My partner is 40 and has nothing saved for retirement. He had been expecting a large inheritance from his father when he passed that ended up not materializing for reasons I won’t get into (I know, not exactly the most sound financial planning). I’m on track to be able to retire but there’s no way I can afford to save enough for us both. He’s also currently unemployed, he has been trying to get into a new field for the past two years that also may not end up materializing either. There’s a good chance he may be making very low wages for the foreseeable future, and it will be very difficult for him to catch up in any meaningful way.
I feel like a monster for wanting to break it off over this. We’ve been together for 8 years. I don’t want to live in poverty when I’m old if we stay together for the long haul, and it’s hard to see any possibility of that not happening. But I worry a lot for his future, and feel like I’m his only hope for any sort of stability going forward. He would be in way, way worse shape without my income.
What should I do?
Let’s look at the facts. Facts are our friends, even when they hurt.
Fact one: Your partner is a 40-year-old man who had a financial plan that consisted entirely of waiting for someone else to die. That is not a retirement strategy; that is adolescent behavior. Relying on an inheritance is a refusal to take ownership of one’s own life.
Fact two: He has been unemployed for two years “trying to get into a new field.” At 40, with zero savings, you don’t get the luxury of a two-year exploration phase. You get a job. Any job. You deliver pizzas, you dig ditches, you work at Amazon—and you pursue the dream on the side. The fact that he is comfortable not working for two years while you shoulder the burden tells me he is comfortable letting you carry the weight of his existence.
Fact three: You are playing the role of his mother, not his partner. You said, “I feel like I’m his only hope.” That is a terrifying sentence. You cannot be someone’s Jesus. You cannot save a grown man who refuses to participate in his own rescue. If you are his only hope for stability, he is already unstable, and you are just enabling him to stay there.
Here is the hard truth you don’t want to hear: If you stay with him out of guilt, you will end up hating him.
It won’t take long. Maybe three years, maybe five. But you will wake up one day, working your tail off to fund a retirement he didn’t prepare for, and you will look across the breakfast table with absolute contempt. You will resent every dollar he spends. You will resent his lack of drive. And that contempt will destroy the relationship anyway, only then you’ll be 50 and broke.
You are not choosing between “being a good partner” and “being selfish.” You are choosing between a shared life of dignity and a life of enabling dysfunction.
You need to sit him down tonight. No more “trying.” No more “foreseeable future.” You tell him clearly: “I love you, but I will not finance a future where I have to work until I die because you wouldn’t get a job. I am looking for a partner to build a life with, not a dependent to support.”
He needs to feel the weight of his own life. Right now, you are carrying it for him. Put it down. If he picks it up and starts running, great—you have a future. If he crumbles because you stopped propping him up, then you have your answer.
You are worthy of a partner who runs alongside you, not one you have to drag across the finish line. Stop setting yourself on fire to keep him warm.