My Best Friend’s Partner Is Hiding Money From Him, And I Think That’s Good

Does putting your money and your wife’s together work?

Photo by Vera Arsic: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-and-woman-wearing-brown-leather-jackets-984950/

One day my best friend told me this while we were drinking beer in a bar near our house:

My partner and I share our money very transparently. Always. We don’t have hard rules with each other, but we always split shopping or dinner out in half and we love the “one person wins this time and one person wins next time” policy.

We live together and share the rent and other expenses.

When one of us is short of money, the other helps cover an urgent expense. Even luxurious expenses.

We are in a happy and peaceful relationship. I’ve never had any misgivings about what’s mine and what’s yours.

But a few days ago, I discovered that she has a secret personal bank account that she has never mentioned. I feel financially betrayed, but it’s hard to express what I’m feeling to her without sounding weird.

I felt like we were on a financial journey together, as young people in our 20s, building our financial empire. Now, however, I feel that we’re not in it together financially — we’re just moving in the same direction lovingly.

According to her, she wasn’t hiding anything from me.

This money was irrelevant to our daily lives because it was a private and personal fund — something she would only use if the serious relationship became toxic and she needed to move on alone.

But that only made me feel worse as if she’d always had one foot in and one foot out of the relationship.