There's a great article on Salon in the life section about money and young couples. Many young couples got together during the dot.com boom. Money was plentiful because jobs were easy to land. But now many couples don't have enough money to get married or even pay the rent.
My dad has always said that money is what causes most of the couples to come to him for marital counseling. This article is interesting to me because all that sustains the couples in the article is a hope that times will get better. The article tacitly admits that the couples are uniting by money! Incredible!
The question is:
do they come to him for marital counseling because they are disagreeing on how money should be spent?
or
because they don't HAVE any money?
Ask him, seriously. I wanna know. As a poor newlywed, I need to know!
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 5, 2003 2:47 PMGreat article. It can be really tough when money is tight. We had a hard time when we first moved to Chattanooga because my wife wasn't able to find a job for almost two months, but we made it (Thank God!) and we've learned a lesson or two along the way.
Josiah, I bet it's a big combination of the two. Spending priorities are brought more into the light when there's less to go around.
Posted by: John at June 5, 2003 3:39 PMDitto on John. It's both. Couples don't have enough money to live either how they want or at least how they expected. Money turns their heart against each other, and they begin to fight. Pretty soon they hate each other over the fact that she, "Snips all those coupons but can't even buy the chips I like."
or, "He says money is tight but he still has cable. I don't even watch TV." These problems sound idiosyncratic, and they are. But they are merely expressions of passive-aggressive power games that couples play when they begin to fight.