My Money, Our Money

No matter what your questions are about money and relationship, the answer is going to come back to really looking at what are the meanings that you're assigning to this Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in life. Together, we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease, pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here. Money, money, money. Ain't it funny? Money is a hot topic, especially in relationship to love and sex in long term relationships, you know, money is energy and it's power. How you handle money together shapes so much of the rest of your experience of your relationship, of your turn on, of your connection, it shapes your partnership, it shapes how you feel about yourself and abundance, safety, freedom, adventure, security. So I thought I'd dive into it in an episode about my money, our money, your money, and look at the relationship side and the erotic side of what happens with couples and money. It was a challenging episode to put together because this there's so much we could talk about. I could talk all day about this and there are a number of episodes in here. But for today, I'm just going to look at some of the big questions that I get about money with regard to our relationships. I'm going to share with you how I see money fitting into love and sex in long term relationship and we're going to look at the impact that it can have if you're wide awake and you're on the same page and we're going to look at what happens if you're not. So let's dig in. So first I want to go into some of the questions that people often ask me. And as we look at those questions together, I really want to normalize some of what may be happening for you and for your partner and help you tune up the way that you relate to money concepts and conversations and decisions so that you can have more of the experiences that you want with your partner and your money and so that you can have fewer the experiences you don't want. So one of the questions that I often get is how do we manage our money given that we have very different approaches. You know, sometimes someone will say, my partner is really a big spender and I'm a big saver. Or they'll say, we got together a little bit later in life and I have a greater net worth and a greater income than my partner. How do I make sure that I don't lose what I've built because of their habits? Or they'll say, you know, I know a lot about money and so I do all the managing, but I kind of resent that and my partner is not really with it with regard to money or vice versa. Like they handle all the money and I feel like I don't know enough. I'm not taking good care of myself by turning all of my power around the management of our finances over to my partner. So all of these questions go back to a bottom line foundation of our values and the meanings that money has for us. And just like our sexual preferences and our emotional template, these things were formed really early in life by experiences we might not even consciously remember. But what's certain is that the way you spend money, earn money, save money, and communicate with your partner about all of the above today is very much shaped by those beliefs and meanings. And so when you can bring them to the level of consciousness and look coolly and calmly together at how each of you thinks about and behaves around money, then you can discover a lot. And you can collaborate, you can be flexible, you can learn new skills, you can come closer together on it. And when you do that, it creates a lot more room for, for synergy. Regardless of whether you earn more, spend more, or save more than your partner, you can both begin this kind of process of coming closer together on money and using that to grow closer emotionally and erotically by looking at your money. Memories. What are three significant moments in your childhood where you remember your money, your spending, your saving, or someone else's? I remember my grandpa joking about getting a $10,000 hat that came with a free boat motor and him paying cash and having that $10,000 in cash there in his hand and me getting to touch that money. And that was like really significant, you know, this payment for this boat motor. I also remember my mom not buying me the brand name or the particular design of shirt that I wanted. You know, there were several times I had a dream about something clothing wise and my grandpa bought me my first pair of guest jeans. My dad went with me to the Brass Plum at Nordstrom and bought me the esprit shirt that I wanted with the satin inside the collar. And it was all black and white checks. And I loved that shirt so much. One color of satin inside the collar, a different color inside one cuff, and a third color inside the other cuff. Bright jewel tones. And it was the epitome of 80s style. I look like somebody out of Duran Duran. And you know, so like my mom was responsible for thinking about the entire clothing budget and she didn't feel like she could splurge on those pieces. And then the men who loved me would indulge me. And, you know, I thought of my mom as cheap and not getting me what I really wanted. But she was also the one who took a huge amount of responsibility for me. So just seeing all of that in context is really helpful to, you know, kind of retell the stories and look at them in a different way. But emotionally, I had been shaped with regard to money spending and having by those experiences and by the way that I interpreted them at the time, right from my 7 year old, 11 year old, 14 year old mentality. So that's what we want to go back and look at is what did you hear and experience and do and say, and how did others respond? That's what shaped you emotionally around money. And then how does that play out today? Are you someone who really feels compelled to spend everything you have? Are you someone who really feels compelled to save and save and save and kind of hoard money beyond what you actually need to do to take care of retirement or college savings or your other savings goals? Do you save just on principle, even as there are needs and desires that are unmet? And when the two of you have conflict around money, what is the nature of that? What is the nature of the difference between the two of you? It's really useful to look at money personalities. And I have found Kurt and I have worked with Michael Ann Valterra here in Seattle. Michael Ann taught us so much about ourselves with relation to money and how to come together on money. And she introduced us to the work of Olivia Mellon, M E L L A N. And her book Money Harmony really taught us about our money types. And that allowed us to move forward into other ways of being, even at the same time as we honored our natural instincts with regard to how we're going to be with money. So it's really easy to get kind of condescending if you have a lot of capability around money or you really think of yourself as good with money. Whether that's because you're a saver or because you're great at finding bargains, or you're really great with the long range planning or you're really great at managing the day to day. And all those things of course can be more vibrant in one partner, while a different skill is bigger in the other partner. So it can be really easy to really value what you have and get kind of condescending about how your partner is. And that's definitely a sex crusher. When we're condescending toward a partner that we then want to have some safety with and some capacity to surrender to. You know, many female bodies have to feel really safe in order to open up erotically. So if the way that you think about money has you not feel respectful of your partner, has you not feel safe with them and taken care of with them financially, that's going to bleed into the bedroom. And if the two of you can find a way to see what they do bring that is helpful, that does contribute to your safety, your well being, whether that's your the things that you get to have on a daily basis or the way that they contribute to your long term security, all of that is to the good in your erotic life. Now, a lot of my answers about how to work with some of these questions around money. I make more than my partner does and sometimes they feel emasculated by that. Or I'm a real saver and my partner's a real spender. How do we deal with that? Or one of us really manages the money but resents that and the other one doesn't have the know how or the interest to step forward on it. What do we do? All of those things are really workable if both partners are interested in working on it. But that's the other piece about money is sometimes it's the canary in the coal mine. It's the tangible, practical, emotionally sticky place, you know, that really gets our attention. And when it has our attention, sometimes what it's telling us is this person isn't really a partner. They don't want to show up and help you be safe. They aren't really, really in the game. They actually are in a contract with you where you're going to take care of them and they're not going to take care of you. And the challenge is that sometimes we think that's what's going on when it's not what's going on. But often when I help a person, often a woman, dig into some of those questions about their partner, it takes time and care and loving examination and looking together at it. But sometimes what they find is, oh yeah, this person really playing a different game than I am. They're just on a different page than I am and they don't want to come to the table and really create the kind of partnership that I desire and deserve. So know that, that that's a part of what can come out of this is a seeing where money reveals to you the lack of partnership. And a lot of times that's a huge relief for people because they see like, oh, yeah, that piece that was missing in our erotic connection was reflected in something that was missing in our financial partnership. And the bottom line was that we were playing two different games. What connection and partnership meant to each of us was different enough that we shouldn't be together. Because what I want is never, ever going to happen, given what they want to put in. So no matter what your questions are about money and relationship, the answer is going to come back to really looking at what. What are the meanings that you're assigning to this? For instance, what does saving mean to you? What does getting the best price on things mean to you? What do you think it means about you if you have a certain level of income, and what do you think it means about you if you don't? What do you think men are supposed to do? What do you think women are supposed to do with regard to money, with regard to earning, with regard to saving, with regard to managing money day to day? So if you think that the man is supposed to manage the money and your man doesn't, even if the way that you manage the money and the way he doesn't work well for both of you, you will still be miserable inside that because of that meaning that you're assigning. See, so the meaning can actually differ from the true pragmatic experience. And that's where we often need to pull back from it. It's just like erotically, sometimes you can have an actually delicious erotic connection, but it doesn't involve penetration or the man doesn't ejaculate. And one or both of you might assign meanings to those things, like, oh, it's not sex if it's not penetrative. And so you'll think, oh, we aren't having sex, or we aren't having good sex, or it's not, this isn't how it's supposed to be, even though how it is works really well for you. So we want to know what those meanings are that are causing our sense of this is right or this is wrong, this is good, this is bad, this is what I'm supposed to have. This is not what I'm supposed to have. When we can name the meanings, then we can be free from them. We can change what the meaning is. The questions will always come back as well, to what is each of you bringing? What style do you have with regard to this aspect of money? And how can you rely on one another? What can you be counted on for? And what can your partner be counted on for? Because trust and truth are really central. If you have trust and truth, then most of the other things are workoutable. And if you don't, then they're not. You know, there's a notion of financial infidelity that I really place stock in. I think that erotic infidelity, you know, lying about what you're doing with your body is emotionally devastating to partners. Having an open relationship, you know, being with other people when you're communicating about that can be just fine. It's that sense that I don't know what's happening or things happened and I didn't know at the time what it was, tends to really rob the partner of their sense of agency. And it really shakes us to our foundation when we have that sense. And I think the exact same thing happens financially if you open a credit card without your partner's knowledge, if you're gambling or spending in ways they don't know about. And I've done this. I created that kind of pain in my own marriage, building my business and spending compulsively on things that I thought would help my business. I hid some of that from my husband, or I didn't even have to work that hard to hide it, because as Olivia Mellon would describe him, he's kind of a money monk. So he let me do the management, and I use that to rationalize. Well, he's not paying any attention. Doesn't really matter what I do that he doesn't know about, because if I tried to make him know about it, he wouldn't want to. And I. And to some extent, that was accurate, but that didn't erase my dishonesty in it. So things got a whole lot better for me, even though we still don't talk that much about those details. I am transparent now, and I am honest and accountable for what's up. And that has made all the difference inside me. And that's what changes things between us. Not the details of the financial conversations, which don't look all that different. It's the spirit of it that changes a lot. So if you've got trust, you've got that sense of truthfulness, and you're aware of both your money styles and the meanings that you're assigning, then the other pieces kind of can be worked with. But I want to get into another set of questions, and that has to do with income differentials and contributions other than financial contribution to your household and your family and the right to free time. So this is a lot of what I deal with in my work with couples around fair Play. So the book Fair Play by Eve Rodsky has been really powerful in my work with clients and in my own marriage. And it's more about how we divide our household labor. But this question of who makes the money is a big one, because imagine a couple where they both were lawyers, but then after. After a child was born, the female stays home with the child. You know, they just look at it together and decide that that's what she's going to do. So she has lots of change in identity from being somebody who makes a lot of money and does things that are recognized by the world to someone who's with a small child and maybe other parents who are home with small children and doing small child things. So that's a big mental load. And then that parent may also not feel that they have a right to spend in the same ways that they did when they were earning or to take time for themselves because they're not earning. And so their partner works all day at a job, and they work all day with a child. And we could argue about which of those is harder emotionally. And yeah, mostly emotionally. The job is probably harder intellectually, but the childcare is probably harder emotionally. And so at the end of that day, which of them deserves rest? Which of them deserves time with friends? Which of them should have resources to spend on hobbies or resourcing themselves? And so when we really value everyone's time and when we really value providing care, then that points in certain directions as to how we will allocate the financial resources in the family if we value the contributions of caregiving at the same level that we value the contributions of money. So those are big questions to ask, and they really point straight to our values and what we think life is really about and what we think matters and who we think matters. So asking yourself those questions in a deep way can help you to unravel some of the conundrums that you might face around what you do with income differentials, what you do with affording time and resources to a partner who might earn less and still have needs and desires of their own. So I was really curious about this, and I asked in a couple of Facebook groups about how people are managing money. And, you know, I wanted to get away from the selection bias of just my clients and my close community and look at people, people in general. And so I went into some of the Facebook groups that I'm part of that are really big and got hundreds and hundreds of answers, which is really cool. And what I found is that it's really pretty evenly divided. Now, of course, there's a huge selection bias because these answers are publicly viewable. So if the two of you fight all the time and are miserable about money and you haven't landed on a way of managing money together that works at all for you, you're probably not going to respond to my question. Right. So the selection bias is toward people for whom it's working. But even that is great to know, right? You and I can look now at the responses that I got, and what we're seeing is that among the people who responded, most of whom it's working really beautifully, there was not one right answer about how you combine finances or don't combine finances. It looked like, you know, I didn't analyze them scientifically or anything, but it looked like it was kind of 50, 50 in terms of some people saying we combine everything. We never look at who contributes what. We make decisions jointly. A lot of people said there was kind of that camp where they combined money and they made the decisions together and everybody spent what they spent. And then there was another camp where they didn't combine it pretty much at all. And one person would pay certain bills and the other person would pay other bills, and sometimes they would try to do that in a way that was kind of egalitarian in terms of If I make 30% of the money and you make 70% of the money, you going to pay 70% of the bills, and I'm going to pay 30% of the bills. Other times somebody, you know, with that same ratio or even a bigger spread between the incomes, sometimes somebody would say, I make more money. And so I pay for the mortgage and the utilities, and my partner, with their smaller income, they pay for the vacations. So it looked like there were both ways that people were working it out and really happy with it. So what I'd take from that, based on this sample size, is, is that it doesn't really matter what the plan is that you work out. There's not a big rule about you have to combine money or you have to keep it separate. It's really about respecting each person's desires. And preferences and coming to something that works for both of you. One thing that I detected in the responses is that some people are more on top of their money than others. You know, some of them talked about all of our credit cards are joint too, you know, so I, I hear plural credit cards in there. That tells me they're carrying debt and maybe they're not. Maybe they're paying those off every month. But, you know, you can be kind of happy air quotes with how you manage money, but not be producing results that are going to be happy in the long term. You know, carrying debt, not saving enough for retirement, overspending in the moment, and causing yourself stress on down the line, even if you're feeling pretty copacetic with it right now. So I'd encourage you to, to both look at some of the, you know, there's more than enough of this wisdom out there. I don't have to give you the smart stuff on saving for retirement, having a contingency fund for those things that are kind of surprises but kind of shouldn't be, right? The, the emergencies like our refrigerator dying last summer or the summer before that. Those kinds of things that, you know are going to come. And so you need to have the money set aside for those so that they don't feel like a kick in the shins. That is not the purpose of this episode. It's really to help you look at the emotional piece underneath and the connection to our erotic life. So that's something that I see a lot. When there's an income differential and one person doesn't feel respected as a result of that, that can often breed a lot of resentment, especially if that person is making tremendous contributions that aren't financial. So, you know, a traditional air quotes, traditional kind of 1950s style marriage, one person works, brings home all the money, the other person does all the childcare. And, you know, this is an extreme example, and I think in that time those were not equally valued. You know, there was a service component. When the breadwinner got home, the homekeeping partner was in service to that person, like they had been the one who made the valuable contribution. And, and the other one was living a life of leisure. Even though anyone who stayed home all day managing a home and one or more children knows that that's a lot of work too. So if we want to have a vibrant erotic connection, then we need to work out ways of both people feeling really seen and respected and cared for. And then we need to be able to be flexible in switching up our roles or the way we're playing, the energy we're playing from when we go into an erotic space. So if you have a big job or your own business and you're in charge all day long, making all kinds of decisions, there's a way that you may really crave to let down, to lie back, to be opened, and to have somebody else very much be in charge inside that erotic space. But to have that, to really receive it, and to make room for your partner to show up that way, you got to be able to turn it off, turn off the go, go, go and the decider, you know, the general kind of role in yourself. And that's hard to do if you don't trust your partner to stand up and take charge. And trusting your partner to stand up and take charge will be affected by how they handle money. So I don't have answers for you in this quick episode. What I have is these questions to help kind of drop seeds into the space between the two of you so that you can look at these things together. What do we have going on with regard to earning, with regard to spending, with regard to savings? And how is that reflected in the bedroom? How does that affect our connection with each other emotionally? And then how does that play out sexually? So being able to communicate openly about these things non defensively, not trying to establish a position and then defended against attacks, and also not communicating in a way that might make your partner feel attacked is really useful. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes there's unskillfulness, sometimes there's immaturity on one or both person's part. Kurt and I have definitely walked through that together. We were both just kids. We didn't want to be in charge of money, neither of us did. And that made some messes. But since we've both grown up around that and really taken responsibility, all of the Law of attraction or manifesting stuff is really true. When you manage money well, you're a magnet to money. You know, we take good care of the energy that is in our care today. That energy being time and space, love and money. So we consider ourselves stewards of. Of resources that don't really belong to us, they belong to the divine, but they've been entrusted to us, and we take good care of that. And more is added unto us. It just happens that way time and again. And we are humbly, really grateful for that. So we've developed that skill. And how do you develop that skill? How do you get from where you are to where you want to be? It happens one day at a Time, a little tiny action that you repeat on the daily becomes a set of habits, and that set of habits begins to accrue results. And it's astonishing how quickly years pass. You may have that experience as well, but that's a really good thing in this area because you start with a little habit today, and next thing you know, it's three years later, and your net worth looks really different. And the way that it feels to manage money together looks really different. I started using Ynab I don't know how many years ago now, but it took me years to invite Kurt into that habit with me of entering transactions when they happen. You're at the gas station, you're at the grocery store. You order something online, pull out your phone, pull up in the Ynab app. And Ynab has a really great geofencing system, and they make their app really super streamlined. So when I'm at the grocery store, it knows what grocery store I'm at. All I have to put in is the amount, and if it's groceries, it's already categorized, and it already knows where I'm at. So it's super simple. It takes, like, 10 seconds to enter a transaction, and then all of our transactions are in there. And you might say to me, michelle, my bank downloads my transactions to Mint or whatever. That's great to have that backup. But then you're relying on the bank's accuracy to know what you did. And don't tell me that you went to Target and you knew what you spent that on. We have no idea what category that was or how many categories were in your Target bill. Same with Costco. There's all kinds of different things you're spending money on there. And. And if you really want to know, you really want to be a great steward of your money, you need to know with more precision than that. Like, we were at Target. We had the money. It's fine. It's really helpful to us to know what we're spending on what so that we can predict what we need and we can make decisions that actually serve us. So I've learned to spend more on clothes and toiletries. I was sort of neglecting myself in those places. So. So this isn't just about, like, tightening your belt. It's about really thriving and flourishing and looking at the fullest expression of your aliveness. So that might be its own podcast episode, but I started on this because one of the things I wanted to help you with was growing up in the ways that we've had to grow up to if one or both of you have that same kind of immaturity and unskillfulness that we had. Because if one of you has that and the other one doesn't, then the partner who is kind of more skillful and has the maturity to manage your money, that person's probably in a parental role and probably resentful about that. And how sexy is that? That's a really lousy feeling to feel like you've got it together. And this person who's ostensibly your partner isn't really a partner, they're another child. You know, you may not, may or may not have actual children, but when you feel like you're the parent and they're the child, that's a real passion killer. And so inviting your partner not necessarily to become the person who manages the money day to day, but inviting them to like manage their own transactions, to be transparent, to meet with you at least once a month to look at where you are money wise and to begin to take ownership of aspects of your financial or material well being, that's really going to contribute to the turn on and the connection and your erotic life. So YNAB is a great resource. The book Money Harmony is a great resource and I look forward to hearing from you inside the couples community about how this is unfolding for you. And we talk about all of this in step 7 of my GPS program. Great passionate Sex, the system for navigating lifelong passion. And I would love to see you in there. We're putting together a group of people to start together in January. We're working through this 90 day program and if you want more information about that, just drop me a DM on social or send me an email and we can talk about your place in GPS and how all of this, you know, really deciding to have lifelong love and passion is the first step. The second step is eliminating the obstacles for once and for all, identifying in a precise way what blocks you from from intimacy and then in a very precise way looking at what tools you're going to use to address those and then getting the support to build those tools in as habits so that you are actually addressing the obstacles that you may have been aware of at some level that one of you might have known about in the other one, but that you haven't really been able to get to in therapy. This is the program that actually helps you do that. So that's the second step is to unblock and the third step is to expand. And that's where these money conversations, conversations about communication and polarity, channeling the divine masculine and divine feminine in the way that you play together in the bedroom and communicating in in a minimalist and really potent way about sex and initiation and communicating when things get off track, because they do in everybody's bedroom. All of those things are in step three, those expanders. So at least love this program so much and would love to play with you inside of that. So just reach out if that sounds like it might be a great way to start off 2022. So as we wrap up this episode, I just want to leave you with the thought. Whatever you choose to do together with money, do it consciously. Communicate openly, explore the real meaning that you've made up, and rewrite the meanings if they aren't serving you and your relationship well. Money is like a mirror. It will reflect whatever we hold up to it. Money's like sex in that it's taboo and profoundly powerful, and it's like health in that people don't like to be told what to do about it. But if the two of you will slow down and take the time together to dig into the meanings you've placed on that mirror that money is, you can create from it anything you desire. I wish you all the best in that. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizenberry.com that link is in the show notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget, with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to so you never miss a episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button, and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode and until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.