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Tag Archives: trust
What is Financial Infidelity?
When someone thinks of the word infidelity, their first thoughts often travel to having a physical affair with someone. While this might be the first thing that pops into your mind, it isn’t the only form of infidelity that someone can commit. In fact, there are several others, including emotional infidelity and financial infidelity.
Financial infidelity is more common than you might believe. After all, they say that one of the main reasons couples argue is due to financial stressors in their relationship. Many signs of financial infidelity often go unnoticed by the other partner. While financial infidelity is not often discussed in society, it is a pervasive problem in some relationships.
What Is Financial Infidelity?
First, it should be noted that unnecessary spending or poor budgeting habits do not necessarily mean financial infidelity is being committed. Instead, financial infidelity is when someone is being untruthful or secretive about financial aspects of their life. This can be especially problematic for couples who share bank accounts, but all couples can suffer the consequences because of it.
Many consequences can result from financial infidelity. One of the biggest ones is that it impacts the relationship itself. Regardless of what they are about, secrets can be a root cause of tension and stress in a relationship. Secondly, when there are secrets regarding finances, it can cause the person hiding this big secret to continue to spiral out of control.
Signs of Financial Infidelity
While there are a variety of signs of financial infidelity, the following list highlights the most common ones that people can experience.
Secretive Spending Habits
As we said above, financial infidelity does not necessarily mean someone has poor spending habits. However, it becomes a sign of financial infidelity if someone is hiding these spending habits. They might have a shopping addiction that causes them to hide their purchases from their partner. Or, they may have a deeper problem, such as gambling.
Extra Income Is Hidden
Let’s face it: we all are likely working extra hustles or overtime to make ends meet. It’s one thing to make extra income to help ease the financial burden or as a way to surprise your partner with a gift or a big trip. However, hiding additional funds from your partner can be seen as a sign of financial infidelity. This becomes a problem when money is concealed with the purpose of using it for things someone doesn’t want their spouse to know about.
Lying About Spending Habits With Shared Bank Accounts
It’s common for many long-term or married couples to share bank accounts when they are living with each other. After all, it makes it much easier to handle shared expenses such as mortgages, rent, or utilities if you pay for everything out of one bank account.
Oftentimes, one person is mainly in charge of handling these shared bank accounts, generally speaking. If the person in charge of the finances isn’t truthful about spending, that is a major violation of trust.
How To Deal With Financial Infidelity
While financial infidelity is hard to deal with, it is possible to move on from it. If you are a person who is being secretive about money, the first step is to bring it out to the open. Do you want to do that? Likely not, as there are probably feelings of shame, guilt, or not thinking it’s a big deal. But, financial infidelity, in many ways, can be a sign of a deeper-rooted issue within the relationship as well as your individual self.
If you are interested in learning more about emotional infidelity or couples therapy, reach out to learn more.
Betrayal
I have seen such a shift in what the word betrayal means and how trust is broken down. It has definitely become a passion of mine to help couples understand that:
- You can repair your relationship after a betrayal and;
- Breaking trust is breaking trust. Your relationship defines what that means so if you feel as if you have been betrayed then guess what? You are correct.
Let’s break down some areas of betrayal that most people think are okay but in reality they aren’t.
- Porn– This one is okay as long as your partner knows what you are doing and doesn’t feel neglected because of you watching porn. If it is a secret then you are breaking trust by not sharing and um…. Why does it need to be a secret anyways?
- Social Media– This again can be innocent or not depending on how you are viewing things. If you are liking posts that your partner wouldn’t necessarily want you liking, yep that’s NOT okay. If you’re posting pictures of your family, your trips, etc yep that’s okay.
- Money– Yep, if i hear someone say that oh I bought something but have to hide it from my partner, the trust is broken. Don’t hide, just say it loud and clear!
- Friendships– If you have to hide your friendship for any reason, then there might be something that is going to happen. Better be open about who you are talking with and how often you are talking to them.
The gist of these things is that when you feel like you have to hide something from your partner, then you are potentially breaking trust. Just learn to share even if it is hard. If you feel that you’re doing something that will hurt your partner if they find out and that is the reason you are not sharing, well then you will eventually hurt your partner anyways.
Trust = Communication
I can’t say that loud enough, so I will say it again Trust=Communication.
Let’s not have any miss conception of values and intentions. Be open and honest and then we don’t have to worry about small betrayals leading to breaking trust.
Summer Travel
How has your summer been? Any travel that you’ve had that you enjoyed? I had the opportunity to travel alone with my husband this summer and it was long overdue. I say all the time that you should make time for each other. In reality, it can be really hard to do. We did it and it was magical. Here are some reasons why you should make the time to travel together!
Traveling together can be a great way to strengthen your relationship
If you’re like me, I love a plan and I like to look forward to things. Well, we planned out this trip a year in advance! Taking the time to talk about where you want to go, how long you want to stay and what you want to experience can fill those days when you just want to watch a TV show. Start brainstorming and start dreaming of where you want to travel together.
Sharing new experiences and creating memories can bring you closer as a couple
I can safely say that we will be talking about this trip for a long time. We did so many cool things and had so many memories that I didn’t know that I wanted to do that I will be looking at our pictures when our life gets stressful or I just need a break. To relieve the moment even afterward can help you feel closer to your partner after you return home.
When you travel together, you have the opportunity to navigate new environments and situations as a team, which can help build trust and communication skills
Can travel be stressful? Yep, it can, but in those times, you learn how to be a better couple because you are working on your listening skills, coping skills, and your ability to just laugh things off which is needed at times. Stressful times are challenging and how you navigate them can definitely shed some light on how you work as a couple. I recommended to everyone that they talk about it and work on establishing better communication if things don’t go as planned. Always room for improvement right?
Taking a break from your daily routine and spending quality time together can help reignite the spark in your relationship.
Should you need to take a break, who better to do it with than your significant other. Enjoy each other, remember what you fell in love with, and create new memories to keep that spark alive!
Should I Like That Post or Keep Scrolling?
Happy summertime! Are you finding any more time in your schedule to relax? Are your kids in camp or at home driving you crazy already? Summer is a more relaxed time in our house and in between camps and free time, everyone has a bit more time on their hands.
I hear from people all the time about social media, someone is on it too much, someone doesn’t like it at all, screen time was up this week etc etc. Is there anything wrong with spending your down time on social media? Well, that all depends on what you are doing there and how much you trust each other.
Let’s talk about John and Sue
John uses insta for his business and feels it’s the best way to connect with his customers. So John is on insta a lot for business and Sue is okay with that until she happens to find his phone and then realize he is liking pictures that really have nothing to do with his business and he is chatting with other girls on insta.
Well, Sue is livid and John is trying to understand what he did wrong? Did he do anything wrong…… Um, the bottom line with trust is just that, TRUST is the core that keeps a relationship together and you have it until you don’t.
John still really doesn’t understand what he did wrong and keeps defending his actions, he didn’t cheat, didn’t meet with anyone, definitely didn’t have sex with anyone, just hit like on a few bikini pictures. Sue is trying to explain to John that hitting like on those pictures has nothing to do with his business and everything to do with how he feels about the picture.
Okay, John kind of gets it but now Sue doesn’t want John on insta and doesn’t trust him anymore and he is losing business because he just cancels his insta account.
Do you want to know what happens?
All of this has to do with trust and John and Sue had to work on repairing trust in their relationship. John got some individual counseling and realized that he has some attachment issues and didn’t want to get too close to Sue. In couples counseling John and Sue had to find forgiveness and look at the cracks in their relationship to repair and find new ways to connect.
Can trust be repaired?
The short answer is YES! It’s hard and it’s not for everyone. When you’re betrayed, it hurts. When your partner doesn’t understand what they did was betrayal, that hurts even more.
What can you do?
Each relationship needs to define trust. John and Sue definitely had to talk about the boundaries of their relationship and work on rebuilding trust.
Have some open conversations. If I did this, would you be upset? Figure out where your boundaries are before it leads to betrayal.