Is Your Partner Betraying You for Money: A Guide to Financial Infidelity

“When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.”

-Isaac Bashevis Singer

Keeping matters private, hiding things and acting secretly often damage relationships of any sorts. Although unknowingly, we do build a temporary wall of secrets which when discovered has a serious emotional repercussion.

Likewise, Financial Infidelity - the act of not being true to your spouse about your financial matters like income, debts, investments, savings is a common practice encountered today.

There are people amongst us who have witnessed marriage failures due to financial infidelity while for some this hasn’t been a point of concern.

Generally, financial infidelity does greater harm in situations where one spouse takes crucial financial actions without the knowledge of the other, showing signs of weaker trust and communication among the marriage partners.

There are people who hide their cash, credit cards, loan accounts, investments and other purchases from their partner. Financial Infidelity has become a major reason for divorces due to rising arguments in the relationships.

By now you must be wondering if any of your actions in the past could damage your current relationships. Well, better late than never, to fix those. Discussed below are some practices which commonly lead to financial infidelity and create problems among the people.

Objecting the Spending Habits of a Partner

In today’s times, almost every individual has planned expenses which are fixed. However, few deals might be irresistible for an individual at times that might come like a cannonball for the other. There can be fundamental disagreements among couples regarding issues like these. However, raising objections over the pettiest expenditure of a partner, might not be a good signal.

To some extent, creating budgets can help resolve the habits of unnecessary spending and making planned expenditures.

Keeping Income Confidential from a Spouse

The most common form of financial infidelity is hiding your income from your partner. No matter how handsome/little money you make, it might be on top of your anxious ends to not disclose your income and related details with your partner.

In several societies, such orthodox beliefs have been already eradicated but are still prevalent as an individual’s habit and lead to loss of trust among the partners.

Maintaining multiple bank accounts or cards

In-line with the above practice of hiding income is the maintenance of more than one bank account without being in the knowledge of the other partner. This could be possibly because you might want to save from your income or conduct other financial transactions without telling your partner. The secret account that holds your treasure might gradually become a base of increasing troubles in your life.

Similar scenario goes with the secret credit card that you might have for meeting all your extravagant spending and guilty pleasures like clubbing and drinking. At times, these small guilty pleasures piles up leading to a lifetime’s guilt and regret.

Removal from a Joint Credit Card or account

Every relationship stands strong on the unique habit of sharing things and maintaining transparency. It is commonly seen that couples might choose a joint bank account or a joint credit card for better managing the costs and expenses and maintaining transparency.

Another common trend among couples is the withdrawal of a member’s ownership from the joint account or the credit card. This might be devastating for the trust of the partners and also for their individual interests.

Hidden spending

People also tend to hide their expenditure from their partner. For this, they even have separate credit cards and bank accounts. To some extent, the partner from whom things are hidden might be at fault since this kind of behaviour is generally seen in cases where one of the partners tends to disapprove the purchases of the other partner unnecessarily.

Making Investments in Silence

Another mistake that couples make and regret later is not acknowledging their partner about the investments made by them.

Want to know what is worse?

You are making an investment in the name of your partner without their consent.

Often people make the mistake of keeping their spouse out of the loop while making investments for personal or joint purposes. Such cases when open deteriorate to a next level and the other partner might suffer a lack of rights that he/she could exercise in scenario of transparency.

Faking to work while not having a job

In times of looming recession, economic instability and growing international trade tensions, there is an increasing risk of not having a job. In recent times, several events of mass layoffs by corporates have occurred where thousands of individuals have lost their jobs.

Many individuals hide from their spouse the truth of their unemployment. Losing a job should not be that big a deal for an individual which comes at the cost of putting an end to the relationship.

This type of infidelity is completely devasting for the relationships. People need to develop a habit of not only sharing each other’s fears and fantasies but also to have a sense of understanding and constructivism for each other to avoid incurring fatal costs.

The growing number of divorces due to financial infidelity validate that money is a crucial matter of disagreement among couples. Hiding your money is considered quite similar to hiding your habit of drug or alcohol or being with someone in a secret relationship. For relationships to work, people need to understand that transparency, communication and trust are among the major factors. Now,

Would you maintain complete transparency with your partner about your money matters?