It’s no secret that the recent financial landscape has resembled the spikey terrain of the Alps rather than gentle rolling hills. Drastic ups with even more drastic downs. Inflation and rising interest rates mean most of us are feeling the pain.
While we all do our best to keep a positive financial footing, the stress that effort is causing has effects that go beyond our bank accounts. The most evident for many couples is the toll it takes on their relationship.
Hidden Ways Financial Stress Is Dividing You
Most couples will tell you ideally they’d have the same goals and approach to handling money, especially when it’s tight. The truth, however, is that most of life isn’t ideal and most partners have different views on money.
Money is the biggest source of arguments for couples when times are good, and when times are bad the problems can be overwhelming.
To make it worse, even when you and your spouse are trying to work together on the financial front, the stress can sneak up and affect you each individually and your relationship as a whole in ways you may not recognize.
For instance:
- Increased sensitivity. This isn’t in the good way where one partner becomes more sensitive to the needs of the other. People under financial stress can become more sensitive to all of the additional stressors and issues in life.
Suddenly, little things that had been taken in stride before become unbearable, especially if there’s a monetary consequence.
Lawn mower needs repaired? Kids creating more laundry than usual? Someone forgot to put the milk away?
These are examples of common life frustrations that might become much bigger frustrations when there’s financial stress.
- When stress is high people often lose the ability to stay calm and exercise patience. This can be an external expression of the need to control things and create order in a time where everything (namely money) seems out of their control.
- Depression due to feelings of failure. When finances are tight and lifestyles have to change or certain things have to be given up, it can cause a person to feel as though they’ve failed.
This can be especially true if there are established roles in a relationship. The primary earner may feel they’re failing or have fallen short, or if one person is responsible for the children they may feel guilty for not bringing in an income.
These feelings can cause one partner to pull away from the other and become emotionally unavailable.
- Recrimination and accusations. Blaming each other for everything from dirty dishes to unpaid bills isn’t uncommon when there’s financial stress. Being quick to blame and even becoming accusatory saying things like, “You just don’t care,” “You did (insert offense here) on purpose,” “You don’t do anything around here” can be a manifestation of financial stress.
- Referred pain. You know how you might feel leg pain that’s actually due to a back injury? The same thing can happen psychologically. Financial pain can present itself as other things, like frustration with your partner or misplaced anger. These can (and often do) lead to problems in your relationship.
Even the best intentions in terms of working together can get offset when financial stress enters the picture.
Stress due to money has a peculiar intensity due to the fundamental importance of financial stability to one’s life. Often when it’s money problems that are the issue it can feel almost like a life-or-death situation. This then exacerbates the stress response and therefore the impact on a relationship.
The Ultimate Impact
Out of all the ways financial stress can impact a relationship, however, the largest is by contributing to divorce.
Although many couples cite money issues as a primary contributor, it should be noted that divorce because of money issues is something of misnomer. Truly what most often leads to divorce is lack of communication regarding money.
Even when you each have the same goals and seem on the same page financially, the stress responses listed above can eat away at a relationship causing a breakdown in communication. It’s that breakdown that created the divide and other issues to compound and grow.
This can lead to partners becoming out of step with one another, making separate financial decisions, or even spiteful ones.
It’s the,
- Stress reactions
- Lack of communication
- Out-of-sync decision making
that really lead to divorce.
What You Can Do To Protect Your Relationship
The biggest way to protect your relationship in all circumstances is to maintain communication – even when it’s hard.
This sounds easy, but communication, especially when you’re both stressed and life is hard, is really difficult for many.
Consider the listed responses above.
If you’re feeling depressed, like a failure, impatient, and easily angered, opening up and having a balanced conversation about money (or anything else) isn’t likely at the top of your “fun things to do” list. And it’s probably not on your partner’s either.
But that’s precisely the reason you need to do it.
In order to make the communication and conversations easier consider trying the following:
- Make weekly appointments with each other to talk about “business” and all the uncomfortable things.
- When things are feeling good, have a conversation to discuss the way you each react to stress and where you each tend to be vulnerable. This can help you recognize each other’s behavior and what it means when things are particularly strained.
- There are no heroes when it comes to financial problems. Neither one of you needs to be the savior or shoulder problems on your own. Your lives are shared – so are your problems. Learning to lean on each other and become actual partners is crucial.
If financial issues are stressing your relationship, understand you’re not alone – not by a long shot, especially right now. Maintaining communication, being responsive to your partner, and keeping your partner as an ally and not an adversary will help you get to the other side. And yes, there will be an other side.
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