Financial “Cheating” Is One Of The Biggest Reasons For Divorce
“The big reason at the top of the list is that there’s a general lack of frequent and effective communication about money taking place within the couple,” Golden said. Indeed: In the Harris Poll, 3 out of 10 respondents said their partners wouldn’t approve of the decisions they’ve made or were embarrassed about what they’d done and didn’t want their partner to find out.
Such behavior caused Golden to slip into language often used in conversations about substance abuse to describe financial philandering: hiding purchases and large credit card bills, he said, act like “gateway deceptions” that can lead to more severe money lies, such as lying about the amount of debt or amount of income they earn to keep money on the side.
“The deceptions might seem kind of minor or benign in nature but they can certainly lead to more extreme circumstances,” Golden said.
Tina B. Tessina PhD. understands the severity of financial infidelity firsthand. A California-based psychotherapist and author of How to be Happy Partners: Working it out Together and Money, Sex, and Kids, she has not only worked extensively with couples facing money-related deceptions over the course of her 30-plus year career but also had a marriage implode when she learned about her husband’s money secrets.
“My then-husband was a gambling addict, and I found out because tough guys came around to repossess the car or demand payment,” she said.
Tessina said that while neither men nor women have a monopoly on financial infidelity, there’s a gender split in its causes and features.
“When men get into financial trouble, it’s often through gambling — cards, stock market, fantasy football — or spending on drugs, porn, or male toys like automobiles,” Tessina said. “Women tend to overspend on fashion, household items, or on the kids.”
Obsessions with grown-up toys can help keep a secret hidden in plain sight. Earlier this year, Jalopnik reported on a man so obsessed with vintage BMWs that he embezzled hundreds of thousands from his employer. He appeared to all the world as a trustworthy suburban husband whose only vice was hitching his belt up too high. After buying a jaw-dropping 50 BMWs, both his marriage and life were destroyed.
Financial deceptions can destroy marriages and cause problems that linger long after the union ends. A person interviewed for this story told me that after splitting from her husband, she learned her ex had been evading taxes for years. She was shocked: she had seen him filing and mailing tax forms but it had been a pantomime. He’d really filed nothing. When she found out, the IRS was threatening to garnish her wages to recoup unpaid taxes. Adding insult to injury, her ex cleared out their joint savings account.
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