THAT'S MEN:There's more to money than its monetary value, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
IF YOU ever want to start a row between a husband and wife, a good kicking-off point is to invite them to have a discussion about the family finances.
There’s something about money that can set the most rational of partners at each other’s throats. Whatever that something is, it’s not about what the money can buy.
The fact is, there’s more to money than money. For instance, I have known men who saw it as a point of great importance to keep their wives in the dark about the amount of expenses they got at work – yet these were men who had their wages paid into joint bank accounts which were, in many cases, managed by their wives.
When the employer proposed ending the expensive business of paying expenses in cash in brown envelopes and transferring the money into their bank accounts instead, panic ensued. Now the bit of money over which they had control would come to the attention of their nearest and dearest.
It was as though the company was proposing to unman them. In the end, the employer resolved the matter by allowing employees to nominate a separate account for expense payments.
The funny thing about this is that some of the wives were probably squirrelling away money too which the husbands were not told about. In Dublin parlance, this is known as “running away money” and it is valued by women who actually have no intention of running anywhere. But they too feel better for knowing there’s something at the back of the press which only they can get their hands on.
No doubt these attitudes owe something to childhood experiences. Throughout our formative years we are lectured about money, we see our parents pursuing money, sometimes in desperation, but every cent we get has to be handed to us by an adult.
I can still feel the emotional impact of the first-ever pay packet I received doing a summer job as a messenger boy in Naas. It was like a jolt of power, I went off and bought a book with my own money for the first time – The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan’s account of the D-Day landings.
I wonder if kids today whose first pay packet may be transferred straight into a bank account get the same emotional kick? That they get an emotional kick I have no doubt – still, there was something special about the notes in that first envelope.
And so money becomes linked to power, self-esteem, powerlessness, shame and all sorts of emotions. That’s why conversations between partners about finances so easily become confrontations and why money problems can break up a marriage.
So the next time you sit down at the table to do up the sums, tread carefully – you’re handling dynamite.
I wrote recently about the phenomenon of pornography consumption, especially in the context of the internet. Then I came across this quotation on Twitter from Samuel Pepys’ diary (@samuelpepys):
“Reading L’escholle des Filles, a lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man to read to inform himself in the villainy of the world.”
Later, though, he dropped the self-justification: “I did read through L’escholle des Filles, a lewd book. After I had done it I burned it, that it might not be among my books to my shame.” Pepys died in 1703.
On a more modern note, American journalist Clare Kleinedler writes in the excellent, all-female blog The Anti-Room (theantiroom.wordpress.com) that “pornography is something I enjoy on occasion and I’m sure this is true for many women” but she is increasingly disturbed and put off by the growing proliferation of pornography which depicts women being mistreated, describing it as “alarming and, quite frankly, sickening”. So she harks back to the more innocent – if we may call it that – pornography of the 1970s and 1980s “where men and women could have sex without anyone being slapped”.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail