The Psychology of Money in Marriage

You see these power plays in your office every day: A divorcing couple owns a million-dollar house, and it makes sense to sell it and divide the assets. The wife refuses, saying, “I won't have a roof over my head without this house.” Or she wants to move, and he says, “I'm not going to give in to her the way I used to.”

Money is not seen by these people as the commodity it should be. Instead, it is fraught with feelings, messages and beliefs from family, society and personal experience. If money were seen as a commodity, your job would be much clearer.

Now, a new generation of therapists is emerging who are looking at money issues as an integral part of couples' problems with power and entitlement. The novel ideas being developed could be useful not only in the context of the therapy session, but also in the attorney's office, where it may sometimes be difficult to understand why a client or his or her spouse is making demands that seem to make little rational sense. In sharing some of these new therapeutic concepts with those in the legal profession, this article sets the stage for a better understanding of what may be behind a divorcing couple's outward behavior. From this understanding can come ideas on how to overcome the roadblocks to successful negotiated settlements.

But first, we must understand the psychology. In this article's first installment, we will, through case studies, focus on the ways in which people's emotions can be tangled up in money issues. Although some of the case studies to follow involve couples that were not in the process of divorce but simply came to me for family therapy, their stories will illustrate some emotions behind the behavior that can spill over into the divorce negotiation process.

Power Plays: Money Equals Power

As everyone knows, men and women as individuals can have problems related to money, and couples, whether gay or straight, married or living together, often fight about money. “If we had enough money, we wouldn't have any problems,” is a common complaint — from those couples on welfare to those earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. And a refrain of many men is, “She spends it faster than I can make it.”

Money issues can bog down a marriage just as completely as those surrounding sex, in-laws, religion, sports, food and home decorating. This is not news. What is new is that some therapists now see money as perhaps the core issue of a marriage in trouble, no matter what other problems a couple presents first. Which partner has the money is directly related to who has the power. And the question of who has the power is always a central problem when a marriage starts to falter. Investigating who has the money is our shortcut to understanding these power plays.

Money — the Last Taboo

Both men and women have trouble talking about money in therapy, but a man's self-esteem is more traditionally tied to how much he makes. Men keep score, and money is the easiest way to see who is winning. Ivan Boesky supposedly had a tee shirt that read, “He who has the most toys when he dies, wins.” A lot of men bought that tee shirt. And women are socialized to nurture, to honor connection. Theirs is to be the domain of family, of feelings. They are not to enter the world of problem solving. Their reward for staying home is to be cared for. Part of the masculine mystique is that man is the provider, even though a majority of women now work.

So, how do we start to uncover the many layers of money as the power index of a couple? We have a five-part questionnaire that we use directly in the therapy session. As an attorney, you might, in interviewing your client, informally use this five-part questionnaire to try to discern the hidden agendas around money that you and your client could encounter in settlement discussions. Or, to support your work, you might also suggest that your client and his or her spouse seek input from a therapist who works with money issues.

Part One: How Much Money Do Each of You Earn?

This is a straightforward money question that often garners surprising answers. In the 1990s, 25% of married women earned more than their husbands. But therapists find that wives with bigger incomes than their husbands are often reluctant to divulge their salaries. Some fear it will make their man feel — or actually be — impotent. Some harbor secret shame that this is not the way mother told them it is supposed to be. Their feeling is that the man takes care of the woman, even if the woman has the earning power to take care of herself.

Sally and Donald had been married just 2 years when they came to see me. The presenting problem was that Donald felt there was an insurmountable inequality between them concerning money. Sally had turned to Donald to be “her rock,” and now found him distant or angry. Sally was always ordering him around and making all the decisions — about building their new house, where to take vacations, and so forth. Sally, as it turned out, had around $7 million from investments as a managing partner at a New York law firm. Donald made $36,000 a year as a carpenter. So first we explored the fact that Donald thought Sally was entitled to be in charge because she had so much more money. Then, we went deeper, and saw that he had also felt inferior to his first wife, who did not work outside the home. So, money was first a concrete example and then a metaphor for his one-down position.

Husbands reluctant to reveal their incomes may be withholding financial information in a power play for control. If a wife does not know how much her husband makes, she cannot question how the money is used. To illustrate, a couple named Sarah and Mitchell came in to see me with an urgent crisis. Sarah thought that her husband Mitchell, a music industry big-shot making approximately $750,000 a year, was impotent. She had undergone artificial insemination to become pregnant with their son. Then she discovered that he had been seeing prostitutes an average of two times a week for the entire 13 years of their relationship. In the last year before she discovered his extramarital activities, he had been having an affair with a 19-year-old prostitute, to whom he had given many expensive gifts and for whom he had set up an apartment. In conducting a family history, we found out that Mitchell's wife reminded him of his devouring, powerful mother in some ways. Having control and secrets around money gave him some power in his mind, because, he admitted, he really felt that his wife –who had a major position in the non-profit world, but was actually bringing in no income — was in charge in their relationship, and all-powerful.

Part Two: Do Either of You Have Access to Additional Money?

Without the answer to this question, the total power picture may be out of focus. One partner may be earning more, but what if the other has a large trust fund or just receives $100 a week from parents or other relatives? While I was working in a clinic in the South Bronx, a wife was acting like the boss even though her husband had a night watchman's job, and she was staying home with the kids. It turned out she was earning more doing cornrow braiding in her kitchen during the kids' naptime than her husband earned at his job. They did not know it consciously, but they both knew — she was on top!

Part Three: Who Handles the Finances?

The partner handling the money may contribute more to the marriage than the working partner realizes. For instance, in one domestic situation, a wife who stayed home with the kids complained, “He acts as if he is in charge all the time.” He responded, “Well, I'm the breadwinner. I'm in charge of making sure we make it.” But it turned out that the wife, who had no salaried job, managed the money she inherited from her grandfather, a scattered lot of stocks that she had sold to invest in a money market fund, giving them $700 a month in incremental dollars. And she was the one who suggested they refinance their mortgage when the rates dropped, a move that saved the couple $200 a month. In addition, she kept the books for his restaurant and did the tax returns, services that would normally have cost $2500 a year. Discussing finances in therapy made this husband aware of his wife's contribution to their financial well-being, and his attitude toward her changed.

Part Four: What Was the Money Message in Your Family?

This is a really crucial question, with several levels of meaning — all important. What was the message in society at large, in the beliefs in the particular home and in the personal experiences of life for the individual? We look at the person not in isolation, but in the context of his or her relationships and experiences, past and present.

In the last 20 years, the spending power of families with young children has dropped 39%, making two-career households an economic necessity for many couples. But many American men grew up with the model of husband as sole provider, and so did their hardworking wives. This can lead to mutual dissatisfaction that will not go away until the cause is uncovered. If the husband bullies, “You don't keep the plastic-wrap drawer clean,” and the wife nags, “You're lazy,” he may be saying, “Your real place is at home — like my mother (and where my father was in charge).” And she may be saying, “Why don't you earn enough, so you can take care of me, like my mother said it should be?” Actually, both are shamed, the husband by the fact that he needs his wife's income to survive, and the wife, because she must contribute to their financial well-being, although, at the same time, she may be proud of her personal achievement.

I find a striking example of this in the case of Anna and Pat. Married 25 years, they were a handsome couple, she Italian, he Irish. When they were first married, he worked for a major corporation, and she did decorating, almost as a hobby. After 15 years, Pat suddenly lost his job and has not really worked for the last 10 years. Anna was able to parlay her decorating interest into a major business. In fact, the couple admits they are living as well as, if not better than, before, with a lovely house and swimming pool in Westport, CT. But neither can shake the feeling of shame and failure that their lifestyle is being maintained by the wife and not the husband.

Now, let's look at the beliefs we learn in our own families. A case in point: I saw a Puerto Rican man for a court appraisal in a liability case. Hurt on the job, he had not worked for 3 years. His tendency to drink, before limited to rowdy Saturday nights, had developed into alcoholism. He explained to me that he felt useless to his wife and four children. When he was a boy in Puerto Rico, his father would line up the children every morning and put a coin in each of their open palms, “This is what a man does,” he would say, “A man is the provider for his family.”

Part Five: Do You Feel Rich or Poor?

Again, this is a deceptively simple question, not at all related to net worth. One client, Dave, called me in order to start treatment. He said he was depressed, having just lost $34 million in the stock market. When he came for his session, we saw that he was not exactly bankrupt — he was still worth $15 million. In fact, generally, whatever he had put his hand to had made money. He had done so well that he had even bought a previously failing tennis club in the Hamptons, just so he could continue playing tennis. But, in charting his family history, we found that he felt ignored by his parents — a mother who was fragile and neurotic and spent most of her time in bed, and a father, whom he adored, but who never paid attention to him, never looked at his grades (so they fell off), and never went to his sporting events (so he stopped playing sports). Dave felt empty; he felt bereft, and he unconsciously wanted his net worth to reflect this. So, he gambled in the stock market until he could show this stupendous example of failure and loss — the loss of $34 million. When he saw how he related his dollar worth to his personal worth, we reconnected him to his loving second wife and two daughters and helped to fill up the feeling of emptiness with relationships, not dollars.

A matrimonial lawyer referred one of his clients, Jerry, to me. Jerry wanted to sue for custody of his two small children from his second marriage, and the lawyer felt it was more about wanting to gain back some power and emotional territory than about raising the children, although Jerry was devoted to them. When we charted the family history, Jerry described a very cold, distant, intellectual mother. At first, Jerry had an adoring, intimate relationship with his father. But there were some rumors of his father having an affair and staying in his marriage only because of Jerry and his young sister. From about that time on, his father withdrew from his son. Activities such as going to ballgames together, going out for breakfast on the weekends or even sitting at the kitchen table, just the two of them, abruptly disappeared. And Jerry never recovered from the feeling of being empty, being stripped and devoid of love. He had a first loveless marriage. His second marriage was to a much younger woman, whom he showered with gifts, clothes and houses in an attempt to keep her. In therapy, he began to see himself as a man of substance in every way by looking at his success with his two grown children from his first marriage and his close relationship with the two younger children from his second marriage. He stopped the custody battle. He paid for his grown daughter's wedding, which he had not planned to do. He bought and decorated a nice apartment for himself, which he also had not planned to do. And, he felt ready for a substantial relationship, which he had previously not thought he could sustain.

Conclusion

We have seen how money is rarely viewed as a commodity, and how it is the best example of power and entitlement in the couple. Looking at money issues in a new and direct way can be our shortcut to understanding the real issues and discrepancies of entitlement. This process can get individuals to examine their own multi-layered beliefs about their power, or lack thereof, based on family, community, ethnicity and personal experience.

In next month's issue we discuss more specifically the psychology of money in divorce: how divorce reinforces rigid gender roles, how divorce has a life cycle, and how children of divorce learn about the toxic power of money.

You see these power plays in your office every day: A divorcing couple owns a million-dollar house, and it makes sense to sell it and divide the assets. The wife refuses, saying, “I won't have a roof over my head without this house.” Or she wants to move, and he says, “I'm not going to give in to her the way I used to.”

Money is not seen by these people as the commodity it should be. Instead, it is fraught with feelings, messages and beliefs from family, society and personal experience. If money were seen as a commodity, your job would be much clearer.

Now, a new generation of therapists is emerging who are looking at money issues as an integral part of couples' problems with power and entitlement. The novel ideas being developed could be useful not only in the context of the therapy session, but also in the attorney's office, where it may sometimes be difficult to understand why a client or his or her spouse is making demands that seem to make little rational sense. In sharing some of these new therapeutic concepts with those in the legal profession, this article sets the stage for a better understanding of what may be behind a divorcing couple's outward behavior. From this understanding can come ideas on how to overcome the roadblocks to successful negotiated settlements.

But first, we must understand the psychology. In this article's first installment, we will, through case studies, focus on the ways in which people's emotions can be tangled up in money issues. Although some of the case studies to follow involve couples that were not in the process of divorce but simply came to me for family therapy, their stories will illustrate some emotions behind the behavior that can spill over into the divorce negotiation process.

Power Plays: Money Equals Power

As everyone knows, men and women as individuals can have problems related to money, and couples, whether gay or straight, married or living together, often fight about money. “If we had enough money, we wouldn't have any problems,” is a common complaint — from those couples on welfare to those earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. And a refrain of many men is, “She spends it faster than I can make it.”

Money issues can bog down a marriage just as completely as those surrounding sex, in-laws, religion, sports, food and home decorating. This is not news. What is new is that some therapists now see money as perhaps the core issue of a marriage in trouble, no matter what other problems a couple presents first. Which partner has the money is directly related to who has the power. And the question of who has the power is always a central problem when a marriage starts to falter. Investigating who has the money is our shortcut to understanding these power plays.

Money — the Last Taboo

Both men and women have trouble talking about money in therapy, but a man's self-esteem is more traditionally tied to how much he makes. Men keep score, and money is the easiest way to see who is winning. Ivan Boesky supposedly had a tee shirt that read, “He who has the most toys when he dies, wins.” A lot of men bought that tee shirt. And women are socialized to nurture, to honor connection. Theirs is to be the domain of family, of feelings. They are not to enter the world of problem solving. Their reward for staying home is to be cared for. Part of the masculine mystique is that man is the provider, even though a majority of women now work.

So, how do we start to uncover the many layers of money as the power index of a couple? We have a five-part questionnaire that we use directly in the therapy session. As an attorney, you might, in interviewing your client, informally use this five-part questionnaire to try to discern the hidden agendas around money that you and your client could encounter in settlement discussions. Or, to support your work, you might also suggest that your client and his or her spouse seek input from a therapist who works with money issues.

Part One: How Much Money Do Each of You Earn?

This is a straightforward money question that often garners surprising answers. In the 1990s, 25% of married women earned more than their husbands. But therapists find that wives with bigger incomes than their husbands are often reluctant to divulge their salaries. Some fear it will make their man feel — or actually be — impotent. Some harbor secret shame that this is not the way mother told them it is supposed to be. Their feeling is that the man takes care of the woman, even if the woman has the earning power to take care of herself.

Sally and Donald had been married just 2 years when they came to see me. The presenting problem was that Donald felt there was an insurmountable inequality between them concerning money. Sally had turned to Donald to be “her rock,” and now found him distant or angry. Sally was always ordering him around and making all the decisions — about building their new house, where to take vacations, and so forth. Sally, as it turned out, had around $7 million from investments as a managing partner at a New York law firm. Donald made $36,000 a year as a carpenter. So first we explored the fact that Donald thought Sally was entitled to be in charge because she had so much more money. Then, we went deeper, and saw that he had also felt inferior to his first wife, who did not work outside the home. So, money was first a concrete example and then a metaphor for his one-down position.

Husbands reluctant to reveal their incomes may be withholding financial information in a power play for control. If a wife does not know how much her husband makes, she cannot question how the money is used. To illustrate, a couple named Sarah and Mitchell came in to see me with an urgent crisis. Sarah thought that her husband Mitchell, a music industry big-shot making approximately $750,000 a year, was impotent. She had undergone artificial insemination to become pregnant with their son. Then she discovered that he had been seeing prostitutes an average of two times a week for the entire 13 years of their relationship. In the last year before she discovered his extramarital activities, he had been having an affair with a 19-year-old prostitute, to whom he had given many expensive gifts and for whom he had set up an apartment. In conducting a family history, we found out that Mitchell's wife reminded him of his devouring, powerful mother in some ways. Having control and secrets around money gave him some power in his mind, because, he admitted, he really felt that his wife –who had a major position in the non-profit world, but was actually bringing in no income — was in charge in their relationship, and all-powerful.

Part Two: Do Either of You Have Access to Additional Money?

Without the answer to this question, the total power picture may be out of focus. One partner may be earning more, but what if the other has a large trust fund or just receives $100 a week from parents or other relatives? While I was working in a clinic in the South Bronx, a wife was acting like the boss even though her husband had a night watchman's job, and she was staying home with the kids. It turned out she was earning more doing cornrow braiding in her kitchen during the kids' naptime than her husband earned at his job. They did not know it consciously, but they both knew — she was on top!

Part Three: Who Handles the Finances?

The partner handling the money may contribute more to the marriage than the working partner realizes. For instance, in one domestic situation, a wife who stayed home with the kids complained, “He acts as if he is in charge all the time.” He responded, “Well, I'm the breadwinner. I'm in charge of making sure we make it.” But it turned out that the wife, who had no salaried job, managed the money she inherited from her grandfather, a scattered lot of stocks that she had sold to invest in a money market fund, giving them $700 a month in incremental dollars. And she was the one who suggested they refinance their mortgage when the rates dropped, a move that saved the couple $200 a month. In addition, she kept the books for his restaurant and did the tax returns, services that would normally have cost $2500 a year. Discussing finances in therapy made this husband aware of his wife's contribution to their financial well-being, and his attitude toward her changed.

Part Four: What Was the Money Message in Your Family?

This is a really crucial question, with several levels of meaning — all important. What was the message in society at large, in the beliefs in the particular home and in the personal experiences of life for the individual? We look at the person not in isolation, but in the context of his or her relationships and experiences, past and present.

In the last 20 years, the spending power of families with young children has dropped 39%, making two-career households an economic necessity for many couples. But many American men grew up with the model of husband as sole provider, and so did their hardworking wives. This can lead to mutual dissatisfaction that will not go away until the cause is uncovered. If the husband bullies, “You don't keep the plastic-wrap drawer clean,” and the wife nags, “You're lazy,” he may be saying, “Your real place is at home — like my mother (and where my father was in charge).” And she may be saying, “Why don't you earn enough, so you can take care of me, like my mother said it should be?” Actually, both are shamed, the husband by the fact that he needs his wife's income to survive, and the wife, because she must contribute to their financial well-being, although, at the same time, she may be proud of her personal achievement.

I find a striking example of this in the case of Anna and Pat. Married 25 years, they were a handsome couple, she Italian, he Irish. When they were first married, he worked for a major corporation, and she did decorating, almost as a hobby. After 15 years, Pat suddenly lost his job and has not really worked for the last 10 years. Anna was able to parlay her decorating interest into a major business. In fact, the couple admits they are living as well as, if not better than, before, with a lovely house and swimming pool in Westport, CT. But neither can shake the feeling of shame and failure that their lifestyle is being maintained by the wife and not the husband.

Now, let's look at the beliefs we learn in our own families. A case in point: I saw a Puerto Rican man for a court appraisal in a liability case. Hurt on the job, he had not worked for 3 years. His tendency to drink, before limited to rowdy Saturday nights, had developed into alcoholism. He explained to me that he felt useless to his wife and four children. When he was a boy in Puerto Rico, his father would line up the children every morning and put a coin in each of their open palms, “This is what a man does,” he would say, “A man is the provider for his family.”

Part Five: Do You Feel Rich or Poor?

Again, this is a deceptively simple question, not at all related to net worth. One client, Dave, called me in order to start treatment. He said he was depressed, having just lost $34 million in the stock market. When he came for his session, we saw that he was not exactly bankrupt — he was still worth $15 million. In fact, generally, whatever he had put his hand to had made money. He had done so well that he had even bought a previously failing tennis club in the Hamptons, just so he could continue playing tennis. But, in charting his family history, we found that he felt ignored by his parents — a mother who was fragile and neurotic and spent most of her time in bed, and a father, whom he adored, but who never paid attention to him, never looked at his grades (so they fell off), and never went to his sporting events (so he stopped playing sports). Dave felt empty; he felt bereft, and he unconsciously wanted his net worth to reflect this. So, he gambled in the stock market until he could show this stupendous example of failure and loss — the loss of $34 million. When he saw how he related his dollar worth to his personal worth, we reconnected him to his loving second wife and two daughters and helped to fill up the feeling of emptiness with relationships, not dollars.

A matrimonial lawyer referred one of his clients, Jerry, to me. Jerry wanted to sue for custody of his two small children from his second marriage, and the lawyer felt it was more about wanting to gain back some power and emotional territory than about raising the children, although Jerry was devoted to them. When we charted the family history, Jerry described a very cold, distant, intellectual mother. At first, Jerry had an adoring, intimate relationship with his father. But there were some rumors of his father having an affair and staying in his marriage only because of Jerry and his young sister. From about that time on, his father withdrew from his son. Activities such as going to ballgames together, going out for breakfast on the weekends or even sitting at the kitchen table, just the two of them, abruptly disappeared. And Jerry never recovered from the feeling of being empty, being stripped and devoid of love. He had a first loveless marriage. His second marriage was to a much younger woman, whom he showered with gifts, clothes and houses in an attempt to keep her. In therapy, he began to see himself as a man of substance in every way by looking at his success with his two grown children from his first marriage and his close relationship with the two younger children from his second marriage. He stopped the custody battle. He paid for his grown daughter's wedding, which he had not planned to do. He bought and decorated a nice apartment for himself, which he also had not planned to do. And, he felt ready for a substantial relationship, which he had previously not thought he could sustain.

Conclusion

We have seen how money is rarely viewed as a commodity, and how it is the best example of power and entitlement in the couple. Looking at money issues in a new and direct way can be our shortcut to understanding the real issues and discrepancies of entitlement. This process can get individuals to examine their own multi-layered beliefs about their power, or lack thereof, based on family, community, ethnicity and personal experience.

In next month's issue we discuss more specifically the psychology of money in divorce: how divorce reinforces rigid gender roles, how divorce has a life cycle, and how children of divorce learn about the toxic power of money.