HEALTH PLUS:The experience of changed financial circumstances can be positive for many families – if they take the right approach, writes MARIE MURRAY
FOR RICHER, FOR poorer has taken on new significance in many marriages. Recession changes everything. Marriage is no exception. Communicating about finances is something that couples are finding themselves having to do.
For many this is difficult. It’s a new conversation and how to conduct it is a challenge, particularly for those who never had to do so before.
There is no doubt that having money can lighten aspects of living and that being without money can strain marriage to a serious extent.
But research is also clear that except in situations of absolute impoverishment, it is not necessarily lack of money that destroys a marriage. It is how couples communicate and negotiate with each other about it that determines how the relationship progresses.
It is whether the negotiation is fair, whether one person has to sacrifice while the other maintains his or her former financial life, or whether together, they both adjust to changes in how they spend.
For many couples, talking about money may be an undeveloped skill, one that they need to acquire quickly, as issues about money, or the lack of it, enters their relationship in a new way.
They need to agree that this is something they have to work out. That what is most important to them is each other, and that no riches would make up for the loss of the other person in their life.
And they do not need to communicate with just each other. Families with children also have to find creative ways of responding realistically to children’s demands for goods and activities that the family can no longer afford.
Parents need to speak with one voice about this. They need to be together. They need to be sympathetic and clear.
The problem with money is that it can affect so many aspects of life. Having enough money reduces stress in many relationships. It can pay for household tasks, saving arguments about who vacuums, dusts or cleans, and whether the husband/wife housework ratio is fair.
Then there is the psychological relief of coming home at the end of the working day to a clean, tidy, well-ordered space, rather than having to face the morning’s breakfast dishes and the remains of last-night’s dinner on the kitchen table.
Before the recession there was a solution to this. When the fridge was empty, energy was low, irritability was high and hyperglycaemia seemed to be setting in, many couples resolved this by going for a meal together, to “relax, relate, communicate” in each other’s company at the end of a long day.
Money bought child-minding. Money bought someone to collect offspring from school. Money bought time. Money bought stress reducers, sport, relaxation, hobbies, holidays. Money bought time together and time apart. Money often bought order. Money bought psychological reprieve.
The financial cost of psychological support becomes conspicuous when absent.
When money is not available for family tasks then a new way of living is required. Adjusting to recession is not about “reducing”, cutting back, scrimping and saving, and shaving off the luxuries of life.
Financial management, from the psychological perspective, is not about adjusting downwards. It is not about taking the hit. It is not about trying to do as much as before with less.
Instead, it is about taking on a totally new way of viewing the world. It is about establishing an entirely new way of relating to people, to things, to activities, to objects, to social pressure, to status and to life.
It is about different values, different perceptions of what is desirable, different aspirations and different measures of success.
Otherwise, each day can bring resentment for what is lost rather than revelations about how rewarding life can be, despite having much less money to spend.
Of course, an argument such as this can be dismissed as idealistic, unrealistic, inappropriate psychobabble. And for those now suffering real and frightening poverty, adjustment is not about perception, it is about getting appropriate financial support.
But for many families, the experience of changed financial circumstances, the experience of doing things together, of spending time together, of sharing work, of walking to activities, of returning to self-generated entertainment and increasing self-sufficiency in life has been, by their own accounts, a positive experience for them.
Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is director of the Student Counselling Services in UCD