My business partner in my real estate business is very competent in her part of our partnership but agressively selfish and demanding while taking for granted that I will go the extra mile and do FAR more than half of the work.
All of our prospective clients come from our numerous web sites and from numerous real estate forums and blogs that I post on as well as dozens of articles I have written and posted in thousands of places on the Net. I also always provide my vehicle and drive our clients which is considerable mileage in our rural area of business. She answers most of the inquirie we get from my endeavors and follows up on all of our prospects until we meet them. She does the follow-up after we meet and after we write a contract she manages all the situations to get the contract to final closing/settlement.
I do the closing, contract negotiations and problem solving, etc. - whatever requires goal oriented communications skills.
I have severe chronic spinal and joint pain and do virtually all of my 12-20 hours a day, usually 7 days a week, while lying down here and using my laptop. The pain has given me severe memory loss.
She does 1-3 hours a day, four or five days a week in her part of the job. I could hire someone to take her place but she is competent and knowledgable as well as experienced so replacing her would be expensive and it would be very difficult to replace her competence.
We split our income half and half but I spend a lot more on expenses, especially Web based expenses and transportation and communication, i.e. phones.
She is also a competitive, champion, weight lifter and also produces such events and expects me to go to some of her meets and competitions and take photos which is an all day, and for me a very high pain affair.
She had an event Saturday which she produced and she had expected me to pick up her son from school on Friday and then drive him to the meet, a two hour drive, Saturday morning.
I had almost two weeks of more pain than normal; still am; and spent almost all of the last 11 days in bed and in far more than usual pain. I told her a couple of times about this but she is very self-focused and likely did not hear or at least did not place any importance on such.
I called her Friday morning to tell her that I would not be able to help her out Friday afternoon and Saturday due to much worse pain and difficulty. She blew up at me with anger. She is still very angry and refuses to communicate.
She habitually expects, or rather demands that whatever she wants I do or give or provide for her and seldom even thanks me. She is also very resistant to any exchange for my excess expenses often flat refusing to share gas expense, etc. A typical day with a client is 100-150 miles and crawling along from house to house at slow speeds and keeping the large SUV A/C going while we are in each house costs an average of $50 to $75 each time. The most she will offer is a couple of dollars, with great grudging at that.
She uses her temper and communication stops as her weapons along with various Disparagement, Denegration and Invalidations against me. And, since she has the least emotional committment to our partnership she rules it like an abusive spouse rules a marriage.
I have spent a few hours researching (that is what lead me here) "Selfishness" and all sorts of related terms, phrases and quotations, etc. in hope of finding some intelligent advice or viewpoints on handling this situation. At this point my only solution is what an abused husband would do in an abusive marriage; just wait until it passes and walk on egg shells in hopes of extending the time to the next outbreak...
Advice Please?
