My ex-fiancé Alex (21) and i (22) were together for 3 years, ultimately ending with him $7,000 in debt to me. We met online in 2020 when I was 18 and he was 17 and we were long distance for almost the entirety of the relationship. We would fly across the world to visit each other, sometimes for months at a time but everything else was over the phone. Whenever I would come visit he would insist on “spoiling me” which consisted of him taking me out to fancy dinners, staying in nice hotels, and buying anything i would even glance at in the store. Sounds nice, but the problem is he would spend ALL OF HIS MONEY in the first 2 weeks of my 4-week trip. like, every single cent. I would have to cover everything else for the rest of my time there. He would be embarrassed and convince me to continue spending money recklessly the way we were before with promises to pay me back. “you’re basically spending my money since you’re getting it back”, etc. He would even ask me to give him my card so people would think he was paying (RED FLAG I KNOW but i was trying to be sensitive to his masculinity since he’s trans). I would always end up blowing my budget for the trip out of the water and come home with my accounts pretty much drained and nothing paid back.
After a year and a half of this happening every time we would visit each other, I finally brought up the debt when he was preparing to quit his job at mcdonalds and move to the US with me for 2 months (his idea to quit, i was against this honestly). I was planning on moving to his country with him when he left, so he brought €800 cash with him to pay me back. I decided to save it for when i move so i wouldn’t have to worry about conversion rates. he convinced me to move it to my suitcase so there was no way i could forget to bring it with me. My ADHD brain forgot he moved it there so when he was packing to go back and his suitcase “broke” i was more than willing to let him borrow mine. After spending ALL of his money again and my footing the bill the rest of his stay, I didn’t have enough money to move. He made me feel guilty for not saving enough and convinced me to reschedule his flight for FIVE HOURS LATER so he “didn’t have to go on a red-eye alone” costing me hundreds of dollars i was again promised would be paid back.
He spent the next month two months unemployed and playing video games all day every day all while telling me i needed to get a THIRD job to save up to move. He kept buying himself takeout and game upgrades and i asked him where he got the money from since his bank account was literally zero when he left. He told me he left cash at home because he knew he would spend all of his money in the US. This completely contradicted what he had told me when he first arrived on the trip so I was immediately sus. I remembered the €800 and tore my apartment up looking for it with no success. I asked him about the money in the suitcase and he brushed it off with “idk i didn’t see it”. I told him over and over to go check the suitcase and finally he said he did but didn’t find it so his MOTHER probably stole it. I saw through that immediately but wasn’t ready to accept he would do that to me.
The money ran out and he finally got a job. Shortly after, he got kicked out and moved in with his new best friend Lisa (16 Y/O!!!!)’s parents and began slowly ghosting me, posting about her all of the time (even on my birthday😍) while ignoring my calls and messages, making playlists for her, he would only call me if she was there too, saying stepping outside to give me a call would be “rude”. That’s kinda besides the point but bro was emotionally cheating and calling me crazy and gross for thinking something was going on. He stopped ghosting after about 2 months of very little contact (i was crashing tf out privately) and told me he felt bad and got us tickets to the eras tour for a late birthday present and he would be coming in the summer to visit and go with me. Now, earlier in the year we had a discussion about how I would never spend thousands of dollars for one night and he said he would for Taylor Swift (I made him a swiftie btw). I said that’s his money and he can spend it how he wants but this is why we don’t share finances. I asked him where we were sitting and he said it was a surprise.
Alex came to visit (couldn’t go a day without facetiming Lisa) and after he was already here he said he got scammed and the tickets were never sent to him (yeah sure buddy). I had just seen a tiktok video of that exact thing happen to someone else so I believed him but was a little suspicious he took the story from that tiktok. The night before the concert he told me he had spent €6,000 on 4 tickets so if i buy 2 for $4,000 (the cheapest we could find) he would send me the whole €6,000 when it got refunded through paypal. He pulled the whole “i’ll love you forever if you do this for me” act and i was so desperate for him to stay and not leave me for Lisa that I bought them and we went. The concert was amazing and we had good seats but it was tainted by the memory of seeing my savings for moving that i had worked 3 jobs for decrease so drastically. I went back to his country with him to visit and he and Lisa spent the whole trip trying to convince me they were purely platonic and i was creepy for insinuating anything. Alex makes no effort to get his money back from paypal.
Fast forward 3 months, we break up and he gets with Lisa less than 24 hours later. I find out from mutual friends that in the time he was ghosting me, he was spending all of his money “spoiling” Lisa and there was no way he had €6,000 to spend on eras tour tickets in the first place. We eventually put together a monthly payment plan of $150 per month with a total owed $7,000. he had his mother take out a loan for $2,000 and used that to pay part of it (he couldn’t take out a loan due to past debt to the app Klarna). I had to hound him for the money pretty much every month and there were multiple times he said he’d paid but nothing would come through on my end. Sometimes he’d say he didn’t have enough left over from his paycheck to pay me but he would be posting about concerts he was going to at least once per week.
His grandparents are pretty rich and they loved me, they still text me every now and then saying they miss me and hope i’m doing well. They have a trust fund set up for him but he didn’t have access to it for obvious reasons, but they were taking money out of it monthly to help pay the rent on his apartment. I once brought up telling his grandparents about the money and he said I can’t do that because they would give it to me out of their pocket and they need it for health reasons since they are old and have frequent hospital trips. I accepted this until i remembered his country has free healthcare. Earlier this month I was about 2 days from telling his grandparents when out of nowhere he pays me all of the remaining debt ($4,000). Here’s where I could be an asshole, I’m assuming they gave him access to his trust so I want to send them a thank you message for their contribution, pretending that I think they already know about it. Exposing this secret could cause a lot of tension in their family and possibly upset his already fragile grandparents who think highly of him. I could just keep quiet, take my money, and disappear from his life but honestly I want at least some revenge. what should I do? does anyone have other ideas for revenge that wouldn’t make me an asshole?
edit: i forgot to mention, alex bought tickets for the europe leg of the tour for me, him, lisa, and her mom BEFORE he came to visit me. after we broke up i asked if he could transfer me the ticket since there weren’t assigned seats on the floor so i could go alone without even seeing them. he made up some stupid excuse about how ticket transfers aren’t a thing where he lives and then i find out after the concert that he took one of lisa’s friends instead. i could’ve seen ttpd live i am still furious
Comments
Backup of the post’s body: My ex-fiancé Alex (21) and i (22) were together for 3 years and ended with him $7,000 in debt to me. We met online in 2020 when I was 18 and he was 17 and we were long distance for almost the entirety of the relationship. We would fly across the world to visit each other, sometimes for months at a time but everything else was over the phone. Whenever I would come visit he would insist on “spoiling me” which consisted of him taking me out to fancy dinners, staying in nice hotels, and buying anything i would even glance at in the store. The problem with this is that he would spend ALL OF HIS MONEY in the first 2 weeks of my 4-week trip. like, every single cent. I would have to cover everything else for the rest of my time there. He would always be embarrassed and would convince me to continue spending money recklessly the way we were before with promises to pay me back. He would even ask me to give him my card so people would think he was paying (RED FLAG I KNOW but i was trying to be sensitive to his masculinity since he’s trans). I would always end up blowing my budget for the trip out of the water and come home with my accounts pretty much drained and nothing paid back.
After a year and a half of this each time we would visit each other, I finally brought up the debt when he was preparing to quit his job at mcdonalds and move to the US with me for 2 months (his idea to quit, i was against this honestly) I was planning on moving to his country with him when he left, so he brought €800 cash with him to pay me back. I decided to save it for when i move so i wouldn’t have to worry about conversion rates. he convinced me to keep it in my suitcase so there was no way i could forget to bring it with me. My ADHD brain forgot forgot I had moved it there so when he was packing to go back and his suitcase “broke” i was more than willing to let him borrow mine. After spending ALL of his money again and my footing the bill the rest of his stay, I didn’t have enough money to move. He made me feel guilty for not saving enough and convinced me to reschedule his flight for FIVE HOURS LATER so he “didn’t have to go on a red-eye alone” costing me hundreds of dollars i was again promised would be paid back.
He spent the next month two months unemployed and playing video games all day every day all while telling me i needed to get a THIRD job to save up to move. He kept buying himself takeout and game upgrades and i asked him where he got the money from since his bank account was literally zero when he left. He told me he left cash at home because he knew he would spend all of his money in the US. This completely contradicted what he had told me when he first arrived on the trip so I was immediately sus. I remembered the €800 and tore my apartment up looking for it with no success. I asked him about the money in the suitcase and he brushed it off with “idk i didn’t see it”. I told him over and over to go check the suitcase and finally he said he did but didn’t find it so his MOTHER probably stole it. I saw through that immediately but wasn’t ready to accept he would do that to me.
The money ran out and he finally got a job. Shortly after, he got kicked out and moved in with his new best friend Lisa (16 Y/O!!!!)’s parents and began slowly ghosting me, posting about her all of the time (even on my birthday😍) while ignoring my calls and messages, making playlists for her, he would only call me if she was there too, saying stepping outside to give me a call would be “rude”. That’s kinda besides the point but bro was emotionally cheating and calling me crazy and gross for thinking something was going on. He stopped ghosting after about 2 months of very little contact (i was crashing tf out privately) and told me he gelt bad and got us tickets to the eras tour and he would be coming in the summer to visit and go with me. Now, earlier in the year we had a discussion about how I would never spend thousands of dollars for one night and he would for Taylor Swift (I made him a swiftie btw). I said that’s his money and he can spend it how he wants but this is why we don’t share finances. I asked him where we were sitting and he said it was a surprise.
Alex came to visit (couldn’t go a day without facetiming Lisa) and after he was already here he said he got scammed and the tickets were never sent to him (yeah sure buddy). I had just seen a tiktok video of that exact thing happen to them so I believed him but was a little suspicious he took the story from that tiktok. The night before the concert he told me he had spent €6,000 on 4 tickets so if i buy 2 for $4,000 (the cheapest we could find) he would send me the whole €6,000 when it got refunded through paypal. He pulled the whole “i’ll love you forever if you do this for me” act and i was so desperate for him to stay and not leave me for Lisa that I bought them and we went. The concert was amazing and we had good seats but it was tainted by the memory of seeing my savings for moving that i had worked 3 jobs for decrease so drastically. I went back to his country with him to visit and he and Lisa spent the whole trip trying to convince me they were purely platonic and i was creepy for insinuating anything. Alex makes no effort to get his money back from paypal.
Fast forward 3 months, we break up and he gets with Lisa less than 24 hours later. I find out from mutual friends that in the time he was ghosting me, he was spending all of his money “spoiling” Lisa and there was no way he had €6,000 to spend on eras tour tickets in the first place. We eventually put together a monthly payment plan of $150 per month with a total owed $7,000. he had his mother take out a loan for $2,000 and used that to pay part of it (he couldn’t take out a loan due to past debt to the app Klarna). I had to hound him for the money pretty much every month and there were multiple times he said he’d paid but nothing would come through on my end. Sometimes he’d say he didn’t have enough left over from his paycheck to pay me but he would be posting about concerts he was going to at least once per week.
His grandparents are pretty rich and they loved me, they still text me every now and then saying they miss me and home i’m doing well. They have a trust fund set up for him but he didn’t have access to it for obvious reasons. I once brought up telling his grandparents about the money and he said I can’t do that because they would give it to me out of their pocket and they need it for health reasons since they are old and have frequent hospital trips. I accepted this until i remembered his country has free healthcare. Earlier this month I was about 2 days from telling his grandparents when out of nowhere he pays me all of the remaining debt ($4,000). Here’s where I could be an asshole, I’m assuming they gave him access to his trust so I want to send them a thank you message for their contribution, pretending that I think they already know about it. Exposing this secret could cause a lot of tension in their family and possibly upset his already fragile grandparents who think highly of him. I could just keep quiet, take my money, and disappear from his life but honestly I want at least some revenge. what should I do? does anyone have other ideas for revenge that wouldn’t make me an asshole?
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Thank his grandparents for paying his debt.
Do it
Yes, thank the grandparents!
Hmm. Maybe thank the grandparents? I’m pretty sure he had the money the entire time and was just using the excuse that he didn’t have money to get you to spend on him. Then again my ex husband would spend every cent on payday and take out loans from friends and family for his actual expenses like rent.
If the debt is paid, sometimes the best revenge is moving on and letting them live with the fact that they lost someone who had every right to expose them but didn’t. That said, if he’s still lying, stealing, or manipulating people, you wouldn’t be the AH for telling the truth. Just make sure your actions reflect your values, not his mistakes.
What country is he from? And what is the culture about family, honor, disowning relatives, and suicide? If there is any chance this could dpiral out to something truly catastrophic you would regret later on, consider that before you do anything.
If you have your money? Change your phone and cut your ties. You don’t need to invest anymore enegy for him.
YWNBTA. His grandparents NEED to know.
Edit: fixed the judgment, sorry about that!
If his grandparents care about you that much to reach out to you I’d thank them for the money and be extra grateful about it, that you just didn’t know how you were going to survive without it and had given up hope of ever getting the 6000 back – yes, tell them the whole amount owed.
Then drop the mic and block him and move on
Updateme!
NTA Thank the grand parents. Hopefully they’re aware but this person has no financial literacy or regulation so will blow their trust fund quickly