For greatest intimacy and less stress, let your husband handle the finances. Follow these steps from Laura Doyle, author of The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion, and Peace With a Man.
Even if you’re nervous about surrendering the finances, act as if you’re confident and follow the instructions below. You can consider it an experiment, if that helps, or, if you need more motivation, think about how exhausted and overwhelmed you are. I know it’s not easy, but you can do it. Remember to stay focused on all the benefits you’ll receive: more free time, more gifts, a greater sense of being cared for, less stress, greater prosperity, and better intimacy.
Here’s how you actually go about doing it:
Step 1: Merge Your Money
There can be no intimacy unless there is vulnerability, and one of the ways wives avoid vulnerability (and therefore intimacy) is by controlling the family’s cash flow. As an act of your faith in your husband’s ability — ability to earn, spend, and manage money wisely — give him all of the money you earn or receive from other sources. Trusting him doesn’t mean you will have to go without. It means he will give you cash to buy the things you need, which is just what you would have done yourself anyway.
There’s no need to panic. In Step 2 you will discover that you’ll enjoy the same standard of living — if not better — as you have grown accustomed to providing for yourself.
I know that if you’re a breadwinner, the idea of turning over your entire paycheck sounds particularly loathsome. However, if you’ve been managing a joint checking account where his money is deposited, then he was doing the very thing you’re dreading. If he was willing to do this, why shouldn’t you be?
If you’ve been maintaining separate accounts and separate finances, I strongly suggest pooling your money in a joint checking account that he manages. You’ve been holding back in a way that may have simply seemed more convenient, but it was also guarded. If what you want is intimacy, you must let down your guard.
Until you are willing to intertwine financially, you will never be able to cross the chasm that keeps you from intertwining emotionally. If these words make your heart race, join the club. You can think of plenty of objections — not to mention the legions of feminists, accountants, and marriage counselors who will say that giving your husband all your money is a terrible idea. Yet, I’ve never seen it fail to make both husband and wife happier and ultimately more prosperous.
If you’re still panicking, keep in mind that you can always go back to the way you’re doing things now. Start strong and act as if you have every confidence that your husband will manage the finances as well as (or better than) you did.
Step 2: Make a Spending Plan
When I teach women about making spending plans in my intimacy workshops, someone always incredulously asks me why I would put myself on a budget. The word budget, like the word diet, makes people cringe because it implies an uncomfortable restriction. It brings to mind clipping coupons and suffering through tuna fish lunches.
But a spending plan is different because it allows you to live in the comfortable style to which you have grown accustomed; it is not designed to save money, but rather to predict what you will need each month, on a month-by-month basis.
Only you can determine your needs. Here are some steps to help you devise your spending plan easily and accurately.
1. Predict your expenses based on what you usually spend and remember to be generous to yourself in your plan, especially for the first month.
Get a realistic sense of what you need by keeping track of what you spend for a month. To do this, make a list of your household purchases. For instance, my spending plan includes funds for clothes, makeup, gas for my car, going out with my girlfriends, facials and manicures, books, CDs, gifts, massages, groceries and home furnishings. My spending plan does not include household expenses such as rent or mortgage, utilities, credit card bills, car payments, or other fixed monthly expenses. Nor do I include my car payment, the cleaning lady, student loans, or the cost of going out on a date with my husband. He handles those for us.
My friends who have children cover their children’s needs in their spending plans: they account for toys, diapers, clothes, babysitting, entertainment, birthday parties, and all the other things that children need for their health and happiness.
Although my spending plan tends to be consistent, each month I make a new one, so that I don’t ever feel hemmed in. For example, if I want to buy a new bedroom set, my spending plan would be unusually large one month. Then, if I’m not going to buy any new furniture the following month, it would drop down to my usual plan again.
2. Tell your husband you want your spending plan money in cash.
He may give you a certain amount weekly, monthly, or on paydays. There are two key benefits to doing this. One, you’ll never need to use a credit card, ATM card, or checkbook to pay for anything. Without those so-called “conveniences,” it’s harder to spend more than you have and easier to figure out what the heck happened on the monthly statement. Two, it’s a very powerful feeling to have all that money in your possession.
Having cash gives you autonomy to spend what you want when you want, instead of having to find out if there’s money in the checking account first.
3. Don’t worry that your husband may not be able to afford your spending plan.
This is not your concern. When you give it to him, it will be up to him to decide if you get all of it. Perhaps you will get more, perhaps you will get less. In either case, you should thank him for the money and make do with it knowing that it is the most he can afford while still keeping the family’s other interests in mind. Remember that sometimes you had more and sometimes you had to make do with less when you were managing the money too. As with any gift, receive it graciously. The minute you start complaining, you’re no longer being gracious.
4. Once you’ve developed a generous spending plan for yourself, the most important thing is to live within it.
It is essential for your husband to be able to predict accurately the family expenditures without worrying that you are going to throw him a curve ball in the middle of the month. You also want to maintain your credibility. Sticking to your plan lets him know that you will be taken care of for the month if he gives you the amount you ask for.
Go easy on yourself. Remember, the goal here is not to save money, although if you do (and you very well might), that’s great. This is not a good time to quit long-standing habits — such as going to Starbucks in the morning — in order to save money. Don’t leave the luxuries out of your spending plan. For now, just indulge yourself, and be sure to let your husband know how grateful you are for that fresh coffee every morning.
5. Revise your spending plan each month. If you find you really have trouble sticking to your spending plan, you may have underestimated your needs, which is why I reevaluate my plan each month. I repeat: You don’t need to feel hemmed in by your spending plan.
However, if you continue to have trouble month after month, you may be a compulsive spender. In this case, I highly recommend you contact Debtors Anonymous, which is patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous and provides a spiritual program to help compulsive debtors and spenders learn to make good decisions with money. If you continue to spend or debt compulsively, there is little hope of having true intimacy with your husband. Since DA is a free program, there’s no reason to put off contacting them.
Step 3: Put the Checkbook Down and Leave It There
Proceed with caution on this step, as it’s a bit tricky. I’ve seen some wives who are ostensibly surrendering the finances broach the idea by saying, “You have to take care of the checkbook and give me money for my spending plan.”
This is still telling him what to do and does not improve things at all.
When Lynda asked her husband if he wanted to take the checkbook, he said, “No. That’s okay.” Then she called me to tell me that she couldn’t do this part because her husband didn’t want to. No surprise. Lynda had not relinquished control. Instead, she had asked for permission to keep control, and gotten it.
Even if you think your husband will be happy to control the money, remember that you are introducing a change to the status quo, and that’s always jarring. You will want to approach the conversation with a spirit of humility by telling your husband that you can’t manage the finances anymore because you’re too stressed out. This is true — you really can’t do it and have the renewed intimacy, romance, passion, and emotional connection you want with your husband.
Some women can’t bring themselves to say that they can’t do the finances anymore, so they announce that they don’t want to do them, but I don’t recommend that. Most husbands hear this as a complaint, along the lines of “I don’t want to do the laundry today,” rather than as a request for help.
I know you don’t like the phrase “I can’t.” I know women have spent the past thirty-five years affirming that we can do anything, I know that a good therapist might coach you to say “I choose not to” instead of “can’t.”
However, the problem with eliminating the words “I can’t” from your vocabulary is that it makes it very difficult to set limits. Saying “I can’t” is a good shorthand for saying, “It’s not worth what it would cost me.” It’s also a great reminder for anyone who’s listening (including ourselves) that we’re mortal women — not superwomen. Saying “I can’t” is more vulnerable and more compelling because you’re not just complaining — you’re acknowledging your own limits and admitting that you need assistance. Loving husbands always honor a cry for help.
For example, if your child came to you and said, “Mom, I don’t want to do my homework,” you’d probably respond by saying it’s understandable but that she had to do it anyway. On the other hand, if your child said, “Mom, I can’t do my homework,” you’d probably respond by offering some assistance. See the difference?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Doyle is the author of the controversial bestsellers The Surrendered Wife (Copyright © 1999, 2001 by Laura Doyle), The Surrendered Single, and Things Will Get as Good as You Can Stand. A popular speaker on relationship issues, she teaches workshops based on her books. She lives in Costa Mesa, California, with her husband.
MORE ARTICLES BY THE AUTHOR
LEARN MORE
- Read the Introduction to The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide To Finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace
- See the book’s Table of Contents
- Browse more books by Laura Doyle
Great quote: “There can be no intimacy without vulnerability.”
Wow! This article is just scary! Ms. Doyle has not even taken into consideration those men who throw around money like it’s water, and are financially irresponsible. I am the “saver” in our marriage, and if my husband were to control all our finances, he would be giving away all our money to his family members and spending it all on “toys for boys” (i.e. fancy cars, etc.), we’d have no savings, and we’d probably end up bankrupt! He actually asked me one time, “why do we need a savings account, anyway?” Give him $500 cash, and he will spend it in a day or two, and not even remember (supposedly) where he spent it. That is why he will not be controlling the finances. I will most definately NOT be taking Ms. Doyle’s advice! You must take into consideration different personality types, and you certainly cannot throw all men into the same category and expect them to be financially responsible, as there are many men who are not.
This is the most utterly ridiculous piece of writing I had ever read regarding intimacy in a marriage. How about shared contributions to the finances also means shared access? This sounds like some fundamentalist mentality that the husband is the head of the house/family regardless of his level of responsibility. I would never, as a career woman, give my paycheck to my husband and allow him to give me an “allowance”. That is an archaic, machismo ideal. I’m not a bra-burning feminist by any stretch, but I think the most intimacy in a marriage comes from a shared partnership when it comes to running the house/family, while also maintaining personal identities/friends/activities. Balance is best.
I bet her editor/publisher is a man.