windfall never really existed. I did not
take away $40-something-thousand-
after-tax from him. I just failed to provide
it. He probably would never even know.
How could it hurt to never mention it?
Complicating matters, this was not the
first time I’d cost us cash through sheer
stupidity. When we were new immigrants
to New York City with no jobs, two friends
and just a few months of marriage be-
hind us, I surrendered $60 to a three-card
monte game on the streets of Chinatown.
At the time that was probably 20% of our
liquid assets. My husband didn’t say much,
but there was an unspoken agreement that
I was a moron.
Unlike me, my spouse did not grow
up without money worries—his parents
struggled to make ends meet. Economic
hardship in childhood has been shown to
have adverse effects way into adulthood,
both psychological and physical, and a
money setback can trigger any number of
nasty memories.
I had no desire to fire off an emotional
howitzer in my husband’s vicinity. Plus,
according to the financial-security com-
pany Experian, 20% of people who divorce
their partner say finances were a major fac-
tor. Yikes.
Still, in a successful marriage, transpar-
ency is key. And there’s one other crucial
ingredient: vulnerability. Intimacy is al-
most impossible without it. So, in fact, I
didn’t hold out for very long before I told
my husband about the forgone $70,000—
although I emphasized that really, every-
one said it was more like $40,000. He
laughed, but in a really nice way. •Adapted from Marriageology: The Art and
Science of Staying Together by Belinda
Luscombe. Copyright © 2019 by Belinda
Luscombe. Published by Spiegel & Grau, a
former imprint of Random House, a division
of Penguin Random House LLC.△
As in any
partnership,
it’s essential
that spouses
communicate about
financial issues so
each knows what’s
going on.