My SO, "Josh" and I have been together for a little over 2 years, and have lived together for 7 months. The second that I met him, I fell madly in love with him. I have not been so lucky in the guy department, and he is truly the nicest, kindest, most trustworthy person that I have ever met. He's also wickedly funny, and way hotter than he realizes (which is why I managed to bag him!) We have a lot in common, and being that we are both easy going, we almost always have a great time together - even if it's just laughing and making dinner on a Tuesday night. My family loves him and I love his family - we are all very close. The one issue is that he's lost his normal, full time job and can barely keep the temporary one he currently has. For a few months now, he's been steadily loosing income and when we talk about finances he constantly says "We need to tighten up" when he's dropped from working full time to part time - which has lowered our household income by about $800 a month. I work in a hospital as a nurse, so my income is a lot higher than his as a lumber salesman and I could float us...but I don't necessarily want to. That's money I want to put into paying off my $100K of student debt.
Some background: When we met, he told me that he was a big PC gamer, but he left his PC at his parents house (a few hours away) and never touched it when we were dating and living apart. When we moved in together, he brought the PC to our new house and this is when things started to go downhill. He has a ton of friends that he plays games with online, they are real life friends that have dispersed across the nation and now they all stay connected by playing games online. I am totally ok with this, and even worked with him to set some time aside every week for him to have a few hours to dungeon raid with the crew. But I started noticing very quickly that he was starting to disregard some life stuff that needed his attention.
First, his car registration expired in October of 2019 - he noticed when he got a letter from his HR department saying his registration expired, and he couldn't work until it was valid. He needs this for his job (he is an outside salesman, so he drives all over the place meeting clients). Most of his salary comes from commission, and he gets a little piddly amount hourly. In the month prior to his registration expiring, he was glued to the PC - he and his buddies had joined a new WOW guild. Every free hour he had was spent on the PC. Since he couldn't legally drive for his work without valid registration, he had to stay home and miss out on a weeks worth of commission and use what little sick time he got to cover part of what he lost in income. The whole time he was home, he was on the PC for 10+ hours a day and didn't do one thing to see if he could stand in line at the physical DMV location and get his stickers and update his registration instead of mailing it in. Granted - he couldn't drive there - but the DMV is less than a mile walking from our house. Since the lost income only affected us a small bit, I covered an extra $200 for rent for him and he made dinner for 2 weeks.
Next, his drivers license expired in January of this year. Same story. 2 weeks of waiting for it, 2 weeks without pay. I looked online and found a physical DMV location about an hours drive away that might have been able to print him a new license that day, and when I sent him the link it was ignored. I asked him to please look into this for a few days, and he'd say that he would...but then I'd get home from work, and he'd be in front of his PC. I get home late so he couldn't call the DMV at that time to verify what I had found online. I was less forgiving this time, and told him if he couldn't pay his half of the rent, he'd have to call his parents. He squeaked by, but barely and I ended up eating more grocery costs than I would have if he was working and able to split everything. We had a long talk about how this pattern cannot continue, and it worried me that he prioritized gaming over dealing with things in his life that need attention. He assured me he would be better.
This salesman job dissolved within the last few weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic, but he was pretty quick to find a delivery job since we live in a major metropolitan area that needs essential services such as delivery drivers. He was hired for only part time (25 hours) a week, and due to the hazard pay bonus (which will end eventually) the money is decent. He is on a 90-day trial with the company. There are so many problems with this, and he doesn't seem to have a care in the world about any of them. First and foremost - even with the bonus, this job only pays him about 2/3 of what he made before. He doesn't have any benefits so he is without health care which worries me because he had a moderate chronic condition that needs to be monitored. He is not on my insurance plan because we aren't married, and it would increase my tax liability by $10-15k per year and I already pay a ton in taxes...so we decided that when he was working full time and eligible for benefits, he could get them through his job. I might be able to add him to my health insurance - but now that he is only working part time, I'm picking up all of our grocery bills, most of the rent, and the utilities. I don't know if I could afford to set aside extra money for the additional taxes next year. I have discussed my uneasiness about the situation with him and the implications of only working part time, and he told me that if we tighten up he thinks we can get by as long as we don't take a vacation this year (almost every year we try to take a week or so off to visit a new state over Thanksgiving, since that's the only holiday I usually have off). I countered with offering to help him find a full time position, and he said this job seems like a lucrative opportunity - it seemed he could make just as much as before, but only working 25 hours a week. He fills the extra availability in his schedule with WOW.
Now, here's the kicker. Today was supposed to be the start of his second week of work, but he didn't show up for work because he was distracted by WOW and didn't notice the time he was supposed to start had passed. He also didn't check his phone for 2 hours as his work was trying to get a hold of him. Since I am his emergency contact, they called me to ask if he was ok. It took me about 25 minutes of calling him nonstop for him to look up and see the 20+ missed calls from me and his employer. When we finally did reach him, he was incredibly flustered and apologetic and got right to work. He got written up for being a no call/no show.
I am boiling mad. A big part of me wants to just give up and walk away, but this is a pattern that I learned in my childhood and has been a huge detriment in my ability to form lasting, long term relationships so I try not to listen to that kneejerk reaction. Part of me also wants to stay, but I am at a loss of how to effectively communicate with him that this behavior pattern is beyond unacceptable. Part of me also knows that he is very isolated from his friends, and especially when we are all required to shelter in place, and WOW is his one way to connect with them and I don't want to be the one to take that away from him.
TL;DR: Boyfriend of almost 3 years keeps on fucking up and missing out on work and opportunities to prioritize playing WOW. Also sorry for how long this is.
Submitted March 31, 2020 at 04:27PM by SensitiveBookkeeper6 https://ift.tt/2UzmV96
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