How Could You NOT Talk About It?

Everywhere in the blogosphere you’ll see people writing about finances and couples. The advice is the same, to be honest, etc.

Here’s the thing. How can two people who spend lots of time together, NOT talk about their finances?

My boyfriend can read about my finances just by reading my blog. That’s an unusual case to be sure. It’s not something to mention on a first date. But even if I didn’t run this blog, I think he’d have a pretty good idea of where I stand. When I look around my apartment and see the repairs I have to make on the place, I generally wonder out loud how I’m going to take care of it and ask his input on some of my ideas for fixing stuff. Usually he’s got an idea of what stuff costs and his own ideas about what he’d do if he were me.

Generally speaking, I probably overshare about this subject because usually my significant other has a clue about my state of affairs. I need to bounce stuff off other people to get different perspectives. I guess I’d trust my boyfriend about this sort of thing because I usually date someone financially responsible. (And the current boyfriend thinks I obsess about finances. I laugh and tell him he should be glad, else I’d turn all my obsessiveness 100% onto him. He laughs, but perhaps slightly nervously.)

The only time I really didn’t share was when I was embarrassed about my credit card debt about 8 years ago. Even then, that boyfriend wheedled it out of me because we were talking about being serious and where we stood with our student loans. Eventually, that information was going to come out anyway. I suppose the lesson learned there is that I don’t want to be blindsided by dating someone with lots of uncontrolled debt either.

The only other serious boyfriend with whom I had real difficulty discussing this topic didn’t have a job. And that squelches just about all conversations related to money. Even so, we still talked about it but in different terms. He’s one of the people who encouraged me to start this blog as a outlet maybe as a deflection from himself. But also because he didn’t have anything to offer me except to get out of credit card debt. (He had none, but only because his parents made a clean slate for him and he never bothered with credit since.)

I guess a lot of my discussions about money with boyfriends have been problem solving sessions. Not so much geared towards how to cover all my bills, but how to get special projects paid (Vacations, renovations, etc.). I’m not looking to have my boyfriend fix my problems, but help me brainstorm a solution that’s workable and be supportive of my goals.

Is it because I work daily in a collaborative environment that I don’t think hiding information is a good thing? Is it because I have no shame? Is it because I’ve seen what ugly things money secrets do to families? It’s probably all those things combined. Maybe I have less fear about other people’s judgments now that I’m older and maybe I have less fear because I’m not as bad off as I was before. But either way, it’s still unfathomable that someone picking a life partner wouldn’t have a clue to these sorts of things.

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