Recently I was pouring over our personal money manager software. I’d just downloaded our banking transactions, and I spotted a credit card purchase I didn’t recall discussing with my wife. Suddenly, I was angry.

‘œYou’re doing it again!’ I accused.

‘œDoing what?’ my wife asked, innocently.

‘œSpending money behind my back!’ I complained.

As you can probably guess, a squabble ensued. Even though we’ve created a plan to clean up the mess created by my wife’s financial infidelity, working the plan has not been completely easy. Although the financial damage has been relatively straightforward to clean up, cleaning up the emotional wreckage has been much more difficult.

Despite our plan requiring financial sacrifices on both our parts, it has been relatively easy to make those cuts. We’ve limited the amount of money we will spend for the rest of the year on birthday and holiday gifts. Instead of buying a ton of individual gifts for everyone in the house, we’ve decided to pool our money and buy a new television as a family gift. We are eating out less and cooking at home more. Our credit cards now live in a locked cash box, and we only use them after discussing the purchase. When the cards do come out, we immediately make an online payment for the amount spent. Cash and checks are the two royals in our family. If we don’t have the money available for something, we don’t buy it.

Although the financial cuts have been relatively easy, the emotional aftermath has been much more difficult to work through. I am having a hard time trusting my wife. I feel betrayed. She feels guilty. I worry that she won’t keep her financial promises. She worries that I’m never going to trust her again.

At this point, what holds our relationship together is the fact that we love each other and we want to work things out. There is much more to our relationship than this betrayal. We have a home, a business, and a life together. Soon, we will have an adopted 13-year-old daughter together. Our shared history of more than ten years has great value for both of us, and we’ve decided that failure is not an option.

Although it has been nearly two months since I discovered my wife’s financial infidelity, this is still something that affects us daily. Although we are not spending much time dwelling on the past, each day we find ourselves spending a lot of time discussing finances. Each day we discuss how much money is in the bank, what needs to be purchased, and whether or not the purchase must happen immediately. Sometimes it feels overwhelming and exhausting.

I think the real lesson here goes far beyond any financial facts we could learn from studying about money. The real lesson is that maintaining a marriage is hard. When we got married in California last spring, we made certain promises to stand together even when times were tough. Although we didn’t recite the specific traditional vows, ‘œfor richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,’ we certainly held that intent.

We will get through this, but it won’t be easy.

Next in the series: Wrapping It Up

I’d like to put my wrap-up post out to my readers. Are there any questions that you would like answered? Do you have any ideas that you’d like me to share? Is there anything you would like to know that I haven’t talked about yet?

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