I used to think giving someone another chance was proof that I trusted them.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it was.<\/p>\n
But with Landon, I had turned it into a habit I couldn't control.<\/p>\n
Every time I considered cutting off his financial access, I knew what the conversation would become.<\/p>\n
He wouldn't focus on whether the expense belonged to the business.<\/p>\n
He wouldn't begin by asking what the company needed.<\/p>\n
Instead, the question would become whether I trusted my own husband.<\/p>\n
That was always harder for me to answer.<\/p>\n
Because I had wanted the marriage to work.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe our disagreements could be solved without making everything official.<\/p>\n
Without drawing lines.<\/p>\n
Without treating someone I loved as a financial risk.<\/p>\n
So I kept making exceptions.<\/p>\n
That didn't mean I had ignored the company completely.<\/p>\n
I had taken precautions over the years.<\/p>\n
I had strengthened security.<\/p>\n
I had changed account managers.<\/p>\n
I had moved certain expenses apart so the business and our household wouldn't remain unnecessarily entangled.<\/p>\n
I knew how to make those changes.<\/p>\n
I understood why they mattered.<\/p>\n
There was no technical reason I couldn't finish separating Landon's access.<\/p>\n
The obstacle was personal.<\/p>\n
Every time I reached that point, I could hear his objections before he even made them.<\/p>\n
And too often, I decided that avoiding another confrontation was worth the uncertainty.<\/p>\n
That was my mistake.<\/p>\n
I could admit it now.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a pleasant thing to admit on the morning my divorce became final.<\/p>\n
Dad had understood the problem much more clearly than I had wanted to.<\/p>\n
He hadn't suggested Landon was confused about becoming a shareholder or director.<\/p>\n
There was no reason for confusion about those facts.<\/p>\n
Landon had never been either.<\/p>\n
Dad was pointing to something else.<\/p>\n
A man could know that an account wasn't his and still behave as though he was entitled to use it.<\/p>\n
Especially when the person responsible for the account had repeatedly given way.<\/p>\n
I thought about that while the phone remained against my ear.<\/p>\n
Landon had called because he expected an answer.<\/p>\n
More than that, he expected action.<\/p>\n
He had encountered a limit.<\/p>\n
And he wanted me to remove it.<\/p>\n
I wondered how many times I had done exactly that without stopping to consider what I was teaching him.<\/p>\n
Not teaching in the sense of explaining a rule.<\/p>\n
Teaching through what I allowed.<\/p>\n
Every objection that made me retreat.<\/p>\n
Every boundary that disappeared after another accusation.<\/p>\n
Every decision I reversed because I didn't want to be told I was damaging our marriage.<\/p>\n
I hadn't meant to give him authority over my company.<\/p>\n
But I had allowed him to become accustomed to privileges that were never his by right.<\/p>\n
And now he sounded furious that those privileges might actually be over.<\/p>\n
I pressed my lips together.<\/p>\n
Dad was watching me.<\/p>\n
I could see that he wanted me to understand something.<\/p>\n
This wasn't a conversation about persuading Landon.<\/p>\n
I had spent years trying to persuade him.<\/p>\n
The relevant facts hadn't changed.<\/p>\n
He had no company position.<\/p>\n
He had no ownership stake.<\/p>\n
He had no authorization to continue spending on its accounts.<\/p>\n
And the divorce had been completed that morning.<\/p>\n
There wasn't a new explanation I needed to invent.<\/p>\n
There was only a decision I needed to stand behind.<\/p>\n
I looked again at the declined transaction.<\/p>\n
I had once given Landon access because I trusted him.<\/p>\n
That didn't mean the access had to last forever.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I could separate those two things without feeling compelled to apologize.<\/p>\n
I used to think giving someone another chance was proof that I trusted them. Sometimes it was. But with Landon, I had turned it into a habit I couldn't control. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36365,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36345\/revisions\/36365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}