When Money Talks, Love Walks: How Obsessing Over Wealth Wrecks Marital Communication
Monday, April 14, 2025.
Imagine a couple sitting in their newly refinanced kitchen, sipping $7 matcha lattes from ergonomic mugs shaped like lowercase letters.
They can’t stop talking about money. Correction: they can’t stop not talking about money.
Every conversation is a performance review. Every silence, a spreadsheet.
Welcome to the world of “money focus”—a psychological script in which the Almighty Dollar becomes a third party in the marriage bed, elbowing out intimacy in favor of itemized deductions.
A new study out of Brigham Young University (LeBaron-Black et al., 2024) confirms what many therapists have suspected since the dawn of two-income households and TurboTax:
when couples obsess over money, their relationship satisfaction tanks.
Not because they’re broke, but because they’ve confused net worth with relational value.
The Money Script Theory: Childhood Beliefs, Adult Blowouts
Most people walk into marriage dragging an invisible ledger of financial beliefs formed in childhood. Psychologists call these money scripts—mental shortcuts like:
Money equals happiness
Talking about money is tacky
You can’t trust people who spend too freely
Originally introduced by Klontz et al. (2011), money scripts have been used to explain why some people hoard, others gamble, and many develop the emotional flexibility of a vending machine when discussing budgets.
The current study is the first to test whether these scripts influence marital satisfaction and financial communication quality.
They do. Profoundly.
Materialism: The Marriage Killer in a Cashmere Sweater
Let’s start with the villain of this story: money focus, also known as money worship. It’s the belief that more money will solve everything—from self-worth to Saturday night. Couples who scored high on this script reported:
Worse financial communication
More frequent money conflicts
Lower relationship satisfaction overall
Why? Because money worship, much like actual worship, demands sacrifice.
Time, attention, and emotional intimacy get tithed to a god that never blesses, only hungers.
According to LeBaron-Black et al. (2024), these couples aren't poor—they’re starved for presence.
And this isn’t new.
Previous research by Li et al. (2021) found that materialistic souls were more likely to experience emotional disconnection and reduced empathy within romantic partnerships. In other words, if money is the sun, everything else wilts in the shade.
Profile-Based Similarity: Why Shared Financial Neuroses Can Be Weirdly Romantic
Now, here’s where it gets spicy—in a social science kind of way. The study found that couples who had similar overall financial beliefs (even if those beliefs weren’t great) had better financial communication.
This doesn’t mean you both need to be Dave Ramsey cultists. It means that financial fluency improves when you’re speaking the same dialect of dysfunction.
Researchers call this profile-based similarity—a fancy term for “at least our baggage matches.”
This finding aligns with other dyadic research.
For example, Archuleta et al. (2011) found that financial harmony—not just solvency—is linked to marital satisfaction. Compatibility trumps content. Shared weirdness beats asymmetrical wisdom.
Talk Dirty to Me About APR
Here’s the core takeaway: how you talk about money is more important than what you believe about it. Couples who reported effective financial communication—regardless of income or education—also reported higher marital satisfaction. This held true across the board, even when controlling for:
Education
Household income
Number of kids
Work hours
That means two teachers renting a duplex can be happier than two lawyers with a mortgage, as long as they can calmly say, “Let’s review the budget,” without triggering a cortisol tsunami.
Financial communication, like emotional communication, is a skill—not a trait.
And when it fails, it’s rarely about dollars. It’s about power, fear, shame, and trust.
But Wait—Is It Correlation or Causation?
The authors are refreshingly honest: the study is cross-sectional, meaning it captures one moment in time. It can’t definitively say whether money obsession leads to marital decay or vice versa.
But when triangulated with other longitudinal studies (e.g., Dew & Stewart, 2012), a compelling pattern emerges: couples who prioritize relational alignment over financial optimization tend to last longer—and feel better about lasting.
Still, future research could explore whether early financial therapy in marriage might prevent the slow conversion of love into ledger entries.
Clinical Implications: What to Do With Couples Who Worship Wealth
Therapists, take note: when couples present with “money fights,” you’re not refereeing a budget. You’re decoding scripts. Ask:
“What did money mean in your family growing up?”
“What’s scarier: being broke or being vulnerable about being broke?”
“Would you rather feel in control or feel connected?”
Also, normalize the fact that two people can love each other and still have wildly incompatible beliefs about credit cards.
That doesn’t make them doomed—it makes them human.
Conclusion: Money Matters, Until It Doesn’t
Here’s the truth wrapped in a meme: No couple ever divorced because they disagreed about Roth IRAs.
They divorced because those disagreements became proxies for deeper ruptures—shame, status, safety.
The meme economy is wise: “Love language? Mine is mutual budgeting without accusations.” It’s funny because it’s true.
And tragic because it’s so often missed.
Put money in its place, or it will put your marriage in one.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES
Archuleta, K. L., Dale, A., & Spann, S. M. (2011). College students and financial distress: Exploring debt, financial satisfaction, and financial anxiety. Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 22(2), 50–62. https://www.afcpe.org
Dew, J., & Stewart, R. (2012). A financial issue: Money as a topic of marital conflict in the home. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 33, 297–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-012-9304-5
Klontz, B. T., Britt, S. L., Mentzer, J., & Klontz, P. T. (2011). Money beliefs and financial behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory. Journal of Financial Therapy, 2(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.4148/jft.v2i1.451
LeBaron-Black, A. B., Li, X., Wilmarth, M. J., Suxo-Sanchez, S. C., Archuleta, K. L., Yorgason, J. B., & Kong, D. (2024). Happily ever affluence: Dyadic analysis of money scripts, financial communication, and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075241237512
Li, X., LeBaron-Black, A. B., & Jensen, T. M. (2021). Materialism, marital satisfaction, and the role of empathy and gratitude. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 42, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-021-09765-7