In a nutshell: It's more about money. And love becomes even more uncertain.
Now in detail: "Ultimately, it doesn't matter what kind of car someone drives," said a dear friend of mine who just married a man who owned a lot more money than she did. I looked at her and said somewhat stretched: "Okaaay!" I sighed inwardly. Because I knew that she was right – which she just proved to me with this saying.
The beautiful "Can't Buy Me Love!" giving up the Beatles as truth is terrible. It is like a last romantic hope for justice and the illusion that capital does not rule every area of our lives. According to our love myths, love grows where it falls and does not require any financial fertilizer to flourish. Our idea of love also says that it doesn't need equality because it makes all boundaries of age, beauty, rank, and status meaningless. Yes, sometimes she does too. But most of the time you can join them right away. Because in the love relationship as we understand it today, two equal people come together on an equal footing. Nobody is worth less. Nobody has power over the other. Nobody determines the relationship. And if we do, we frown at this togetherness in disapproval. We refuse to marry to unite kingdoms or possessions.
But a firm love relationship or marriage is always an economic community. And money changes relationships, creates power relationships. Therefore, the message of suffering mothers to their daughters was clear: learn a profession so as not to be financially dependent on a man. If the separation not only hurts, but leads to social decline, some remain in a relationship from which love has long since moved out. As a dependent, he humiliates himself. On the other hand, those who have economic power can more easily enforce their ideas as a couple.
Nobody wants to be loved for their money. And nobody wants to be the person who desires someone else only because of his earthly goods. Different assets or blatant differences in earnings distribute power and impotence, dependency and self-determination. A big difference in wealth between two partners makes it even more insecure to trust the already fickle feelings of love. Would she love me without my wealth? Would I really want him to be a poor swallow? No one has yet found a way to keep love and property neatly separate. In spite of marriage contracts, separation of property, pension equalization and profit regulation.
Oskar Holzberg, 67, has been advising couples in his Hamburg practice for over 20 years and has been married for over 30 years. His current book is called "New Key Sentences of Love" (240 p., 11 euros, DuMont).
When it comes to money, the freedom of one is too quickly the freedom of the other. When it comes to love and a lot of money, no one is free from feelings. Then it is not enough to speak directly about the financial. It is much more important – but also much more difficult – to talk about the role our unequal wealth distribution plays in our relationship. And what that does to us.
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