Dear Steve and Shirley,
I rushed into a relationship, and I thought I was in love. My boyfriend moved in with me after we dated for two months, and I got pregnant four months later. He wanted us to get married, but I couldn’t do that until I lost my baby weight.
I ended up having a second child, so I kept postponing our wedding. Now that our kids are two and four, my boyfriend doesn’t mention marriage at all. He says his money is tight and he’s focused on getting his side hustle going.
He told me that he wants to get a salon suite to do tattoos. He hasn’t done tattoos in years, but he feels like it would bring in a lot of money. So he’s been going out every night of the week, saying that he’s going to find customers. He’ll stay out all night sometimes, and his excuse is that he doesn’t want to wake the children by coming in late. Their bedroom is right by the back door. But that’s a very bad excuse.
This weekend, he stayed out again and came home at 7 a.m. Sunday morning. He went straight to the shower. I asked him to please take his shower at his girlfriend’s house before he comes home. That caused a big argument, and he told me to get dressed and get the kids dressed.
He took us to the bad part of town to show me an old gas station that he had been renovating. He said it was going to be his tattoo shop. There was an old sofa and a microwave in the back, and he expected me to believe that’s where he sleeps when he stays out. This is where all of his money has been going, and he didn’t even tell me about it.
I feel like he has plans to move on without me and the kids. He still hasn’t told me why he doesn’t come home some nights. Would I be foolish to keep dating this man after all of this?