So a little back story: my husband (50 m)and I (47 f) have been together for 12 years and married for 10. He has always had a huge problem with communication. He will go off and do things behind my back without telling me and then when I confront him about it his excuse is always oh I forgot. He tried to finance a motorcycle behind my back, he has gone out and spent hundreds of dollars on things, makes plans and just goes and does whatever without telling me. There are also many other problems in the marriage and he clearly has zero respect for me.
So this happened on Friday. I have been trying for a while now to get our credit cards paid off so we can buy a new house. Our forever dream home. He knows this as we have talked about it multiple times. We are on a very strict budget and I pat very close attention to the bills. On Friday I went into the account to pay some bills and I noticed a $50 charge to the church that we attend sometimes. I asked my husband about it and he said that he decided that he wanted to start paying tithes to the church and decided to set up automated withdrawals every week of $50. That’s $200 a month. We are not members of this church and are just sporadic attendees. I was absolutely furious. My husband doesn’t handle ANY of the finances and has zero idea about our bills. I pay everything and budget things every week. He didn’t say a word to me about doing this abs didn’t discuss it with me at all.
We just had a huge fight 2 weeks ago about him doing these sort of things behind my back, where he promised me that he wouldn’t do this anymore abd he would discuss things with me before doing them. When I mentioned that to him, he initially mumbled something like, “Well yeah I did break a promise… I didn’t mean to take it from there.” Then he just shut down. I kept pushing – why didn’t you tell me? Why now? That’s when he got really nasty with me and has been screaming and cursing at me all day. But the “didn’t mean to take it from there” stuck with me. Later, after the screaming stopped and I was trying to process, I found a crumpled paper in his trash – a withdrawal slip from a different account I didn’t know he had, or a receipt for something he sold, or even a desperate email about needing money for [vague problem].
I told him that I wanted out of the marriage and that this was the last straw for me. He has been absolutely awful to me all day and is telling me that im making a bigger deal out of this that it is ans that I am way overreacting.
Yes I’m upset about the money, but what I’m more upset about is the fact that he completely disrespected me, broke a promise to me and has somehow decided that im being irrational for being mad about what he did, plus the fact that the tithe was a symptom revealing another layer of financial secrets he’s keeping.
AITA for wanting a divorce after my husband set up an unauthorized church tithe withdrawal ($200/month) without telling me, breaking a recent promise, and then became abusive when confronted, especially since the tithe appears to be the tip of the iceberg, exposing yet another layer of secret financial activity and a hidden problem he was trying to solve alone (badly)?