Expectations

[heisler]

Expectations I recently had a girl move in with me under the idea that sharing expenses would reduce the impact to both of our incomes to a significant degree. DINK. Once we settled in, it took a while for me to get the expenses spreadsheet up, maybe a couple months (I was busy), and meantime I payed the rent, utilities, groceries, etc. Now I have this spreadsheet that shows both our incomes, all of the shared expenses, and lo and behold, the amount contributed, separated by our names. Well, that touched off a shitstorm. Suddenly I'm a debt collector, and the only reason I came up with this spreadsheet is to show how much she owed me. I honestly intend for this to be a good tool for tracking our finances. What do I do now? I must've presented this badly, but how to recover?

[merrigan]

give her a month free

[traczyk]

Seriously? That doesn't seem fair.

[coe]

dont be a tight wad.........

[bruno]

I agree

[bainter]

Forgive the back debt and start fresh It is definitely your fault that you took two months to get your shit together.

[Lsi]

* You are getting pussy from this woman, right?

[attridge]

That's going to be several hundred dollars I guess I need to ask myself if my principles are worth that.

[breeding]

She should have said something, as should have you. Both of you are at fault here. Maybe split it and don't make that mistake again. You fucked up though, seriously. And she abused the situation.

[pflaum]

that sounds about right, thanks

[fanton]

You should've made the spreadsheet together. Make a new one together from scratch. Ask her what columns she think should be on it. Figure it out in a more mutual fashion.

[miklos]

you know I tried that I brought it over to her once I had all the data and we pieced it together. But as soon as I added the columns that showed who had contributed what in the past couple months, it blew up!

[staack]

Why? What exactly made her mad? You made it clear that you didn't have a problem paying more until you two got it sorted out, right? Are you going to get a joint checking account? That way all you have to worry about is equal deposits into that account if nitpicking bill by bill and one person giving the other money is an issue.

[speed]

well now I'm not so sure about the joint checking account, and neither is she. she took the joint checking account thing off the table as soon as I added those columns. As I said below, I probably should have asked her for money in previous months, but she didn't offer anything either. We had from the very beginning agreed it would be split down the middle.

[ebron]

So what made her mad, exactly?

[zietz]

Making the spreadsheet show that she owed money for the past two months.

[jeremia]

I don't think that's something to be mad at. What about that would make her mad? She feels self-conscious about you having more financial power? Does she feel that make you two less equal? Does she feel like it's indicative of bad communication? You need to figure out the underlying issue, i.e., what actually made her mad.

[Nhien]

We did try to find the underlying issue We talked about it for hours and there was a lot of aggression and analyzing of motives. It was a difficult discussion that didn't conclude much and that's why I'm asking others. Your guesses seem like they could be near the target but try getting anyone to admit to those things, especially in the heat of an argument.