It might feel like common sense that as a couple experiences more financial stress, they would probably experience difficulty in their marriage and their marital quality could go down. Makes sense, right? This situation might resonate with you because you have personally experienced it; perhaps you’re newly married and all the financial demands of married life have suddenly become very real. Or perhaps you’ve been married for a while now, and everything has been fine until one of you loses your job. Being married may not feel as fulfilling in these moments. However, there is reason to hope that things can get better, and that marital quality will rise again.
Family finance researchers and therapists know this too and have sought to discover potential ways to ease the negative effect of financial stress on marital quality. In the article, Financial Stress and Marital Quality: The Moderating Influence of Couple Communication, Drs. Heather Kelley, Ashley LeBaron-Black, and Jeff Hill explored how couple communication could be a buffer between the negative influence financial stress has on marital quality.[1] What this means is that the researchers looked at how communication—healthy vs unhealthy—between spouses experiencing financial stress influenced their marital quality.
Let’s go back to our first example of being newly married and now having to manage finances together. A couple might have some individual resources to manage finances, such as using budgets or relying on parents’ resources. As new financial demands present themselves, such as higher cost of housing or unexpected car repairs, these previous resources may not be enough to manage the new financial demands. As such, the couple may need to develop a new set of resources or coping strategies. Kelley, LeBaron-Black, and Hill suggest that one such resource for the couple to develop is healthy communication.
Before conducting their study, Kelley, LeBaron-Black, and Hill guessed that healthy couple communication would make the relationship between financial stress and marital quality better and that unhealthy communication would make it worse. What’s interesting is that, after conducting their study, they found that this was true, but only in part. For husbands, healthy communication did lessen the impact of financial stress on their marital quality. Basically, husbands with financial stress still experienced a drop in their marital quality, just not as much if their communication with their spouse was healthy.
For wives, on the other hand, this was not the case; there was no impact of communication. Meaning, wives experienced a drop in their marital quality when stressed financially, just like their husbands, but the quality of their communication did nothing to change this. Additionally, for husbands, healthy communication lessened the impact of their wives’ financial stress on the husbands’ marital quality. In other words, as their wife experienced financial stress, healthy communication between husband and wife helped improve the husband’s marital quality. But the reverse was not true for wives; when husbands were financially stressed, healthy communication didn’t stop wives from reporting lower marital quality. So, while healthy communication is helpful for husbands’ marital quality when either spouse is stressed about finances, it is not helpful for wives’ marital quality when either spouse is stressed about finances.
“Whoa whoa whoa! That doesn’t seem fair; how did that happen?” That might be your knee-jerk reaction to this information. I know that it was mine. However, despite these findings feeling perhaps a little one-sided, they don’t have to be. They have some important implications.
First, although the findings may not seem like they apply to both husbands and wives, it can still be valuable and useful information for both. For example, husbands seeking help in their marriage may want to improve their communication with their wives, in hopes of improving their own marital quality. There is value in even just one person benefiting from improved communication, particularly since it does not have a harmful effect on the other person’s marital quality. Additionally, although a couple might be experiencing financial stress as a couple, each spouse can experience that stress differently, as well as have different resources to manage the stress. Using an individual-focused approach—in conjunction with other approaches—to manage financial stress and improve communication might not be a bad idea for the couple.
Further, this study demonstrated how one person’s experience can impact their partner’s experience in the relationship. One spouse’s individual financial stress can impact their personal marital quality, as well as their spouse’s marital quality. As such, improving a husband’s experience can, in turn, also benefit their spouse.
And it’s not just finance-specific communication that changed the impact of financial stress on a couple’s marital quality; healthy communication in general was related to improved marital quality. Meaning, using better communication skills to talk about anything—children, sex, work, etc.—improved marital quality for couples experiencing financial stress. As such, couples struggling with financial stress can find relief by focusing on their overall couple communication skills.
These applications are important, but still beg the question why healthy communication seemed to only benefit husbands in this study. However, it is important to acknowledge what other studies have found regarding communication and marital outcomes. For example, another study by LeBaron-Black and colleagues shows that, in fact, financial communication can benefit wives.[2] When spouses share financial values and can communicate about them, their marital quality and stability is higher. This was found to be true for both husbands and wives. As you can see, research has been done and will continue to be done to further understand the relationship between finances and marriage. So don’t worry, there’s hope for wives after all!
Takeaways
1. Improve your couple communication. It’s good to focus on improving communication about finances! However, it could be good to start by focusing on general communication instead. General communication may have more of an impact on marital quality than only focusing on finance-specific communication. General communication can be a precursor to finance-specific communication.
2. Address individual needs and capabilities within the couple. Although financial stress is often faced by a couple together, it can also be felt individually. Therefore, if one spouse is feeling stressed financially, it can be beneficial to focus on just that spouse and build skills that would help them specifically, such as learning healthier communication to improve their perceived marital quality.
3. Develop shared financial values as a couple. Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to what you value financially? The money itself might not be the problem, but rather how each spouse views their financial situation. As such, consider discussing personal financial values as a couple and find common ground. Couples that do share values and can talk effectively about money report higher marital quality.
References:
[1] Kelley, H. H., LeBaron, A. B., & Hill, E. (2018). Financial stress and marital quality: The moderating influence of couple communication. Journal of Financial Therapy, 9 (2) 3. https://doi.org/10.4148/1944-9771.1176
[2] LeBaron‐Black, A. B., Saxey, M. T., Totenhagen, C. J., Wheeler, B. E., Archuleta, K. L., Yorgason, J. B., & James, S. (2023). Financial communication as a mediator between financial values and marital outcomes. Family Relations, 72(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12786