Responding vs reacting
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Your partner says: “Maybe we should buy a new car”. You’re more of a saver than a spender, and a new car would cost a lot of money. You don’t feel you can afford it. You rush to shut the idea down. “No way – that’s too expensive, we can’t afford that.” If you’d taken a few deep breaths, you could have gone with, “Hmm, interesting idea, what made you think of that?”
The first reaction wrecks emotional safety. Your partner now feels less able to share ideas with you. They might worry about your reaction and start keeping things to themselves, leading to resentment and an unwillingness to engage in conversation.
The second response allows the conversation to continue. You understand your partner is just voicing an idea. You get curious, seek to understand them, and allow them to express themselves. In doing so, you build trust that you can be a safe space for them to share what’s on their mind.
If you are impatient or quick to react, this is going to take some work. Start by counting to five before you say anything and make yourself ask three questions before you give your own opinion.
Ratio of negative to positive
There’s a good chance that at this point, you’ve had too many bad conversations that you’re both coming into conversations full of anxiety and dread, waiting for it to go badly.
Having regular meetings to go through everything together might be a great long-term goal, but right now, you need to rebuild emotional trust and safety. This can take a lot of work and time.
So, for now, you might want to start having lighter conversations that are lower stakes and don’t have a decision, specific outcome, or expectation attached. Instead of trying to have conversations about the budget or how your investments are going, see if you can just have conversations about how your respective childhoods were financially.
You might ask questions such as “What were your parents like with money growing up?” “What did you want to spend money on as a kid that you couldn’t?” “What did you buy with your first pay cheque?”
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The goal is to break the cycle of negativity and reset the tone of your conversations. These kinds of questions are designed to be open-ended without expectation or judgment.
If you can see these patterns playing out in your financial conversations, there is a good chance they’re playing out in other areas of your relationship. Healing the communication patterns in your relationship is a necessary precursor to meaningful financial conversations.
Paridhi Jain is the founder of SkilledSmart, which helps adults learn to manage, save and invest their money through financial education courses and classes.
- Advice given in this article is general in nature and not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.
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