Deal Breaker and a Coin Show Part 1

I took a message for my husband, President of the Coin Club.  One of the club members wanted to ride with the group going to a show.  Hmmm.  This interested me as I had not heard or seen anything about it from my husband.  Now it was hanging out there.  I knew he could not go to this show without spending money.  I reminded him we were overdrawn.  I didn't say anything more.  He was defensive.  He said, "I know I've seen the e-mails."  I dropped it.  I'm not his mother.  I wanted to see what he would do.  He knows we do not have enough money for anything out of the ordinary.

I also knew that he'd made money working for an elderly couple and I had yet to see it in the form of cash or a check or a deposit.  I knew he was walking around with it. He didn't say anything, but he slipped up about getting money from them. 

Well, you know how I am always commenting here on how much money we don't have?  This Friday we slid into the payday $459 in the hole.  Yep.  $459 dollars overdrawn.  In the past I would have erased the e-mails as they came in because I wanted to protect my husband from the truth, but my new commitment to not protecting him from reality meant that I had to leave those e-mails about our account being overdrawn right where they were.

He said nothing about the money I knew he had.  He left for the coin show with all his buddies.  I knew he would spend money with all the effort I was making to keep us floating until I could get a job.  Shameful, embarrassing things I won't discuss here.

He came home I asked him if he had fun.  He said yes and told me some stories.  No talk of the coins I knew he bought.  I managed to get out of him he went to breakfast and dinner as well as bought the driver dinner.  Finally, several hours later, I asked him if he saw any coins that he couldn't live without.  At first I didn't believe he bought coins.  I thought he meant that he had seen coins he really would have liked to have.  I really, really, really, really, didn't think he'd be foolish enough to buy coins with the money he'd made on the side.

He did.