Reply to Advice for how to vet your DH’s potential as a future father/partner?

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[quote=Anonymous]Other threads today have me thinking. One person said that you know the kind of partner and father your DH will be based on how their father was when they were growing up. But if you didn’t grow up in the same town, how can you know?

I’m in the middle of a divorce so I’ve been thinking about questions I could have asked to know the truth about STBX and the patterns set by his family of origin:

1) did you eat dinner together as a family? More importantly: at what time? (Turns out that my STBX’s family would sit and wait at the table for my FIL to come home as late as 8:30 pm even when STBX was in 1st or 2nd grade). If I’d probed past my initial question, I would have realized that STbX was raised in a family where everything revolved around FIL and his schedule.

2) did your mom work? When? STBX made a big fuss about his mom’s career but was cagey about key details. I didn’t know until a year before our divorce that she didn’t start working until he was 16, and even then it was part-time and she would drive him to school and pick him up from activities and make all of his meals and do all of what should have been his chores.

3) what were your chores growing up? STBX lied about this so not sure how I could have accounted for his deficits in this area. I wish I had known the truth, which was “none.” His mom did everything until he went away to college because “he needed to focus on his studies.”

4) what did you pay for in high school and college? STBX had a job in college but bent the truth and pretended he worked in Hs, too. He was not responsible for any costs in HS and college and his parents would give him whatever money he wanted. I didn’t know this until we had some major financial disagreements about his personal spending and our joint financial planning. If your spouse has never been responsible for budgeting for their fun, you will have to be the bad guy. Don’t marry someone who never had to pay for anything in HS or college or he’ll never know how to handle discretionary income in a partnership. Don’t marry the baby who spent his summer wages on CDs and concert tickets while you were saving yours for textbooks and rent.

Please add your hard-earned advice here![/quote]

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