Dear Prudence,
My guy and I have been through a lot in 20-plus years. He’s on disability, while I’m looking to retire next year due to poor health. We both have plenty of faults, but most of the time he is kind and generous, and I’ve always thought we were a good team. Here’s the problem: He cares more about what the neighbors think than about my feelings.
Over the years, I’ve tolerated bad behavior from neighbors because he is friendly with some of them. For example, one parked in our front lawn constantly, which made it so I couldn’t get to our driveway, because he thought making me angry was funny. (I have a mobility impairment, so it was not just inconvenient!) I was upset about this nearly daily for several years, but my guy didn’t want me to do anything about it in case it angered the neighbor.
Currently, a frequent guest of another neighbor is drunk/high and driving onto our property. We have video evidence of the incidents, and we had to have our car repaired because she hit it and ran. My husband agreed to report to the police only because insurance required it. Another time, she would have hit my daughter’s car, but we moved it just in time. I’ve had enough and want to put big rocks on the property line to keep her from coming over. Not a fence because I’d have to fix it over and over. He feels we need to “give her time to change.” He also feels rocks would make it harder to mow, and somehow this would be my fault and not hers. Seriously?
We argued, and I let him know I’ve held back for his sake, but property damage is my limit, and I’m done being a doormat. When the time came to pick a side, he picked the neighbors. He asked for time to think of solutions and came to me again with “give her time to change.” I told him I want him to get on a waitlist for subsidized housing. I won’t leave him homeless, but I don’t see how we can stay together if we don’t put each other first. Is there a solution I’m missing here that doesn’t involve letting the neighbor run over our stuff?