My (29F) fiancé (31M) has been staying out late for months. I feel like I’m losing my partner and my financial security but maybe this is normal and exciting?
Throwaway account for anonymity.
TL;DR: My (29F) Fiance (31M) received a promotion 6 months ago. While he has always been extroverted, I’ve noticed a huge change in his behavior. I don’t feel like a priority in his life anymore and I fear for our finances and my sanity. I am scared he could be using drugs or experiencing mania that causes risky decisions with money and lifestyle. I can’t tell if I am overreacting and he is just excited about a new promotion, new friends and new creative ventures or if I am noticing major red flags.
My (29F) fiancé (31M) has changed a lot over the last 6 months and I genuinely can’t tell if I’m being insecure or if something unhealthy is happening.
We have been together for 2.5 years, engaged, live together, and have joint finances. Our relationship had been great, he was always patient, empathetic and thoughtful. He has a past history of addiction and we both had always been very upfront and transparent about our pasts.
About 6 months ago he got a promotion at work and started going out drinking with coworkers after shifts (he gets off around 11pm). At first it was occasional, but eventually it became almost every night until 2–4am. He became quite attached to one coworker (27M) and began giving him rides to and from work and the bar most days. Around that time, I found white drug residue in his car. He blamed it on the coworker and denied using. He also briefly got prescribed ADHD medication after trying some of mine, then “lost” the prescription and never went back. After sharing my feelings about all of this, he slowly stopped hanging around the coworker as much.
He then became extremely close with a new friend (23M) from the bar and got him a job where my fiance works. He started giving the new friend rides everywhere consistently. They started spending basically all their free time together. My fiancé wanted him to move in after knowing him for 2 months. I reluctantly agreed temporarily, but it turned into them practically living together in our garage while planning businesses, making music, gaming, watching movies, falling asleep, running errands, working together, etc. There were many more things that seemed abnormal but I’m leaving them out to shorten the post. I started feeling replaced, like the third wheel in my own relationship. I felt like he was putting his friends' wants and needs above mine and with the friend practically living here, it felt so weird. At first I was jealous because I felt like I was alone most days while it felt like he was doing all the things he should be doing with me, with his new friend. I brushed that off, reminding myself it was only because we have opposite schedules.
When I brought up feeling lonely and neglected, my fiancé said I was pushing him away, pessimistic, controlling, and trying to isolate him from his friends. He also said I’m acting codependent and should work on having more fulfillment alone, which I had already been doing with art, my own longtime social circle and hobbies. He said I should only ask for him to spend time with me when I “need” him, not when I just want him to.
As of a few weeks ago, the friend has gone home to his own house and let my fiance know he never really wanted to move in because we live far from town and would not want to ride his motorcycle back and forth. Since then, my fiance has rented TWO studio spaces with this friend and a few others for a photography/music/media collective idea. There doesn’t seem to be much business planning or budgeting involved, just constant new ideas and spending. Before renting the spaces, and to try to “fix” our situation, he decided to step down from his promotion (losing $10/hr), while also taking on more expenses.
The financial situation is what scares me most:
- We share finances/joint accounts.
- He has a history of debt, cash advances, borrowing money from family, etc.
- He opened another credit card without telling me.
- Difficult to get him to sit down and budget with me because it gives him “panic attacks.”
- I don’t have log-in info to most bill accounts to see balances.
- He regularly convinces me to move my personal savings into our joint account “for bills.” while moving money from our joint account to his personal account.
- If I question spending, he says I’m monitoring him or angrily suggests we split our finances so that “I don’t have to deal with his spending mistakes.”
- He tells me that his friends are helping pay for the studio spaces, and they are. But when I asked if he thought about what would happen if they missed a payment, he didnt really have a plan and said he would just cancel the leases immediately.
- It feels like the media collective idea has quickly turned into a pay to play boys club or like a time share, without a real plan. I’m confused from all of the different ideas my fiancé tells me about surrounding the business.
Lately, he spends nearly every night at the studios until 4am with his friends, I am not sure who else goes. The studios are located directly next door to the 2 bars they frequent. If we do spend time together, he often leaves afterward to go back there or will go by the studio beforehand and leave me waiting. He has also joked about being called a cult leader, or a “people collector” or joking about being emotion-only polyamorous. He says things will “go back to normal” once he steps down from his promotion, but I don’t know what he considers normal anymore.
I’ve been questioning myself for months. I feel like I’ve gone crazy enough to ask a bunch of strangers on the internet, am I overreacting here? Does this sound like addiction/mania/manipulation, or just someone getting caught up in a new social circle and business idea? How do I tell the difference between healthy boundaries and being controlling so we can move forward without feeling like I'm policing him?