My grandmother had a way of speaking plainly and directly. When my older sister and my cousins were of marriageable age, based on her own lived experience and observations of life around her, her words of guidance were unambiguous, unromantic and brutal; “when poverty walks in the door, love flies out the window”.
A 2018 poll of more than 2 000 British adults found that money worries were the top reason for marriages dissolving, and with four in 10 marriages in South Africa ending in divorce before their 10th anniversary, it’s more important than ever to develop healthy money habits in your relationship now. Read more on Money worries and SA Stats
Clearly, my grandmother was a sage and she disagreed with The Beatles.
In a divorce mediation course many years ago, as part of the training, we did an exercise on the values we hold most dear, and I am sure you can conjure up a list of important philosophical choices like love, family, relationships, respect, integrity, honesty. Which are the values that are the top of your list? How about money?
Money was amongst the values listed in the exercise and yet not many chose this as an obvious value. It seems vulgar to choose money as a value, doesn’t it? And yet as we all know when a couple divorces, money is the context through which people inflict pain and continue the power struggle.
This Valentine’s month, we will not be so disruptive as to suggest that money can buy love. Our philosophy is clear – connectedness and belonging enable us to feel loved and alive. That said, we recognize that money troubles, differences in how money should be used, more often than not, disconnects us from those we love and from those who love us, because we’re using our emotional energy fighting to keep one’s head above water or resenting how our partner spends or saves.
Before we proceed, exploring what we should be talking about, it is our position that the most important first step is exploring how we talk about it. Many money conversations end badly because couples have these conversations completely defended against each other, feeling shamed, blamed, furious and misunderstood.
The structure and script of the Imago dialogue process provides the safety to have any conversation. It is the bedrock of a conscious conversation, where we engage each other with clear intentions to seek to understand the other, rather than to be understood, where we seek to listen rather than to respond and where we feel safe and brave enough to lower the pointing finger and look back to our own childhood, to understand our relationship with money, our experience of scarcity or abundance and how money was used as a demonstration of power. In essence, before you have a crucial conversation, ensure that you have a dialogical process to support you.
As importantly, most people have not thought deeply enough about their relationship to money, and what influenced their relationship to it. Why are your partner’s spending or saving habits so triggering to you? What old feelings do they arouse in you?
Our first point of reflection is always personal and individual. Here are a few things to think about:
- Who made financial decisions in your childhood home?
- How did these decisions impact you and individual members of your family?
- What did you learn you needed to do, in order to have money?
- Was there scarcity or an abundance of money?
- When you had money, how did you feel and how did you use it?
- Did you make any plans or promises to yourself about how you would use money, as an adult?
- How do you feel when you spend or save money?
- Are you comfortable having money conversations? (With your partner? ((With your employer?)
- Having thought about these things, what are you becoming aware of?
After reflecting on your story, using a safe and respectful dialogue process, sharing the above with your partner, will create deep understanding of each other and is a strong place from which to start having a conversation about how you will manage your money together.
I will now share an article written by our very own Carol Dixon, “How to stop money from ruining your relationship”, published in Sanlam Reality, that explores the Money Conversation in greater depth. Click here
We hope this was a helpful and insightful read.
Contrary to my granny’s admonishment, we hope through a process of dialogue, you are safe and free enough to fling open windows and doors!!
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