off to make it worth the drive but he wasn’t pleased about that (bad terms with my mom), especially because we had recently taken 2 weeks off after I gave birth.

So basically he said we could go but if my mom gave me the money to make up the average amount I would have made working that day, so that it didn’t affect us if I took a day off.

Y’all, I cannot.

Please tell me Reddit is coming to the rescue.

We start with some blunt talk that sounds like it’s much-needed.