We’ve all likely heard the statistics and studies related to how cheating and infidelity can ruin a marriage. While catching a spouse with another man or woman can certainly be devastating and result in a quick divorce filing, there’s another type of infidelity that is often more difficult to discover, but which may be just as damaging to the relationship between spouses.
There’s a saying that money makes the world go round. There’s also, however, a saying that the love of money is the root of all evil. For anyone who has ever argued with a spouse about money, both of these sayings likely ring true. Research shows time and time again that married couples argue more about money and how to spend or not spend it, than any other issue.
In any healthy marriage, spouses must be honest with one another and trust each other. It goes without saying then that problems are likely to crop up when spouses engage in deceptive practices related to money and numerous studies and surveys show that an alarming number of spouses routinely commit acts of financial infidelity.
As evidence of the lengths that some spouses will go to, to hide purchases from a spouse, a survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal found that “64 percent of men will rip up receipts.” Additionally, a credicards.com study found that six percent of married individuals actually have secret bank accounts while others use secret credit cards to fund their covert shopping sprees.
Spouses who engage in these types of deceptive actions and hide purchases from a husband or wife may do so for a number of reasons. In most cases, however, it boils down to the fact that he or she knows that a husband or wife simply wouldn’t approve.
If problems related to financial infidelity are an issue in your marriage, it may be a sign of more serious and deep-seeded issues. Individuals who have concerns about a spouse’s spending habits would be wise to confront a husband or wife and, in some cases, also address one’s concerns with a divorce attorney.
Source: Deseret News National, “The top predictor of divorce — and how to avoid it,” Herb Scribner, Nov. 2, 2015
