By Katherine Tarleton, LMFT
I’m going to be honest here. I struggled to write this article. It was supposed to come out weeks ago. But that’s because I wasn’t being honest with myself or within my own marriage. I have a spending problem that was more insidious than I was willing to admit.
My relationship with money has never been great. I picked up some terrible cues as a teenager from my parents, and while I don’t blame them at all, I haven’t done enough of the work to relearn better habits. I thought I was doing okay, until a combination of terrible life events and the world falling apart brought me right back to using shopping as a very mal-adaptive coping skill to manage my stress and anxiety. This in turn led to debt that I was actively hiding from my husband. And that led to shame and anger at myself for being in debt and unable to stop shopping to handle my feelings.
Once my husband lost his job because of Covid, and we needed to reevaluate our finances, I was finally forced to tell the truth. Let me tell you, he was not happy! But we worked together to figure out a plan to pay my debt back down and help keep me from spending more, including talking to my therapist about it. Because, even though I am a therapist myself, sometimes it helps to have other people work with you on your coping skills!
So, here’s what I’ve learned about handling financial stress in a relationship!
Throughout “The Before Times” (pre-Covid), finances were one of the biggest stressors for couples. During this very weird quarantine/social distancing time, guess what is one of the biggest stressors for couples. Did you guess finances? DING! You’re right!
Closing down the economy to protect the health of the country has forced more couples than ever to manage new circumstances. If either or both of you are furloughed or laid off, how do you figure out how to keep yourselves afloat, let alone your relationship? Working from home can make how you and your partner tend to spend money more obvious – maybe one of you loves to eat out or possibly has some issues with online shopping. Researchers Jeanfreau, Noguchi, Mong, and Stadthagen (2018) examined this idea of financial infidelity, or hiding finances between partners, and found that 27% of couples admit to keeping financial secrets in their relationship.
In any case, to keep financial stress from wreaking havoc with your relationship, it is critically important for couples to both normalize money differences and address them head on. This means honesty, y’all!! Don’t hesitate to sit down and have the hard conversations with each other- take it from me, the sooner the better. You don’t want to be surprised when it’s too late! By having these conversations early and often, it will be easier to build the trust and support within your relationship that is so important to survival! Start with recognizing your shared goals to be a happy, healthy, honest, and loving couple with the financial security to support your future dreams. A hug and a statement of why you chose and still choose each other as partners frames this whole process in a positive light.
Then get creative. Make these conversations more fun by having your favorite meal, interspersing fun topics, or making a game out of them. One idea is to find a list online of important money question, write them all down on slips of paper, and then draw them out of a hat. Whoever draws the question has the other person answer first, then switch. You can create a big list, celebrating when they match and working together to creatively figure out a compromise when they don’t.
Even when you’ve had all of these conversations, new things can come up: goals change, jobs change, family life events affect income and spending. It’s a good idea to sit down and reanalyze finances every so often. A recent article in Real Simple (Puniewska, 2020) laid out some ideas of how to manage finances as a couple, some of which may help you and your partner figure out what works for you. They suggest you have this conversation monthly. This would help take out the taboo or emotional charge and normalize a very necessary part of relationship health—this is just what we do to be a great couple. It also helps slow the ability to hide things between partners!
If the conversations break down or you feel you need more help, don’t be afraid to seek the help of a counselor or therapist! We are happy to help you figure out how to get back on track and work together as a couple again!
References
Jeanfreau, M., Noguchi, K, Mong, M.D., & Stadthagen, H. (2018). Financial infidelity in couple relationships. Journal of Financial Therapy, 9(1)
Puniewska, M. (2020, May 12). 9 money secrets of happy couples. Real Simple.
