The password your spouse doesn’t have

One · What happened

A survey asked what people don’t tell the person they married

TD Bank published its Love and Money Survey on 20 August, the seventh year it has run the same questions. Talker Research fielded it online in late June and July, 2,000 American adults, a mix of six major metro areas and a general population sample. At some point, 59% have felt scared or embarrassed talking about their own finances with a partner. The question was whether it had ever happened, so once was enough to count.

The survey also asked people which decisions they had hidden.

68% said they feel pressure, at least sometimes, to look more financially successful than they actually are, and that number climbs highest among people currently raising kids. So the people with the least room in the budget are, a lot of the time, the same people spending real money to look like they have plenty of it.

Two · What it is doing

The account you keep in your head, separate from the one you share

Among people currently supporting a child under 18, only 39% describe themselves as fully honest with a partner about money. For people who aren’t raising kids the number is 53%. So parents are the ones hiding more, and I don’t think that’s because parents care less about honesty. A parent just has more riding on the answer, so the actual math is that much harder to admit to.

A secret about money doesn’t hold still. The balance keeps moving while you aren’t talking about it, and the longer it goes the more there is to explain besides the balance. A missed payment you could have brought up in March is harder to bring up in June. The amount barely moved, but by June there are also 3 months of not having mentioned it, and those have to come out with it.

People handle this the way they handle most shame, by putting on a show that everything is fine, and honestly a lot of the 68% number is describing exactly that. The spouse who can’t say the real figure at home somehow finds the money for something that looks, from the outside, like proof everything is fine. Somebody with a sportsbook habit picks up an extra shift and nobody asks why. I don’t think most of it is cruelty. It is a person buying a little more time before a conversation he already knows is coming.

Three · Where the ground is

What marriage was actually built to survive

There is no room, in the way Genesis describes a marriage, for one spouse keeping a set of numbers from the other. Genesis 2:24 puts the whole design in one sentence. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. The next verse hardly ever gets read with it. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. That’s the original arrangement, nothing hidden from each other and no shame about any of it, and everything Scripture says about marriage after that assumes it.

The sin Peter named

Acts 5 usually gets taught as a warning about giving. I read it as a story about a marriage. A couple named Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and told the church they were handing over the full price, when the two of them had agreed together beforehand to keep part of it back. Peter asked them a question first. While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? They could have kept every dollar and said so, and Peter says as much. The problem was the two of them agreeing, ahead of time, to tell one story about the number together.

Both of them dropped dead for it, and that’s the part everybody remembers. A sentence earlier Peter had told Ananias something that fits a married couple hiding a balance just as well. You have not lied to man but to God. A husband and wife who have quietly agreed not to bring a number up with each other have brought God into it, according to Peter, and neither one of them had to mean to.

What confession is actually for

None of this works as a technique. Telling yourself to be more open because a verse says so usually doesn’t last, and John says why. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). A few verses later comes the line most people already know. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). God was already light before anybody confessed anything. Confessing is what a person does once he quits hiding from it, and nothing about it had to be cleaned up first.

A spouse can forgive a hidden card, and given enough time a lot of spouses forgive years of one. The thing that finally gets a person to say the real number is usually having already said it to God, in a conversation where there was nothing left to manage and no version of the story left to get right. Confidence that the marriage will survive the news has very little to do with it. After that first conversation the one with the spouse gets smaller, still awful, but smaller than it was.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

A secret this size only gets smaller once somebody else knows it. So tell one person one true thing today, even a small one, and don’t worry yet about the rest of it.

1. 01

   Say the real number tonight.

   Whatever number you’ve been rounding down or just not bringing up, tell your spouse the actual one tonight. You don’t need a plan for fixing it yet, and honestly a plan will get in the way of saying it. Just the number.

2. 02

   Ask the question you’re afraid to ask.

   “Is there anything about money you haven’t told me.” Ask it plainly, mean it as a real question, and be ready to sit with whatever answer you get without punishing the honesty that produced it.

3. 03

   If you’re the one who’s been shut out, ask to see it together.

   Not a summary from your spouse. The actual account, open on a screen, with both of you looking at the same figure at the same time, sometime this week.

4. 04

   Write down what the secret has cost.

   And I don’t mean in dollars. The fight you kept putting off that got bigger for being put off. The dinner out you couldn’t enjoy because of what you weren’t saying. Add up the hours across a year, write that single number down, and don’t round it in your own favor.

5. 05

   Tell your pastor one number your spouse doesn’t know.

   Do it before you tell your spouse if that’s what it takes to get the words to come. It has to be a person sitting across from you this week. Praying about it by yourself is a good thing to do, and it doesn’t count for this one.