icans. Therapists also like the three-way
system because it mirrors what a healthy
marriage would look like. “It actually re-
flects the fundamental nature of commit-
ment when commitment is healthy,” says
marital researcher Scott Stanley. “There’s
an ‘us’ and there’s a ‘me and you.’ And
‘you’ don’t have to disappear for the ‘us’
to exist.”
one of the thorniest issues for couples is
debt. Kathleen Gurney, a psychologist and
the author of Your Money Personality, calls
it “a silent killer, chipping away at your
self-confidence.” Debt is one of those mar-
ital bogeymen that have loomed larger in
recent years: in 1997, household consumer
credit in the United States was $1.34 tril-
lion. Within a decade, it had grown to
$2.61 trillion, and by the end of 2017, it
had quintupled to about $13.15 trillion.
A lot of that is college debt, but $830 bil-
lion of it was credit card debt. So, if you’ve
managed to rack up a few unpaid bills in
the past decade or two, you are not alone.
It’s not entirely your fault either: in the
past 13 years median household income
has grown by 4.4% while the cost of living
has gone up almost 30%.
If talking about money is like walk-
ing on eggshells, talking about debt is like
walking on eggshells laid on top of im-
provised explosive devices. Many people
avoid it at all costs. You may claim that
your debt is yours to contend with and
that you will take care of it eventually, but
that’s not really the way debt works. If
you can’t pay, eventually your spouse will
have to, unless you die or divorce. If your
spouse gets into difficulties and his or her
creditors require liquidation of an asset,
it could be your car or possessions that
get handed over too. So during conversa-
tions about it, the debtor gets defensive,
the partner gets panicky, and oops, that’s
three days of sleeping in different rooms.
Studies have shown that changes in
debt lead to recently married couples△
Many financial
managers suggest
that each partner
should be allotted
an agreed-upon
amount to spend as
they please.