Homeownership is a dream for many, and when realized it can be a great source of pride and joy.

But in comparison to renting, it also introduces a whole extra layer of work and responsibility – including paying for things when they go wrong.

Because when you own your own home, no one is going to turn up to fix your problems for free.

Unless of course you’re the partner of the person in this story, who is so used to his parents paying when things go wrong, that he thinks nothing of expecting his new partner to pay for things too.

Read on to find out what has happened between this couple to make things so difficult.

AITA for not paying for my partner’s home repairs?

I’ve been dating my partner since early last year. We’ve been doing long distance most of our relationship, but I recently moved across the country to live with him on the east coast.

It cost $4k-5k for me to ship my belongings in a storage cube, drive us from state to state, hotels, food, etc.

I am doing well off for myself. I’m self employed and make $8k-$10k a month, while he is unemployed.

He got fired from his job earlier this year. He’s been applying to places, but still hasn’t found something yet. He’s also autistic and has communication issues.

Let’s see how the dynamic is between the couple since he lost his job.

When he lost his job, I was okay with taking care of the both of us financially as he does all the laundry, the dishes, taking out the trash, and would occasionally cook meals. This is also was kind of an agreement in my previous relationship.

This seemed to work out for us for most of this year when we were staying at my place or his for a chunk of time. But since we came back from the big cross country move, things at his house (extremely old) started falling apart a bit.

His dryer stopped working and I offered to buy a used one, but he was very picky about the one he wanted on Facebook Marketplace.

Eventually asked his mom (who’s married to a multimillionaire) to get us a new one. I guess she’d promised she would get him a new one for years.

But the problems were just getting started.

Then one day the sewage pipe in our basement started backing up into a toilet and sewage was everywhere. We weren’t able to use any of the water in our house without sewage flooding the basement.

Since he has no money, I paid $775 for someone to come out and power wash the sewage pipe, since we assumed there would be some kind of blockage.

I set up the whole appointment, talked to the repair guy and everything, but it turns out our sewage pipe collapsed and it’s under our front porch.

To spare you all the repair details, it would’ve cost $7,045 to get it rerouted. And since I paid $775 to have them come out, they credited that towards our total which is $6,270.

Read on to find out how they’re navigating the financial hit.

I told my partner that I wouldn’t be able to pay for all of that, because I spent so much during our move.

He said he understands and wouldn’t expect me to pay for it and that he’ll just ask his mom to loan him the money for it.

However, it’s been days since he’s told me that his parents will cover it but I haven’t seen the money for it anywhere. And I’ve been asking him everyday now that we’re getting closer to the repair date and he says we’ll get it.

I’ve been paying for us to stay at Airbnbs and hotels (we’ve also stayed with his parents and friends) since we can’t use any water in the house.

And the whole thing is causing problems in their relationship.

We’ve been arguing about it often, but now I’m wondering if I’m in the wrong since I’m the breadwinner and have the money to pay for it.

At the same time, it’s not my house, I never wanted to own a home for this reason, and I’m also a lot younger than him and his parents and they have a lot more money than I ever could have.

AITA?

It really feels like this person is being taken advantage of, with their healthy financial situation being exploited by a partner who is seemingly either unable or unwilling to find a job.

This isn’t new to the partner though, who seems to be quite happy asking his mom to pay for things, even though he is a grown adult.

It’s time for him to grow up and pay for his own expenses, so that the pair can finally have an equal relationship. He doesn’t need to earn as much as his partner, but he does need to contribute something.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit thought about this.

This person agreed that the partner was responsible, and no one else should be paying for the repairs.

While others encouraged them to reevaluate whether this relationship was what they wanted.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought they should find someplace else to live if the partner didn’t fix the sewage problem.

It’s not acceptable.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.