All relationships are prone to a fallout or five. It’s totally normal. Whether it’s about that time your other half ate your last slice of birthday cake even though you specifically said you were saving it to have a with a cup of tea when you got home from work (still not over it), or to do with the fact that one of you puts way more effort than the other does; we’re all prone to a little relationship strain every now and again.
But what you might not have known, though, is that the most common problem between couples is actually money. No, really. The way you handle your dollar may well be the Achilles to the heel of your relationship, apparently. And if it doesn’t match your partner’s money management style, there might a whole lot of tension in your future.
A YouGov survey was carried out for charities Relate, Relationships Scotland and Marriage Care and it found out that finances outranked things like having conflicting sex drives, chores and even having an affair as the biggest cause of tension in relationships, reports The Times. Not what you’d expect really, is it?
Out of the five thousand adults surveyed, 26 percent said that money worries were the biggest cause for relationship rifts. Not being very understanding of one and other came in second at 20 percent, closely followed by conflicting sex drive at 19 percent. The results all echo what advisors at the relationship charities were finding when couples they work with have trouble. And although these sorts of problems are probably pretty familiar to most of us, for money to come out on top as the biggest challenge only tells us that we’re still really uncomfortable talking about it.
Relate counsellor Arabella Russell said: ‘The key is to be completely open and honest with each other about your values, feeling and spending habits. Make sure you’re both clear on how you plan to share finances, pay bills and manage your spending’. Wise words that we’re all quite familiar with, right? But we're probably not all that used to applying the whole 'open and honest' thing to money. Hell, if one-third of us are too scared to check our bank balances then I doubt many of us are sitting bae down to check in on how they'd like to deal with their finances every couple of weeks.
The key is obviously talking about it. It goes for most things in relationships, I guess. New sex position you want to try? Talk about it. Annoyed about that day they lied about having 'a family thing' when they actually went to the pub and got pissed with their uni pals? Should probably say something. And for all that money is the hurdle that none of us really want to jump across, it might just be worth working out where both of you stand for the sake of keeping your relationship (almost) bicker free. Ish.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.