You’re in a relationship with money.
Not a casual one. Not a “we hang out sometimes” situation. This is a committed relationship. You wake up with money on your mind. You go to sleep thinking about it. You fight about it, worry about it, and dream about it.
And yet, most people have never stopped to ask how the relationship is actually going.
The Arranged Marriage You Never Agreed To
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: You didn’t choose your relationship with money. It was handed to you.
Your parents’ fights about bills? You absorbed them. Their silence around finances? You inherited that too. Their anxiety, their avoidance, their “we can’t afford it” or their “money doesn’t grow on trees”? All of it got passed down like a family heirloom nobody wanted.
You’re not starting fresh. You’re starting with baggage you didn’t pack.
This is an arranged marriage. You were matched with a set of beliefs, patterns, and emotional reflexes before you were old enough to spell “savings account.” And most of us never stop to ask the obvious question: “Wait—do I even LIKE the way I relate to money?”
Why Everyone Skips to Spreadsheets
When people decide to “get better with money,” they almost always start in the same place. Download an app. Set up a budget. Track expenses. Make a spreadsheet with color-coded tabs.
It feels productive. It feels responsible. It feels like progress.
But here’s what’s actually happening: Numbers are safe. Emotions are messy.
It’s so much easier to optimize a system than to examine a relationship. So we tinker with the logistics and wonder why nothing really changes. Here’s the hard truth: a new app won’t save your money relationship any more than a new calendar app will save your marriage.
The spreadsheet is the logistics of the relationship. It’s the “who’s taking out the trash” part of the agreement. It’s not the relationship itself.
You can track every dollar and still have no idea why you spend the way you do. You can balance your accounts perfectly and still feel anxious every time you check them. The tools aren’t the problem. Starting with the tools is.
The Dysfunctional Patterns (Which One Are You? 🪞)
Every relationship has patterns. Money relationships are no different. See if you recognize yourself in any of these:
The Ghost 👻
You ignore money until there’s a crisis. “I’ll deal with it later” is your mantra—until later becomes an emergency. Bills pile up. Accounts go unchecked. You only engage when something’s on fire. Then you panic, fix it, and go right back to ignoring.
The Codependent
Your mood rises and falls with your account balance. Good number = good day. Bad number = spiral. You’ve let money become your emotional thermostat. When it’s up, you feel worthy. When it’s down, you feel like a failure. Your self-worth is completely tethered to your net worth.
The Avoidant
“I’m just not a money person.” You’ve made it part of your identity. You’re creative, not financial. You’re big-picture, not detail-oriented. But saying you’re not a money person is like saying you’re not a communication person—in a marriage. It’s an avoidance strategy dressed up as self-awareness.
The Anxious
You check your accounts constantly. You run the numbers over and over. You create worst-case scenario spreadsheets. You never feel safe no matter how much is there. The anxiety would follow you at any income level; it just found money as its favorite thing to attach to. The feeling of scarcity is your constant companion, even in a room full of abundance.
The Resentful
“You’re never enough.” No matter how much comes in, money is always disappointing you somehow. You hit a goal and immediately move the goalpost. You get a raise and find something new to worry about. You resent it for not being more, for not doing more, for not magically solving all your problems.
The Performer
Money is how you prove your worth to others. The relationship isn’t really between you and money—it’s between money and your audience. You spend to be seen. You earn to impress. You measure yourself by what other people think your bank account says about you.
Knowing the Stats Isn’t Knowing the Story
Recognizing your pattern is the first, gut-wrenching, necessary step. You can’t fix a relationship until you admit how you’re showing up to it.
You can know every single fact about someone — their height, their birthday, their history — without actually knowing them. You don’t know what makes them tick, what they fear, what they dream about.
It’s the same with money.
You can track every dollar. You can know your interest rates by heart. But that’s just knowing the stats.
It’s not knowing the story.
The real questions aren’t “how much do I have?”
They’re:
- Why does checking my balance make me feel this way?
- What am I afraid money will reveal about me?
- What do I actually want this money to make possible?
Most people never ask these questions. They just keep downloading apps.
What “Dating Your Money” Actually Looks Like
If your money relationship is like an arranged marriage, then the work isn’t to escape it. It’s to actually get to know each other. You need to date your money. That means getting curious before getting tactical. It means slowing down instead of optimizing faster. It means treating money like someone you’re trying to understand—not control.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. Ask the questions you’ve been avoiding:
- What did I learn about money growing up?
- What’s my earliest money memory—and what did it teach me?
- When I think about money, what emotion shows up FIRST?
- What am I afraid money will expose about me?
- What do I want money to make possible—and why does that matter so much?
2. Notice your patterns without immediately trying to fix them:
- When do I spend emotionally?
- When do I avoid looking at my accounts?
- What triggers me to check my balance obsessively?
- What stories do I tell myself when money is tight vs. when it’s abundant?
3. Get honest about what money represents to you:
- Is it safety?
- Freedom?
- Status?
- Love?
- Proof that you’re good enough?
You’re not trying to create a budget yet. You’re trying to understand who you’ve been in this relationship—and who you want to become.
The “We Need to Talk” Moment
Every struggling relationship has a conversation that keeps getting postponed. With money, that conversation is usually about fear. Or shame. Or old stories that stopped being true a long time ago.
Maybe it’s the debt you’ve never told anyone about. Maybe it’s the fact that no matter what you earn, you still don’t feel safe. Whatever it is—the relationship doesn’t improve until you sit down and get honest. Not with a spreadsheet. With yourself.
This is the “we need to talk” moment. And it’s uncomfortable. But it’s also where everything starts to shift.
Questions to Start the Real Conversation
If you’re ready to stop avoiding and start understanding, begin here. Don’t rush. Sit with them. Be more honest than feels comfortable.
- One: What’s one thing about money I’ve never told anyone?
- Two: If money could talk, what would it say I’ve been avoiding?
- Three: What would my relationship with money look like if I wasn’t afraid?
- Four: What’s ONE way I’d treat money differently if I respected it—but didn’t worship it?
These questions won’t fix your finances overnight. But they’ll do something more important: they’ll show you where the real work is.
You’re in a relationship with money whether you like it or not. You can’t break up with it. You can’t ghost it forever. You can keep ignoring it, resenting it, or performing for it. Or you can do the work to actually understand it—and yourself.
The tools come later. The relationship comes first.
Avraham
Your Financial Coach
P.S. Give your money relationship the fresh start it deserves. Book a FREE session with me.
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