Till Debt Do Us Part

From undisclosed debt to unstated resentment, couples increasingly lead covert financial lives. This secrecy creates a new form of infidelity one that's more dangerous than sexual betrayal.

By Mary Loftus, published on November 01, 2004 - last reviewed on May 12, 2008

Emilie Pooler's suspicions were aroused one night when she called her Lawrenceville, New Jersey, home and her husband, Paul Rybinski, didn't answer.

"I was with the girls visiting my family, and he was home alone," Emilie recalls. Later, when she did get hold of him and asked where he had been, he didn't lie. "Well," he said, "there's this woman whose husband died..."

Paul and Emilie both test developers at Education Testing Service in Princeton and parents to two young girls, consider themselves prudent by most standards. They agree on most financial decisions. They own a three-bedroom town house, never carry a balance on their credit cards and splurge only on vacations.

But Paul has a comic-book collection—about 9,000 strong, most acquired before they were married—and it's Emilie's pet peeve. "When I found out that they were worth about $34,000, I thought, 'Great, we can sell them and use the money as a down payment on a house.' But I had to come to the realization that the collection isn't mine; it came before the marriage. If he wants to keep it, that's fine—so long as he's not using our money to buy more!"

Paul now sells 20 to 30 of his comic books at a time on eBay and uses the profits to purchase one or two comics in stellar condition. "My collection is getting smaller but is of more value," he says. "I consider it an investment."

The night that Emilie called, Paul was with the widow—rifling through her late husband's comic books, in the hopes of adding to his own collection. He never did tell Emilie how much he spent.

Keeping secrets about money is not only tempting in our cultural carnival of consumption, it's also on the rise. The ability to spend and borrow money impulsively has never been greater, with ubiquitous ATMs, Internet banking and online shopping, to say nothing of refinancing deals and new credit card offers arriving almost daily in the mail. Consumer debt, excluding mortgages, has doubled in the past decade. It now averages close to $20,000 per household. This isn't just fodder for economists; it gets between the sheets in almost every marriage in America.

In addition, because the age at which people wed is rising, partners bring extensive monetary histories to their union, just as they accrue complex sexual pasts. Many individuals enter marriage with undisclosed financial allegiances outside the relationship. Given the avoidance, accessibility and ambivalence that now swirl around about money, it's creating an explosive new dynamic in relationships. However small the money deceptions are, however well they are rationalized, they can nevertheless create fissures in a relationship that feel like flagrant betrayal to the other partner. What's worse, a breach of fiscal trust is more destabilizing to marriage than a sexual affair. The kicker is, it can hurt couples long after their relationship bites the dust.

The Last Taboo

If you are in a serious relationship, no matter how long you've been together or how much money you have, your next fight is likely to be about money. Money is inextricably connected to our hopes and our dreams, our sense of security and self-worth, almost all of our core emotions and familial expectations.

Disagreements about money are also more intense, and more negative, than those about other topics. Due to an invisible web of intention that underlies financial transactions, we endlessly attribute unspoken motives and consequences to the financial choices people make. When tweaked, the delicate threads of these decisions, woven throughout our homes and around our daily activities, can instantly become high-tension wires.

Even in platonic relationships, a simple task—say, determining how much to spend on a birthday gift—can give rise to a tangle of contradictory assumptions: Are gifts a symbol of how much someone is valued, or merely a token of affection? Should you spend about what you expect someone to spend on you, or think nothing at all about reciprocity?

Discussing money, however, has always been a social taboo, one we've been taught to avoid since childhood ("Don't ask how much that cost! That's rude!"). You probably know more about your friends' sex lives than how much money they make or owe. And discussing it with a lover is more fraught still, as no one wants to be perceived as a gold digger.

The Negative Dowry

Most adults—67 percent of women, 74 percent of men—enter marriage with at least some debt. Of those with debt, about half owe more than $5,000, primarily from auto loans, credit cards, student loans and medical bills, research associate David Schramm of Utah State University found in a study of 1,010 newlyweds. This "negative dowry" places a tremendous strain on new marriages at a time when couples would rather be focusing on future financial goals. "It's pretty common to find out that the person you married has more debt and less income than you realized," says Scott Stanley, professor of psychology at the University of Denver and coauthor of You Paid How Much for That? How to Win at Money Without Losing at Love. "Essentially they had other relationships with money going on that you didn't know about. The opportunity to feel betrayed is huge."