Money in Marriage: Gender and Power

In the first part of this article, published last month, we set the stage for looking at money issues in couples not just as examples of issues for tension or disagreement, but as our clearest and most concrete way of looking at the power imbalance in a couple. These themes of power and entitlement become more exaggerated, relevant and urgent when the couple is divorcing.

Divorce Reinforces Traditional Gender Roles

Men are traditionally seen as stronger, the providers; women are supposed to be the nurturers, more into making connections than becoming concrete successes. Even at this time, when the majority of women work outside the home, divorce can throw men and women back, almost atavistically, into stereotypical roles. Women are often viewed as stigmatized by divorce; men, on the other hand, are seen after divorce as saleable commodities in the open market.

Let me give you an example of one woman who was aware of how this played out in the workplace. Debbie was a powerful woman in business; she was the publisher of a successful magazine. She made nearly twice as much money as her husband, and, in general, was a more forceful personality. She was negotiating her new work contract when the divorce was being finalized. Debbie explained to me that she was going to keep her ring on, because a divorced woman would already be starting in a one-down position. She might be seen as more needy. The money from her job would now be supporting a single-parent household; her social position as a divorced woman would not be as strong as when she was part of a couple, so maybe she wouldn't negotiate as forcefully or perform as well on the job.

Some other divorcing women I have counseled, however, have been oblivious of the social problems that divorce may bring to their lives. For example, attractive women do not realize that many of their married friends will “drop” them following divorce because these friends are threatened by having a good-looking single woman in their social circle. (In fact, many divorcing women report that their married friends' husbands make sexual overtures toward them, in the name of friendship, that they had not previously made. Actually at times, those overtures may start to look good to them, as women are seen as “not whole” if they are not part of a couple. The “protection” of a male companion may appear to them to be the solution.)

I have worked with several women who went straight from their parents' homes to their husbands'. One woman who married at 19 said that she had never been without the protection of a man until her divorce, at 50. She had an affair with the man who would become her second husband while still married to her first. (She also had a brief affair, immediately after separating from her powerful and charismatic husband, with the husband of her best friend.) Women need to be walked through some of these scenarios in order to be better prepared for the emotional fallout that often accompanies divorce, because the problems they experience may get in the way of clear thinking when they enter into the settlement process.

Factually, divorced women are in a one-down position from men in financial terms. After divorce, men's living standards go up 42%; women's go down 73%. Women frequently come to me with exaggerated expectations of what the divorce will mean to them, emotionally and financially. And, they will most certainly bring these expectations with them into the attorney's office as well. At one extreme is the woman who fantasizes that because she will soon be free of an onerous marriage, she will be able to “fly.” This perception was, in the recent past, encouraged by therapists, who often tended to push a feminist view that a woman unhappy in her marriage had a right to “find herself,” no matter the consequences. But women with such dreams must be made aware of the cold, hard facts. A woman can be exhilarated by feelings of release from a stifling marriage, and she may become willing to give up some of her rights to property or custody just to be finally free of the marriage. Clearly, she is endangering her future financial well-being and therefore entering a situation that may soon seem more like a prison then the unhappy marriage. One of the responsibilities of both therapists and attorneys is to point out that the problems encountered during the divorce process are temporary, but the terms of the settlement agreement are, for all intents and purposes, permanent. When the bills start coming in, there had better be something there to pay them off with.

At the other extreme is the woman who does not want to face the reality that things are about to change drastically. In particular, a “traditional” wife can face a rude awakening when she asks, “Who is going to take care of me?” The answer may be, “No one.” One minute, a woman may be home caring for the kids while her husband is out in the business world as financial provider. The next, she finds herself pitted against that mate, a housewife negotiating a settlement with a tough and powerful businessman. For example, one of my clients, Anita, came from a very traditional Greek family. She was married when she was young and innocent to a 6'6″ guy who made about $500,000 a year as a stockbroker. He always provided for his family financially, but had a series of blatant affairs. Through our work together, Anita was finally able to say that having financial comfort was not enough, because she was so humiliated by her husband's peccadilloes. As the divorce negotiations progressed, her husband would say on one day that he would always take care of her, and on another threaten that she would be penniless following divorce. In either case, he held the financial strings and therefore the power over her.

Her initial feelings of entitlement at finally asking for a divorce gave way to desperate and sometimes primitive notions of being alone and not cared for, despite what her lawyer and I told her. Anita was frantic to keep the couple's $500,000 house because she was afraid that, literally, she would be homeless, living in the street. Her parents, who had a stereotypically old-world outlook on relationships and marriage, offered her no support, telling her she was crazy to leave a successful husband and that he was right, she would be in the street! Anita's reaction to the situation was to ask for more of a financial settlement than was really necessary for her well-being, in an exaggerated attempt to hold on to the financial security she'd felt during her marriage.

Divorce As a Life Cycle

This is a really important idea to keep in mind in your work, because it will help to clarify what often might look like inexplicable behavior, such as an individual or couple holding onto and haggling over petty possessions, or coming back years later wanting to change the terms of the settlement agreement despite the lack of any “changed circumstances” that a court will recognize as such.

Divorce is not just one point in time, taking place on the date when papers are signed. Marriage and family therapists at the Ackerman Institute for the Family say that divorce is a 7-year process, and a spouse should not be surprised at having strong feelings, positive or negative, years after a divorce is final. Some people may be thinking about divorce 5 years before it is actually discussed, so their “recovery period” after the divorce is shorter. Others may never have contemplated divorce until the “D” word was introduced by a spouse, so he or she will have a longer recovery period

A former female patient named Pat contacted me 5 years after she and her husband had been in couples' therapy with me. Even after therapy, they decided that their marriage was unsalvageable. Their marriage ended in a “successful” divorce, meaning they understood why they had gotten stuck with one another, the children were prepared and comforted during the process, and they separated amicably. Pat was the one who wanted the divorce. Her husband Tom was a handsome, successful and refined man. My assessment was that they married too early in Pat's personal growth. She needed, she thought, to individuate, and that meant divesting herself of Tom. She had a blatant affair with the local drama coach (yes, it is a cliche), afterwards went back to school and changed her career. She had a nice boyfriend, though perhaps not as nice as her husband. So she had reached her goals for a different life after her marriage. But then, with the news that Tom was remarrying, she was thrown into anger and depression. We met for a few sessions and looked at the divorce as an ongoing process, in which it takes years to separate two lives. Of course, they will always continue to be intertwined because of the children. But there are residual emotional ties between two people who have spent years of their adult lives together, whether those were happy years or not. This really helped her to make sense of her strong reaction.

I also explained to Pat, and to all the divorcing people I work with, that divorce is a kind of death, not of a person but of a system and a way of life. I have adapted Dr. Kubler-Ross' concept of the stages of death and look at stages of accepting divorce: first disbelief, followed by denial, then anger, often negotiation and then, hopefully, acceptance. It's a very helpful and normalizing construct for therapists and lawyers alike.

Power Issues for Children of Divorce

I often see couples through the process of the rising tensions that sometimes lead to divorce. I continue to work with them, giving them a protocol for how to tell the kids. Then I have the children come in to see me, first with the parents, and then alone. It can be amazing, and heart-breaking, to hear what the children have to say. The main themes for children of divorce are their feelings of abandonment, conflicting loyalties, and a new-found power. So let's just look briefly at the children's power issues, and how they relate to money and entitlement.

So much of children's own decision-making ability, so much of the illusion of control over their lives, is ripped away suddenly with divorce. With the establishment of two separate homes, children can first be genuinely confused about the logistics. Even the small things can seem enormous to the child. A 10-year-old girl confided in me that she thought she was not allowed to bring her favorite stuffed animal from her mother's home to her father's. That, at least, was an issue we could quickly clear up.

But once children get over the shock, they soon learn that having parents separate is an opportunity for a different kind of power — a toxic power — often played out in terms of money or possessions. “Daddy bought me the new Game Boy, so why don't you, Mommy, get me four new games?” Just like the adults, they soon see material possessions as a confirmation of entitlement.

Parents also often triangulate their children into their own fights, during the marriage and post-divorce. In one case, the father bought his wife a designer handbag. He told his 5-year-old son to give it to his mother. Then she said, “Bring this back to your father and tell him I don't want expensive gifts. I just want him to stop traveling so much for business.”

After the divorce, other triangulations take place. For example, settlement had been finalized between one couple, but the wife called her former husband in tears saying she could not come up with the down payment on her new house. The former husband, who was my patient, complained to me, “I know she is manipulating me with this just as she does with offers of sex, but it will spite my two small children if they don't have a nice new home. So, I'll give her the money for their sakes.”

It is no surprise that children learn these lessons of triangulation from their parents. After one couple's divorce, their son, 10 years old, who had learned his lessons well from his parents, would use them to pass hurtful messages that might give him gains. He asked his mother to tell his father that he would rather go skiing with Dad in Vermont than stay home with his mother in their neighborhood. By this, he intended to give his mother the message that she had two bad alternatives: pass on this information to the father and lose her son's company to the father for the weekend, or provide him with a better weekend alternative with her.

Ironically, the demands made by children can be the impetus for both parents to seek more in the settlement negotiations in a variation of “keeping up with the Joneses.” They are just trying to accommodate their children's demands. Each parent wants to have as much as he or she can in the way of material possessions because neither of them wants to be known as the stingy mom or dad. These parents need reassurance that although showering their kids with gifts can bring them appreciation in the short run, the best gifts they can offer their children are consistent love, companionship, discipline, etc.

Conclusion

Divorcing spouses often come into the divorce process with set positions concerning custody, apartments, whatever. It makes sense based on the strong messages they get from society, their backgrounds, and their own experiences. But these beliefs do not usually match up to the facts of what each divorcing spouse actually needs or can expect. So, we who are there to help them sort out their paths to the optimum financially sound and emotionally satisfying future have to get to what's underneath. We need to separate the people from the positions — reframe, restate, calm. They need all of us – the professionals, the objective people —  to deactivate the many other meanings of money and get them back to seeing money as a commodity. Only then can they generate and accept the best financial, emotional and custody options for all concerned.

In the first part of this article, published last month, we set the stage for looking at money issues in couples not just as examples of issues for tension or disagreement, but as our clearest and most concrete way of looking at the power imbalance in a couple. These themes of power and entitlement become more exaggerated, relevant and urgent when the couple is divorcing.

Divorce Reinforces Traditional Gender Roles

Men are traditionally seen as stronger, the providers; women are supposed to be the nurturers, more into making connections than becoming concrete successes. Even at this time, when the majority of women work outside the home, divorce can throw men and women back, almost atavistically, into stereotypical roles. Women are often viewed as stigmatized by divorce; men, on the other hand, are seen after divorce as saleable commodities in the open market.

Let me give you an example of one woman who was aware of how this played out in the workplace. Debbie was a powerful woman in business; she was the publisher of a successful magazine. She made nearly twice as much money as her husband, and, in general, was a more forceful personality. She was negotiating her new work contract when the divorce was being finalized. Debbie explained to me that she was going to keep her ring on, because a divorced woman would already be starting in a one-down position. She might be seen as more needy. The money from her job would now be supporting a single-parent household; her social position as a divorced woman would not be as strong as when she was part of a couple, so maybe she wouldn't negotiate as forcefully or perform as well on the job.

Some other divorcing women I have counseled, however, have been oblivious of the social problems that divorce may bring to their lives. For example, attractive women do not realize that many of their married friends will “drop” them following divorce because these friends are threatened by having a good-looking single woman in their social circle. (In fact, many divorcing women report that their married friends' husbands make sexual overtures toward them, in the name of friendship, that they had not previously made. Actually at times, those overtures may start to look good to them, as women are seen as “not whole” if they are not part of a couple. The “protection” of a male companion may appear to them to be the solution.)

I have worked with several women who went straight from their parents' homes to their husbands'. One woman who married at 19 said that she had never been without the protection of a man until her divorce, at 50. She had an affair with the man who would become her second husband while still married to her first. (She also had a brief affair, immediately after separating from her powerful and charismatic husband, with the husband of her best friend.) Women need to be walked through some of these scenarios in order to be better prepared for the emotional fallout that often accompanies divorce, because the problems they experience may get in the way of clear thinking when they enter into the settlement process.

Factually, divorced women are in a one-down position from men in financial terms. After divorce, men's living standards go up 42%; women's go down 73%. Women frequently come to me with exaggerated expectations of what the divorce will mean to them, emotionally and financially. And, they will most certainly bring these expectations with them into the attorney's office as well. At one extreme is the woman who fantasizes that because she will soon be free of an onerous marriage, she will be able to “fly.” This perception was, in the recent past, encouraged by therapists, who often tended to push a feminist view that a woman unhappy in her marriage had a right to “find herself,” no matter the consequences. But women with such dreams must be made aware of the cold, hard facts. A woman can be exhilarated by feelings of release from a stifling marriage, and she may become willing to give up some of her rights to property or custody just to be finally free of the marriage. Clearly, she is endangering her future financial well-being and therefore entering a situation that may soon seem more like a prison then the unhappy marriage. One of the responsibilities of both therapists and attorneys is to point out that the problems encountered during the divorce process are temporary, but the terms of the settlement agreement are, for all intents and purposes, permanent. When the bills start coming in, there had better be something there to pay them off with.

At the other extreme is the woman who does not want to face the reality that things are about to change drastically. In particular, a “traditional” wife can face a rude awakening when she asks, “Who is going to take care of me?” The answer may be, “No one.” One minute, a woman may be home caring for the kids while her husband is out in the business world as financial provider. The next, she finds herself pitted against that mate, a housewife negotiating a settlement with a tough and powerful businessman. For example, one of my clients, Anita, came from a very traditional Greek family. She was married when she was young and innocent to a 6'6″ guy who made about $500,000 a year as a stockbroker. He always provided for his family financially, but had a series of blatant affairs. Through our work together, Anita was finally able to say that having financial comfort was not enough, because she was so humiliated by her husband's peccadilloes. As the divorce negotiations progressed, her husband would say on one day that he would always take care of her, and on another threaten that she would be penniless following divorce. In either case, he held the financial strings and therefore the power over her.

Her initial feelings of entitlement at finally asking for a divorce gave way to desperate and sometimes primitive notions of being alone and not cared for, despite what her lawyer and I told her. Anita was frantic to keep the couple's $500,000 house because she was afraid that, literally, she would be homeless, living in the street. Her parents, who had a stereotypically old-world outlook on relationships and marriage, offered her no support, telling her she was crazy to leave a successful husband and that he was right, she would be in the street! Anita's reaction to the situation was to ask for more of a financial settlement than was really necessary for her well-being, in an exaggerated attempt to hold on to the financial security she'd felt during her marriage.

Divorce As a Life Cycle

This is a really important idea to keep in mind in your work, because it will help to clarify what often might look like inexplicable behavior, such as an individual or couple holding onto and haggling over petty possessions, or coming back years later wanting to change the terms of the settlement agreement despite the lack of any “changed circumstances” that a court will recognize as such.

Divorce is not just one point in time, taking place on the date when papers are signed. Marriage and family therapists at the Ackerman Institute for the Family say that divorce is a 7-year process, and a spouse should not be surprised at having strong feelings, positive or negative, years after a divorce is final. Some people may be thinking about divorce 5 years before it is actually discussed, so their “recovery period” after the divorce is shorter. Others may never have contemplated divorce until the “D” word was introduced by a spouse, so he or she will have a longer recovery period

A former female patient named Pat contacted me 5 years after she and her husband had been in couples' therapy with me. Even after therapy, they decided that their marriage was unsalvageable. Their marriage ended in a “successful” divorce, meaning they understood why they had gotten stuck with one another, the children were prepared and comforted during the process, and they separated amicably. Pat was the one who wanted the divorce. Her husband Tom was a handsome, successful and refined man. My assessment was that they married too early in Pat's personal growth. She needed, she thought, to individuate, and that meant divesting herself of Tom. She had a blatant affair with the local drama coach (yes, it is a cliche), afterwards went back to school and changed her career. She had a nice boyfriend, though perhaps not as nice as her husband. So she had reached her goals for a different life after her marriage. But then, with the news that Tom was remarrying, she was thrown into anger and depression. We met for a few sessions and looked at the divorce as an ongoing process, in which it takes years to separate two lives. Of course, they will always continue to be intertwined because of the children. But there are residual emotional ties between two people who have spent years of their adult lives together, whether those were happy years or not. This really helped her to make sense of her strong reaction.

I also explained to Pat, and to all the divorcing people I work with, that divorce is a kind of death, not of a person but of a system and a way of life. I have adapted Dr. Kubler-Ross' concept of the stages of death and look at stages of accepting divorce: first disbelief, followed by denial, then anger, often negotiation and then, hopefully, acceptance. It's a very helpful and normalizing construct for therapists and lawyers alike.

Power Issues for Children of Divorce

I often see couples through the process of the rising tensions that sometimes lead to divorce. I continue to work with them, giving them a protocol for how to tell the kids. Then I have the children come in to see me, first with the parents, and then alone. It can be amazing, and heart-breaking, to hear what the children have to say. The main themes for children of divorce are their feelings of abandonment, conflicting loyalties, and a new-found power. So let's just look briefly at the children's power issues, and how they relate to money and entitlement.

So much of children's own decision-making ability, so much of the illusion of control over their lives, is ripped away suddenly with divorce. With the establishment of two separate homes, children can first be genuinely confused about the logistics. Even the small things can seem enormous to the child. A 10-year-old girl confided in me that she thought she was not allowed to bring her favorite stuffed animal from her mother's home to her father's. That, at least, was an issue we could quickly clear up.

But once children get over the shock, they soon learn that having parents separate is an opportunity for a different kind of power — a toxic power — often played out in terms of money or possessions. “Daddy bought me the new Game Boy, so why don't you, Mommy, get me four new games?” Just like the adults, they soon see material possessions as a confirmation of entitlement.

Parents also often triangulate their children into their own fights, during the marriage and post-divorce. In one case, the father bought his wife a designer handbag. He told his 5-year-old son to give it to his mother. Then she said, “Bring this back to your father and tell him I don't want expensive gifts. I just want him to stop traveling so much for business.”

After the divorce, other triangulations take place. For example, settlement had been finalized between one couple, but the wife called her former husband in tears saying she could not come up with the down payment on her new house. The former husband, who was my patient, complained to me, “I know she is manipulating me with this just as she does with offers of sex, but it will spite my two small children if they don't have a nice new home. So, I'll give her the money for their sakes.”

It is no surprise that children learn these lessons of triangulation from their parents. After one couple's divorce, their son, 10 years old, who had learned his lessons well from his parents, would use them to pass hurtful messages that might give him gains. He asked his mother to tell his father that he would rather go skiing with Dad in Vermont than stay home with his mother in their neighborhood. By this, he intended to give his mother the message that she had two bad alternatives: pass on this information to the father and lose her son's company to the father for the weekend, or provide him with a better weekend alternative with her.

Ironically, the demands made by children can be the impetus for both parents to seek more in the settlement negotiations in a variation of “keeping up with the Joneses.” They are just trying to accommodate their children's demands. Each parent wants to have as much as he or she can in the way of material possessions because neither of them wants to be known as the stingy mom or dad. These parents need reassurance that although showering their kids with gifts can bring them appreciation in the short run, the best gifts they can offer their children are consistent love, companionship, discipline, etc.

Conclusion

Divorcing spouses often come into the divorce process with set positions concerning custody, apartments, whatever. It makes sense based on the strong messages they get from society, their backgrounds, and their own experiences. But these beliefs do not usually match up to the facts of what each divorcing spouse actually needs or can expect. So, we who are there to help them sort out their paths to the optimum financially sound and emotionally satisfying future have to get to what's underneath. We need to separate the people from the positions — reframe, restate, calm. They need all of us – the professionals, the objective people —  to deactivate the many other meanings of money and get them back to seeing money as a commodity. Only then can they generate and accept the best financial, emotional and custody options for all concerned.