I totally agree with Trent words that “Your stuff doesn’t define you. It won’t fill the holes you feel in your life. It won’t solve the problems you face. It just makes you feel good for a little while, but then you’re back to where you started (and often in a slightly worse spot).”

I know too many people who are in bad situations and they feel trapped because they have used shopping as recreation so they can’t make changes. Kelly was lucky that she had sisters who cared enough to have an intervention and who had the money to buy her a plane ticket. I’m glad that she is in a better place now.

Personally, I am in the process of ending a marriage with an alcoholic and it is the hardest thing ever. I have never been a big shopper or spender, but I find myself wanting to take my kids out to eat instead of cooking at home. I need to get out of my house, I am too distracted to cook, and I like the “temporary high” of eating something really yummy! Right now I am just trying to tell myself, this too shall pass!

The pitfall of web self-pub is the lack of an editor to call attention to something that might come across the wrong way- something you might not even notice that needs to be rephrased to avoid distraction and offense.

Anyway- I always knew you read the comments-the train of thought to responsive subsequent posts is always evident.

If I don’t do that, then the post is useless. It becomes so specific that it only applies to one person. If I’m going to do that, I just email the person directly, which I do with about 50% of the emails I flag as “reader mailbag” material. There’s not enough in those situations to really be of value to lots of readers.

As for Kelly’s story, she was not physically abused (as far as I could tell). She was in a controlling relationship that led to some self-worth issues which caused her to spend. When she got herself into a better place and got her self-worth back, she no longer felt the need to spend as much. I think that’s a story that applies to a lot of people.

I tried to find a balance of telling enough of her story to inspire those in such relationships as well as make it clear that there is a tie between personal finance and self-worth, but keep it vague enough that her privacy was protected. I think I did that.

The part of her story I really understand is how self-worth and spending habits are deeply connected. I don’t know the ins and outs of being in a controlling relationship, but I’m happy that Kelly escaped it and I hope that by sharing a bit of her story here, people who are in such relationships might find a light at the end of a dark tunnel.

“It was that last paragraph that really hooked me.

‘I don’t feel worthless anymore. I don’t feel like I need to spend money to be happy any more.’

I know exactly what she means.”

I read this as: Trent knows what that last paragraph means: that she doesn’t feel like she needs to spend money to be happy anymore. There is no mention of knowing how she feels, just what she means in that sentence.

I also know exactly what it means to no longer spend money to try to be happy. I know how it feels to spend money because you feel worthless, as well. I am fascinated by how money habits and emotional states are intertwined. In my case, the worthlessness made me spend unconsciously. This was more to fill the worthless hole than to try define myself or build up any sort of status. There was also an element of “I’m too much of a mess to understand this money stuff, so I will close my eyes and hand over the credit card. This fancy meal/trip/concert will make me feel better, or distract me enough.” (I’m also fascinated by WHAT people spend money on emotionally. Mine was food and activity, not stuff. Some people love stuff, cars, adventure, clothes, etc).

I truly believe that getting my emotional life together is what enabled me to crawl out from the mess. That, and hitting a bottom that scared me enough (not being able to pay rent is scary). I simultaneously left a profoundly dysfunctional relationship and finally committed to a fulfilling career path and the responsibility that came with it. That was what set me straight. Suddenly, the hole that I was filling with blind spending was filled. I was emotionally satiated, so there was no need to gorge.

These days, life is incredibly good. I choose frugality because it brings a mindfulness to my spending that delights me. There’s an element of choice and freedom to it: I choose not to spend wastefully, and I have extra so that I also can choose to have an occasional lovely night out, which is so much more meaningful because it is occasional and because it is just that: a lovely night out, not a distraction from misery.

Actually, whatever the events were, based on the way Trent edited the email, she DID say explicitly what they were – he put [After a long series of rather scary events] showing that he was paraphrasing.

And whether there was domestic violence or not, that doesn’t change the fact that there definitely was abuse and that Trent using her email to springboard into his post the way he did was appalling and insensitive. He’s not being condemned based on misreadings, but on actions.

I don’t believe I “condemned” Trent for anything.

I feel that drawing a rough equivalency between Kelly’s situation and Trent’s “financial meltdown” is contrived and insensitive.

As for her not explicitly stating anything about violence, you DO realize that Trent heavily edited the sections of her email which dealt with (Trent’s description) the “scary things,” don’t you? The bracketed section represents an edit – see Trent’s introductory comment.

“What do you think the ‘rather scary events’ were”

Who knows? It could be anything. Maybe he canceled her credit card. Maybe he went on a drinking binge and crashed their car. Maybe he was cheating on her.

My point is, if there had been physical violence, she probably would have said so explicitly. She didn’t seem to have any reservations about revealing how controlling and emotionally abusive he is – why would she stop short of disclosing violence if it had indeed occurred?

At any rate, with what we were given, violence can only be ASSUMED. And Trent is being condemned based on that wild-guess assumption. That just rubbed me the wrong way.

I’d be really interested in your answer to kjc’s question, though: What do you think the “rather scary events” were, if not violence or threats of violence?

Gretchen: “That’s an abusive relationship. How is that even debatable?”

As Courtney20 noted, nobody is denying that Kelly’s relationship is abusive. I took issue with kjc’s specific use of the phrase “domestic violence.” No violence was described, or even implied, in Kelly’s letter.

It bothers me when people use phrases like “domestic abuse” and “domestic violence” interchangeably, as though they were the same thing.

They absolutely are not. That’s all I meant to point out.

I an understand why some reads could get upset with this post, especially if they have had any experience with domestic abuse in their own lives. Maybe it would have been better to leave out the original email, but I do think that his response was helpful. Maybe the writer of the email will not receive the response as being helpful, but I truly believe that is how it was meant and if received correctly is helpful

I tend to doubt that the OP’s main reason for writing was to highlight the abuse she suffered, but to instead focus on the positive aftermath. That positive outcome is what Trent picked up on. This is a personal finance blog and so that is where the emphasis was placed. It doesn’t mean Trent is insensitive to what happened to the OP. But, as some others have said, negativity is where you find it–or look for it.

Lest anyone think I myself am insensitive to this kind of thing I will divulge that many years ago I, too, escaped an abusive (physical) relationship. Yet not once while I was reading this article did I feel that Trent was out of line with his response.