Shall we talk about money today? Aargh, no, run for the hills, we can’t possibly talk about money! And therein lies the problem. Money creates so many issues in relationships: who is in charge of it, who is making it, who is spending it, different attitudes to spending vs saving, what to spend it on, financial security etc. And not just in our partners but also with friends. It can be incredibly divisive and we all often make huge judgements about people based on our perception of their financial worth. For example: “I don’t think I’ll like her, she’s so rich, she’s probably really snobby” or “They have no clue and waste all their money on rubbish” or “They drive a nice car so are probably like us” or “He must be an amazing coach because of the fees he charges”. Many, often unspoken, judgements.
And we are all massively influenced by our own upbringing, and are often unaware of that. For example, I am fabulously tight! I love a bargain, hate waste and will generally get up at 2am rather than pay much extra for a well-timed flight, even though I’m lucky enough to afford the latter. And it’s probably because my role models (i.e. parents) growing up had to be very careful with money as there wasn’t a lot of it available so I learnt to look after it. Whereas Husband is more of a spender because of the different messages in his youth. So we have very different attitudes to spending & this is a common aspect of many relationships.
Added to this the vast majority of people struggle to talk about money. It’s often considered rude to ask what someone earns or how much their house is worth and culturally we are taught to not discuss money.
In short, money affects so many aspects of our lives, yet we have different attitudes, different upbringings, different priorities and we’re culturally taught to not talk about it. Well frankly that sounds like a recipe for relationship disaster!
If you find that Money creates issues in your relationships it might help to ask your partner / family about what was their financial situation growing up to help understand their viewpoint.