MyTwoCents: 'I know that my dad means well and is looking out for me. But he thinks that my husband lacks ambition and is 'mooching' off of my income.' charlottecowles responds
Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images My husband and I have been married for two years and together for five. We’re both in our late 20s and live in New York. He works for a nonprofit and I’m a management consultant. Overall, we’re pretty happy. But one significant issue is that my dad disapproves of the fact that my husband doesn’t make a lot of money. This is particularly bad going into the holidays, when we visit my family, and always results in tension.
“There needs to be a boundary between your marriage and your father,” says Megan McCoy, a licensed marriage and family therapist and professor of personal financial planning at Kansas State University. But rather than just telling your dad to butt out, it would be more helpful to address his fears about your finances directly. “Asking your dad about what, exactly, he’s so worried would be healing for both of you,” explains McCoy.
This does not solve the problem of how you feel about your partner’s income, however. And I understand your internal conflict around this. You seem unsure about the source of your financial anxieties — are they the result of your dad’s harping? Or your own fears about self-sufficiency? It’s tough to give legitimacy to your worries when you aren’t sure who to ascribe them to. And it doesn’t help if you feel embarrassed about them either.
The best way to bring up this topic with your husband is to spring it on him out of the blue while you’re both hungry and tired. Just kidding. You want to give him plenty of advance notice, so that he has time to gather his thoughts. “We tend to put off financial conversations until something is wrong,” says McCoy. “But research shows that if you create goals together, your relational satisfaction goes up.
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