Love, Money & Commitment: The Life Of An Un-Wife
How an unmarried but completely committed couple manages money.
When Paul bought me the car, I felt saved but not entirely safe, like family but not quite. Maybe that's a good thing—better than assuming a future that is by no means guaranteed. After all, parents do not always bail out their children, adult children do not always take care of their aged parents. Divorced women often end up poor. How much security is reasonable to expect?
The questions are the same as they were in the first years of our life together. What is practical? What is fair? And they are different. Should Paul and I aim for perfect financial equality? Or does that quest betray—or even encourage— the suspicion that one is putting in more than her share and the other taking advantage?
It is still not easy to answer these questions or even, after fifteen years, to talk about them, because for Paul and me, as for most of us, money has a childhood history; it represents identity, status, independence, security, and—when exchanged or shared between intimates—love.
We will probably never finish working it out. In the meantime, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, we are pulling tighter the knot we never legally tied.
Reprinted with permission from Riverhead Books. To buy One Big Happy Family, click here.
Discussion
What strikes me about this article is how if you stay together long enough, you start facing some of the same questions as married people. How much do you merge finances? What if one person has more money than the other? Who owns things you buy together? How do you work out differences in values about spending and saving? Can you trust the other person?
In an odd way, I think it shows that not getting married doesn't protect you. If you split up after a few years, it's going to be painful and messy. You might not even be able to keep the law from getting involved, if your partner wants to bring it in.
Out of this brilliant essay, one of my favorite bits is that Judith says she and Paul will most likely always be discussing this issue. This reality -- especially when challenging subjects like money or sexuality are involved -- is that the act of discussing the hard points is almost as important as resolving them (if that's even possible).
