It's About the Money, and It's Not About the Money

Abstract

It’s About the Money, and It’s Not About the Money Barbara L. Mitchell1 issn 0362-4021 © 2018 Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society group, Vol. 42, No. 2, Summer 2018 259 1 Faculty and Supervisor, Couple Therapy Program, Training Institute for Mental Health, New York. Correspondence should be addressed to Barbara L. Mitchell, LCSW, 25 West 45 Street, Suite 401, New York, NY 10036. E-mail: mitchell.relationships@gmail.com. Money is frequently a source of conflict for couples. We hear “you spend too much” or “you just don’t make enough.” The couple gets stuck in a cycle of blame and recrimination. As therapists, we are often stuck with them in trying to figure it all out. When the couple’s conflicts are played out with money, we need a framework to understand what is underneath the conflict and how to intervene. In other words, it’s about the money, and it’s not about the money. THE MEANING OF MONEY Economically, money facilitates the exchange of goods and services from one person to another. As a means of interacting with the world, we use money to meet our physical needs for food and shelter. Wealth confers status in most cultures, whether it is the size of your goat herd or the size of your bank account. As such, it draws envy and jealousy from some who do not have a lot of it or a sense of superiority and entitlement among some who do. Owing to the powerful symbolic nature of money, it becomes freighted with a great deal of conscious and unconscious meaning in turn. Our use or misuse of money becomes a way to live out unresolved issues from early stages of psychological development. Individuals who have suffered physical or emotional abuse and neglect are left with a deep sense of unworthiness and shame. Money can be a symbol of satisfaction for traumatic relational wounds. A mother struggling with addiction, illness, or deprivation is unable to adequately mirror her baby. The infant’s unmet oral needs leave her with a deep sense of shame and unworthiness and the need to experience 260 mitchell a good and worthy self. The need goes underground and remains unconscious. Spending becomes a means of addressing this depleted self state. The experience of buying gives her a temporary feeling of worthiness that is repeatedly sought. The negative consequences of her overspending (mounting credit card debt) are disregarded for a while because of the way money satisfies the ever-present need. Over time, however, she becomes trapped in a compulsive cycle of repeatedly seeking the feeling she so longs for and simultaneously fighting against it. Thus her early trauma is re-created as money fails to permanently satisfy her hunger. A dearth of experiences of healthy autonomy can leave an individual with feelings of inadequacy and incompetence. Doling out money to others can meet the need for power and control. This can be seen in individuals whose parents regulate access to their money through the establishment of trust funds. The unconscious message is experienced as a lack of confidence in their adult child’s abilities to manage himself or herself, and as such, inordinate numbers of trust funders have difficulty establishing themselves in work or careers. A condition of “one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake” characterizes their approach to establishing themselves as adults. Family history is repeated, as the parent of the adult child injects puts his or her disowned deprivation, despite his or her fortune, into the child by withholding and controlling his or her child’s access to money. UNCONSCIOUS PARTNER SELECTION PROCESS The forces that draw two people together and help them form a romantic bond are almost always outside of conscious awareness. Chemistry is fueled by a sense that the other is the one each was meant to be with, a sense that the relationship is preordained. We hear “he completes me,” “she knows what I’m thinking.” Our experience of love is informed by what love looked like, sounded like, and felt like at home. Our expectations of what it feels like to be in a romantic relationship reflect our early experiences of...