Each week i asks experts to answer readers’ questions about love, sex and relationships
My partner and I both come from working-class backgrounds where money was always tight. We were raised in single-parent families and have had to work very hard all our lives to pay our way.
As a result, my partner is extremely frugal with his cash. On the plus side, this has allowed him to buy a flat on his own dime. On the negative side – he is so fixated on saving pennies wherever he can that it’s taking the joy out of life.
Even though our backgrounds are similar, our outlooks are very different. I definitely live in the moment and want to enjoy life while I still can, which stresses him out to no end. Admittedly, in the past I have got into trouble with credit cards and overdrafts after being made redundant twice in the past few years.
I am the first to admit that I am no money expert but his approach gets me down. We frequently argue over things like not filling the kettle with too much water, getting cabs when it’s raining, which friends to avoid on nights out (because he remembers who doesn’t buy him a drink back).
He is notorious amongst our friends group for only talking about money on nights out and his meanness has become a running joke. He will only buy yellow-ticket reduced-price food, and needless to say, he refuses to ever turn the heating on and follows me into each room to switch the light off if I’m in there for too long.
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He refuses to get married because of how much a wedding would cost and if we go on holiday, he will only choose the grottiest budget hotels, even when I pay half. He once brought his own bed linen to Portugal just so he could stay in a cheap hostel.
We have always had clear lines on who buys what and we keep our finances totally separate. However, the flat we live in is his and he will always hold this power over me. I have been paying for half his mortgage and I have no rights if he decides to kick me out.
Now, with the current cost of living crisis, I worry that saving money is going to become something that dominates all our lives. How can I communicate with him better on this over the coming months? How can we find middle ground between being sensible and cautious but without it taking the joy out of everything?
Lucy Fry, couples and individual therapist at Portobello Behavioral Health, says:
Ouch – it sounds like you are both suffering a lot, thanks to scary experiences of money (or the lack of it) growing up alongside a genuinely frightening cost of living crisis.
These are two things you share in this situation, so it’s good to remember that: you are both reacting against the past when it comes to money. I’d guess your partner associates his extreme frugality with cultivating the sense of security he lacked when younger, whilst you associate it with the restriction and worry you so hated.
In essence, you both want to have a different experience around money than your younger selves, yet you’re going about it in opposing ways. Individual therapy will certainly help with this, as could some short-term couples work. You could ask him to describe the impact of money worries on his life, without interrupting or telling him he is wrong.
Hear why he reacts in such an extreme way before then explaining how it impacts you (rather than finger-pointing or insisting he changes). If he is unwilling to dig deep into what lies underneath his behaviour, then this issue could well end up dominating your lives, but with some compassion and patience, it may become a source of connection and empathy.
Often couples want to be understood more than they try to understand, which means nobody really feels heard. On the surface he’s become miserly, but this kind of extreme frugality often masks a deep and generalised fear of scarcity, usually rooted in childhood.
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Set a timer for five minutes and promise you won’t interrupt him as he answers questions like: How did it feel to not have enough, when he was younger? Was his parent often worried about money? Did he feel responsible for this as a child and, if so, what was that like?
If saving money on heating can protect him from feeling the terror he felt when younger and his only parent was clearly upset and distracted, then it isn’t really about the heating but about avoiding those unbearable memories, whether fully conscious or not.
You could also make sure he understands how his behaviour impacts you without placing all the responsibility for your feelings onto him. As I often tell couples, this is about explaining yourself, rather than try to change them. Perhaps your experiences of money as a child caused you to rebel against money worries, live for the day and worry tomorrow! His frugality takes you back to that frightening childhood scarcity just as your flippancy around money does the same for him.
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As told to Marianne Power
