10 Essential Elements For The Joy of Financial Intimacy

Fostering financial intimacy is an ongoing process. 

Ask me how I know this. 

I am a dreamer, and my loving wife is more pragmatic. There are many ways we are similar and different. 

I didn’t know how this would impact our marriage and money life 17 years ago as we stood at the altar getting married. I couldn’t have imagined how each of our histories with money would ultimately impact how we make so many life decisions, every one of them touching money directly or indirectly.

How about you? 

What have you experienced with love and money? If you are like most couples, money is a top source of stress in their relationship. 

Overcoming money stress takes pursuing financial intimacy. There is great joy in experiencing financial intimacy, as I have seen in my life and that of the countless couples I have worked with. 

Financial intimacy is the experience of feeling safe, seen, heard, and cared about in the many different elements of your financial life. It is also about being able to make decisions with your partner about life and money. 

Here’s the rub: we get stuck with ourselves and our partner when we don’t see eye to eye on life and money decisions, leading to a couple of predictable paths. 

We avoid the issue

We fight over the issue

We cycle between avoiding and fighting over the issue

It doesn’t have to be this way when you know how to foster financial intimacy. You can go from deepening anger, resentment, and contempt toward each other to promoting love and financial well-being. 

10 Essential Elements For The Joy of Financial Intimacy.

1. Excellent Communication - We can all continually learn how to more effectively and healthily use pro-relationship communication skills. Active listening is one of those skills. Active listening includes focusing on what the other person is saying and why they are saying this. 

Example: Your partner is complaining about not having enough money for the bills. 

You respond with acknowledgment and empathy. 

I hear that you are concerned about not having enough money to pay the bills this month. It leaves you feeling overwhelmed and scared. 

Instead of comments like

Why do you constantly worry so much about money

It’s not a big deal. We will make it through this

If you would stop spending so much money on…

Etc. 

2. Know Each Others Attachment Styles - We all have a relationship history that started in our families. How we were cared for or not cared for has a profound impact on our attachment styles and how we show up in intimate relationships. Our attachment styles can also affect the longevity of our intimate relationships. 

When the longevity of our relationship is uncertain, it can make it hard to focus on making shared financial goals for your financial future and building towards increased financial security. 

Take this wonderful attachment-style quiz based on scientific research. 

3.Get Curious About Your Brain  - When we know and understand even the basics of how our brain works we can start to see our own and partners money decisions differently. Our brain, in simple terms, develops in three layers.  The top layer is the thinking brain (neocortex) and is the last to develop. The middle layer (limbic system) handles most of the emotional processing. It develops through childhood and is where so many money memories get stored.  The inner/lowest layer of the brain is instinctual and is the brain stem. It is a large player in fight/flight/freeze/fawn that can definitely show up around money.  

The layers of the brain develop to work in coordination with each other. If either the middle or lower layers are overly active or deactivated, the functions of our thinking brain will not perform as effectively for us. Making it much harder to make helpful financial decisions.

Our attachment style can impact how our brain is developed and what happens when we feel relationship connection and disconnection. This is why financial intimacy is so important. Financial intimacy creates space for our brains to work together. 

4. Navigating Human Emotions and Feelings - There is a wide range of attitudes about emotions and feelings in the general public, the scientific community, and within religious/spiritual groups. You have feelings about feelings.

For the purposes of financial intimacy, I would encourage the two of you to consider that every emotion is part of financial intimacy. Both the comfortable and uncomfortable emotions that we can experience. 

Knowing how to work through the whole spectrum of human emotions is a large part of financial intimacy. Instead of expecting ourselves or our partners not to have emotions (not possible) tied to money, we can expect we all have emotions tied to the full range of money decisions we will make. 

5. The Families We Come From, and Live In - Each of you has a family financial history that shapes your expectations about money and relationships. Family is also where gender role expectations and money often start to develop. 

Reflecting on our family's influence on us is not about blaming parents or family members but instead getting curious about how our families have shaped our money expectations. As children we absorb the emotional meaning of money from our families, long before we can come to the logical understandings about money. Emotional development happens long before logical development for children in their families. 

This is why if money was a particular source of stress and distress in your family, you will need to work through the emotional pain attached to money. 

6. Financial Maturity Matters - We all exist along a continuum of financial maturity that impacts our ability to experience and provide financial intimacy. Financial maturity does not happen automatically by getting older. 

Instead, it is developed and fostered with intentionality. Much like our physical health does not happen automatically, the same is true for our financial life. A large part of financial maturity is working with the wide range of thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and relationship expectations that come up in an intimate relationship and money. 

7. Social Class Matters - Where we live, the jobs we go after, how we spend our leisure time, and the types of financial products and services we use all connect to social class. 

While there is a wide range of understandings about social class, when we work to foster financial intimacy in our relationships, we take the time to understand how our childhood and adult experiences with social class have shaped our expectations of ourselves and others. At the same time, we are open to learning from our partner about their childhood and adult social class experiences. 

8. Mental Health and Financial Intimacy. Whether we experience depression, anxiety, ADHD, chronic low self-esteem, insecure attachment, etc. the reality of our mental health impacts how we experience ourselves, our partners, and money. 

Getting mental health care to work on and through our mental health issues helps us to also experience greater levels of financial intimacy in our lives. 

Beneath many mental health issues are unresolved traumas from childhood. The Centers for Disease Control have many studies confirming this, including the Adverse Childhood Experiences studies. Treating the underlying trauma and its impact on our lives is imperative for fostering financial intimacy. 

9. I bet you never thought we would get here. An article about couples and money and we haven’t talked about financial planning. 

Too often, couples start by trying to budget or making retirement savings plans and get stuck. So then, one of the partners will double down on budgeting and retirement savings strategies, often leaving their partner more angered and alienated.  If this is the case, then it is a sign other issues need to be addressed as you work together to manage your shared finances. 

Having outside counsel to consider various ways of achieving your financial goals can greatly help. Working with a Fee-Only Fiduciary financial planner to help you consider how to coordinate the different moving pieces of your financial life. While it is tempting to think there is one right financial product or service to accomplish financial goals, there are often many. 

10. Bringing The Financial Intimacy Pieces Together -  For me financial intimacy is like learning to read for kids. It takes time, practice, and support to happen. It doesn’t happen automatically. 

You start with learning to recognize the alphabet. 

Then you move on to words

Next into sentences

Paragraphs follow after that

Lastly whole books

Financial intimacy is a layered experience with a lot of nuance to it. Start with where you are at and go from there. Just like if you had barriers to learning to read, you would seek out additional reading support. The same is true for financial intimacy. There is support for the two of you. 

That is why I created The Couples Guide to Financial Intimacy. A comprehensive guide to help couples develop the joy of financial intimacy in their lives. You have just learned the letters of financial intimacy in this article. Now it is time to move to the words of financial intimacy in The Couples Guide to Financial Intimacy. 

May You Experience Increasing Financial Intimacy,

Ed Coambs - Therapy-Informed Financial Planning™

MBA, MA, MS, CFP®, LMFT, CFT-I™