9
One Plus One Equals One
Money Matters in Same-Sex Relationships
Barbra Zuck Locker
Money is a hot topic. Money and sex. Money and power. Money is often linked with highly charged subjects and it is, in itself, highly charged. No one is neutral about money. Everyone has feelings about it.
Talking about money is difficult for all couples, gay and straight. In a 1999 piece written for the New Yorker, cultural critic Daphne Merkin tells of her schizophrenic experience growing up in a very wealthy family that was extremely ambivalent about money. Secrecy and shame about money pervaded family life. She provides a telling example of how parental attitudes toward money shape children's behaviors. Merkin admits that as an adult, she remains confused, concerned and somewhat blinded around money. She attributes the breakup of her marriage to financial misunderstandings and to her own inability to deal with them. In her astute social commentary, Merkin (1999) observes the following:
For all of the loosening up that the eighties brought, money remains quite firmly in the closet…. We don't really tell each other very much. The simple truth is that I haven't the vaguest idea what kind of money even my closest friends live on…. My friends, I might add, can't have a much better idea of how I make ends meet [pp. 94–96].
Merkin's account poignantly illustrates how one's personal relationships with money often remain out of awareness and how one can bring assumptions, expectations, and conflicts about finances into relationships with others, particularly one's spouse or partners. Money issues in couples reflect many aspects of the relationship, including each partner's sense of self and feelings about the other.
Although the emotional impact of economic issues can be staggering, the many meanings of money are not a central focus of the psychoanalytic literature. Do analysts, like their patients, avoid the subject? Lieberman and Lindner (1987) coined the term “moneyblindness” to describe a tendency to deny money's value and place in human interactions. One might assume that anxiety is the basis for such avoidance both for analysts and for their patients. One indication that money may be the last taboo (Mellan, 1992) is seen in the consulting room, where patients who are likely to give vivid details of their most intimate sexual encounters are somewhat coy about the exact amount of an annual bonus. Yet analysts are always learning about their patients and themselves by the ways in which fees are negotiated and handled (Liss-Levinson, 1990). How money is managed in treatment is often highly revealing of an individual's or couple's capacity for intimacy. In couples treatment, listening to how the pair deals with money can yield valuable information about many other aspects of the relationship.
Money will inevitably have some symbolic meaning in a relationship; each relationship generates its own meanings based on the individual and joint experiences of the members of the couple. Money is both a personal and interpersonal issue. It is a common ingredient in self-definition and is almost always a tie that binds, both in families and in couples. Couples argue about money, use it to control or blackmail and even to exploit each other. They also dream together, share fantasies and aspirations for the future, and make plans, many of which are dependent on financial conditions as yet unknown. Most dreams come with a price tag. Working out how the price is paid and by whom can be a thorny process in many relationships. For many couples — gay and straight — reaching consensus about money issues requires enormous effort over an extended period of time.
An inability to manage financial issues may restrict intimacy and foster isolation within a couple. Alternately, a couple's capacity to share money may be indicative of the two people's ability to share a life. That is not to say that resources must be pooled equally in all marriages, but partnerships are enhanced when couples know how to resolve financial conflicts in an open, honest way. At the very least, couples need to be able to resolve these differences in a way that works for them.
Money issues are not unique to same-sex couples. In clinical practice I have not observed any notable differences in the way gay and straight patients handle money in their relationships. Sociocultural and legal factors, however, as well as gender-role expectations, have a different impact on same-sex couples than they do on their straight counterparts. This can affect the meanings that are attached to money. For example, in same-sex couples, the organization of financial matters will inevitably raise questions in each partner's mind about the ways in which each partner is conforming to or deviating from stereotypical gender roles. Both may have feelings and opinions about the financial gender role they are playing and about the part their partner is playing. This can make it difficult, although not impossible, for same-sex couples to negotiate financial intimacy. It also contributes to what I call “mathematical madness,” or the multiplicity of ways in which couples use money to avoid closeness and how financial issues, like sexual ones, come to symbolize other problems in a relationship. This chapter explores the functions that money plays in the life of some same-sex couples. Although it focuses primarily on same-sex pairs, many of the observations can be applied to all couples.
Same-Sex Couples and Money
When comparing how gay and lesbian versus straight couples deal with money issues, there is always a tendency to drift into discussions of legal and social policies that create inequities between those who can marry and those who cannot. These realities are profound, and they do affect the role that money plays in same-sex pairs. In heterosexual marriage, there is an assumption of financial mutuality, or economic equality, although patterns of dealing with money vary widely from marriage to marriage. Two legally married people have to work against this premise with legally defined prenuptial agreements to “unshare.” In homosexual “marriages,” the law makes it necessary to work actively toward creating mutuality and to merge finances actively or protect one partner in case of the other's death or disability.
In addition to the legal and social-policy issues that govern the management of money in unmarried couples, the expectations that individuals bring into a couple are undeniably influenced by cultural gender role constructions. A great deal has been written about the traditional marriage with man as breadwinner and woman as bread maker. Although the feminist movement and women's increased participation in work outside the home have altered the rigidity of these roles, and the rigidity of the gender-role assumptions associated with them, most men and women still enter marriage with clear expectations that the man will be the major earner and the woman will have primary responsibility for the home and children. Despite sweeping social changes, the notion that the man should be older, taller, and richer than the woman is still commonly held.
In contrast, same-sex relationships have no such socially defined expectations, and gender-specific role assignments are up for grabs. Marcus (1998) thinks that this is a positive development as “the economic realm of the relationship can evolve organically” (p. 179). Although it is true that outside the legal dictates of conventional marriage things can evolve without the constraints of social expectations, there are unique challenges that go with entering into uncharted territory.
Moreover, although there are currently few, if any, social constructs governing same-sex marriages, the individuals in these partnerships have presumably assimilated not only the social constructs around money for their respective gender roles, but all of the expectations for how those constructs are acted out within the context of a relationship. When both partners enter the relationship with firmly rooted gender-role assumptions and expectations — even if these are unconscious or unacknowledged — the relationship will typically be somewhat skewed.
Gender skewing refers to a tendency in same-sex couples to drift toward the societal role expectations for their gender. Two men, for example, may have more difficulties around wage competition whereas two women may run into trouble around unspoken, unresolved expectations of being supported by the other partner. The presence and degree of gender skewing in a relationship depends on the life-cycle stages of the partners and to what extent they have internalized conventional gender role definitions. In addition, gender skewing may relate to how much money a couple has. Because men earn more than women, households with two working men will presumably earn more money than households with two working women or a heterosexual working couple. Regardless of their actual income, myths about gay earning and spending power can also affect the expectations brought into same-sex relationships.
The degree to which societal expectations determine how money is handled in a relationship varies. Many heterosexual couples, married and unmarried, keep their money separate despite conventional expectations that they conjoin. Many gay and lesbian couples, on the other hand, move toward a union of their finances as a way of demonstrating commitment. Ultimately, however, the ways in which a couple, same sex or heterosexual, navigates the shared financial realm depends primarily on the individual characters of the two people involved and the quality of intimacy in the relationship.
Money Can't Buy Me Love
In Amy Tan's (1989) The Joy Luck Club, a young married woman, Lena St. Clair, nervously anticipates an impending visit from her Chinese mother. Lena knows that her mother will see that something is wrong in her daughter's marriage. She will learn this because she will see that there is no sharing in the relationship. The couple keeps rigid accounts of each penny spent so that they can reimburse each other for items not jointly used, or for purchases not mutually desired. Interestingly, the couple developed this elaborate accounting system for tracking household expenses so that Lena would not be perceived as dependent or wanting to be taken care of. This focus on keeping things “even,” however, ironically throws the relationship completely out of balance and causes it to fall apart. Here, Tan shows how money issues and a married couple's inability to solve them are indicative of deeper issues involving intimacy and commitment.
During sessions with Ellen, I found myself thinking of the story of Lena St. Clair, which I shared with her. Ellen was referred to me after her breakup with Mary, a woman with whom she had been involved for more than 10 years. The two had raised Mary's son Robert together. The boy's father had died of a rare cancer when Robert was a toddler, several years before Ellen and Mary met. Robert was now away at college, and Ellen reported that her relationship with Mary started to unravel when the teenager left and came to an end when it was discovered that Ellen had been involved with another woman. Mary was alternately enraged and despondent over the betrayal. Ellen's solution was to offer Mary a financial settlement that would provide for Robert's education.
Ellen was not completely without remorse, and she came to treatment to gain a better understanding of herself and of what had gone wrong with Mary. At the same time, she began a new, long-distance relationship with Linda, which continued in spite of many disagreements, particularly about money. Ellen reported that one of the reasons she was initially attracted to Linda was her financial independence. Linda was also professionally successful and lived in a large Midwestern city. An early struggle between the two had been over whether one or the other would relocate so that they could live together. It was ultimately Ellen who prevailed and Linda moved to New York.
Although Ellen described being drawn to Linda because she wanted “a partnership with an equal,” she tried to exert financial control with Linda in the same way that she had with Mary. With Mary, Ellen asserted her right to make financial decisions because she was the earner. With Linda, an ongoing power struggle developed that was characterized by an informal and sometimes unconscious accounting system that was almost as dramatic as the one used by Lena St. Clair and her husband.
In the stormy relationship between Ellen and Linda, money concerns were paramount. Whereas Ellen spent money easily on luxury items, she chose for her partner a woman who prided herself on simplicity and practicality, so the couple would disagree about virtually every purchase, from a coffeepot to a pet. Linda wanted to adopt a pet from a shelter, while Ellen spent countless hours communicating with breeders and searching for the perfect purebred dog. These repeated arguments kept Ellen and Linda at a distance, which left Ellen feeling misunderstood and isolated — her greatest fear.
For Ellen, early issues of abandonment made it difficult for her to trust and share, and having a lot of money in the bank served as a talisman against her fear of being alone in the world. Whenever she put her faith in Linda as a safe harbor, she became frightened of her dependency and feared that Linda would take advantage of it and try to control her. It appeared that both women wanted to be taken care of and were constantly testing to see if the other would come through.
While Ellen took many steps forward and backward on her road to union with Linda, fear prevailed. Money, and conflicts about how to spend it, seemed to be the surest way to keep her neediness and desire for Linda out of her awareness, and she remained secure in her insecurity. In this relationship, money arguments served to maintain a level of separation that appeared to keep things safe. Like Lena St. Clair, Ellen was afraid to allow herself to feel dependent on her partner and lost the chance for the genuine intimacy that may have come from fully allowing herself to succumb to the relationship.
Looking for Ozzie and Harriet
Mike and Peter illustrate the collision between values of the dominant heterosexual culture and the less clearly defined values and partner role expectations of a gay male subculture. Referred by his cardiologist after Mike's hospitalization for coronary surgery, the two men, both in their 50s, had been involved for close to 30 years. They did not live together, however, and had always been nonmonogamous. Nevertheless, Mike considered Peter to be his “husband,” and, in that role, Peter came to the hospital for family group sessions focusing on Mike's postoperative life. It was suggested by the group leader that Mike and Peter begin therapy together after Mike's discharge.
The two men were strikingly different in their presentations. Peter, somber, quiet, and somewhat passive, spoke of his concern for Mike and fears that he might have a heart attack and die. Other than that, Peter seemed complacent about the relationship. He expressed neither problems nor expectations. Mike, on the other hand, complained openly about the state of their union. He seemed to long for a conventional marital situation and did everything he could to fit the “queer” peg of their relationship into the round hole of heterosexual matrimony. He longed for a shared apartment, regretted not having raised children, involved Peter in his extended family, resented his own exclusion from Peter's family, and tried in every possible way to provide financially for Peter. His will, retirement accounts, and insurance policies listed Peter as the beneficiary. He put Peter on his apartment lease and obtained domestic partner health insurance benefits for Peter through his employer. Peter, it seemed, contributed minimally to the relationship. The full weight of making a “marriage” of their relationship seemed to fall on Mike.
Peter's lack of ambition or goals was not limited to his relationship with Mike. He approached his career with a similar level of passivity, earning little money, and was unable to afford more than the studio apartment he had lived in since graduate school. Because each man had an apartment that was too small for two people, and they felt they could not afford one larger one, they continued to live separately. This arrangement seemed to suit them both well as they had long ago decided that their sexual incompatibilities made it necessary for them occasionally to seek partners outside of the relationship. Both Peter and Mike found this arrangement to be culturally acceptable and were comfortable with it.
During the couple's therapy, it became increasingly clear that a focus on money was being used as a way to keep them at a comfortable distance. It also became clear to both men that Mike preferred fantasies of a committed marriage to a real union. Despite his constant complaints that Peter was not giving enough of a commitment, Mike actually had a partner who suited his ambivalent needs. He acknowledged in treatment that his desire to replicate the kind of financial interdependency he associated with marriage was really an attempt to assuage his guilt about not being able to be interdependent and sexually monogamous. Ironically, it emerged that Mike, so determined to have a husband, was more sexually active outside the couple and the one who insisted on an “open” relationship.
The Diva and Her Assistant
In contrast to Mike and Peter, Kay and Dale, together over 15 years, were the picture of a traditional monogamous “marriage.” They lived the conventional family life that Mike had once dreamed about. They owned an apartment, had a large network of friends, and shared many cultural interests. Both women worked hard in their respective careers, and each reported high levels of job satisfaction. Despite this harmonious structure, Kay and Dale's struggles demonstrate that unresolved — and unconscious — financial issues can disrupt even the most committed relationship.
Kay and Dale sought treatment together for what they described as their only complaint, a radical change in their sex life. Both reported that lovemaking had always been passionate and enjoyable, and they were proud that they did not seem to lose interest in each other sexually in ways that they thought to be “stereotypical for lesbians.” Their sexual life was clearly an important part of their identity as a couple that both partners deeply missed. Both agreed that it was Dale who had seemingly lost her desire for sex. Dale described that she was uninterested and unresponsive, but didn't know why. She reported feeling the same toward Kay as she always had, except completely removed sexually.
Our sessions revealed that while Kay and Dale enjoyed a rich life together, they avoided dealing with disagreements and resentments. Over time, it became clear that communication between the two was not always open, and both had a problem dealing with anger. Dale was characteristically meek in the relationship, and Kay was set up to play the role of “bully.” She was hurt and offended by the terminology, revealing the sensitive side of her character so long ago covered with a thick skin to help protect against cruel and physically abusive foster parents. Dale, used to a lifelong capitulation to a demanding, tyrannical father, had developed a passive-aggressive character and was shocked in the treatment to learn how much power she had in the relationship. She was uncomfortable with this and had trouble realizing that her “strike against management” had “shut down the factory.”
Although the two envisioned themselves as partners, one was really treated as a “superstar” in the relationship and the other a handmaiden to the headliner. Dale deeply resented her lack of financial power, and it became clear that she was unconsciously “checking out” rather than confronting her dissatisfactions. She was a full partner in the management of the household and in assisting in Kay's public relations business, but she did not have equal access to funds or to decision making because of her lesser financial contribution to the joint account. Kay generally settled important matters and also decided on all vacations, nonessential expenditures, and was the initiator of sex.
I conceptualized Dale's sexual rejection of Kay as an attempt at overthrowing management. She had trouble tolerating the idea that she had so much power, but once she began to own it, she was freer to express her dissatisfactions directly to her partner. Kay was equally unhappy with her “chief executive bully” role and had not fully realized how much she controlled Dale with money. She began to understand that while she had always felt that she was being extremely generous with Dale, she spent money in the ways that made her feel best, not always on what her partner really wanted.
A poignant example of the financial power struggle between the two women surfaced when Dale bought an expensive wedding present for mutual friends. Kay was critical of the amount of money that Dale spent on the gift. When Kay realized that she felt on some level that it was not Dale's money to spend, she gained insight into how she had been controlling the relationship by controlling the purse strings and keeping her supposed “partner” in a second-class status. As the financial resentments between the two women began to clear, they were able to renegotiate other inequities in the relationship. Dale, feeling “more alive,” agreed to be in charge of sex for a while. Without the pressure of rejection, and with a fuller understanding that despite her initiating sex and spending, she was not always meeting her partner's needs, Kay was able to give up some control in the service of a more equal partnership. The two left couples therapy with a clearer understanding of the role money played in their relationship and a renewed interest in their sexual life.
God Bless the Child that Got His Own
A less successful treatment highlights another aspect of the difficulties that money can play in same-sex relationships. Here, covert gender-role assumptions established unspoken and unrealistic expectations between the partners. Connie and Lois also typify how early individual histories of deprivation will be carried into a relationship and profoundly influence each partner's ability to trust the other and negotiate differences. Unresolved early needs for nurturing and love, present in each of these women, inhibited the capacity to be unguarded and prevented them from achieving closeness or intimacy.
Connie and Lois had expressed anger freely. In fact, among my most vivid memories in practice was the need to take a walk outside after my initial consultation with them because it had felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room and replaced with something toxic. It was a painful experience to witness rage and sadness expressed to such a palpable degree.
The two women reported that they were seeking therapy for “sex, money, and time issues.” Connie was an architect with a large firm. Lois worked for a distant cousin in his landscaping business whenever extra help was needed. She enjoyed the outdoor nature of the work but did not like the sporadic income. The dichotomous structure of this couple's relationship was immediately apparent. Connie enjoyed a successful professional career, whereas Lois always had difficulty making a living. The couple lived in an apartment that Connie had owned and redesigned before they met.
Lois had asked me over the telephone about the fee, and stated that it might be a problem. During the consultation, money issues were so explosive for this couple that they could not agree on how to pay me. Connie, the more financially comfortable of the two, wanted to pay the fee herself. Lois, uneasy with this, wanted to pay a fair portion based on her income. I asked them how they could work this out between them to pay me one fee but they were unable to find a solution. They wanted individual bills, each reflecting their share of the fee and each wrote me a separate check every month. When they asked how long our work together would take, I told them I would have a better idea when they were able to give me one check for the two of them. Money was symbolic of all the ways this couple could not get together.
The relationship between Lois and Connie was both volatile and accusatory. While the two women claimed to be in love, they appeared to be consumed by competitiveness, resentment, and rage. Lois complained bitterly of all the ways that Connie had failed her. Despite her wish for independence and reluctance to accept financial help from Connie, Lois wanted to be taken care of. Connie, generally silent and less explosive in the sessions, expressed exasperation about her seeming inability to satisfy her partner on any level.
Another difficulty was Connie's background of Orthodox Judaism. She struggled for years reconciling her homosexuality and her religious beliefs and had been married for a short time after college. She had given up Jewish orthodoxy before meeting Lois. Despite her protests to the contrary, she seemed disturbed by Lois's Catholicism. Both women felt rejected by their families and claimed to have no social support for their relationship. They had different ideas of how to spend time and few interests and friends in common. Lois seemed jealous of Connie's professional success and financial security, and Connie reported being jealous of a coworker with whom she believed Lois to be infatuated, despite Lois's denial. There were many serious issues in this relationship, but the treatment is being recalled here because those that came to the forefront centered on money.
Lois appeared demanding and petulant in the sessions. She was intractable in her belief that Connie was failing to meet her needs. Connie continued to be unaware of how she was failing. In the sessions, Connie displayed the lack of understanding of which Lois constantly accused her, but it remained unclear exactly what she did not understand. Connie's passivity and outwardly calm demeanor in the face of Lois's tirades only resulted in Lois “upping” the volume.
Lois continued to feel that she was not being heard and her needs were not being met. She was alternately furious and solicitous with me, vacillating between accusing me of being just like Connie and then leaving lengthy apologetic messages about how helpful the sessions were and how badly she felt about her behavior during them. What emerged was Lois's belief that Connie should take better care of her monetarily. There was a wish for material support and security, coupled with a belief that Connie could provide it. Despite her expressed wish to pay her own way for therapy and other joint bills, Lois was resentful of what she perceived as Connie's options due to her greater income. Connie, who had accepted her partner's demands for independence at face value, could not grasp that Lois's urgently expressed needs went well beyond money, nor did she have the emotional capacity to give what Lois was demanding. After a few months in treatment, Lois announced that she wanted to end the relationship. The remaining sessions focused on trying to facilitate a somewhat amicable breakup. Lois did wind up accepting financial help from Connie to get her own apartment and to pay for some courses she was taking. Lois had originally moved in with Connie when they decided to live together and was alternately pleased with and scornful of her partner's upper-middle-class lifestyle. When she decided to move out, she demanded accommodations similar to those to which she had begrudgingly become accustomed. Ironically, Lois had grown up in upper-middle-class surroundings and had rejected her parent's “bourgeois values” and lifestyle comforts. Her ambivalence about money, which was clearly present before the start of the relationship, found a strong voice during her relationship with Connie.
Connie, who had come from a relatively low-income background, was not insensitive to issues of deprivation and longing, but she was not in conflict about having and not wanting. She had worked hard for her material success and was willing to share it with her partner. But, in the process, she seemed to have walled off her emotional self to protect against feelings of being unacceptable or left out. Lois's more obviously charged feelings about money, along with her extreme neediness, kept her in a struggle with herself and her partner. She seemed most comfortable on the outside looking in the bakery window, but was enraged at not having the bread.
In this case, individual psychologies dominated the interpersonal field in a way that would have been identical had the partners been in a heterosexual relationship. For Connie and Lois, there was no getting outside of their own histories and their own ways of being in a relationship with another person. The issue was not money. Rather, these partners could not share, collaborate, or make joint decisions. In this relationship, Lois and Connie acted out their complex individual histories of deprivation by becoming paralyzed around money issues.
One Has Money, the Other Doesn't
Two men in their 20s, together since college, exemplify a number of issues about how couples deal with money in general, but also serve to illustrate how the presence of individual wealth can affect a same-sex relationship. The consequences of the inability to marry and legally redistribute the wealth, coupled with the internalized questions of who should be the “breadwinner” in a gay male relationship, posed interesting challenges in this case.
When Hal entered individual treatment with me, he was in his early 20s and already in a deeply committed monogamous relationship with Evan. They considered themselves married, had commingled funds, and were planning a future that included having a family. Both men were in graduate school preparing for different, although related careers. The two met through a summer internship program when they were quite young. Although they were pursuing similar professions, their economic circumstances were vastly different. Hal came from a working-class family and had always supported himself through school with side jobs and scholarships. He attended an Ivy League college and planned on taking out student loans to pay for his graduate education. He was the most upwardly mobile member of his family and expected someday to earn enough to live a life of relative middle-class comfort. Hal described his partner as coming from a background of wealth and privilege. Evan had a trust fund from his grandparents, giving him financial autonomy that would only increase with the passage of time. He was comfortable in a moneyed world and had a sense of infinite possibilities. Although, like Hal, Evan was ambitious for career success, his goals did not appear to be financially driven. When the two met and fell in love, it became clear to Hal that he felt somewhat confused about money in the relationship. He didn't have any, and he knew how to handle that. Suddenly, however, the moments of his life were filled with expensive places and things. Evan made plans for both of them, picked up the check wherever they went, and bought lavish gifts for Hal. After graduation, Evan asked him to live together in an apartment that Hal would never have been able to afford on his own.
During treatment, Hal recalled early issues around money with his feeling that, with Evan, he really never knew where he stood or how much money he had to spend. Although Evan was enormously generous — his money issues seemed to revolve around a need to give it away — Hal felt he could never assume that he had any autonomy in terms of making decisions that involved spending money. He would accept the gifts that Evan gave, but did not always have money for what he needed. As he put it, “I could have used some underwear and not another cashmere sweater.” Hal felt uncomfortable having so many things he could not afford and about not being able to voice his desires. He believed that he would be seen as asking for money if he expressed an interest in seeing a particular concert or buying something for their shared apartment.
Moreover, because Hal had not yet “come out” to his family, he had no way of explaining why his roommate would pay all the rent. How could he explain living in such a great apartment? He dreaded visits from people from his West Coast hometown. In treatment, Hal referred to his “double coming out” as his sudden wealth was only explicable in terms of his having “married” someone rich. Having grown up unaccustomed to wealth, Hal was observant about the impact it had on his life and the way he felt about himself as a person with access to money. He became aware of the fact that people treated him differently and that his affluence made others uncomfortable at times. He also referred to “coming out” about having money as an issue that was separate from his gay relationship.
At the time Hal entered treatment, he had become accustomed to living on Evan's trust fund. His internal conflicts, however, were hardly resolved. He reported no difficulty paying for multiple analytic sessions each week and stated that the two now had a joint account to which he had complete access. Although Hal's issues about the ambiguity of day-to-day spending had lessened, his feelings about them remained intense. There were also issues about his male identity and his strong feelings that it was somehow wrong to be supported by another man. As an educated, professional man he felt insulted by the stereotype of “boy toys,” young gay men who seek out the company of richer partners and feared being viewed in this disparaging manner.
Hal identified his concerns in individual treatment and began to recognize his part in perpetuating his sense of being the “junior partner.” He began to communicate these feelings more articulately to Evan and reported that, for the first time, he was able to make Evan understand what it felt like to be Hal in the relationship. Consequently, Hal became increasingly comfortable sharing in the wealth. Evan remained committed to finding ways to empower Hal in the relationship and help him to feel equal. Some of these efforts would prove to be difficult in the face of legal constraints, but Hal and Evan both worked on instilling a feeling of ownership in Hal that was separate from financial ownership. Things also improved when Hal began working and earning a regular paycheck from his position in a large firm where he feels he has a strong future.
The sense of personal security that each of these men has, along with their genuine love for each other and commitment to a life together, have helped them negotiate this difficult terrain. Their relative youth when they decided to live together also contributed to the ease with which they were able to blend their lives and make them one. Unfortunately, the fact that they are not permitted to marry legally serves to reinforce the essential fact that most of the money the two live on belongs to Evan and not to the couple. The reminders of this fact occasionally evokes old sensitivities in Hal, but he and Evan are constantly finding new and better ways to overcome them.
Conclusion
Money, like sex, is an important issue in relationships. The way people deal with money reflects a great deal about their characters, their histories, and the influences of the cultures and subcultures in which they live. In addition, as the above case material here illustrates, financial problems often mask other problems in a relationship, although money in and of itself can be the problem. Different styles of dealing with money can polarize a couple in much the same way as other differences, causing each to take an extreme position that is often experienced as irreconcilable.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the less money people have, the more they fight about it. My own clinical observations do not support that view. People have different ideas about how much money is enough and vastly different ideas about handling finances in the context of the couple. With the exception of relationships that are extremely stressed because there is not enough money to pay for basic needs, money issues will be governed by who the people are and not how much they have. For those willing to take a chance on love, there seems to be a concomitant willingness to take a chance on money. While same-sex pairs may have some additional external barriers to inhibit union, individuals in pursuit of real intimacy will find it and also will find ways to overcome obstacles.
Relationships in which partners are willing to share themselves are those in which money can be shared and differences in spending styles resolved. Open communication and willingness to risk intimacy make the simple math of one plus one come out even.
References
Lieberman, A. & Lindner, V. (1987), Unbalanced Accounts: Why Women Are Still Afraid of Money. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Liss-Levinson, N. (1990), Money matters and the woman analyst: In a different voice. Psychoanal. Psychol., 7 (Suppl.):119–130.
Marcus, E. (1998), Together Forever. New York: Anchor Books.
Mellan, O. (1992), Money polarities in couples. Family Ther. Networker, 16(2):47.
Merkin, D. (1999), Our money, ourselves. The New Yorker, April 26/May 3, pp. 88–104.