Relationships 101: Talking about finances

Financial difficulty is never easy to navigate. Integrate active and constructive listening, understanding and empathy as main essentials when interacting with your partner during any difficult situation and you will have the ingredients to “riding the wave together” mode. Riding a wave instead of treading in the deep and fighting your way through can decrease levels of stress and tension and can increase levels of couple satisfaction and happiness. Taking the time to truly know and understand your partner can give you the essentials needed to develop the foundation of a lasting relationship.   

Before starting a conversation about finances, finding and adapting information that works best for you and your partner is key. Acknowledge your limits and reach out for assistance from appropriate financial supports including credit counsellors and your bank, who can help identify the specific problems and support decision-making.

If talking about money woes is constantly difficult with very little change, it is also possible that the tension and stress is not about money, but a potential sign of deeper issues that are showing up within a financial conflict. Problem-solving often does not happen immediately and can take time, with multiple small doable steps to realize over the long term. If you’ve had difficulty for a long time and resentment has built to the point where conflict is too difficult to manage or getting worse, consider seeking couple therapy. 

Whether it’s finances, parenting, work, family, or any of life’s situations, building and improving how you manage conflict and communicate with your partner makes a huge difference in how you get through hard times. Consider this the foundation and next, check out these tips when approaching financial matters: 

Set yourselves up for success with key questions

Sit down and start with key questions: 

• What are the specific issues with our finances?
• How do we spend money?
• Do we have shared accounts? Separate accounts? What are the deciding factors in choosing? What might help?
• How will we know when our finances are better? What are the benchmarks we want to use including how we want to spend?
• What resources have we accessed and can we access? Are we procrastinating and stopping ourselves from asking for help? What gets in the way of asking for help if we haven’t? 

Plan your conversation 

• Schedule a time to talk about your finances
• Set up specific guidelines and ground rules about how the conversation will go
• Agree on realistic goals about what you want and need out of the discussion
• Be in listening mode and really hear, stop yourself from speaking too quickly, work to understand your partner, ask questions and paraphrase to check on what you are hearing
• Frame your stance as “we” and do this together, as “us”, as a team 

Money-related problems are common and difficult to tread at times, but they don’t have to be. Consider seeking therapy to help with relationship communication or reaching out to appropriate financial supports when you need to.

If you're ready to seek therapy for relationship struggles, find the digital mental health therapy best suited for you and complete an assessment for individual support. 

References 

• Gottman, J. (1994). Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. Fireside, Simon & Schuster, New York. 
• Grobbelaar, C. & Alsemgeest, L. (2016). The Relationship between Spousal Communication and Financial Arguments and Stress between Young Married Couples. Journal of Social Sciences, 46(3): 271-281. Retrieved from JSS-46-3-271-16-1655-Grobbelaar-C-Tx9.pmd.pdf 
• Kelley, H., LeBaron, A. & Hill, J. (2018). Financial Stress and Marital Quality: The Moderating Influence of Couple Communication. Journal of Financial Therapy, 9(2): 17-36. Retrieved from https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1176&context=jft