My Husband Spent My Entire Salary on His “Hobbies” and Laughed: “Don’t Like It? Divorce Me.” The Next Morning, He Couldn’t Pay for a Taxi or Even Coffee
“Thirty-five thousand,” I said, looking at my phone screen. “In one month. On fishing spoons, lures, and gas for the boat.”
Denis didn’t even turn around. He was sitting on the couch, scrolling through a fishing forum.
“So what?”
“Polina is wearing last year’s jacket. The sleeves are too short. She’s thirteen. She’s growing.”
“Buy her a new one.”
“With what money? You took everything I had saved from the card.”
Only then did he look at me. Calmly. The way people look at someone who is saying something obviously stupid.
“Don’t like it? Divorce me.”
Just like that. Fourteen years of marriage, and fourteen years of the same phrase: “Don’t like it? Divorce me.” As if divorce were a button you press and suddenly you’re free. And the mortgage? And Polina? And the fact that the apartment was in both our names, and dividing it would mean court, appraisals, stress?
I worked as a quality control inspector at a cable factory. Sixty-eight thousand after taxes. Not much, but steady. Denis earned fifty-five thousand as an installer at a power substation. Together, one hundred twenty-three thousand for three people. It would have been enough. If not for the boat.
He bought the boat seven years ago for four hundred eighty thousand. Back then I still tried to argue, tried to explain that we needed to replace the kitchen, that the stove was barely working. He just brushed me off and took the money from our savings account—the very account where I had been putting away five thousand a month for repairs. I had saved for two years. He spent it all in one morning.
After that, it only got worse. Fishing gear, bait, echo sounders, motor oil, gasoline, storage at the reservoir—three thousand a month just for the spot. From April to September, he left on Friday evening and came back late Sunday night. I had already gotten used to spending weekends alone with Polina, because he was never around anyway.
Then October, November, December would come—the “off-season.” But money still went to fishing equipment expos, catalogs, and online store orders. Last November he ordered a spinning rod for nineteen thousand. Japanese. Delivery was another two thousand three hundred.
I tried to talk to him. The first time was over dinner, calmly. I showed him the expenses for the month. He said, “What is this, a report?” and went to watch TV.
The second time, I suggested, “Let’s divide the budget. Half for each of us, and we spend our share however we want.” He laughed. “I’m not a student living on a stipend.”
The third time, I wrote him a message—a long one, with calculations. How much went to fishing, how much was left for everything else. He read it. He replied with one word: “Nonsense.”
By the seventh conversation, I had no arguments left. Because arguments only work when the other person is willing to hear them. Denis did not want to hear anything. Every conversation ended the same way.
“Don’t like it? Divorce me.”
He said it so easily, as if he were passing the salt—without irritation, without anger. Just stating a fact: there’s the door, there’s the key, there’s the way out. And the fact that I was carrying the utilities, groceries, clothes for our daughter, school expenses, and half the mortgage on my shoulders—that was supposedly my personal choice. My decision. Don’t want to? Leave. He genuinely believed that.
I didn’t leave. Because the apartment was mortgaged in both our names, and there were only three years left to pay—just hold on a little longer. Because Polina needed a father, even one like that. And also because I kept thinking: just a little more, and he’ll calm down, get it out of his system, finally grow up. Back then he was forty-three. Then forty-five. Then forty-eight. He never grew up.
I started keeping a table on my phone—not in a notebook, just regular notes in an app. Every purchase, every transfer, every charge: date, amount, purpose. And when, six months later, I finally looked at the total, my stomach hurt—physically, not as a metaphor.
Two hundred seventeen thousand in six months. On fishing.
That was more than three months of my salary.
The autumn turned cold. Polina was wearing thin sneakers because last year’s winter boots had become too small. After my shift, I stopped by a store and chose a pair for her for four thousand two hundred—decent ones, fur-lined, with non-slip soles. I tapped the card.
“Insufficient funds.”
I stood at the register, feeling my ears turn red. I immediately put the boots back and walked out, trying not to look at the saleswoman. I checked the balance in the app: seven hundred thirty-one rubles. Yesterday there had been nine thousand. I looked at the transaction history: “Transfer – 8,200 rubles – Fishing36.ru.”
He had bought himself a winter suit for ice fishing.
I called him from the street. My fingers were freezing; the phone almost slipped out of my hand.
“Denis, you took money from the card.”
“And?”
“Polina doesn’t have winter shoes.”
A pause. Two seconds. Three.
“Ask your mother. Or wait until payday. Why are you getting hysterical?”
“I’m not hysterical. I’m telling you that your daughter has no warm boots, and it’s minus seven outside.”
“So what? What does that have to do with me? Manage the budget better.”
He hung up. I stood at the bus stop. There was no bus. The wind blew straight into my face.
That evening, I did two things. First, I asked my mother for three thousand for the boots—and my mother transferred it immediately, even though she herself lived on a pension of only twenty-one thousand. Second, I opened a separate account in another bank in my own name and transferred three thousand into it—everything that was left from my advance payment. Denis did not know about it.
I was ashamed. Not because of the account—but because I was asking my retired mother for money for her granddaughter’s shoes while I had a working husband and two salaries in the family. Mom didn’t ask anything. She just transferred the money and wrote, “Buy good ones. Don’t save on them.” She knew. Not everything, but enough.
I never complained to her about Denis—I was too ashamed. But Mom saw. She saw it in Polina’s shoes, in my jacket, in the way I always refused coffee when we walked in the park. “I don’t want any.” But really, I felt bad spending two hundred forty rubles, because two hundred forty was half a loaf of bread, a pack of pasta, and sunflower oil.
Meanwhile, Denis was posting photos of his new winter suit in a fishing chat. Caption: “My wife gave it to me for my birthday!” I saw it by accident—Polina showed me because her dad had asked her to like the post. Fourteen likes. Three fire emojis. And my salary—on his back, in waterproof membrane fabric.
Polina put on the new boots and ran off to her sports class. I watched her from the window. Her jacket was short; her wrists stuck out from the sleeves. And Denis had a new winter ice-fishing suit. For eight thousand two hundred.
Every month I transferred three or four thousand to the secret account. Not much, of course. But I desperately needed a cushion—not out of greed, but out of fear, because I had already understood: he would not stop.
In February, my mother-in-law came over. Nina Vasilyevna. Seventy-four years old, energetic, carrying a cake.
Denis invited friends—two guys from work, Lyokha and Sergey. He said we were celebrating his birthday. Fifty years old. A milestone. I prepared the table: three salads, a hot dish, baked chicken with potatoes, and cabbage pie. Four hours in the kitchen after my shift. Groceries—paid for with my money, of course. Four thousand six hundred went on the festive table. Denis did not contribute a single ruble to his own birthday celebration.
At the table, everything was going normally. Lyokha praised the chicken. Sergey talked about his vacation. Then Nina Vasilyevna said:
“Deniska has settled in well. He works, he fishes, he rests. A man needs rest, am I right?”
Lyokha nodded. Sergey shrugged.
“And you, Angelina, why are you so gloomy? Your husband is the provider. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t run around with women. Fishing is a noble hobby. And you’re always dissatisfied. You should appreciate him.”
I said nothing. I put down my fork, picked up a glass of water, and took a sip—just to keep my hands busy, because I really wanted to answer.
“He brings you fish, doesn’t he?” my mother-in-law continued. “Fresh fish. Not store-bought. Do you know how much zander costs in the store? And he brings it for free!”
Denis was smiling. Broadly, smugly. Like a man being praised for something he deserved.
And then I heard Polina drop something behind the wall. A dull sound. Then silence. I got up and went to her. She was sitting on the floor in her room, gluing the sole of her sneaker with superglue. The same thin sneakers she had worn before the boots. The sole was coming off.
“Mom, I have PE tomorrow, and my second pair is falling apart,” she said without lifting her head.
I returned to the table. Nina Vasilyevna was still talking about what a wonderful provider Denis was. I opened my phone. Notes. The table. Seven years.
“Nina Vasilyevna,” I said. “You said ‘provider.’ May I clarify something?”
The table went silent. Denis stopped chewing.
“Over the past seven years, your son has spent two million eight hundred seventy thousand rubles on fishing. That includes the boat, gear, gasoline, storage, suits, exhibitions, and so on. In those seven years, he has brought home fish worth approximately thirty thousand—I counted. That’s at market prices. So: he invested almost three million and got thirty thousand back. A provider.”
Lyokha started coughing. Sergey stared at his plate. Nina Vasilyevna opened her mouth and didn’t close it.
Denis stood up. The chair slid back, screeching across the linoleum.
“What are you doing?” he said quietly through his teeth.
“Counting,” I answered. “Quality control inspector. That’s my job—to count.”
“In front of people?”
“And spending in front of people is fine? You’re not embarrassed to brag to Lyokha about a new echo sounder for twenty-two thousand. So I shouldn’t be embarrassed to say where the money came from.”
Nina Vasilyevna finally closed her mouth. Then opened it again.
“Angelina, this is a family matter! Why air dirty laundry?”
“And why do you praise Denis and judge me in front of guests, Nina Vasilyevna? That is also a family matter. But you weren’t embarrassed.”
Lyokha was the first to get up from the table. He said, “Thank you, we should go,” and pulled Sergey by the sleeve. Sergey walked to the door without looking back. From the stairwell, I heard him quietly say to Lyokha, “Three million, can you imagine?”
Nina Vasilyevna packed the half-eaten cake into a bag. Her hands were trembling. She called a taxi and left without saying goodbye.
Denis stood in the middle of the kitchen. He looked at the empty table, at me, at the door. Then he said:
“You’ll pay for this.”
And locked himself in the room.
Polina peeked out of hers.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
And I sat alone in the kitchen. Dirty plates covered the table. The salad had dried out. The chicken had gone cold.
I cleaned up in silence. Not because I had forgiven him. Because the dishes wouldn’t wash themselves. And because I needed to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t think about what I had just done.
It was a strange feeling. Not joy. Not relief. Something in between. Like taking off a heavy backpack after a long road—it still hurts, but it’s already easier.
Polina came in, silently took a towel, and started drying the plates. We didn’t talk. We didn’t need to. Then she went to sleep. And I sat there, looking at the clean table.
But I knew: in the morning, there would be a scandal. Denis was not the kind of man to stay silent after something like that.
The scandal did not begin in the morning. It began at one in the morning.
Denis came out of the room. He turned on the kitchen light, where I was still sitting.
“You humiliated me,” he said. “In front of my friends. In front of my mother. On my birthday.”
“I stated numbers. Not opinions. Numbers.”
“What numbers? You were counting behind my back! Spying!”
“I was looking at statements from our joint card. The one my salary goes to. The one you take money from without asking.”
“Without asking? It’s the family budget!”
“Family means it’s for the family. But Polina’s sneakers are glued together, I haven’t had a vacation in six years, and I haven’t bought a new dress in four. Not one café visit just for pleasure.”
I immediately added, because he was silent and, it seemed, actually listening:
“And you have a boat, two winter suits, an echo sounder, and three rods at twelve thousand each. A tanning salon once every two weeks for one thousand two hundred—to ‘maintain’ your fishing tan. A fishing magazine subscription—one thousand eight hundred a year. You didn’t even spend a single ruble on your own birthday—I bought the groceries with my money. For your celebration.”
He was silent for five seconds. Then he said what he always said:
“Don’t like it? Divorce me.”
I looked at him. At his fisherman’s tan that didn’t fade even in winter—from the lamps at the tanning salon he visited to “maintain” his tone. One thousand two hundred rubles per session, once every two weeks.
“Fine,” I said.
“What do you mean, ‘fine’?”
“Divorce it is. But first—the money.”
He snorted, waved his hand, and went to sleep.
And I stayed. And did what I had been thinking about for the last three months.
I opened the banking app—the joint account: forty-one thousand three hundred rubles. I transferred everything, down to the last kopeck, to my separate account in another bank. Then I went into the salary card settings and changed the payment details: from now on, my salary would no longer go to the joint account, but to my personal one.
I closed the app, put the phone on the table, and looked at the clock: 2:14 a.m.
My hands were completely calm—no trembling, no cold. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt that I had done something truly precise, just like at work—when you test a cable and already know: this one is good, that one is defective.
I turned off the light and went to bed. But I didn’t fall asleep right away. I lay there listening to the clock ticking in the hallway. Denis snored behind the wall. He slept peacefully. He didn’t know yet.
The morning would be interesting.
The morning began at seven. Denis got up, got dressed, and left the apartment. Usually, he stopped by the coffee shop near the house—an Americano for two hundred forty and a bun for one hundred eighty. Every morning. I knew because I saw the charges.
I was getting Polina ready for school when the phone rang.
“Angelina! My card isn’t working!”
“What card?”
“The joint one! I can’t pay for coffee! What did you do?”
I spread butter on Polina’s sandwich and put it in a container.
“I didn’t do anything to your card. The card works. There’s just zero on it.”
“What do you mean, zero? There were forty thousand there!”
“There were. I transferred it.”
“Where did you transfer it?”
“To my account. You said, ‘Don’t like it? Divorce me.’ I’ve started. With the finances.”
A pause. A long one. I could hear the coffee shop noise behind him: voices, dishes clinking, music.
“Have you lost your mind? Give the money back!”
“No.”
“I won’t be able to get to work! My gas tank is empty!”
“Walk. It’s three kilometers. Polina walks that much every day in her glued-together sneakers.”
“You’re sick! I’m telling you—give the money back! Some of that money is mine too!”
“Your salary goes to your own card. You’ll have enough. And what was on the joint account was what was left of my money, the part you didn’t manage to spend on fishing lures.”
He hung up. I put the phone away. Polina was standing in the doorway with her backpack, looking at me.
“Mom, is everything okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”
We went outside. It was minus eleven. I walked beside my daughter and thought: forty-one thousand three hundred rubles was, of course, not millions. But it was his gas, his coffee, his boat storage, all those fishing magazine subscriptions—everything he was so used to, everything he considered “a given.” And now—zero.
And in my personal account, the one I had been secretly topping up for fourteen months, there was already forty-seven thousand. Plus that forty-one three hundred. Plus my salary would now go only there. For the first time in fourteen years, I knew exactly how much money I had—me personally, not “the family,” not “us.”
And I was not ashamed. Not at all. Not one bit.
There was something else instead: the feeling that I had finally pressed the very button I had stared at for years and had still been afraid to touch. And nothing terrible had happened—the sky had not fallen, the earth had not split open. Denis just didn’t have enough for coffee, and he had to walk to work.
A small thing? Maybe. But I smirked.
That evening, he came home angry and silent. He sat in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, took out soup, heated it up, and ate without saying a word. Then he put the plate in the sink and finally said:
“This is theft.”
“No,” I answered. “Theft is when you take my salary for your fishing spoons. This is a redistribution of the family budget. You like that word so much: ‘family.’”
“I’ll go to the police.”
“Go ahead. Show them the statement where, over seven years, you spent three million on fishing from my card. They’ll appreciate it.”
He stood up and went to the room. He slammed the door, but not too hard—Polina was sleeping.
I washed his plate, put it to dry, and made myself tea. I drank it alone, in silence.
Nothing improved. Denis did not apologize, did not “understand,” did not “realize” anything—he just got angry. But I didn’t back down either.
The next day, Nina Vasilyevna called.
“Angelina, what have you done? Denis says you robbed the family!”
“Nina Vasilyevna, I transferred my salary to my account. That’s all.”
“And what about my son? He needs to eat, he needs to get to work!”
“He has his salary. Fifty-five thousand. Enough for food and transportation. If, of course, he doesn’t spend it on lures.”
She hung up. Then she called back an hour later, and again two hours after that. I stopped answering.
Three weeks passed. Denis still lives at home, but he sleeps on the couch in the living room. He takes the bus to work—there’s no money for gas, because he now spends his own fifty-five thousand himself: on food, transportation, cigarettes. And for the first time in fourteen years, he learned that bread at the grocery store costs seventy-two rubles, not “some amount.”
The boat is sitting in storage, which costs three thousand a month. Denis has already missed two payments, and the management keeps calling with warnings: one more month, and they’ll start charging penalties.
My mother-in-law calls every day—not me, but Polina. She says Mom “robbed” Dad. Polina listens, then hangs up and stays silent. Only once did she say to me:
“Mom, are you going to give him the money back?”
“No,” I answered.
“What if he asks properly?”
“In fourteen years, he never asked properly. He took.”
Polina nodded and went to her room. I still don’t know whose side she’s on—maybe both. She is only thirteen. She shouldn’t have to choose.
And I bought her a new jacket. And myself a pair of winter boots. For the first time in four years.
Yesterday Denis said:
“You destroyed the family.”
I didn’t answer. But I thought: who had been destroying it for the previous fourteen years? Who took money from my card without asking? Who bought himself echo sounders while his daughter glued her soles back on? Who said, “Don’t like it? Divorce me,” every time I tried to talk?
For fourteen years, he spent money—and that was normal.
One night of my transfers—and suddenly I was a “criminal.”
Fair?
