Relationship: money and love – is Zoff inevitable?

partnership
Couple therapist reveals: money and love – is Zoff inevitable?

Friendship ends with money. That’s already proverbial. Because business is business. Feelings shouldn’t play a role here. And when it comes to feelings, business and financial dependencies are not a good idea. Because it suddenly creates inequality and dependencies that destroy a friendship.

Does a love relationship also mean an economic community?

A love relationship is also vitally dependent on the partners being like good, if possible very good, friends for each other. But unlike pure friendships, in love we can’t just keep money and feelings separate. On the contrary. In our couple relationships, the cold logic of capital – whoever is stronger wins – meets head-on the laws of love that say if one loses, everyone loses. Because most of us live the model of coming together for love and now suddenly being an economic community.

For millennia, marriage was primarily an economic enterprise. It was about surviving together or, for the more affluent, preserving and increasing wealth. This is how princesses were married, this is how the poorer classes found each other. In our relationships today, mean mammon meets noble love. And it irritates and hurts us and our romantic ideals when mean money triumphs over noble love. Be it because of the marriage contract, which is now almost a matter of course for wealthier people, be it because she still has to pay rent in his villa despite 15 years of relationship, be it because despite all the love they still bill every month to the penny, be it because the financially more dependent partner has no insight into the finances of the better or sole earner.

Sometimes it is emotional orders, such as preserving the family fortune, which is why the wallet remains tightly closed even though the heart opens.

Making yourself vulnerable to love while money is in control

It is then other feelings than love that determine our behavior. Feelings that are so deeply anchored in the personality that even love does not reach them: such as stinginess, the fear of being taken advantage of, or the need for dominance because there is a lack of trust in being treated lovingly by others. Or they are feelings that have arisen in the relationship: If you feel that you are not getting what is due to you, that you are always giving more than you are getting, you will not be generous. For those who feel at their mercy, their own money is a firm hold. For those who cannot give up or struggle for self-worth, money and possessions become the ultimate means of power to assert themselves.

In a love relationship we are looking for attachment, the emotional security of not being alone. To do that, we have to open up. We make ourselves emotionally dependent, become vulnerable. Money also gives us a feeling of emotional security, but we don’t have to open ourselves up and make ourselves vulnerable. Money, then, gives us a sense of control that many may cling to even more when the romantic relationship asks them to relinquish it. Then love ends with money. But with it, unfortunately, often the whole love relationship.

Bridget