Healing Space | How to have money conversations in relationships

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

Do you find it difficult to talk about money? Not just to your boss to ask for a raise, but to your partner, friends, colleagues? If you run a business, do you hesitate to levy your real rate or raise your consulting fee and end up charging clients a lower rate or handing out a disproportionate amount of discounts? The reluctance to address money in your closest relationships could be an indicator of how you value yourself and your relationships.

For instance, if a parent constantly rewarded you with money or an expensive gift instead of showing affection, as an adult you might think that a gift is sufficient as a token of affection instead of actually expressing affection directly. This could actually annoy a partner who does not equate affection and money in the same way. The conversations about money especially between friends and family are important to have in order to eliminate such misunderstandings. “Do you want to hang out?” can mean “do you want to go to a club and spend money on food and drinks” for a college or workplace group, while for you it might mean do you want to just meet at someone’s house, order some food in, and talk. If you haven’t understood what the terms mean to each other monetarily, you might have a problem.

Why do we find it so hard to have conversations about money? Precisely because we use them as measures of self worth. If someone earns more or saves more or lives better than we do, we use it to say they are more successful, more valuable, worked harder, or are otherwise endowed with virtues that money imparts them. These become the unspoken gaps between us – if a wife earns more than a husband, the conversation becomes harder because the husband is living with the societal expectation that he should have been earning more and is therefore somehow inferior. If a son doesn’t give his salary to his parents, husband to wife, he lives with the burden of being ungrateful. We tie up virtue with money.