Vinod, a 38-year-old writer, believes that love is a luxury for some and the price that comes with it can often be overwhelming. He said he learned this the hard way when gay sex existed almost a decade ago decriminalized In India, his first boyfriend cheated on him out of money just because Vinod couldn’t easily end their relationship for fear of crushing the loneliness.
“He didn’t make much money and used to borrow money from me, which I thought was fine at first,” Vinod told VICE. “First he told me he needed the money to commute, eat, buy clothes, pay bills, etc. But over time, he got into the habit of borrowing money without batting an eyelid. I think eventually I got him used to it too, which I shouldn’t have.”
Vinod made a note of how much money he lent, but noticing that his friend’s wallet never came out of his pocket began to ask him where the money he lent him actually went.
“He avoided answering my questions and instead kept cajoling and saying, ‘Baby, I’ll pay you back. You know I want to take care of you.” He would utter such classic lines without hesitation and with supreme confidence. I think we believe a scammer because we’re so needy when it comes to fellowship that sometimes financial cheating doesn’t count,” he said.
In a lesser-known short story by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, we see the full extent of financial infidelity—its justification and absurdity. The Foster Portfolio, also adapted in a short filmfollows a poor man, Herbert Foster, who discovers he has inherited a million dollar fortune and hires an accountant to help him invest the money.
The only catch is that he still doesn’t stop working hard on the weekends or working overtime, even though his wealth has covered him for the rest of his life. The accountant discovers much later that Foster despises his wife and their mundane marriage so much that he would much rather work weekends than stay at home, even if it means not telling her about the fortune or taking it himself use.
He committed what is known as “financial infidelity”: when a person hides or withholds money-related matters and decisions from their partner.
Financial infidelity encompasses a wide range of behaviors. It could mean things that seem too small or mundane – such as It could also mean something much more serious – like siphoning off funds from joint accounts, lying about your income or debt, lending large amounts of money without your partner’s consent, making extravagant purchases that you withhold from your partner, or keeping secret from bank accounts or credit cards.
according to a current survey According to US News & World Report, nearly 30 percent of couples said they had dealt with financial infidelity, with about a third of the sample saying they “kept purchases secret.” Other to learn from 2015 also found that one in five lied to their partner about their income, while one in four lied about their debt.
The pandemic has also helped screw up money matters between couples. A recently opinion poll found that nearly 60 percent of adults said the pandemic had increased financial stress in their relationships.
In the case of Rami, a 28-year-old lawyer, she noticed a pattern in her boyfriend’s financial transactions a year after they moved in together in June 2020. The pattern, she said, boils down to a single motif: keep up appearances.
“He didn’t tell me that within a month of us moving in together, he was fired from his job,” she said.
For the next year everything seemed normal. He paid his share of the rent and shared equally in the day-to-day expenses. But then he started delaying his payments under the pretense that his salary was late. Sometimes it seemed like he had no money for weeks. Then one day, Rami’s friend called her. It emerged that her boyfriend had borrowed Rs 30,000 (US$400) from her friend with a promise to pay it back soon, but had ghosted her for two months.
“When I confronted him about it, he just broke down. He had accumulated debts from almost half a dozen people, two of whom were my own friends who never told me anything until he spooked them,” she said. “He kept borrowing money from people, confident that eventually he would get a good job and pay off the debt. But the job never materialized and the debt kept piling up.” Rami eventually broke up with her boyfriend and moved back in with her parents.
Debt can be stressful enough, but when a marriage is headed for divorce, it can also get very messy.
Daniel Coombes, director of a London-based family law firm, told The Guardian that “debt accumulation in a divorce is a really sad situation” as the court can only work with what is in place. “Once someone’s spent all the money, it’s gone,” he added. In many cases, Combes says, the extent of financial infidelity often only becomes apparent during the divorce proceedings.
Relationship counselor Ruchi Ruuh said that in her experience, partners in financial infidelity have to do some tough self-examination about the health of their relationship.
“Every successful relationship, romantic or not, is built on trust,” she told VICE. “Some partners want to hide their expenses or savings because they may be in an abusive relationship, while in other cases the relationship might be working on anxiety.”
Such was the case with Barry Rodgers, a 32-year-old journalist – his relationship with his boyfriend was based on financial secrecy.
“When I moved to Mumbai, I was making enough to survive but not thrive,” he said. “But my boyfriend would want to eat at fancy places almost every other night. We started fighting about it because he often ended up offering to pay and then used that to dominate me. That was a recipe for disaster.”
After the first few years, Rodgers got jobs that paid him better, but he still did whatever it took to hide how much he was making lest he be dragged to another upscale restaurant and drown his life savings. Eventually, this culminated in Rodgers “distancing” from his boyfriend — dislike was setting in, communication was at an all-time low, and sexual compatibility was never solid at first. Financial infidelity, he said, opened up the many cracks in their relationship. They separated after five years.
Forbes suggests several possibilities recognize financial infidelity before it’s too late: you see new credit card statements in the mail, your name has been removed from a joint account for no apparent reason, bank account passwords are changed without consulting you, unilateral financial decisions are made, general unwillingness to talk about finances matters , and your partner feels very paranoid when you stumble across their emails.
In Asian societies, where families are often tightly knit and members are entitled to each other’s money, lying about savings and income sometimes seems like the only option.
“In such societies, your partner may ask you to help their siblings if you have a lot of money, and you can’t even say no,” Ruuh said. “Some relationships might be too tightly knit to have any respite.”
But she insisted hiding shouldn’t be an option if you want your relationship to thrive and be healthy. “You have to set healthy boundaries in every relationship. If you don’t want your partner to know the details of your transactions, keep a separate bank account and tell your partner why financial autonomy is important to you and that it has nothing to do with them. have this conversation. If you feel like your partner isn’t listening, you need to re-evaluate the entire relationship.”
Dominique Broadway, an advocate for financial literacy, told CNBC that partners must consistently schedule specific time to discuss financial matters and have “money appointments”. And the only way to do that is to “show and tell” — from opening your bills together to gathering all your finances in one spreadsheet and reviewing them together.
Ruuh adds, “The responsibility is always yours to have that healthy conversation about boundaries.”
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