A Question of Love and Money

He who marries for money, earns it. - Yiddish Proverb

Out for dinner recently, a friend relayed the story of a guy she’d gone out with the week before. He was a successful investment banker-type; someone she’d met a few weeks earlier at a networking event. They’d chatted, as you do, and afterward he’d followed up to ask her out for dinner – not professionally. They agreed on a time and he chose the location.

He was lovely company and at the close of the date when the cheque came, he casually asked my friend how she’d like to split it. Gracefully managing the awkward half-second that followed, she naturally paid her share. Now her crowd sourcing question to us was this: Do I go out with him again? Although a good conversationalist and interesting fellow generally, the surprise request to pay her piece made her fairly sure she would never see him again.

Questions of dating etiquette (and perhaps chivalry) aside, I’ve long speculated on whether we can draw romantic conclusions about someone based on their relationship to and behaviour with money.

Love and money are the two fundamental forces of life; they’re the dual engines that make our lives go. Love and connection is what makes life entirely worthwhile. Money is everything else.

We trade our life energy for money. Cash is the tangible return on the relentlessly non-refundable investment of time we make every day. In this way, money represents our life force.

As a result, for better or worse in this culture at least, cash also reflects of our self-worth (not least of all to ourselves). How could it be otherwise? When you’re struggling to meet your own basic needs or those of your family, it feels like an exceedingly intimate and personal failure.

Of course love also reflects our self-worth: if you’re loved you’re redeemable – even if you’re dead broke.

When I was at university I dated a guy who was suuuuuper cheap. He had money; he just didn’t like to spend it. He was especially chintzy with servers, “they get a paycheque, why should I subsidize them?” He worked like a dog, stashed every cent and lived in perpetual fear of losing (or spending) any of the money he’d saved. Fun, right?

But here’s the thing I noticed: This guy was also suuuuuper cheap with love. It was not something he shared easily. Rather than boundless and ever-expanding, he lived like love was a finite supply that must be conserved at all costs. Consequently, he never spent too much of it at once, rather doling it out marginally, a few cents in the emotional tip jar at a time to help keep things going.

So, beware the guy who short-changes the waitress, I say. There’s a good chance he’s prepared to short-change you too. If a person believes there’s neither enough love nor money to go around, they scrimp where they can.

Then there’s the woman I know who’s completely financially irresponsible. She lives large and on credit and denies herself no luxury or desire because she deserves it! It so happens this woman has been equally irresponsible with love, disrespectful in a variety of ways including cheating on her husband, a sense of entitlement and lack of awareness underpinning all her choices in the same way.

My totally unscientific research has also shown that those greedy for money are generally greedy across the board, love included; because there’s never enough of anything, they’re always grasping for more. I know another person ruthless in the pursuit of money and success similarly ruthless in the pursuit of love. By contrast, I also happily know many who are generous and trusting with money be equally generous and trusting in love.

I thought drawing a line between financial infidelity – keeping money secrets from your partner – and physical infidelity was too obvious to be legit until I found a near-mirrored pair of fascinating statistics: 29% of married couples admit to withholding financial information from their spouse, while 30% admit to physically cheating.

Interesting, right?

Of course, there are exceptions to every theory – or in this case, every observation. I also happen to know, for instance, a guy who takes his ability to earn a few million a year for granted who’s as mad-in-love with his wife as he was 20 years ago and as committed to working on their relationship and priorizing her happiness as he ever was.

Thank God (again) for our endless ability to make ourselves anew, though; for never being stuck one way. “When you know better, you do better,” as Her Sageness (aka Oprah) so wisely says.

To this point, I’ve been more than a few ways with love and money in my own life – not giving them each their respectful due in my youth (OK, who’s kidding who: I squandered both indiscriminately), then working too hard to hang on to too little as I aged.

Though a slow learner to be sure, I’ve moved on, on both counts. Today I invest in both more wisely and cautiously; I’m a grateful and more conscious steward across the board.

In the end, my friend chose not to see the guy again. The whole invitation-to-dinner-you-pay-for-what-you-eat thing just rubbed her the wrong way. Potentially revealing as it is, you won’t be surprised to know I totally endorsed her choice. Considering we’re generally trying to be our most impressive selves on a first date, it just didn’t seem like an auspicious beginning, investment banker or otherwise.

When we talk about drawing parallels and the things we know for sure, here’s one of mine: In both love and money, the more you give away with an open and generous heart, the more you gain in return. Be selfish and spread both around a little, won’t you?