When we don’t discuss money with our partners and ask the hard questions either at the beginning of the relationship, or during, the relationship then our financial decisions are made unconsciously. At some point how our partner relates to money will also affect our own relationship with money. For instance, if your partner knows no financial boundaries you may end up living your life constantly digging yourselves out from credit card debt. If your partner isn’t truthful about money, any kind of financial planning becomes much more difficult. In a recent survey conducted by Smart Money and Redbook magazines 40 percent of both men and women admitted lying about how much something they bought had cost.
As in Doug’s case, he has been married for over fifteen years; he now wishes that in the beginning of his marriage he had kept his credit separate from his wife’s. Today, he is experiencing major financial issues as a result of his wife adding his name to her credit cards and then not paying them on time. Throughout his marriage money has been a difficult subject to discuss and the root of tension between he and his wife.
Several years ago Mary also discovered, after she married her second husband, that he owed 40,000 dollars to credit card companies, for which she later became jointly responsible. She said, “When we dated, I remember him paying for things with his credit cards but I didn’t think anything of it. We were so much in love that it didn’t occur to either of us to discuss money prior to our marriage and now money has become a source of most of our arguments.”
Both of these couples experienced financial stress in their lives due to their lack of communication about money. Beginning a life long habit of developing good communication in the beginning of your relationship is ideal, however if your relationship is more mature, it is never too late to begin in-depth discussions regarding this issue. For Mary, having money discussions in the beginning of the relationship is particularly difficult because when we first fall in love it’s possible to experience chemical changes that can prevent us from thinking clearly. In her book The Truth About Love, Pat Love Ed.D. states, “The infatuation syndrome is truly an example of mother nature at her finest. All the predicable behaviors that accompany the falling-in-love experience are brought on by a naturally orchestrated, drastic change in brain chemistry.”
