I see couples with two children saying: ‘I paid for the shopping and you haven’t paid me back.’” “Now, because women mainly work, there is much more autonomy around money and no idea of sharing whatsoever.

Feminists in the 70s and 80s tried to make joint bank accounts and money sharing the absolute norm because most women gave up work when they had children. The way couples deal with money has changed radically over the past 25 years, Abse says. I can’t ring the lender and say: ‘My husband hasn’t got his half this month’ How often it leads directly to divorce is hard to say, for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that separating couples always end up fighting about money one way or another.

“In my experience, you generally can’t get to the bottom of what happened to the money,” she says. But more frequently, says Susanna Abse, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who often works with couples, the cash is just “dribbled away”. And it can, of course, be driven by other lies, other humiliations a gambling or sex addiction is incredibly hard to disclose, and neither comes cheap. It can also just be poor communication around money, combined with the powerful shame of debt, corroding trust inch by inch. The deceit can be a form of coercive control, as one person seeks to dominate the decisions of the relationship by hiding key information. British research by Money Advice Service from 2015 also found one in five people lied to their partner about their earnings and one in four lied about their debt. This is by no means a post-pandemic phenomenon, nor is it peculiar to the US. Some 30% of couples questioned by researchers described lies they had experienced or told in their relationship, the main one being secret purchases (31%), followed by hidden debts (28%) and dishonesty about income (23%). The first she knew of his £20,000 personal debt was when the mortgage adviser said: “There’s no point even applying for this: you’re not going to get it.”Ī survey in January by US News & Report sketched out how widespread so-called “financial infidelity” is.

But, she remembers: “He was avoiding me even going to the appointment, saying: ‘I can go on our behalf – it doesn’t need two of us.’” He had a good job, he was earning a decent salary, he had a nice car, they went on holidays. They had been together four years, and had enough that they were ready to see a mortgage adviser. When Kirsten was in her early 20s, she and her then boyfriend, later husband, were saving to buy a house.

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