My fiance and I have been together for two and a half years and will be getting married in December. He has a unique (very niche) hobby that isn't cheap. Without going into too much detail, the guy is essentially building a custom race car and has been for over four years. There's been setback after setback, but he's adamant about getting it finished. I try to be supportive because I know everyone else in his life has told him to just give it up and put that money elsewhere. But this is his passion project of literal years that he desperately wants to see through. Despite that, I have always had my own concerns about it. Before we were together, he lived very, very frugally to make sure he could make his monthly payments to his mechanic. I don't understand the project at all, but again if it's HIS money and we can still pay our bills then whatever. He can do what he wants with his own paycheck as long as everything else is paid for at the end of the day.
He told me in March that he had made his last payment. Cool, we could start putting more money away towards the wedding. This is partially my bad for being too trusting, but we share a joint account and have separate savings. I wasn't really watching that closely where money was going, but I've been looking closer into it because I have to make a hefty car repair and need to adjust our budget. As it turns out, he has not stopped paying for his race car. His mechanic doesn't take a credit card, so he's essentially been giving our monthly payment for our venue to his mechanic and instead putting the wedding payment on his personal credit card. When I figured this out, I blew up at him because it's incredibly deceptive and also I never agreed to having MY money also go towards his project. He broke down and told me he was embarrassed to admit he owed his mechanic a few more payments because all anyone does is tell him to give it up. So he figured he'd pay his last few payments with cash while making sure our wedding still got paid for and then pay down the credit card himself when all was said and done.
My thing is....he could've told me. He didn't. He chose to lie because he probably knew I wouldn't respond well to him putting more money towards this car when we have a wedding to pay for. To me, it's irresponsible.
I don't even know what to think at this point, I'm so angry. It does feel borderline obsessive, to pour thousands of dollars into a project over years and years with no real result and not be able to give it up (he hasn't even been able to drive the thing yet) and then to choose to put OUR money towards that instead of towards our wedding like we had agreed. I think in his head he explained it away by making sure the wedding venue still got their payment via credit card. So to him, it didn't necessarily feel like he was doing anything wrong because things were still getting paid for. It's like he manipulated his own thought process to make it seem less worse than it is.
This is also just triggering to me in general because this is my second wedding. During the planning of my first, my ex blew a bunch of our wedding money on snowboarding gear and didn't see the problem with us suddenly being out hundreds of dollars. I mean at least my current fiance feels bad and was ashamed when I confronted him. I can't get past the lie and I'm trying to figure out if my past experiences are fueling how harsh I feel about this, or if this really is as big of a betrayal as it feels....
