Posted by: Dan Savage
Topic: It’s said that money is the #1 reason couples fight. What’s your advice on keeping the peace on the finance front?
For once I get to feel nice and normal and mainstream! Money is the #1 reason my boyfriend and I fight. Things get particularly ugly every year right around April 15, when I scrutinize the previous year's worth of Visa statements. Our calm, mature, level-headed discussions about the amount of money Terry spends on clothes and records and odd miscellaneous items (stuff I like to call "total crap") can be heard on the International Space Station.
So perhaps I'm not the best person to give advice about keeping the peace on the financial front. But maybe there are times when it's better to not keep the peace. Fighting and conflict are not always bad for a relationship; sometimes they're the tools we use to hammer out the kind of comprises that make a relationship possible. I mean, think about it: what is a couple if not the original "two-party" system? In our house, I'm the sober, conservative, budget-balancing Democrat and Terry is the sh*t-faced, free-spending, deficit-creating Republican. Left to his own devices, Terry would bankrupt us. But even I have to acknowledge that there are times when Terry spends our money—which I tend to see as "mine," since I'm the breadwinner and he's the stay-at-home-and-shop-online parent—on things that, yes, we actually need. Like a new toaster or a light bulb or groceries.
Together we balance each other out—but maintaining our balance requires lots of discussion, reopening of old wounds, and the occasional knock-down, drag-out, and completely necessary fight.
No one has suggeswted the obvious: do not share finances, and split the bills evenly according to each person's ability to pay. You can't fight about someone ELSES' money, now, can you? :)
Posted by: blondegirl | July 29, 2007 at 05:34 PM