Man runs up 8k tab in iTunes Store, fiancée dumps him

Some people say love is grand, love means going through the good and the bad together. It's okay when your man falls down and you get down to help him get up. But when you've got four kids, a mortgage, aging parents and some medical bills in the background, that man's a big liability. I'm not thinking about liability to the woman.. I'm thinking of the kids.

For all you know, the woman's action shocked the guy into straightening his act. But if she stayed by him, he may have not felt the need to stop.

uh, debts incurred before marriage are only the other spouse's responsibilty if they are added to the account as a joint account holder. Which you would be very foolish to do. Debts incurred after the marriage could go either way depending if the account is a joint account or they live in a community property state, or the debt was incurred by one spouse to benefit the marriage (ie. husband buys groceries on a card in his name).

NOT marrying a man with $43,000 in secret debt makes her a "gold-digger"? I'd say it makes her smart. This guy must have some real mental problems to be that far in debt from purchasing more music and DVDs than he would ever have time to enjoy.

sight_unseen wrote "if you read her quote in Laurie Duncan's original post"

Sorry, but the "original post" is on Dalton Ross' blog at http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1542207_3%7C%7C1180096%7C0_0_,00.html

I feel sorry for the guy. I had a compulsive spending problem, myself.

I was a fairly normal guy and actually fiscally responsible (owned a home at 30, along with no debt and some 401k savings, despite having dropped out of college) until I got restless leg syndrome.

Yeah, that sounds stupid, but RLS is when your legs feel like they are vibrating/itching/aching when you're not moving. It's often related to nerve damage from diabetes -- a kind of neuropathy.

Anyway, they use a drug called "Mirapex" to treat it. It's originally for Parkinson's disease (like Michael J. Fox), and is technically a "dopamine agonist," which means either that it helps or hinders dopamine.

Apparently, though, a side effect of this medication was all sorts of compulsive behavior: shopping, sex, eating. Personally, I spent $40,000 on eBay in 6 months before I figured out what the problem was, went off the medication, and haven't had a problem since.

So, yeah, the guy needs to get control, and that may require seeing a doctor. The problem is that you don't see it as an addiction while you're doing it. It just feels good. I imagine lots of compulsions are like that.

I can see the fiancee's side, but I also think there were better ways to deal with it than just breaking up. (And maybe we don't have the whole story. I haven't read the original link.)

A guy who can't be bothered to look at the situation with a little more depth than money/no money and with a little more empathy than "she should be all about MY needs, ME ME ME" isn't good partner material anyway.

Alright then Tara.
*cues the violin music*

Look, to her, the relationship was about money. So long as he had it, all's well. Once he doesn't, guess it's time to call off that wedding and post about it online. It wasn't enough to break off the engagement, she had to gossip about it with a billion strangers... with all the compassion one would muster if they'd, say, stained their shoes. Classy.

I don't expect you to agree with me, and I do respect your opinion, even agree with some of what you said, but from a guy's perspective this is just another case of: Money = girl. No money = no girl. Love I guess was a messy afterthought best avoided.

I'm pretty much done with this topic.

Do you know her last name? Do you know her fiance's last name? No? Well then, I guess she didn't defame or humiliate him then.

He may have been using his credit for his purchases, but as someone else pointed out, if they marry - his debt becomes her debt.

Also, isn't interesting that people are going all out to imagine the best possible version of the man and at the same time the worst possible version of the woman?

What if she wasn't planning a big wedding because she's being super careful with her money to care for a disabled sibling/pay back student loans/plan for retirement with her future spouse? What if *he* was the one planning the wedding? What if he spent all that money because he's always known that his parents bail him out of whatever financial difficulty he gets in? Or because he knew he was about to marry a woman with significant financial resources of her own and was gleeful not to have to deny himself anything anymore? What if, when he finally stopped lying to her, he still didn't consider his spending a problem and wasn't interested in getting help?

We just don't know. And making up a story where he's the poor innocent troubled one and she's the selfish vindictive cold one doesn't make sense and is very icky.

I'm glad to see the responses to my post.

To the poster who called the GUY the gold-digger, I respectfully disagree. He wasn't using her credit cards, he was using his own. Which leads me to another person who stated that once they are married, his debt becomes her shared debt, which is actually rather a good point. I hadn't thought of this. But she didn't just call off the wedding (yeah, maybe justified), she defamed her former fiance online for the world to see. She clearly wrote of him in past tense, if you read her quote in Laurie Duncan's original post.

Someone also said that the support she didn't provide for her husband-to-be wasn't really expected yet, as it hadn't been earned. I also disagree with this statement. No wonder divorce is so commonplace, no one really cares about their partner, it's all about what THEY get out of the relationship. No doubt, if she dumped him for his problem and FREAKING WROTE ABOUT IT for the world to see, she would have been a useless wife.

Doubtless, the dumped fiance is far, far from blameless in the matter, but this is just another example of how selfish people in the United States have become.

Nameless fiance guy, I really hope you do remain nameless through all of this, and you can fix your life. Like I said before, you're better off without her.

At least he could have DJed his own wedding