I Lost My Financial Security Four Times in One Marriage

I spent years building my savings, lost them to the costs of chronic illness, rebuilt them while disabled, and then lost almost everything again when I left. Then I lost my business.

Today, on October 28, 2026, I am marking 10 months since leaving Taiwan and a situation that had become unbearable and unsafe.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and I have decided that it is time to start calling some of my experiences by their proper names: financial abuse, economic control, and isolation. My therapists have identified other themes that I will address in due course.

Over the past months, I’ve revisited bank statements, financial spreadsheets, correspondence, and handwritten calculations spanning more than a decade of my seventeen-year marriage and twenty-three-year relationship. What I’ve discovered has left me absolutely devastated.

The Government of Canada recognizes economic abuse as a form of gender-based violence that includes controlling another person’s financial decisions, taking their money, and misusing joint bank accounts. I didn’t recognize how closely those descriptions matched my own marriage until I began reviewing the records.

This month my therapist helped me understand that I lost my financial security four times during my 23-year relationship.

FOUR TIMES!!

I was around 29 when he convinced me to let him invest my RRSP savings. That money was supposed to be for my future. Instead, it was invested and lost. I forgave him. When we married, MY loss was absorbed into our “shared” financial history.

Except it wasn’t shared. It was my retirement money that disappeared. I never let him near my Canadian bank account again.

Women are often told to keep a separate account just in case. I’ve done that diligently my entire life, and for more than two decades, I maintained that separation because I’d already learned what could happen when I trusted him with my future.

Today, at 51, I am rebuilding the financial security I should have been accumulating throughout my adult life. The tiny amount of savings I’ve managed to protect represents my independence, my security, and a future that I WILL keep in my hands.

The second time, I exhausted my savings and retirement funds while living with serious chronic illness and carrying financial obligations that became increasingly impossible to meet.

I’ve worked my butt off for years, established several international businesses, earned a professional income, and accumulated savings for my retirement. I should have substantial savings by now had life not gotten in the way.

Living with chronic illness makes financial security especially important. I wrote about the cost of maintaining an income when you are disabled and chronically ill in 2020.

Between approximately 2012 and December 2022, my savings and retirement funds were gradually consumed by medical treatments, moving expenses, and the rising costs of our life together.

By 2018, I was paying approximately NT$32,000 every month for biologics to treat my inflammatory arthritis, before accounting for other medical expenses, transportation, food, rent, or ordinary living costs.

I continued working because I couldn’t afford to stop, despite being vocal about how overwhelmed I was. My contemporaneous records on My Several Worlds and Facebook document how badly I was struggling.

As my health deteriorated, my earning capacity declined, but my financial obligations remained remarkably consistent. Eventually, I exhausted the money I had spent years saving.

Meanwhile, someone else in my home kept living it up as though nothing was happening to me. A pool and barbecue station, a motorcycle, and luxury trips to North America, Europe, and Asia were apparently more important than the well-being of a spouse.

The Jobs I Found For Him

Before we moved to Zhubei, my husband and I lived in a Taipei apartment where disputes involving water damage (the landlord’s issue) and modifications to our outdoor space (a swimming pool and barbecue station) created enormous stress, involving neighbours, community representatives, and government authorities.

During this period, my health deteriorated, and I came out of remission in 2022. I was still running Reach To Teach by myself and had found him a job at a buxiban during the pandemic. When a physical education teaching position became available in Hsinchu, I secured that job for him too, waiving the recruitment fee I would ordinarily have charged the school.

His salary increased to approximately NT$104,750 monthly, including base pay, bonuses, and a NT$10,000 monthly housing allowance. He also enjoyed generous paid summer and winter vacations. With those extended holidays came weeks, and eventually months, when he travelled and left me alone.

I was still earning approximately NT$70,000 monthly, and I believed his new job would improve our circumstances.

During the pandemic, he’d complained that he never wanted to become a middle-aged teacher. I replied that I’d never wanted to become sick and disabled either, but those were the circumstances life had given us, and we had to make the most of them.

I was committed to making our life work and believed that advancing his career would benefit our marriage. We moved to Zhubei and rented a beautiful apartment for NT$45,000 a month.

I hoped things would finally become easier. Instead, the financial imbalance between us became harder to survive.

The Arithmetic of an Unequal Marriage

He insisted that we split everything equally. The job I had secured for him included a NT$10,000 housing allowance, and I argued that this benefit should be applied to our shared rent before dividing the remainder.

That would have reduced our rent to NT$35,000, with each of us contributing NT$17,500. He disagreed, insisting the housing allowance was his money. I fought him on it and lost.

Meanwhile, my medications still cost approximately NT$32,000 a month. Between rent and medication, NT$54,500 of my NT$70,000 salary was already committed.

That left NT$15,500 (CAD $665 or USD $475) for everything else: groceries (foods I could actually eat), hospital transportation, appointments, household needs, and personal expenses.

Despite earning substantially more than I did, he continued insisting on equal contributions. His spreadsheets allocated everything from groceries and restaurant meals to transportation and individual purchases.

I’ve recently reviewed records going back to 2020 and discovered just how much I was paying for things I never wanted.

Our grocery bills alone could reach NT$12,000 a month, divided equally between a healthy man who stood six feet nine inches tall and a chronically ill woman who was sometimes barely eating because of severe digestive issues.

This was all supposed to be fair because it was fifty-fifty. But equality on his ridiculous spreadsheets did not mean fairness within our marriage.

In December, when he knew I was leaving Taiwan and there was no food in the house, I had to order cat food and supplies online because I couldn’t transport them home in my power wheelchair.

His own spreadsheet shows him assigning the entire bill for our cats’ care to me WHILE I WAS PREPARING TO LEAVE TAIWAN AND TRANSPORT THEM TO CANADA.

A Better Career for Him and A Smaller Life for Me

The move to Zhubei brought another loss that I didn’t recognize until March 2025. My independence was gone. I was a princess in a tower waiting for the only person in my life to come home each night. I never knew what kind of mood was going to enter the house.

My friends and support network were an hour away. I became increasingly housebound between May 2022 and December 2025 as my worsening health made travel more difficult.

He went to work, spent time with colleagues and friends, and enjoyed life outside our apartment. Meanwhile, I was home desperately trying to keep our company going to pay “my half” of the bills while my health was on fire.

I was so lonely I’d visit Family Mart or Carrefour just to talk to the staff.

When friends visited in the fall of 2025, I burst into tears as they entered our home. My friend Jackie called that evening to ask if I was okay, and I told her I couldn’t keep living like this. They knew something was terribly wrong right away.

I don’t believe the original move to Zhubei was deliberately intended to isolate me, but I recognized what was happening.

When he later suggested moving to a villa on a mountain behind his school, I fought against it.

Our apartment was seven minutes from my hospital. His proposed villa was thirty minutes away, leaving me more isolated and dependent on transportation. I tried to imagine being on a mountain completely alone and having to pay for 30 minutes of transportation to and from my numerous hospital visits. There was zero money or energy or health left for me to sustain that kind of arrangement.

Then came the pressure to move to Europe. He showed me rural houses in Ireland, which frightened me. Apparently it was “a joke,” but I didn’t find it funny.

One night he announced that I needed to research countries in Europe or Asia where we could move. I had to make the list because he wasn’t going to investigate where my medical needs could be met. He was DONE WITH TAIWAN.

I refused. How would I access medical care or navigate ANOTHER medical system without support? What would my days look like while he pursued his interests and travelled? I already knew what isolation felt like. There was no way I was participating in that plan.

When he complained that I never wanted to go anywhere or do anything, there were two reasons. I couldn’t afford it, and my body often wouldn’t allow it.

The Third Time I Lost My Financial Security

On December 10, 2022, after years of fighting for help, I finally secured medication coverage. My relief was enormous. One of my largest recurring expenses was dramatically reduced, but I had already exhausted my savings and retirement resources.

I started rebuilding again. I continued working despite serious illness because I had no other choice. When I was left alone for weeks at a time, I prioritized freelancing, created books, and sold artwork. Budgeting became my way of life. As a disabled woman, I needed reserves for medical care, unexpected expenses, and retirement.

While he enjoyed the financial freedom to travel, shop, and spend money on his interests, I was trying to recover what years of medical expenses had cost me.

I never demanded that he stop living his life, but I expected him to help me rebuild mine. Instead, the spreadsheets and requests to settle expenses kept piling on, along with subtle suggestions that I was trying to get more money from him. He flat out refused to discuss money or save with me.

By October 2025, I had rebuilt a financial cushion.

It represented years of work and financial restraint. I had spent years rebuilding enough savings to support myself for approximately three years if my health forced me to stop working. And believe me, my friends, my health was tanking badly between 2023 and 2025.

Instead, I spent my savings AGAIN only this time it was to get myself out of Taiwan and back to Canada.

Even then, I remember begging him to leave my money sitting in my account for a little while. I wanted to feel secure, to know that the money I’d worked so hard to accumulate was there when I needed it.

That was how little financial peace I felt I had.

The Canadian Centre for Women’s Empowerment identifies tracking a partner’s spending, controlling access to financial resources, and withholding jointly earned money as forms of economic control. I had been living with spreadsheets, deductions, and demands to settle expenses for years.

Then He Calculated What I Could Live On

By the final months of 2025, the company was struggling and my salary had been reduced to approximately NT$37,900 (CAD $1,628.20 or USD $1,162.52).

I remember him coming out of the cottage in the summer of 2025, announcing he’d figured out a way for me to pay my bills and save NT$12,000 a month for retirement. This was the minimum monthly amount I’d told him I needed to save. My mom looked at me during his announcement and later asked how much I’d have left. It was peanuts. Below poverty level.

Meanwhile, the expectation that I contribute to household expenses continued, despite his written arrangement to cover my monthly credit card bills.

NT$12,927 for a woman with multiple serious chronic illnesses, healthcare expenses, and transportation needs. No accommodation for disability-related costs or our vastly different financial circumstances.

My bank records show what happened in practice. On October 10, 2025, NT$37,900 was deposited into my account at 12:23 p.m. At 12:25 p.m., NT$25,000 was withdrawn. In just sixty-one seconds, almost two-thirds of my monthly income disappeared.

Sometimes he demanded I transfer money to him. Other times, he used my bank card to move it himself. He regularly dipped into my American bank account, sometimes with my knowledge, often without. When my ISB statement arrived in September 2026, it revealed extensive activity. He even transferred $2 at one point. What for, I have no idea. But this man nickel and dimed his sick and disabled wife for two fucking dollars.

The deductions didn’t end there. Every month, I dreaded the tenth. I watched most of my income disappear, scrambled to meet living expenses, and struggled to preserve the savings I’d worked so hard to rebuild.

I ended up spending most of those savings to leave Taiwan. That’s how I lost my retirement savings a third time during my marriage.

Marriage Is Supposed to Provide Security

By October 2025, I was extraordinarily ill, and he was increasingly focused on moving to a cheaper apartment. I begged him to let us stay, suggesting we ask our parents for temporary help because I couldn’t manage another move. He told me nobody needed to know what was happening in our marriage.

With his family coming for Christmas, he became more determined to move because they’d be available to help. I asked whether we could postpone until after Christmas.

I needed stability, access to medical care, and time to recover. Instead, I faced another move with an unpredictable man holding every card. By December 19, he’d found a new apartment for NT$35,000 per month, ten thousand less than ours.

That monthly saving was only slightly less than what I had left to live on after household deductions, medical Ubers, granola bars, and whatever else he was charging me for.

And believe me, if you are reading this, I have ALL your spreadsheets and notes.

When I saw his spreadsheet with my $5 medical Ubers to and from the hospital neatly listed as expenses I needed to repay him for, while he continued enjoying luxury trips, high-end clothing, and extravagant meals, something inside me broke.

Why Didn’t I Just Leave?

People often ask why women remain in abusive relationships. Why don’t we recognize what is happening? Why don’t we leave?

I am asking two different questions today. How do you leave when you don’t have money? And how do you leave when you are extremely ill?

By the time my marriage was coming apart, I had spent years exhausting and rebuilding my financial reserves. I was living with serious autoimmune diseases, chronic pain, fatigue, and mobility limitations.

I’d lived in Taiwan for more than two decades. My business, world-class healthcare, home, belongings, cats, and friends were there. Leaving meant relocating internationally while disabled and arranging flights, shipping belongings, veterinary documentation, medications, accessible transportation, and rebuilding healthcare in Canada.

More importantly, I still loved my husband. I kept thinking he was stressed, that things would get better, or that he’d come to his senses and stop treating me so badly.

I’ve spent decades supporting his career, preserving our business interests, helping build his reputation through the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan, and working toward a secure future.

I didn’t want to destroy my marriage. I desperately wanted a partnership that felt safe.

Disability introduces barriers rarely acknowledged in discussions about domestic violence. What happens when you cannot reliably drive or pack your belongings? When shelters won’t accommodate someone in a wheelchair with complex health problems?

Women with disabilities face a disproportionate risk of financial abuse. Canadian survey data from 2018 found that women with disabilities were more than twice as likely as women without disabilities to report being forced to give an intimate partner money or possessions. For those of us whose health depends on expensive treatments and reliable access to care, the consequences of losing financial independence can be devastating.

Leaving isn’t merely a decision under those circumstances. It’s an enormous financial, physical, medical, and logistical undertaking.

The night I realized he was harming me, I realized I had to go. He was not going to change. I had to save myself. No one was coming to save me

Seventeen Years of Marriage

December 10, 2025, was our seventeenth wedding anniversary. I cried so hard that day, I howled. I had never experienced grief like that before.

My husband sent emails and texts about financial arrangements and transfers involving my earnings and company-related funds. I had not authorized those transfers. His anniversary message was largely concerned with paperwork and scheduling, followed by a brief acknowledgement of the date.

I still tried to salvage our anniversary. He had arranged a last-minute hospital appointment, so I offered to order dinner. He didn’t want to go out, although I was willing to buck up for it.

I ordered Indian food and made sure it was hot when he returned. He sat beside me and ate with lust. I barely ate anything.

When he finished, he went to bed. I cleaned up and placed my half of the money for our anniversary meal on the table.

After seventeen years of marriage and a day spent in tears, I was still preparing to pay half of our anniversary dinner. The next morning, my money was still on the table, so I put it back in my wallet and thought fuck this man.

I Used My Rebuilt Savings to Leave

On December 28, 2025, I left Taiwan. I returned to Canada in my wheelchair with my cats in cargo and repatriated to my homeland with $1,662 to my name.

I paid for shipping, flights for me and the cats, veterinary appointments, transportation, medical expenses, and the costs of relocating internationally for the third time in my life.

Much of the financial cushion I had painstakingly accumulated was consumed by leaving and starting over. I spent that hard-earned money getting myself to safety.

There is something profoundly cruel about having to use your retirement savings to leave a marriage you believed was supposed to help provide for your retirement. I had saved for treatments and for leaving, and was left with almost nothing.

At 51, I never wanted to start building my life again, nor did I want to leave behind my beautiful life in Taiwan. But remaining was no longer a viable option.

I paid for my freedom with the savings I had spent years rebuilding.

The Fourth Time It Happened I Lost Control of the Business I Built

And then came the fourth financial loss: Reach To Teach Recruiting. My business, which I had spent years building, managing, and keeping alive despite serious illness. I brought him into it. He worked for me at first.

He repeatedly positioned himself as the person providing for me, when I was the person generating the business revenue in the end.

Even during the final weeks of my marriage, I was working on teacher placements while in the hospital. I have emails with teachers timestamped December 15, 2025. I was still trying to make it work and believed he would do the right thing.

When I initially planned to return to Canada, I thought my move was temporary. I never agreed to surrender my role in the business or my financial interests. As soon as I arrived, I received a barrage of emails and calls about the business. I asked for time to recover from my flight and establish healthcare in Canada. I WAS EXCEPTIONALLY CLEAR ABOUT NEEDING TIME AND SPACE FOR RECOVERY. Apparently, I didn’t respond quickly enough for him.

So he assumed complete control, and I lost access to the company and the income it had provided.

The business that might have helped me rebuild my savings was no longer available to me.

Four distinct blows to my financial security during one marriage. And I am still legally married to the man at the centre of this story.

Financial Abuse Doesn’t Always Look Like Poverty

Financial abuse can be remarkably difficult to recognize from the outside. My situation doesn’t look like the stories of financial abuse I typically see online.

It doesn’t always happen in a home with no money. It can happen to an educated professional who earns a substantial income, operates businesses, and lives in a beautiful apartment. Financial demands can ignore disability-related expenses and declining earning capacity.

When one person controls withdrawals, expenses, and household accounting, a spouse can become financially vulnerable. It can happen when someone has to beg to leave her own earnings in her own bank account for two days, with consequences lasting long after she leaves.

I know what it feels like to watch my world become smaller while the person I married enjoys professional opportunities and financial freedom. And I now know what it feels like to examine years of financial records and recognize patterns I couldn’t fully understand while I was living through them.

Rebuilding for the Third Time

I am now 51 years old and disabled, living in my parents’ basement in the Canadian town I left more than three decades ago. I receive disability income support and am rebuilding my professional life through a new business. Unfortunately, ODSP’s income rules penalize me for earning more than a modest amount, making it extraordinarily difficult to regain financial independence and leaving me facing the prospect of legislated poverty for the rest of my life.

My medications alone would cost an estimated $20,000 or more annually if I had to pay full price. So far this year, I’ve earned less than $6,000. Even combining my earnings with ODSP, I couldn’t afford those prescriptions, let alone food, rent, and basic living expenses.

What does financial independence mean when I have to choose between paying for the medications that keep me functioning and paying for food and shelter? The amount I earn each month would not pay for my treatments in full.

Without income from the business I helped build, I don’t know whether I’ll ever recover what I’ve lost. Watching friends retire after working hard all their lives, knowing I may never have that opportunity despite how hard I’ve worked has been devastating.

I spent years trying to build a better life for my husband and myself. By finding him a job that advanced his career and supported the move that improved his financial circumstances, I had hoped our lives would improve.

When I finally left, I paid an enormous price for my freedom.

I want people to understand that leaving an abusive relationship isn’t simply a question of courage. Sometimes the person who needs to leave has no financial flexibility, no physical reserves, and no obvious way to replace the income or support they may lose.

I lost my financial security four times during one marriage. Meanwhile, I am still married to the person who caused enormous harm to me. Now I am telling my story.

More from my TRUTH DAY series

This post is part of my TRUTH DAY series, documenting what happened, what the records show, and what rebuilding has required. Read the other posts in the series here.

1. 19 Years with My Several Worlds: The Next Chapter
2. 17 Years with axSpA and Choosing a Different Kind of Love
3. Starting Over Isn’t Starting From Nothing
4. Sentences That Stay With You – Words That Cut Like Knives
5. Four Months Since I Left Taiwan — Beyond Capacity
6. High-Functioning Collapse in Complex Care
7. Repatriation Lesson One: Healthcare and Disability Do Not Cross Borders
8. The Fear of Being Abandoned When You Are Sick
9. Ownership, Labour, and Erasure at Reach To Teach Recruiting
10. Chronic Illness and Disability: How Sick Do You Need To Be For Help?
11. The Day I Was Supposed to Return to Taiwan
12. The Invisible Weight of a Disabled Wife
13. Nine Months Later and The Cost of Leaving

If you’d like to support my rebuilding, my GoFundMe remains open. I am still recovering financially from leaving Taiwan and rebuilding my life in Canada, and any support helps with medical, relocation, and basic living costs. Thank you for being here.