My partner and I have been in a relationship for two years. During this time she has been working on freeing herself financially from her last relationship. She is a self admitted horrible money manager. Last fall she received money that was put aside to finally get her finances in order. We talked extensively about how importnat the money was and how it should be spent. She promised financial transparency. I have repeatedly offered support and assistance and she insisted it was her problem to take care of and she would. Since then when I have asked about the progress and if the funds were still being appropriated as needed. She has repeatedly reassured me that everything was right on track and she was being very careful with it so we could finally start a life together.

This week she finally came clean that all of the money is gone and we are no closer to her being financially available to move on than we ever were. She's apologizing and asking for a second chance. I can't even look at her. She is already on her second or third chance. She had a fresh start with this money and put more effort into deceiving me for the past seven months to keep me around than she did into getting her mess cleaned up. She now says she has been struggling and I have no idea what she's been through. She was too scared to tell me, didn't want to lose me, blah, blah.

She says people make mistakes, it's no reason to "kick her to the curb". She's even pulling the guilt card ("our families are involved, our kids are involved"). None of that occurred to her when she was pissing away our future? Anyone out there care to tell me why I want to invest myself in this relationship again and help her fix this mess? My response has been that she needs to go and fix the mess. I am done hearing about what she's going to do - I need to see her actually do something about it before I can even consider whether or not there is anything left to salvage. Anyone out there care to tell me why I want to invest myself in this relationship again and help her fix this mess? Can a relationship actually recover from this kind of deception?