A tale of two boyfriends (guess which one I married)
Once upon a time, I dated a guy I will call Vic (not his real name). Vic, at first glance, seemed to have his life together. He was still finishing up his degree, but he worked, he had a solid social circle, he had a lot going for him. I hadn’t been in a relationship for awhile when I met him, and I admit I rushed in way too fast: About six months after we started seeing each other, he moved into my place. We had agreed that he would pay less rent than I did, since I made more money, but otherwise we didn’t talk a lot about money beforehand. We’d been independent, self-supporting people before we met, and I figured we would still be more or less that, except living together.
But as time passed, I kept learning, well, some rather unfortunate bits of information about Vic. His father had in fact just paid off a substantial amount of credit card debt for Vic. Then, I learned, the amount was actually a lot more substantial than I’d thought. And on top of that, Vic was still into spending money he didn’t actually have.
More time passed, and our relationship changed some more. I bought an apartment in New York, a huge step for me. Vic was not part of that financial commitment; I had saved up the down payment by myself, the mortgage would be mine alone and the apartment would be in my name only. Because of that, I decided not to charge him any rent, because I didn’t want him to be able to argue he’d ever had a financial stake in the apartment and therefore lay claim to any equity. (Clearly, there was at least a part of me that saw where all this was going…) He offered, instead, to pick up the tab for all our groceries and other incidentals.
Guess how long that lasted.
Eventually, of course, I broke up with Vic (and thank *god*, I might add), but it was only afterward that I was able to really sit down with myself and realize how many financial red flags I’d ignored for any number of reasons — I loved him, I didn’t want to rock the boat, I didn’t want to be judgmental, I didn’t want to sound like I was lording my higher salary over him, and more. Take your pick.
About eight months after the break-up, I met a man I will call Alexander. I had enough distance from Vic now to really think about how to approach this relationship: We went much slower, we didn’t move in until we’d been together for over a year, I paid a lot more attention to how Alexander did or didn’t spend his money. We had the time to get to know each other’s friends, to see how we each reacted in a lot of different situations, and to get a feel for how we treated each other as potential partners. Turns out Alexander was and is pretty awesome in many ways. ❤
More than that, though, we actually *talked* about money. We talked about our values around money, our goals, our spending patterns. I’m definitely thriftier than Alexander, but that’s mostly because I’m on the cheap side. He’s pretty frugal as well, and he doesn’t overspend or depend on other people to bail him out when he buys too many expensive toys or delivery meals.
The contrast with Vic was huge — and made it clear that yes, Alexander and I would be good partners. Not just a couple, but real, honest-to-goodness partners, standing by each other in thick and thin. When it came to finances knowing we had the same values was huge! It made me wonder what life would have been like if I had settled down with someone with whom I wasn’t on the same financial page, someone like Vic. And I could see, quite clearly, how awful, how miserable that would have been, because we would always have been at cross purposes; we would have been pulling in different directions while still tied to each other, a terrible way to live.
But Alexander and I would always pull in the same direction. Oh sure, we had occasional disagreements about money. But it’s a disagreement, not a fight, and we talk it out. We know our differences on money are more differences in degree than in kind. I saw how valuable that was to me, how much it meant to me to be with someone like that. And I knew what to do next.
Reader, I married him.
