Are You Cheating Financially

Are You Cheating Financially

By Keith Bunn Jr.

February 5, 2012

Have you ever signed up for a credit card, or a loan and didn’t tell your spouse about it? How about stashing cash and not telling them? If you have, for whatever your reason was, you have committed what is popularly called Financial Infidelity. Why call it that? Because the emotions that surround money issues can be just as strong as matters of the heart and when trust has been broken in your household finances, the emotions that come from that are as if you have cheated on your spouse.

These emotions are both strong and real and they can be felt by BOTH spouses. The ones who have done the deed can feel a strong sense of guilt from hiding this issue and because they know their significant other will be mad and probably not understand why they did what they did. The significant other can feel hurt and betrayed, thinking, “If they have hid this from me, what else have they been hiding?”

The first thing that has to be done if you have committed financial infidelity is tell your spouse the whole truth about what you have done. I know it will be a scary thing to do, but it has to be done. No healing can take place until this is done. If you’re the other spouse, the first thing you have to do is show some grace! I know you feel betrayed, hurt, and all that, but it has to be done. No healing can take place until this is done.

After that is done, you may need to seek out marriage counseling, because at the core of this, this is a break down in the marriage, not in the finances. You BOTH need to find out why this happened and begin the healing of your marriage so this doesn’t happen again. For a short time, the guilty party probably shouldn’t handle the household funds. Only after some time, and once some trust has been established again, can they handle some of the funds. Then when trust is fully established can they have free rein again.

Now one of the reasons this whole mess happened in the first place is because there was no budget meetings taking place. Think about it. If both parties sat down and did a budget together, each of them had a vote on what to do with the money, gave every dollar a name, they both knew how much money was coming in and going out, there would be no way to have this kind of money issues.

Also, during the healing process of both your marriage and money, the one who committed the financial infidelity must have a vote in the household budget meetings. This is also part of the healing process. This will be a difficult time for the both of you but only with time, patience, love, will you get through it.

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