I understand having a joint account, but I also think you should both have your own money as well. It makes some things easier.
For me, I prefer that we each have our own accounts and then a joint account where we pay the bills from. I’ve done this twice in my long-term relationships, and it’s worked a heck of alot better for me than the “all in the same pot” deal. And I’ve had my boyfriends/significant others say the same thing.
For us, we figured out what the bills would be each month and then each put in an equal percentage of pay (because we made different salaries). The remaining pay stayed in our individual accounts. That way, if he wanted to buy a new game for his X-Box or I wanted to buy a cute pair of shoes, it came from our personal accounts.
We also used our personal accounts to cover our own gas/lunches/cell phones - that way if we splurged, it was our own accounts that got skinny, not our joint account.
THIS. DOUBLE, or maybe quadruple, if you have kids. Although I often find it easier not to ditch the scorecard completely but to heavily weight my husband’s contributions, and try to remember all the things he does. It’s easy to say “I get up with the baby and I cook dinner and I tidy up and… and… and!” and usually what gets me out of it is to notice, “…and he does the lawn work and he washes the dishes and he made dinner yesterday when I was tired and he takes out the trash and, hm, maybe I should be nicer to him…” I think I read somewhere that both spouses think they do 75% of the work around the house.
That being said, we did have a talk at one point, when the Little One was about 3 months old, about how I had noticed that he had a couple of hours every day of leisure time and I had… fifteen minutes. That was a bit too much inequality, which he agreed with and which we subsequently fixed. I didn’t need it to be completely even (there’s where ditching the scorecard comes in), but I did need a little more me time than I was getting at that point.
Second this. We’ve been married 14 years, and tend to say things like:
“I’m concerned about our finances. I know we agreed to save for ‘X’ but I feel like we’re spending on other stuff instead. Should we refocus our spending or change our savings agreement?”, or
“I’m feeling stressed because I’d like the house to be tidy, but it seems like there’s difficulty in getting all the chores done. Can we put more effort into cleaning, hire someone to help, or should we adjust our expectations?”
Two reminders:
Say “thank you” a lot, even for the other person doing what they were supposed to do anyway. Appreciation goes a long way.
When one of you has a pet peeve, the other should do their damnedest to comply. It’s hard for the little things to grate on you when they’re immediately rectified.
And if all else fails, take the high road. Challenge yourself to be the “better” spouse. Most of the time, your spouse will live up to those standards right along with you, and if they don’t, you have the satisfaction of being superior when you eventually throw them to the curb. I know that sounds really jaded, but I have a major fear of being taken advantage of, and that’s how I quieted it.
One thing we do that helps defuse arguments is to avoid accussations and absolutes- “You never do X”. This kind of phrasing really prompts the other person to get defensive and you end up getting dragged into really stupid arguments just to prove you X does in fact happen more than 0% of the time. The classic “I feel” works better because it gets the person to empathise with the other person- you can’t tell someone how they’re SUPPOSED to feel, so if they feel slighted, it gives you a chance to ask why and in general the argument/conversation becomes much more constructive.
The dont keep score thing is something I really want to get behind because I am marrying a woman who has a razor sharp memory and when I disappoint her she will remind me exactly how many times it happened in the past, what date, how many birds were flying past the window at the time, etc. Its frustrating because it feels like when she upsets me I really try to let it go and not wave it in her face when she does it again.
I want the marraige to work, but from a practical, realistic standpoint, not some pie in the sky aspiration. One thing I’m grateful for is that she is very good at zeroing in on the biggest challenges we will have to face, and is up for discussing them and looking for solutions.
In some ways its particularly challenging for us because we come from two different cultures, and its easy to feel like the other person isn’t meeting you in the middle. But we try to address all these things NOW so that while we are married we aren’t putting ourselves in a sunk cost fallacy.
One other piece of advice - if you don’t mind: Keep any disagreements out of the bed and the bedroom.
If you have something serious to discuss, do it out of the bed. If you have something negative to say, say it somewhere else.
Keep your bed and bedroom a safe, stress free place. Once you have kids you may feel like the bedroom is the only place you have that’s private. Find somewhere else.
This was a hard lesson for me to learn. But I’m a happier person because of it.
Heh. You do realize you’re also keeping score here, right? “I don’t do this mean thing that she does! One point to me!”
I do agree though that it doesn’t do much good to rehash things in the past continuously. We’re all adults here, I hope; my husband knows perfectly well that this isn’t the first time he was late for something and I got upset about it; I don’t need to rub it in! The rehasher gets more angry, while the other person just gets all defensive and it turns into a disaster. My mom does the “Remember last July you blah blah” with my dad and with us, and so did an ex-boyfriend of mine (one of the reasons we’re exes), and it was something that I vowed to try not to do with my husband.
Something I try to do, when we are late for the 17th time and I am tempted to tell mr. hunter about the sixteen times last year we were late for things and it was All His Fault and I had to miss whatever and was very embarrassed, is to try to focus on what we can do to fix it rather than his previous shortcomings (“would it help if I gave you a ten-minute warning?”). It also always helps to try to look at it from his point of view (“He’s been working a lot lately… I should cut him some slack.”).
Cross-cultural marriages are hard. What cultures, if I may ask? My husband and I are cross-cultural (Asian, white) as well as cross-religion (Mormon, Lutheran), but we have a very strong shared cultural-geek background (as well as a geeky attitude towards both our cultures and religions) that very much trumps the cultural and religious aspects. That helps us understand each other (as well as the fact that I was brought up in US culture).
Also, while I agree that you should address these things now, I don’t see what you mean by sunk cost fallacy. Once you’re married, you’re married (unless things are so bad you can’t take it anymore) – you shouldn’t be constantly doing a cost-benefit analysis to see if it’s worth it for you to get out, which is what this comment sounds like.
Since he never does this, why do you assume he will EVER do it. It’s pretty clear it ain’t gonna get done. Put an ad on Craigslist and have someone do it, and tell him the cost is coming out of his birthday gift
Seriously though, my mum and brother had a similar thing. He’d borrow money and my mum was like 'He’s always borrowing money and he never pays me back." I told her, “When Mike says, ‘Can you loan me $5.00,’ what he means is 'Give me $5.00 and I have no intention of ever repaying you.”
You go into any relationship with a certain mindset and expectation and when they are met you’re happy. If you go into a relationship keeping finances separate, fine, but if you go in expecting to share and don’t your expectations are not met and you start having issues.
That’s fair ball. There are other things you can handle this way, too - Jim and I never fight over squeezing the toothpaste because we each have our own tubes. We don’t fight over which way the toilet paper should be loaded because the rule in the house is “Changer’s Choice.” It’s not a cop-out to just completely avoid common pitfalls.
I think that is often cited as one of the bad fighting habits. This link describes fighting fair - some of the points that she might be interested in are sticking to the current topic of contention, and no bringing up past stuff - if you’ve forgiven someone for something, it’s done and over with. You might need to come up with counters to this if she won’t stop doing it.
Also, get a pet or two so you can air your grievances through the pet - “Mr. Snuggles, I don’t know why he can’t hit the laundry basket with his dirty underwear either.”
One thing that strikes me from what you’ve said, Incubus, is that you need to respect your mother’s opinion, but her baggage is not your baggage. Listen to her, respect her, but don’t go looking for trouble - you aren’t your mom, and your marriage won’t be the same as hers.
Something else I think that is really important (that fiancee and I definitely do) is really put a lot of time talking about stuff that may come up in the future. If X is an issue for someone, how will things be if it doesn’t change? Ten years down the line, are they still able to tolerate it? Or is it a dealbreaker in the long run.
Kids is a huge one. How many, how will they be raised, what kind of influence do we want to have on them, etc. Some people seem to just barely scratch the surface on these categories, then are really unhappy later because they are in a situation they didn’t want to be in.
Our plans, in order of time, are as follows:
Plan/have a wedding
Move in together
Save up for/buy a house
Have kids
Rather than only discuss in depth the task at hand/immediate one, we discuss all of them. How we are planning/paying for our wedding. Where will will live when we move in together, and managing all the stuff we need to do when we are living together. How much money we are going to set aside each month to save up for a down payment for a house. Where we would like to live/what type of house we would like to live in. How many kids spaced out how many years being raised in a blingual multicultural household.
We talk about all these things now so that nobody feels coerced or flim-flammed into going along with something they didn’t necessarily want. In our case, this is easier for her to bring up than me, simply because she has a much more specific vision of the future, but she wants to know my vision/dreams too and find a way we can make them happen together in a way we both want.
In some divorces, I noted that some people have this assumption that by virtue of marrying their partner, their partner is going to be on board with their future/vice versa without actually sitting down and discussing it. So they blindly plod along until they hit a ‘wall’ of realization that their way/ideals don’t jive with their partner, and now they are waist-deep in things and at a point where its much harder to change some things. Guys who feel ‘manly’ being the provider only to feel that their wife spends all the money/doesn’t work as hard as they do. Women who assume their fiancee will change their mind about wanting kids and upset 10 years later when he still doesn’t want kids. People seem to put their head in the sand about discussions like this.
I’ll suggest a couple of books for the two of you. Both have off-putting titles, but I think each offers something of interest.
How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk: Like a lot of self-help books, it promises more than it delivers, but it offers real insights into looking at how relationships develop and what to pay attention to under dating situations–including your own behaviors and histories. Ignore the inflammatory title, if you can.
A friend of mine (a lawyer, although not a divorce attorney) claims that the prenuptial agreement is the most romantic concept in Western law, insofar as it separates (or at least clearly delineates) any financial motivation from love. I don’t know that I totally buy her argument, but I would agree with her that a prenup is a very good idea in any marriage. People–even people who are the most loving, sensitive, and practical of people–can change during the course of a marriage, and if it comes to divorce it is best to be both motivated and equipped to sever the union as quickly and cleanly as possible without spending thousands of dollars arguing over who gets the silverware.
The biggest problem with the idea of “our” money is when anger overrules reason and one party starts to think “I have every right to spend/control/pocket every last dime of OUR money”.
We do this too, with a variation; both accounts are joint. His paycheck goes in his account and mine goes in mine. He doesn’t normally use my account and I don’t normally touch his. We have the bills divided and move them around as necessary like you do. If he DOES ever need to use my account (he works mostly out of town) then he can, and we have understandings in place about what’s ‘acceptable use’ without having to specifically ask the other party if it’s OK. This has worked really, really well for us for 26 years with almost no arguments or disagreements. We both like managing our own seperate money and accounts but also having joint access if we need it. For us, this works.
Yeah, that’s unfortunately common, I think because a horrible lot of people forget/ignore the absolute, A #1 rule of having a good marriage: Don’t marry a jerk. I have seen vanishingly few divorces that happened because someone fundamentally changed after marriages, but a hell of a lot that happened because people married someone who was lazy/stupid/dishonest/generally unpleasant and were then shocked, SHOCKED I say, to find themselves married to a stupid, lazy, lying asshole.
Don’t do that.
Marrying a genuinely good person who genuinely likes and respects you as a human being, whom you genuinely like and respect as a human being, and treating each other accordingly is every bit as important, maybe even more important, as being on the same page about sex, money, or kids for a successful marriage. It’s certainly more important when you’re going through a divorce.
sound advice. to further expound on this point (which from what was said in the OP shouldn’t be hard to implement) don’t sweat the petty stuff and its ALL petty stuff in the long run. Paradoxically, none of it is petty if you don’t take care of it right away, the smallist thing ignored has the potential to fester. if you address something that seems petty to you right away it doesn’t grow, you don’t get so worked up about etc. always ALWAYS keep your eye on the long term while you deal with the short and midterm regardless of the seeming magnitude of what ever the issue is.
What is your spouse to be like on waking, when icky sick and its coming out both ends, same for you, what are you like at your worst? what is your SO like at YOUR worst. What are you like at your SO’s worst.
dammit, was gonna say this also and got distracted so just posted what i had.
another thing is don’t be afraid to discuss roles in the relationship and adjust to suit your situation. Stay at home spouse was mentioned regarding how much work is done etc. Im a stay at home dad, my wife works. when we married it was reversed. it wasn’t working neither was happy, house was a mess, i was grumpy coming home from sometimes several 16-18 hr days in a row to have to do house work etc. lost my job we talked about it, she started working i stayed at home, HUGE adjustment, catch a lot of flack from people but it works for us, were both happy, and I’ve discovered how hard it actually is to stay home but how much joy of child rearing i missed out with my first two
Ever considered going up to an elderly couple (50+ years of marriage) and ask them how did they managed to stay married? I recall someone doing that at a retirement home and got some pretty thoughtful answers…I just wish I could find that article.
If you have the time and resources, spending a couple of hours over lunch with you and your fiance, the couple might give you guys some pretty insightful stuff.
I have asked long-time married people that and it made me realize that I didn’t really want a long-term marriage ever because it isn’t a goal unto itself for me. The things that they went through to pull it off seemed like an unnecessary stunt especially in this day and age. If I could find a long-term married couple that actually seemed happy about how it all played out, that would be good to listen to but those are a lot rarer than the raw survivors.
I know that sounds really jaded, but I have a major fear of being taken advantage of, and that’s how I quieted it.
