She is probably pregnant

I went home for lunch today and my wife greeted me at the door with “I have something to tell you.” That was immediately followed with the words “I’m pregnant.”

I had to go sit down.

The wife and I have hardly had any sex since our honeymoon. In four months of marriage, minus the weekend of the honeymoon, I can count the number of times we have had sex on one hand. Part of the reason we weren’t having sex, was because  of our differing views on having a child. She wanted one with me to go with the two girls she already has; one from her last fiancée and one from a one night stand. As I stated in earlier blogs, I am happy with these two girls and I don’t want another kid. We can’t afford the two we have, not to mention the fact that the wife asked me for a divorce two months ago. Bringing a child in to an unstable marriage sounded like a bad idea to me. Because of these differing views, she withheld sex for about a month and a half, except for one night when we had been drinking with friends and her sister was with the kids.

Also, you can blame me for just being me. I have never wanted kids. Probably…definitely….for selfish reasons. Now I have two step kids and I love them, but I still have selfish motivations for not wanting another child, mostly around money, time, and sleep. Also, I have a very pessimistic view of the world we live in. Bringing a kid in to this fucked up world does not seem like the right thing to do. Finally, in my family, kids have always been viewed as a burden. If you had a kid on purpose you were stupid and if you had one on accident, you were still stupid, but you might as well man up and be a dad. This is the maternal family, on the paternal side…I don’t know. My dad wasn’t much of a dad and his dad was a fucking moron.

Right now you are thinking “well, dumbass, why didn’t you use birth control.” You are perfectly right to think that. Every time we had sex, minus one or two, we used condoms. You are now asking “What about those one or two times?”  This is going to sound lame…very lame. She told me she couldn’t get pregnant for a while. She was on the depo shot for about three years and got off just before we were married. She told me that the doctor informed her that it would be a long time before the depo was out of her system, up to a year, and that she wouldn’t be able to get pregnant until then.

Guess the doc was wrong, or I was lied to.

I am unhappy about this situation. I do not want another kid at all. In fact I have been wondering if leaving my wife is the right choice for my future, now it seems that no matter what I will be stuck with her and this kid. A kid I don’t want, a kid I am not prepared in any way, shape, or form for. A kid that we can’t afford. We are barely making bills now, another mouth to feed will horribly break us.

Hell, reading this I want to punch myself in the face. I wouldn’t want me to have a kid because I sound like a selfish ass hole. Maybe I am a selfish ass hole.

I’ve started looking in to things though. I can sell my little .22 rifle, scope and hard case for some quick cash. That would at least help get the 4,000.00 on the credit card a little down, or help buy tires for the wife’s car. Speaking of cars, I guess I am going to have to sell mine or trade it in for something else. My car payments are 420.00 a month for the next two and a half or three years (until I was married I was paying more than the minimum, after I got married I can barely make the minimum) and I owe around 13,000.00 on my car. If I am very lucky I can sell it private party and get 23,000 for it or I can trade it in and get 18-20000 for it, pay off the balance, and use the rest as a down payment on something more gas efficient and family friendly. That thought makes me cringe.

Fuck. What did I get myself in to?

Money then and money now

Once upon a time I had some money. I was always kind of broke, but it was really my own fault. I ate out almost every lunch and every dinner, I spent close to 100.00 on comic books a month, not to mention regular books on my kindle. Spent money getting my car washed nicely a few times a month. etc. I didn’t splurge on big things very often, but I pretty much had everything I wanted. Things were tight, but doable. Especially after I received my promotion. I started making an extra 400.00 a month. At that point I barely had a balance on my credit card, and what I did have was Christmas and birthday presents. Maybe some car parts. I was actually able to start dumping money in to savings. If I wanted to run out of town for the day, I could afford the gas. I would take the girlfriend/fiancé (now wife) on a date night or two a weeks, sometimes out of town. Towards the end of last year and beginning of this year I had to give her some money to help her out, quite a bit of money actually, enough I had to take a small loan out of my retirement. I admit, I did use some of that cash on myself.

My credit card balance at the end of March, right before I was married, was 767.00. I was married on April 10th. At the end of April my credit card bill was 2025.60. Now it is up at 4000.00. After I got married I adjusted my earnings, taxes, etc. to account for three new dependents, especially as my wife quit her waitressing job. I am now making 400.00 a month more with this adjustment. On top of this, she is using her moms food assistance card. It’s illegal as hell, but she is doing it. Somehow, with the extra cash and food stamps, we are barely making ends meet! How the fuck am I now always broke? My checking account is nothing, my savings is starting to dwindle again, and my credit card debt is climbing!

What the hell happened? How can a family of four with a couple of cars be costing this much fucking money?!

Last time I tried talking about this stuff to my wife, it didn’t go over well. Somehow this is probably all my fault.

I was looking in to financial articles on families, how to save money, cut spending, etc. I ran across a couple of articles about how a mans income goes up after a divorce, here is an excerpt.

“Incomes of “separating husbands” rise “immediately and continuously” in the years following a marital split. “The differences between the sexes are stark,” he said. “But this is not so much a gender thing as a parent thing. The key differences are not between men and women, but between fathers and mothers.”

He found that, when a man leaves a childless marriage, his income immediately rises by 25%. Women, however, suffer a sharp fall in income. Their financial position rarely reaches pre-split levels.”

Another article talked about how even with child support and either alimony or spousal support, men’s available income still goes up.

If she ever asks me for a divorce again, it won’t exactly hurt me financially if I give her what she wants.