Money changes everything
From the beginning of our marriage, I’ve paid all the bills. (The money was pooled in a joint account.) Not just the household bills, but any bill. Telephone, utilities, her therapist, her charities, my charities, etc. Some things were tied to my credit card because it was easier to manage them: SpeedPass, FastLane, newspapers. And because I’m a geek, I have more than a few things that get paid automatically.
Now we have to disentangle things and deactivate all those automatic mechanisms. Last night she asked me which bills on the stack of bills she had to write checks for. “All of them,” I said. I hadn’t looked at them since she switched the direct deposit for her paycheck from the joint account to her own account.
My psychopharmacologist wrote a book called “The Seven Basic Quarrells of Marriage.” They are: gender, loyalties, money, power, sex, privacy, and children.
We’ve had arguments about all of them except for money and privacy. I think we’re about to argue about money. Nice to get these things checked off the list before the marriage dissolves altogether.