u/Healthy_Novel_2010

I can't seem to get my posts posted. Looking for advice. Help

I am a 27-year-old female, and I have been in a relationship with my 30-year-old boyfriend for three and a half years.

About two years ago, I lost my job. I was financially okay because I had saved a lot of money. After a couple of months with no success in finding a new job, I started focusing on something I had always been interested in. It required additional education, so I decided to pivot from interviewing and focus on getting about seven certifications and licenses for this new career.

Once I passed all my exams and got my licenses, I could officially start working. They told me it was going to take about six months if all went well. Well, it took me about 11 months to pass everything and get certified.

So, after about a year and a few months of no income and living off my savings, I could finally start working. However, in my industry, I am commission-only. It takes a good amount of time to get a decent salary, but after a few years, it can really pay off if you are patient and you can earn a lot.

The same month I could finally start working, my boyfriend got fired from his job. My boyfriend never really had set aside money for an emergency fund. However, once he saw me and my situation, he finally started putting money aside. He really only had about one, maybe two months' worth of expenses saved. Luckily, he got severance from his job, so that gave him some extra time.

Fast forward to today, and he has been out of a real job officially for a year. He collected his unemployment, burned through all the savings he had, and has gone on government assistance. He has been applying but has not been able to land anything. He also wants to work on his own things and start up a company. I have been very supportive of this, but I have been very worried and stressed financially because he has debt and just isn't as financially savvy. He is not horrible with money; he just wasn't very good with it before we met, partly due to his circumstances. However, he did start to get better, and then he lost his job.

A couple of months ago, he got a job where he makes $14 an hour. It can be a Monday-through-Friday thing for 40 hours a week, but he chooses to only work once a week for eight hours. Now, the job is kind of cool, but he has to do it from 5:00 AM to 1:00 PM. It screws up his sleep schedule since he wakes up at 4:00 AM to go to it. He is not a morning person, and neither am I, so I get it.

Now, I told him when he lost his job that I would help him with expenses and that he wasn't going to lose his house, car, etc. The bills that were necessities would all be paid on time, and I would happily do this for him. My only ask consisted of two things:

1. That he puts in effort to get a job. If he wants to do his own thing and build his business as his job, that is fine as long as he is actually working on it. For the most part, I don't really feel like he has slacked off.
2. Please, please, please don't make me pay for his child support because I will not be giving him money to give to his daughter's mom. There will always be food, running water, her toys, and a roof over her head for a safe, loving home to sleep in at night here at his house.

Now, I understand number two sounds kind of harsh, but his daughter's mom is a nightmare to deal with. She is so rude, mean, and awful to my boyfriend and me. She is literally a monster. So, in my mind, if my boyfriend really can't make his child support, then she will just have to find it in her heart to co-parent and be understanding that her daughter's dad is falling on hard times, and she can do what she needs to do to be understanding.

Now let me preface this: my boyfriend is a great dad. He is not a deadbeat; he loves his daughter so much, more than me and anything in this world. He always paid his child support on time and still has, even while unemployed. I'm just saying if things got really tight and he couldn't make the full payment from whatever unemployment or savings he had, that was on him to figure it out, not me. I will happily pay for food, utilities, and toys here at his house for his daughter to use, but I will not be funding his child's anything at the mother's house.

So, with that said, my boyfriend has pretty much exhausted everything. He got his child support temporarily reduced, but he literally has nothing left with the exception of his old work 401(k). If he takes money out of it, he will be penalized twice since it is all pre-tax money, and he will be hit with the government fee for not being of retirement age. So, I have encouraged him to leave that money alone. He can find a way to make a $450 child support payment a month, and I will take care of everything else if I have it within my means.

I do have the means, however, I'm starting to get uncomfortable with how much money is going out and how little is coming in every month—hence the $14-an-hour job. He only wants to work one day a week, but he really needs to work at least five times a month to cover child support after taxes. He reasoning is if he works or does x job or x thing to get money, it won't pay off in the long run, because he needs every moment to work on the thing he is building because he belives its going to take off what he is working on. So anything he does to make a little bit of money is taking away from making this thing great and done. But again, I'm just asking for $450 a month to be covered by him for his child support, thats it.

Now, I've been at my job for about a year, and I've made less than $20,000. I've also had business expenses around $3,000. The industry I am in is very hard and tough to do well in, but I'm being patient, and the things I'm working on take time. I have been pretty frugal with what I buy and spend money on. I've always been this way, but now more than ever since my job loss and then my boyfriend's.

So, here is the big issue. I have my savings dwindling every month, especially since some months I literally don't get a paycheck due to being commission-only. I am coming up on a goal deadline in a few weeks, and I need to do another X amount of sales. If I don't, I think I'll be fired for being a low-producing employee.

It was looking like I was just going to miss my goal, so I did the thing I've been trying not to do because I know it makes my boyfriend uncomfortable. I reached out to my ex-boyfriend, and I did business with him.

Some background about my ex and me: we dated, got engaged, and were together for a total of seven years. We started dating when I was 15 and he was 17. We went to college together and got engaged in 2021. We basically grew up together; we were high school sweethearts and each other's first and only relationship ever.

We were going through the process of planning our wedding, and in the summer of 2022, I was blindsided because he cheated on me with one of his coworkers. I was absolutely devastated. To say that my world crumbled underneath me is an absolute understatement. I thought everything was wonderful and perfect one minute, and my whole relationship unraveled before my eyes in the matter of hours. Seven-plus years of my life were completely destroyed by his stupidity.

I won't go into all the details, but after my pleading with him that I still wanted to work through it—even though he did me dirty—he told me to go find someone else. So, I basically realized at that point we were over.

Shortly after that, I started dating a lot of guys, mostly through Tinder. I wasn't too serious about them, and I made that clear since I was still healing. In October 2022, just a few months later, I met my now boyfriend. I didn't expect it to go anywhere or think we'd be a thing, especially because we hooked up after our first date. I also thought he was so handsome and good-looking and that I wasn't pretty enough for him, so we were just going to hook up and move on. However, that didn't happen, which I'm glad about. We have made so many great memories, and I love him.

Now, it did take me a while to heal from my ex. I would say it took me a year to be okay, and in a lot of ways, I'm still kind of scared. I'll be honest, I don't think my heart has been fully open. Especially in the beginning, I had my guard up because I didn't want to get hurt again the same way as before.

I became official with my boyfriend in December 2022, so only six months after the end of my first relationship. It was quick, and I did always tell him I wanted more time to heal, but he forced me into the relationship by telling me he didn't want to talk to me anymore unless we were official. I liked him a lot, but I just wanted to be careful given what happened. So, I got into the relationship probably before I was fully good and healed.

Fast forward to 2024. My boyfriend's dad had always been very sick. He was always going to the hospital, and in the fall of 2025, he went to the hospital again and died in January 2026. So, at this point, my boyfriend had been unemployed for over half a year, and his mom also wasn't working because she was at the hospital with his dad 24/7. Basically, their Social Security checks were just enough to cover their basic expenses month-to-month. Since my boyfriend's dad was always sick, he never qualified for life insurance. Therefore, when his dad died, they had nothing to pay for the funeral.

With all of the stress my boyfriend went through with dealing with his dad's doctors, his sickness, the job loss, and his crazy, evil, monstrous child's mom, I told him and his mom, "Don't worry about the cost of the funeral. Give your dad the funeral he deserves. I want you to be able to bury your dad and be at peace that you did right by him. I'm not a millionaire, but I can make sure he gets a proper burial. I don't want you stressing about money because that's not important right now. Right now, family is. Since I have the means, you can pay me back when you can." Something like that.

Now, his parents had been trying to sell their home, and this is another disaster in and of itself. However, I figured once they sold their home, they'd pay me back.

All this "money" I had saved up had been my wedding money, house fund money, honeymoon money, new car money, and a six-month emergency fund. I started saving big time for all these things when I got my first big-girl job at 20, and I was literally stuffing half my paycheck away for them.

Since I had the means, I wanted to pay for the funeral costs because that was the biggest gift I could give him and his mom—not the money, but the peace of mind and comfort during this time. I still haven't had my dream wedding, I still haven't bought myself a new car (new to me), and I haven't gone on a honeymoon. I only got to use up my "emergency fund" money. I have given up so much because I wanted financial freedom and security, and I have worked hard saving for the things in life I actually wanted. I'm being patient for the things I want and using the money I do have to help others and people I care about.

So, since I was trying to reach my goal at work, I reached out to my ex. When we were together, he did very well for himself financially; he always had high expectations of being a high earner. So, I contacted him to see if he would be interested in what I had to say. Again, it was a business decision. It was all business and strictly business. This meant a couple of phone calls back and forth to each other for about three weeks to discuss, get info, and execute.

Even though he cheated and did me so bad, I never found it in my heart to hate him. I tried. I was so angry and mad, and I hated what he did, but I got to the point where I see he's a decent person who simply made a very big mistake and realized his errors too late. Even though he pursued his love affair gal for a bit, it was my understanding that they didn't last long after, and he realized he screwed up once he found out I was dating. We did try to go on a date in the fall once, but it was so emotionally hard for me knowing what he did. And again, I met my now boyfriend, and I wanted to pursue new things. So, I have pretty much moved on from my ex. I don't have any desire to go back to him, but I'm cordial with him because I'm a mature adult, and I can still act decently to someone without feeling a certain way.

My current boyfriend has never liked my ex because he thinks I'm still attached and never got over him. Since I didn't talk to him first about doing business with my ex and get his permission or approval before going and doing it (even though he said himself he would never approve), he thinks that I am a terrible girlfriend.

I get and understand where he is coming from. I honestly, truly do. I wanted to tell him, but I just felt like he has so many things going on, and I didn't want to burden him anymore. He really has so much on his plate, it's crazy ridiculous, and I just scratched the surface in this post with what he's dealing with.I would also like to add that I care so much about my boyfriend and his daughter; I treat her like my own. Shortly after my boyfriend's dad passed away, I surprised my boyfriend with two kittens—a brother and sister who are the cutest bonded pair—since he always talked about wanting a cat and I wanted to bring some love and joy into the house for everyone. I cook, clean, help around his house, do yard work, and help however I can when we do home improvement projects. I am so invested and involved with my boyfriend that, yes, hopefully, we will get married. But how we are even supposed to do that right now with all of the craziness going on in our lives, I don't know!I know my boyfriend is insecure; he always has been since the start of our relationship. So, I understand how he feels, but I also know how I feel about him, my ex, and everything else.I have done so many things outside of my job to make money. I've sold things, including jewelry that belonged to my grandmother, who passed away so abruptly a few years ago, to try and pay for things. (It's not a huge deal, as some of it wasn't my taste or style, and I have other things of hers to remember her by.) I do odd jobs like help people with dog or house sitting, I take people to the airport, I've donated plasma, and I work a few hours for my mom's company when they need extra help. I'm trying to do anything to keep us above the line and hopefully keep my accounts at a baseline so I can stop touching them.

He has to communicate with his ex very frequently regarding their kid together. They both want nothing to do with each other quite frankly, so any concern of romatic anything is basically nonexistent. Even though they also got engaged shortly after finding out they were pregnant after a few months of dating, my boyfriend broke it off because again, shes a absolute monster.

Oh, one more thing to note: his mom will be moving in and living with us once she sells her home, whenever that happens. She can't do much for herself and relies on family to do basic things. It's not that she is sick or has health issues; it's that she is from India and she never learned certain things, like how to drive a car, because she's always had her husband (my boyfriend's dad) do everything for her.

So, am I a jerk for going to my ex to do business with him as a way to try and make ends meet when we are financially struggling? I am just trying to get to the point of making enough money to cover both of our expenses so I can keep my savings account where it is at, and allow him to continue work on the thing he is passionate about building and not have him have to take time away from his passion to work and then that way, when we do get married and buy a house together, I will still have all the money I saved, just like I intended.

I am a 27-year-old female, and I have been in a relationship with my 30-year-old boyfriend for three and a half years.

About two years ago, I lost my job. I was financially okay because I had saved a lot of money. After a couple of months with no success in finding a new job, I started focusing on something I had always been interested in. It required additional education, so I decided to pivot from interviewing and focus on getting about seven certifications and licenses for this new career.

Once I passed all my exams and got my licenses, I could officially start working. They told me it was going to take about six months if all went well. Well, it took me about 11 months to pass everything and get certified.

So, after about a year and a few months of no income and living off my savings, I could finally start working. However, in my industry, I am commission-only. It takes a good amount of time to get a decent salary, but after a few years, it can really pay off if you are patient and you can earn a lot.

The same month I could finally start working, my boyfriend got fired from his job. My boyfriend never really had set aside money for an emergency fund. However, once he saw me and my situation, he finally started putting money aside. He really only had about one, maybe two months' worth of expenses saved. Luckily, he got severance from his job, so that gave him some extra time.

Fast forward to today, and he has been out of a real job officially for a year. He collected his unemployment, burned through all the savings he had, and has gone on government assistance. He has been applying but has not been able to land anything. He also wants to work on his own things and start up a company. I have been very supportive of this, but I have been very worried and stressed financially because he has debt and just isn't as financially savvy. He is not horrible with money; he just wasn't very good with it before we met, partly due to his circumstances. However, he did start to get better, and then he lost his job.

A couple of months ago, he got a job where he makes $14 an hour. It can be a Monday-through-Friday thing for 40 hours a week, but he chooses to only work once a week for eight hours. Now, the job is kind of cool, but he has to do it from 5:00 AM to 1:00 PM. It screws up his sleep schedule since he wakes up at 4:00 AM to go to it. He is not a morning person, and neither am I, so I get it.

Now, I told him when he lost his job that I would help him with expenses and that he wasn't going to lose his house, car, etc. The bills that were necessities would all be paid on time, and I would happily do this for him. My only ask consisted of two things:

1. That he puts in effort to get a job. If he wants to do his own thing and build his business as his job, that is fine as long as he is actually working on it. For the most part, I don't really feel like he has slacked off.
2. Please, please, please don't make me pay for his child support because I will not be giving him money to give to his daughter's mom. There will always be food, running water, her toys, and a roof over her head for a safe, loving home to sleep in at night here at his house.

Now, I understand number two sounds kind of harsh, but his daughter's mom is a nightmare to deal with. She is so rude, mean, and awful to my boyfriend and me. She is literally a monster. So, in my mind, if my boyfriend really can't make his child support, then she will just have to find it in her heart to co-parent and be understanding that her daughter's dad is falling on hard times, and she can do what she needs to do to be understanding.

Now let me preface this: my boyfriend is a great dad. He is not a deadbeat; he loves his daughter so much, more than me and anything in this world. He always paid his child support on time and still has, even while unemployed. I'm just saying if things got really tight and he couldn't make the full payment from whatever unemployment or savings he had, that was on him to figure it out, not me. I will happily pay for food, utilities, and toys here at his house for his daughter to use, but I will not be funding his child's anything at the mother's house.

So, with that said, my boyfriend has pretty much exhausted everything. He got his child support temporarily reduced, but he literally has nothing left with the exception of his old work 401(k). If he takes money out of it, he will be penalized twice since it is all pre-tax money, and he will be hit with the government fee for not being of retirement age. So, I have encouraged him to leave that money alone. He can find a way to make a $450 child support payment a month, and I will take care of everything else if I have it within my means.

I do have the means, however, I'm starting to get uncomfortable with how much money is going out and how little is coming in every month—hence the $14-an-hour job. He only wants to work one day a week, but he really needs to work at least five times a month to cover child support after taxes. He reasoning is if he works or does x job or x thing to get money, it won't pay off in the long run, because he needs every moment to work on the thing he is building because he belives its going to take off what he is working on. So anything he does to make a little bit of money is taking away from making this thing great and done. But again, I'm just asking for $450 a month to be covered by him for his child support, thats it.

Now, I've been at my job for about a year, and I've made less than $20,000. I've also had business expenses around $3,000. The industry I am in is very hard and tough to do well in, but I'm being patient, and the things I'm working on take time. I have been pretty frugal with what I buy and spend money on. I've always been this way, but now more than ever since my job loss and then my boyfriend's.

So, here is the big issue. I have my savings dwindling every month, especially since some months I literally don't get a paycheck due to being commission-only. I am coming up on a goal deadline in a few weeks, and I need to do another X amount of sales. If I don't, I think I'll be fired for being a low-producing employee.

It was looking like I was just going to miss my goal, so I did the thing I've been trying not to do because I know it makes my boyfriend uncomfortable. I reached out to my ex-boyfriend, and I did business with him.

Some background about my ex and me: we dated, got engaged, and were together for a total of seven years. We started dating when I was 15 and he was 17. We went to college together and got engaged in 2021. We basically grew up together; we were high school sweethearts and each other's first and only relationship ever.

We were going through the process of planning our wedding, and in the summer of 2022, I was blindsided because he cheated on me with one of his coworkers. I was absolutely devastated. To say that my world crumbled underneath me is an absolute understatement. I thought everything was wonderful and perfect one minute, and my whole relationship unraveled before my eyes in the matter of hours. Seven-plus years of my life were completely destroyed by his stupidity.

I won't go into all the details, but after my pleading with him that I still wanted to work through it—even though he did me dirty—he told me to go find someone else. So, I basically realized at that point we were over.

Shortly after that, I started dating a lot of guys, mostly through Tinder. I wasn't too serious about them, and I made that clear since I was still healing. In October 2022, just a few months later, I met my now boyfriend. I didn't expect it to go anywhere or think we'd be a thing, especially because we hooked up after our first date. I also thought he was so handsome and good-looking and that I wasn't pretty enough for him, so we were just going to hook up and move on. However, that didn't happen, which I'm glad about. We have made so many great memories, and I love him.

Now, it did take me a while to heal from my ex. I would say it took me a year to be okay, and in a lot of ways, I'm still kind of scared. I'll be honest, I don't think my heart has been fully open. Especially in the beginning, I had my guard up because I didn't want to get hurt again the same way as before.

I became official with my boyfriend in December 2022, so only six months after the end of my first relationship. It was quick, and I did always tell him I wanted more time to heal, but he forced me into the relationship by telling me he didn't want to talk to me anymore unless we were official. I liked him a lot, but I just wanted to be careful given what happened. So, I got into the relationship probably before I was fully good and healed.

Fast forward to 2024. My boyfriend's dad had always been very sick. He was always going to the hospital, and in the fall of 2025, he went to the hospital again and died in January 2026. So, at this point, my boyfriend had been unemployed for over half a year, and his mom also wasn't working because she was at the hospital with his dad 24/7. Basically, their Social Security checks were just enough to cover their basic expenses month-to-month. Since my boyfriend's dad was always sick, he never qualified for life insurance. Therefore, when his dad died, they had nothing to pay for the funeral.

With all of the stress my boyfriend went through with dealing with his dad's doctors, his sickness, the job loss, and his crazy, evil, monstrous child's mom, I told him and his mom, "Don't worry about the cost of the funeral. Give your dad the funeral he deserves. I want you to be able to bury your dad and be at peace that you did right by him. I'm not a millionaire, but I can make sure he gets a proper burial. I don't want you stressing about money because that's not important right now. Right now, family is. Since I have the means, you can pay me back when you can." Something like that.

Now, his parents had been trying to sell their home, and this is another disaster in and of itself. However, I figured once they sold their home, they'd pay me back.

All this "money" I had saved up had been my wedding money, house fund money, honeymoon money, new car money, and a six-month emergency fund. I started saving big time for all these things when I got my first big-girl job at 20, and I was literally stuffing half my paycheck away for them.

Since I had the means, I wanted to pay for the funeral costs because that was the biggest gift I could give him and his mom—not the money, but the peace of mind and comfort during this time. I still haven't had my dream wedding, I still haven't bought myself a new car (new to me), and I haven't gone on a honeymoon. I only got to use up my "emergency fund" money. I have given up so much because I wanted financial freedom and security, and I have worked hard saving for the things in life I actually wanted. I'm being patient for the things I want and using the money I do have to help others and people I care about.

So, since I was trying to reach my goal at work, I reached out to my ex. When we were together, he did very well for himself financially; he always had high expectations of being a high earner. So, I contacted him to see if he would be interested in what I had to say. Again, it was a business decision. It was all business and strictly business. This meant a couple of phone calls back and forth to each other for about three weeks to discuss, get info, and execute.

Even though he cheated and did me so bad, I never found it in my heart to hate him. I tried. I was so angry and mad, and I hated what he did, but I got to the point where I see he's a decent person who simply made a very big mistake and realized his errors too late. Even though he pursued his love affair gal for a bit, it was my understanding that they didn't last long after, and he realized he screwed up once he found out I was dating. We did try to go on a date in the fall once, but it was so emotionally hard for me knowing what he did. And again, I met my now boyfriend, and I wanted to pursue new things. So, I have pretty much moved on from my ex. I don't have any desire to go back to him, but I'm cordial with him because I'm a mature adult, and I can still act decently to someone without feeling a certain way.

My current boyfriend has never liked my ex because he thinks I'm still attached and never got over him. Since I didn't talk to him first about doing business with my ex and get his permission or approval before going and doing it (even though he said himself he would never approve), he thinks that I am a terrible girlfriend.

I get and understand where he is coming from. I honestly, truly do. I wanted to tell him, but I just felt like he has so many things going on, and I didn't want to burden him anymore. He really has so much on his plate, it's crazy ridiculous, and I just scratched the surface in this post with what he's dealing with.I would also like to add that I care so much about my boyfriend and his daughter; I treat her like my own. Shortly after my boyfriend's dad passed away, I surprised my boyfriend with two kittens—a brother and sister who are the cutest bonded pair—since he always talked about wanting a cat and I wanted to bring some love and joy into the house for everyone. I cook, clean, help around his house, do yard work, and help however I can when we do home improvement projects. I am so invested and involved with my boyfriend that, yes, hopefully, we will get married. But how we are even supposed to do that right now with all of the craziness going on in our lives, I don't know!I know my boyfriend is insecure; he always has been since the start of our relationship. So, I understand how he feels, but I also know how I feel about him, my ex, and everything else.I have done so many things outside of my job to make money. I've sold things, including jewelry that belonged to my grandmother, who passed away so abruptly a few years ago, to try and pay for things. (It's not a huge deal, as some of it wasn't my taste or style, and I have other things of hers to remember her by.) I do odd jobs like help people with dog or house sitting, I take people to the airport, I've donated plasma, and I work a few hours for my mom's company when they need extra help. I'm trying to do anything to keep us above the line and hopefully keep my accounts at a baseline so I can stop touching them.

He has to communicate with his ex very frequently regarding their kid together. They both want nothing to do with each other quite frankly, so any concern of romatic anything is basically nonexistent. Even though they also got engaged shortly after finding out they were pregnant after a few months of dating, my boyfriend broke it off because again, shes a absolute monster.

Oh, one more thing to note: his mom will be moving in and living with us once she sells her home, whenever that happens. She can't do much for herself and relies on family to do basic things. It's not that she is sick or has health issues; it's that she is from India and she never learned certain things, like how to drive a car, because she's always had her husband (my boyfriend's dad) do everything for her.

So, am I a jerk for going to my ex to do business with him as a way to try and make ends meet when we are financially struggling? I am just trying to get to the point of making enough money to cover both of our expenses so I can keep my savings account where it is at, and allow him to continue work on the thing he is passionate about building and not have him have to take time away from his passion to work and then that way, when we do get married and buy a house together, I will still have all the money I saved, just like I intended.