By Bryan LufkinFeatures correspondent@bryan_lufkin
Getty ImagesSecrecy and dishonesty around spending creates rifts in relationships. Why aren’t we talking about it more?
Three months before high-school sweethearts Tai and Talaat McNeely were about to tie the knot, Tai had learned that Talaat had been keeping a secret from her: he had sizable loans and credit-card debt. It almost ended their relationship.
“He didn’t want to tell me the truth about his finances,” says Tai. Even though the Chicago-based couple had gone through counseling which touched on money matters in the lead-up to their wedding, Talaat had still kept his complicated financial situation hidden from Tai. To her, it was a breach of trust that almost derailed their engagement.
Talaat had committed what’s known as ‘financial infidelity’: when a person in a couple hides or withholds money-related issues and decisions from their partner. According to a January 2022 survey by US News & World Report, as many as one in three couples deal with financial infidelity in the US alone; other surveys suggest the practice is getting more common with each passing year. The effects can be devastating: a 2018 study showed 76% of married couples involved in financial infidelity say the experience negatively impacted their relationship, and 10% got divorced over it.
Experts say the reason financial infidelity is so common is because we find money matters in general hard to talk about – and things become even harder when we think we’ve mismanaged our money or used it in a way that our partner might disapprove of. But they also say that conquering that taboo around discussing money is key for couples to survive the fallout – or avoid it altogether.
The ’hidden’ nature of financial infidelity
Financial infidelity covers a wide range of behaviours. It could be something as seemingly banal as not filling in your partner on tiny purchases here and there, like the after-work happy hours with colleagues. But it could also be something more serious: siphoning money from shared accounts, lying about your income or debts, lending large amounts without consent, making extravagant purchases without permission or keeping bank accounts or credit cards secret.
Getty ImagesBoxes from online shopping piling up could be a sign of your spouse making purchases behind your back, a sign of financial infidelity (Credit: Getty Images)Michelle Jeanfreau, associate professor of child and family sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi, US, says there still isn’t a lot of public awareness about financial infidelity. According to her and her colleagues’ research, while 27% of people surveyed explicitly admitted to committing financial infidelity, more than half of them reported committing behaviours that could be classified as financial infidelity – suggesting many people don’t know what exactly constitutes financial infidelity.
Jenny Olson, an associate professor of marketing at Indiana University, US, who’s studied the phenomenon, says two main components must exist to classify as financial infidelity. One: you have to be engaging in a financial behaviour you know your partner would disapprove of; two: you keep that behaviour a secret. “There’s anticipated disapproval,” she says.
While there is limited data, experts suspect that financial infidelity has been on the rise for decades, since more households now have two breadwinners. “Now, people have separate bank accounts, multiple income streams, a lot of people have more than one job, a lot more people are talking about their side hustles,” says Jeanfreau. “I think it’s just easier to blur the lines.”
It's also easier to keep it secret nowadays because “it’s hidden, and it’s so difficult to observe”, says Olson. “We’re not managing a cheque book at the kitchen table. We’re logging on [to banking apps] to see some seemingly virtual expenditures that don’t feel real, depleting a pool of shared resources.” So, it’s easier to commit (and harder to notice) financial infidelity when your funds feel intangible and invisible.
Autonomy and avoidance
There are many reasons people might hide some or all of their spending from their partner.
Olson suggests some people commit financial infidelity as a way of reclaiming autonomy in the relationship; they use spending as a means of reasserting their power. “We have this wanting to not just be together, but separate,” says Olson. “We’re our own individual persons, and we like to have some autonomy with our finances as well.”
Problems with managing money can make you feel less than, and worried about what people will think of you – Beverly HarzogBut the most common reason people keep finances secret is because they want to avoid a confrontation or being made to feel embarrassed about their spending. Rather than being an act of malice, financial infidelity often occurs because the perpetrator cares so much about what their partner is going to think of them that they hide their transgressions.
Ottawa-based Melissa Houston, an accountant, says she knew her spiral of overspending was wrong, but didn’t want to reveal her behaviour to her husband because he trusted her to run their finances. “There’s just so much shame around mismanaging money,” she says. “I was embarrassed. I was ashamed.”
Houston began overspending as “an avoidance behaviour” triggered by dissatisfaction with her job as an accountant. Things came to a head when she told her husband she’d committed to the purchase of an in-ground swimming pool in the backyard. When she came clean, she says, “the look of disappointment on his face was brutal”.
Beverly Harzog, credit card expert and columnist at US News & World Report, and the editor of its January 2022 financial infidelity survey, says money matters can be highly emotional. “As adults, problems with managing money can make you feel less than, and worried about what people will think of you,” she says.
But our ability to discuss money can also depend on our upbringing, adds Harzog: “Was it taboo to talk about money, was it openly discussed or was it never really addressed?” Recent UK research showed less than half of the 3,000 parents surveyed talked openly with their children about money – even though encouraging financial literacy feeds into healthier spending in adult life.
Tai McNeely says even before she found about Talaat’s debts, she was the more financially savvy of the two; she’d already paid off a car as a teenager and put herself through university. “I had the great credit score, he didn’t. I knew how to handle all the money, he didn’t.”
Bouncing back
Dealing with financial infidelity as a couple can be hard – and the first challenge may be finding out about it. According to the US News & Report survey, only 8% of partners find out about it via a confession. Often, partners will only find out what’s going on by noticing little things – the arrival of more boxes than usual, or the fact that their partner’s holiday bonus never materialised.
Broaching the subject can also feel very hard. “I like the word ‘taboo’ to discuss money,” says Jeanfreau. “Like, you’re supposed to know what to do with it, but no one wants to talk about it.” Olson adds that “we’ve been trained not to” bring the subject of money up, despite “finances being a huge part of our lives” and “a bedrock of a relationship”.
Getty ImagesExperts urge couples have regular, open conversations about money in a non-judgmental setting to avoid one partner making unpleasant financial discoveries (Credit: Getty Images)To avoid problems, say both experts, it’s important to establish a regular time to discuss spending, including setting budgets for each person. And for people who do find their partners committing financial infidelity, the experts recommend avoiding hostility or judgment, even though it can be upsetting.
“We do all make mistakes,” says Harzog. “Hopefully, this person is important to you. At least put in the effort to see if you can come back from that.” She says financial breaches of trust aren’t usually as serious in a relationship as someone having an affair, for instance. As long as one person doesn’t feel trust has been irrevocably destroyed, couples can bounce back.
In the wake of her financial infidelity, Houston changed jobs; she started her own business to empower women to take control of their money. While she and her husband are still rebuilding trust, she says that their communication around money and spending has become much more honest, open and frequent. She believes that getting coaching or therapy to tackle the issues causing the financial behaviour, like a lack of satisfaction in other parts of life, is crucial. “It is so important, even when you get your money mindset back on track, to keep checking in on yourself,” she says.
McNeely and her husband, meanwhile, have now been married for 16 years. Together they run a podcast and YouTube channel that gives financial advice to couples. McNeely says that once her husband acknowledged what he had done, they were able to work together as a team to move on. Even though his actions temporarily screeched their relationship to a halt, she realised that the complicated, awkward nature of discussing money – even with your life partner – could be more to blame than the partner himself.
“It wasn’t that he didn’t love me,” she says. “He just didn’t want to disappoint me.”
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