Money is such an emotionally loaded topic that few couples discuss it directly. Yet it is, more than sex, what drives partners apart. Psychotherapist Olivia Mellan shows how to put money in its place.
For most people, money is never just money, a tool to accomplish some of life's goals. It is love, power, happiness, security, control, dependency, independence, freedom and more. Money is so loaded a symbol that to unload it--and I believe it must be unloaded to live in a fully rational and balanced relationship to money--reaches deep into the human psyche. Usually, when the button of money is pressed, deeper issues emerge that have long been neglected. As a result, money matters are a perfect vehicle for awareness and growth.
Most people relate to money much as they relate to a person--in an ongoing and complex way that taps deep-seated emotions. When two individuals form an enduring relationship with each other, money is always a partner, too. In these liberated times, couples discuss many things before marriage, but the meaning of money is not one of them. Money is still a taboo topic. Often, the silence is a shield for the shame, guilt and anxiety people feel about their own ways with money. I, for one, would not want to tell a date that I'm an overspender.
Many individuals have a troubled relationship with money. Then, when they get into a couple relationship, money matters get explosive. Other people may have no problem with money individually; the trouble starts after they're in the relationship.
In two decades as a psychotherapist specializing in resolving money conflicts, I have observed that couples usually polarize around money. Partners tend to assume defense styles, or personalities, in relation to money that are direct opposites to each other. I call it Mellan's Law: If opposites don't attract right off the bat, then they will create each other eventually.
Commonly, a hoarder marries a spender. The United States is in fact a nation of overspenders. We live in a market economy and we are led to believe that we are good citizens to the degree that we go out and spend. Because of our community breakdown and spiritual alienation, many people feel a core emptiness that they try to fill up with things. If we're not overspending, we're typically worrying about money or compulsively hoarding it.
We grow up in families where nobody talks about money. Most people will immediately protest: "Not true. My family talked about money all the time." When I ask, "How did you talk?" they reply, "My father worried about not having enough, and he yelled at my mother for spending too much."
The fact remains that people do not grow up with educational or philosophic conversations about what money is and isn't, what it can and can't do. We don't examine the societal messages telling us that gratification lies in spending or that keeping up with the Joneses is important. Information-based money discussions are so taboo that we usually reach adulthood without a realistic sense of our family's finances.
I once met a man who had no idea that he grew up in a wealthy family. He said, "We had a family restaurant and my mother was always worrying about how we were at the edge of doom. As a child I developed a stammer from all that money anxiety. As an adolescent, I worked day and night to keep the restaurant afloat. Years later, my mother was talking about the good old days when we were making so much money in the restaurant business. I started screaming at her about all the money anxiety I carried. I was outraged that it wasn't even based on a real threat. When I stopped screaming, I noticed that my stammer was gone."
And it never returned. That's a therapist's dream story: one catharsis, no symptom. But it does show how money carries a huge emotional load.
As a result of the money taboo, I grew up as most kids do: imitating my parents' way of handling money without being aware of it. My father, affected by the Depression, worried out loud about money. My mother was a shopaholic, expressing love by buying me and herself clothes. She'd hide the purchases behind a living room chair until my father was in a good mood. As an adult, whenever I felt either depressed or particularly happy, I too would go out and shop. And even if I bought everything at a thrift store, I'd hide all the items behind a chair until my husband was in a good mood. Actually, I alternated between shopping and worrying about money.
Some people do the opposite. They typically say, "My father was a hoarder and a worrier. I hated the way he made me account for every penny of my allowance. I made a vow to myself that I'd never be like that." Such people, however, are anything but free of the parental attitude; their behavior is still defined by it.
In addition to irrational attitudes and beliefs about money that we internalize from our families of origin, we carry our own emotionally-charged memories of money from childhood. I remember being in a barbershop with my father when I was six, and some kid asked his father for a quarter. The father said no. The kid started to sob uncontrollably. I remember being so gripped by the child's sense of deprivation, I made a vow right then that I was never going to feel deprived like that. If you tell yourself at six that you're never going to feel deprived, you have the makings of a chronic overspender.
Tags:
balanced relationship,
boundaries,
conflict,
couple relationship,
finance,
money,
money conflicts,
money matters,
Opposites,
personalities,
relationships,
security control,
taboo topic,
troubled relationship
