I'm 46 and my husband is 61 and we've been married going on 24 years. He was very sick with a benign brain tumor in 2023. He had a craniotomy and radiation treatment and since then it seems like I'm starting to see the beginnings of dementia or some type of cognitive decline.
He also managed to bankrupt us to the tune of $125,000 with his own credit card debt ($50,000) and back taxes with the IRS at $75,000. I was not aware he wasn't paying these bills and I found out through credit reports and letters I started receiving from the IRS threatening liens. I had to pay lawyers and have roughly $75,000 of it reduced.
The past 8 months I keep going back and forth between wanting to leave and staying. I am becoming what a lot of women in the online world talk about being a "nurse with a purse" meanwhile it seems like I'm looking after a child. Eats boxes of cereal now, doesn't help out with cooking or doing the dishes and doesn't want to look after his health. He's also losing his eyesight due to the nerve damage from the tumor so he's going to be legally blind and won't be able to drive.
He is constantly coughing, sneezing, snoring, flatulating, crapping, etc. I feel like I'm living in a nursing home. I'm beginning to see some real changes on the horizon towards him becoming an old man and me being his caretaker and it's made me beyond angry. I wouldn't be so resentful about this if he didn't bankrupt us but he did. He has no money, no retirement savings, no assets and has never been able to plan financially (I've always known this and stuck my head in the sand because I didn't want to deal with it and he would always scream at me if I talked about money).
So now I've begun to take on a nursemaid role and I'm growing extremely resentful about it. I don't know if I should stay or leave but I feel like I'm being cheated. He gets to have the luxury of having a younger woman around to take care of him meanwhile I have to still cook and clean, worry about our financial future and also look after him and his health. I don't even want to know what this is going to look like 10 years from now.
You have so much more of your life to live. I don't think it matters in this case weather or not he caused his own health issues, but he certainly could do something to improve his health . The financial issues my or may not be apart of his brain issues, but I don't think it matters.
I'm 61 now, at 50, I left my husband, same age as me, but one of the many reasons was his lack of self care, he was 350 and 5"7 , financially distroid us, he also may or may not have some brain issues, related to brain swelling when he was a child, but I couldn't let him keep destroying me.
I will say after I left him he started loosing weight and taking care of himself, leaving him most likely extended his life. He is now a big guy, but not a Humugus guy, and takes better care of himself. Financially he is still horrible, but that's his problem now.
What good are you to your husband as missurable as you are?
Best of luck, keep us posted if like to know how things go.
So I suspect this may not be an age difference issues, if you were a normal healthy 60 year old you might be considering the same thing
When he ends up on Medicare and in a care home, what will you do for money and insurance?
Get your husband evaluated for 24/7 care. If found he needs it, place him in LTC with Medicaid paying. You may want to get an Elder Lawyer. There is something where a spouse can say they will not support a spouse in care. You want to protect what assets are yours like 401k or Money put in IRS CDs under ur name.
It maybe better to divorce him and allow the State to take over his care.
A friend of mine, male who married a woman 15 yrs younger, they raised two children. He use to brag that when he becomes much older his wife will take care of him. Well, guess what? His wife developed dementia, and when it became worse he could no longer care for her as he was now 85. He had to place her into memory care.
Just something to think about.
This is what love does. I'm really glad my DH didn't jump ship when i got sick and he's really thankful I didn't when he got sick.
Your DH had a very serious surgery and naturally side effects will occur! He wasn't, I'm sure, trying to lose $125K and isn't wanting to eat boxes of sugary cereal, just like I don't want to be in the predicament I'm in. Sometimes life is hard though, and we hang on by our fingernails as long as we can, looking for a bit of kindness and understanding from our spouses. I'm grateful I have that in mine.
Before you leave, if you do, please see to it that DH has a caregiver. It won't matter if she's young or an old battle axe, as long as she helps him live his best life.
Or see an Elder Care attorney for financial advice and guidance on getting DH on Medicaid for ling term care.
Let your post serve as a warning to young women wanting to marry much older men.
Good luck to you.
Age aside, it sounds like he’s ruined both your lives. You know you want out and you’re wanting people to agree with you. I for over think it’s time you left.
See a lawyer and get out while you can.
You have obviously lost respect and love for him, and he's only 61. He can't get Medicare until he's 65!
Get your half of what is left and start over elsewhere. Unless you want to give up your life to a sick man who was clearly abusive and dishonest with you about the money, before he got sick. That would be it for me! He will be wearing diapers soon, so get started on rebooting your life. You are lucky you are still young!
I take it you have no kids or relatives. This makes it easier to get out. If you are resentful after only a year, you need to get out pronto. You can recover financially quickly in 5-7 years to and need to get on the ball! The stress can destroy your health.
Get your head out of the sand and learn from this. I wish you luck in starting over. I divorced after 20 years and changed my life for the better.
I spoke to my tax lawyer and he should also be able to get the tax liability reduced on my end as well. Like I said, I've been mulling this over for months now, tossing and turning and I can't get over the anger of the financial betrayal. And if the shoe was on the other foot, and I got sick, he would not be able to take care of me. He wouldn't have the money for medicines or any of it. He has never been able to pay for anything and he never cared about paying for any of it either. In the end I finally (painfully) figured out he doesn't care if I wind up in the streets.
Was there some and it is now gone due to his changes and current life circumstances?
Was there NEVER much love?
To me, the question is love and devotion and that is something only you can measure. If it is over you will need to arrange for care if he isn't at all self caring, before separating. Is there family? Is he safe alone?
Only you can decide if the marriage is over. If it is, I personally would not stay with someone whether or NOT they were ill; however, if he is helpless you cannot leave without SOME person or entity knowing he is in need.
Best of luck with your decision.
Does he have a PoA? If so, is it you? If you are not his PoA then you won't have much control regarding care and/or facility placement. He will then become the ward of a court-assigned legal guardian. You are under no obligation to become his PoA, but he should find someone willing, local, trustworthy and a generation younger.
You should consult a financial planner to see what your financial future holds.
My cousin (very beautiful, youthful and healthy) married a guy 20 years her junior. She's now 70 and a few years ago she was diagnosed with early onset ALZ. It's been awful for him...
In his 70s he developed Parkinsons. When we started getting called over to help pick him up off the floor (a 6'4" man) it soon became clear he thought we were his care and retirement plan. My MIL was having her own significant memory and chronic pain issues at the same time.
Since I was the one managing their care, taking them to appointments and generally trying to salvage the unsalvageable, I had a "come to Jesus" talk with SFIL, informing him that he needed to assign a PoA since Parkinsons is progressive (his own sons were estranged from him). He refused to assign anyone. He actually got angry when I told him we weren't going to rescue him. Not only did they have 0 savings, but were thousands in cc debt, and due to unpaid back taxes their home was in foreclosure (also thanks to a ballooned 2nd mortgage he took out against the equity for them to live on because he never really worked). I worked closely with social services to make sure he became a ward of the county. Once his Lewy Body dementia got bad he went right into a county Medicaid facility and I never went to visit him. He never seemed to have any conscience about ruining his wife financially (and the others he borrowed money from).
However , I don’t think you realize that it’s quite possible at least some of his behaviors are a result of the brain tumor , surgery , treatments etc. Some of the financial issues could have happened because of this tumor, and he couldn’t think straight.
IMO , you should at least see about how to get care for him . Idk if he could get Medicaid and placed in a nursing home or not yet . A consultation with an eldercare lawyer may help you , even if you just let him become a ward of the state , you will have some financial things to work out I assume.
Has he been to the doctor recently regarding the cognitive and behavior changes ? He may need to stop driving . He may also be depressed .
* At 22, Alva’s question about ‘love and devotion’ is different. It’s mostly love, devotion rarely comes into it much, unless it’s waiting out a year or two before you can get together.
* At 22, you got something from being with a 37 year old – sophisticated, established, worldly experienced etc. You got your money’s worth then. At 37, he got something from being with a 22 year old – sexy, impressive, the other guys were jealous etc etc. He got his money’s worth then.
* He ‘betrayed’ from the beginning what he seemed to promise. The ‘financially established’ veneer was fake. Did you ‘betray’ from the beginning? Probably not.
* He has ruined both of you financially.
* He is now demanding far more than he is giving.
* You don’t love him any more. Chances are he doesn't love you either.
* The future looks bleak.
Quit, and don’t feel guilty. You aren’t. He is. If you arrange his future for him, it’s a bonus he doesn’t deserve.
But now that he's sick, and you're tired of being his nurse, you think it better that you just divorce him. And perhaps you are. Only you can make that decision.
And the fact that no where in your post did you mention that you still love this man, I find very telling.
So if in fact you no longer love him, then do both of you a favor and divorce him, as it's really not fair to keep up the charade. He deserves better and so do you.
And please make sure that if you do divorce him that you take a very long time before you jump back into the fire, and if and when you do, please make sure that he is closer in age to you, and that you actually love him in sickness and health till death do you part.
And I wasn't going to share my story, since I didn't detect any love between you and your husband, but I was encouraged by one of my friends on this forum to do so, so here it goes.
I married my late husband at the age of 34 and he was 46. It was both of our second marriages, and we were very much in love. And being a single mom at the time of my 2 children, I looked forward to living "happily ever after" with a good solid man.
However a year and a half after we were married my husband had a massive stroke at the age of 48 that left him unable to walk, talk, read, write and paralyzed on his right side. Needless to say our world was turned completely turned upside down, and our future now looked very different.
With much PT, OT and speech therapy my husband was able to walk again with a brace on his leg, speak a few short sentences and words, and do his self care all with his left hand/arm, as he never regained use of his right arm/hand and he was right handed.
A year or so later he started having gran mal seizures caused by the scar tissue in his brain from his stroke. And as years went by his health issues continued and eventually he developed vascular dementia, and never once did I think about throwing in the towel and leave the man that I loved and never stopped loving despite everything that we'd been through.
Yes our life was very different than I had originally hoped for when we first got married, but I knew that if the tables had been reversed that my husband would have stood by my side through it all as well.
You see, that's what true love looks like.
Now I'm not saying that all of it was easy, as it wasn't. Most of it was very difficult especially towards the end of my husbands life when he was completely bedridden in a hospital bed in our living room for the last 22 months of his life, and under hospice care until his death at the age of 72.
So technically I was his caregiver for 24 1/2 years of our 26 year marriage, and you know what? If given the chance to do it all over again for the man I loved...I would, no questions asked, as I took my wedding vows very seriously, and I know how very much he appreciated me sticking things out with him in the good and the bad.
But that is where you and I differ I think. I loved my husband in sickness and health until death parted us, and I don't get the feeling that you share that same kind of love for your husband.
So you have a lot of thinking and praying to do.... I will leave it at that.
If I didn't love him, I wouldn't have stayed married to him for 24 years. I was blindsided by him this year financially bankrupting us. This is not a black or white situation for me, it appears I am being left strapped by this one way or another whether I stay or not.
In the end, I will have to be able to care for myself financially in the future and I have to plan for that. He will never be able to do that and has never been able to that. And I'm supposed to be obligated to take care of someone I now can't trust one iota who clearly doesn't care whether I wind up homeless when I'm his age wiping his rear end? Life doesn't work that way. Rent costs money. Food costs money. Elder care costs money. EVERYTHING costs money. And because he got to skate by all these years not caring about money at all, now I get to come in and be the "noble" woman and save the day? I don't think so!
Also some people that don't feel they will live a long life, over spend, the issue is he is bringing you down with him
I do know of someone that got arrested for embezzling from her job, died a year later from a brain tumor.
I had a patient ask me if I wanted to get married again. I was like, no.
I’m curious though what you thought the endgame was going to be like marrying someone so much older than yourself? Financial issues aside, this seem inevitable for someone who married into a trophy wife type situation.
As burnt said leave, but please don't abandon him.
Do not neglect your financial health as well.
Similar story.
My GF’s husband now ex, gambled and tried to recuperate losses by investing in questionable( high return, too good to be true) businesses and kept borrowing against their house. Needless to say lost it all. She is left at sixty with nothing. Her retirement looks bleak.
So does mine potentially as my husband will require extensive care in the next 10 years, but being fiscally responsible and savvy he deserves it. If he needs AL for 10,000- 12,000 per month he deserves the best, but so do I, I am working on it as I deserve the best either.
It is really not a question of deserving, it is more of how conduct ourselves in marriage.
Lack of financial responsibility, neglectful, reckless behavior shows lack of respect for other spouse. Financial abuse, secrecy, refusal to disclose assets or liabilities ruins any marriage.
Financial needs and increasing cost and his own neglect of his health are not good indicators for any future relationship.
This is financial abuse. Been there done that! This actually has triggered my PTSD of when my husband would buy something and id be up all night worrying if the oil was going to last until payday.
Or dealing with the pouty or anger when you put your foot down.
It is true about the nurse with a purse or being a hospice wife is the new term. Men are diliberately marrying younger with homes and health insurance. I know this is true because I've over heard conversations from men while on public transportation getting women for the health insurance and moving into their homes. Most of these guys are in the early sixties targeting women in their mid forties wanting to get married.
Since I'm already retired and have Medicare, I'm no longer a good catch. LOL
Divorce this man. There is no shame in divorce. I'm not going to send you on a guilt trip because I know you are suffering as a young woman. My daughter is your age, and I wouldn't want to see her marrying an older man in his sixties.
My #1 first tried to ruin me and impoverish our children but I stuck it out because ‘til death do us part’. When that didn’t work he tried a more tried and true method. That one did the trick. If it hadn’t, it very likely could have been ‘til death do us part, but much sooner than anyone would have anticipated!
He was not older than me, he was just pathetically passive -aggressive.
I've just reported your replies to nothappy46 because IMO they're quite cruel... verging on abusive. Opinions are fine, but do you have to destroy a person to get your point across?
P.S - I just re-read this entire thread... -and I realize it's not just your reply that I find offensive, it's a "pile-on" from other forum posters too.
...Judgemental, unkind, non-supportive, kicking a person when they're down and vulnerable...it's like a angry mob picking up a rock and virtually "stoning" a person IMO.
OP is well able to stick up for herself, on this site at least. Her own comments - "Good for you being a saint. And for using your story as a shaming tactic to lecture and judge me" - could well count as 'cruel and abusive' to a poster trying to help.
I didn't work a lot, because I had 4 boys, 🤔so I had2 full time jobs, they were his kids also. So I believe that's I did my share of bringing to my family.
So weather or not you worked, made as much money as him, should not be in the equation at all. Nor is it anything anyone should judge.
The only way would be if you were possibly an in the bed all day drunk, never doing anything, through out your whole marriage.
Who made the money, who didn't, means absolutely 0 to me and probably to the courts
This made me think about my father who left my mother who was dedicated and didn't have a job because he didn't want her to work.
Fast forward, I'm in high school and he meets this woman who is about twenty barely out of her late teens with a couple of kids from different fathers. She leeches on to dad even though he is still married to mom. This affair goes on from the time I was in high school to when I'm in my mid thirties. They tie the knot after mom dies. She is younger than my older siblings. The grandchildren call her grandma. After dad got old and things were no longer fun, he started seeing who she really was. This is an opportunist or gold digger type. Plus dad was in his mid fifties when he met her.
This is not the same situation with this poster since her husband was not all that old when they married. They spent twenty-four years together and had some bumps in the road with his mismanagement of money.
She feels cheated our of a spouse and finances. None of us knew what was down the line when we married these men. My third husband passed in 2016. We didn't get a chance to sort out the financial part because we were newly married. This type of thing can happen to anyone no matter the age.
I understand her anger which is actually fear for the future and feeling cheated out of a marriage and relationship. Eventually, she will calm down to make a decision what is best for the both of them in the long run.
Marriage isn't always a bed of roses. Sometimes all you end up getting are the thorns and sitting on them.
I don't think she means that she is a nurse with a purse since she had been married over twenty years, but just saying this out of frustration.
Taking care of sick people can be the most tiring and frustrating experience. She is losing a spouse. To me, this anger is part of the anticipated grieving process.