One of the most common themes I see in questions I receive from readers is an uncomfortable sense of what financial roles are in a relationship. A person lives with someone/is engaged to someone/is married to someone and is unsure about how to handle their partner’s debt/spending/shared purchases. That sentence covers the core of a lot of the questions in the reader mailbag.

There are a few key elements that seem to often come up in my responses to these questions as well, and those elements really form a strong foundation of how people in relationships should think about and handle their money.

It really boils down to four key principles that really flow together.

Talking about money in a relationship is absolutely essential. When you’re in a relationship intense enough that you’re sharing many of the costs of life, you have to be able to communicate clearly about those costs, as well as the income you both have with which to cover them and the plans you each have for the future.

Why?

The debts and expenses of your partner are also your debts and expenses. If you owe a debt and have to make a monthly debt payment, that takes money out of the shared pool that you both have with which to cover your monthly expenses. If you spend money somewhere, that money is removed from the overall pool that you have to cover your monthly bills.

Let’s say you’re out and about on the town. You tell yourself that your partner is going to be able to cover the rent this month, so you convince yourself it’s okay to spend some money. Because you spent that money, you’ve eliminated your ability to help pay the rent.

Now, what happens if your partner isn’t able to pay the rent? You’re suddenly in a serious pickle, one that’s caused not only by a communication failure, but by the reality that your spending, bills, and debts affect your partner’s spending, bills, and debts.

Whether you like it or not, if you’re in a relationship, your finances are shared, whether in actual practice or not. Your actions affect your partner and vice versa.

The third principle is something of an extension of this one.

Hiding debts and expenses from your partner affects them in many ways and is deeply dishonest and damaging to your relationship. Since your spending alters how your partner is able to spend money, hiding a debt or an expense from your partner is essentially the same thing as taking money out of their pocket without telling them why.

It undermines financial stability. It undermines the trust in your relationship. It ensures that your partner is unfairly being asked to shoulder an additional burden without even knowing why.

Usually, the root cause of this is a communication breakdown. You’re afraid to tell your partner because you’re afraid of the retribution you envision in whatever form that may take. You can’t bring yourself to admit a mistake to your partner because that shows weakness.

All of this culminates with a simple statement about the stability of one’s relationship.

If you can’t talk about money with each other, then your relationship is on tenuous ground.

A relationship is about mutual support. If you can’t talk about your financial situation because it shows weakness, then you’re not mutually supportive. You’re antagonistic and combative. If you can’t talk about your financial situation because you fear retribution, then your relationship is at best combative and at worst abusive.

If you can’t communicate through your mistakes and honestly evaluate your full financial situation together on a regular basis, your entire relationship is on tenuous ground. You need to take a serious look about whether this relationship is something you should be continuing, because there are some deep trust issues (and other problems) running right through the relationship you’ve built.

The solution to all of this is simple, and it’s right there in the first principle. Communicate. Talk about everything with your partner. Admit your failings, and don’t brow-beat your partner over his or her failings. You’re both human beings. You’re both going to make mistakes. The entire purpose of a relationship is to be there for each other through both the high points and the mistakes. Otherwise, there’s no point in having a long-term relationship.

Last week, I wrote an article discussing reasons why the idea that men shouldn’t get married for financial reasons was false. In the article, I pointed out several purely financial reasons for men to get married, reasons that applied very well to women as well.

Many people responded with the great point that many of the benefits described in that article are also applicable to people who cohabitate. This is absolutely true. The benefit of reducing the cost per person for rent, energy, and so on occur when people are simply roommates, regardless of their relationship. Also, simply cohabitating instead of actually being married also avoids some of the negatives of marriage, such as legal entanglement.

However, there are several specific economic benefits to marriage over cohabitation that, when considered together, paint a positive economic view of marriage.

First, being married means you have the right to receive property settlements and support in the event of divorce. If you’re cohabitating, your partner is on the lease, and you suddenly find all of your stuff tossed out in the yard, your options are pretty limited. If you’re relying on your partner to support you and he or she tells you to get out, you’re completely on your own.

Second, being married means the ability to obtain family health, dental, and other insurance benefits. The exact rules on this vary from state to state, but generally it is much more difficult to obtain insurance through your partner’s employment if you are not married. Being able to obtain that insurance reduces the cost of insurance for both members of the household and often allows one member to take on a challenging (and often lucrative) alternative career path.

Third, being married means receiving your partner’s property in the event of death without a will (and even with an incomplete will). The presence of a spouse greatly simplifies the resolution of a person’s estate, as the spouse virtually always takes the property. If the cohabitants are not married, the door is open to a great deal of legal wrangling. One only needs to take a peek at the battle over Stieg Larsson’s estate for a clear example of what I’m talking about.

Fourth, being married means receiving survivor’s benefits from retirement plans and Social Security. If your partner dies before you and you’re married, you’re likely to continue receiving some benefit from his retirement and Social Security. If you’re unmarried, you don’t get any of these benefits.

Simply put, cohabitation certainly gives some of the same financial benefits of marriage as opposed to living single, but it does not confer all of the benefits.

Now, are there advantages to simple cohabitation over marriage? If you approach the relationship as though an end to the relationship is expected at some point, cohabitation is superior to marriage in many respects. In effect, smart cohabitants would function just like roommates, with clearly delineated finances and possessions, so that there are minimal issues if the relationship fractures.

In my eyes, danger enters the picture when cohabitants begin to share more and more things of financial consequence. When you begin to co-sign for loans and for utilities, you’re creating a serious financial challenge in the event of a messy breakup without clear rules to follow. Even more challenging is a cohabitation situation with a child involved. Cohabitation agreements can resolve some of this, but they have limited legal backing.

Simply put, I strongly encourage people not to financially bind themselves to each other unless they are entering into a legally married state. Such actions include cosigning for loans, co-ownership of major possessions, and having children. The drawbacks and challenges of disentanglement if one partner chooses not to be cooperative during a breakup (that would never happen, right?) aren’t worth it.

I get asked this question all the time, and I think it’s one that’s got enough cultural pressure behind it that it’s worth discussing. From a purely financial standpoint, why should a man get married? Let’s look at the reasons behind this question first.

The argument against marriage for men is pretty straightforward. The most common reason given for men not to get married is that the financial outcome of divorce proceedings is seen to be unfair. As the argument goes, the average male salary in the United States is higher than the average female salary, yet when couples are divorced, the splits are often 50/50 – or, in some cases, skewed towards the partner with greater financial need.

Usually, along with this, issues and concerns about children are brought up as well, along with other concerns about losing the freedom to make life choices and so on. Generally, these issues fall much more into the realm of the emotional than the financial and vary so much on a case-by-case basis that they’re difficult to reasonably discuss.

Instead, I’m going to stick with the financial side of the equation.

Along with that, I’m also going to make a fairly bold statement for the anti-marriage folks out there: it’s financially beneficial for both men and women to get married. There are a lot of reasons for this.

Almost always, you’re both going to be bringing in an income. There will simply be more money coming in than before. Often, it’s a lot more money, approaching a doubling of income for both of you. That’s a lot more money to live on, day to day. There’s also the fact that you’ll have two sets of benefits to choose between. If one of you has better insurance, then you both have better insurance, for example.

You both benefit from economies of scale, meaning your expenses won’t rise as much as your income will. If you’re living in a one-bedroom apartment, it’s often very easy to get married and stay in the same place. Rent doesn’t go up, and the utilities will barely budge. Even if you do need to upgrade, your housing costs likely won’t double (like your income did). You’ll also be sharing electricity, phone service, internet service, and so on – one bill for each of these things instead of two. While food and household items will jump a fair amount, having both of you at home means that bulk buying makes more sense. Buy a gallon of milk instead of a container and you’ll be spending less per glass of milk, for example.

You have greater earnings stability. If you lost your job while single, there’s suddenly no income coming in. Panic time, in other words. If you’re married, you have a partner that will still be bringing in income, a partner that has a real stake in your survival and continued success. While it’s an urgent situation, it’s not a panic situation.

You have greater earnings potential, too. With a partner at home handling some of the household needs and providing emotional support, people can often use that as a springboard to achieve even greater success. This is often particularly true for males with children.

You have the “stable home” factor. Married couples often find greater success with things such as applying for mortgages and so on, particularly if they’re manually underwritten, because such family units are usually more stable than single folks.

But what about the pain of divorce? Most of the fears that men have about getting married are actually fears about divorce. The truth is that you can alleviate most of those fears by simply taking a few steps right now.

First, don’t get married until you’re absolutely sure. If you’re not sure, don’t sit on that reason, either. Don’t be afraid to talk about your concerns and make it clear to your partner why you don’t want to get married. If you can’t have that kind of open conversation about marriage, either you’re not emotionally ready for marriage or your partnership isn’t ready for it.

Second, if you have assets you want to protect, get a prenupital agreement. Part of a good prenupital agreement is a base understanding that you’re both going to financially benefit from this marriage for many of the reasons stated above. An agreement that says that one of the partners takes nothing away from the marriage in case of divorce isn’t a healthy agreement for either party to sign. One approach is to use your current individual net worths as part of the equation, perhaps setting aside the assets you entered the marriage with before dividing up the rest in some fair fashion. Remember, if you’re coming into this marriage with no net worth but big dreams of getting rich, a big part of you getting rich is the support of your partner, who has earned that stake because of the support provided.

Finally, look at your behavior and your partner’s behavior honestly. Are you engaging (or seriously considering engaging) in activities that would lead to divorce when you’re engaged? Is your partner? If you find it easy to engage in patterns that would lead to divorce while you’re seriously considering marriage, then your relationship has problems deep enough that you shouldn’t get married. In short, don’t ever put yourself in a situation where divorce looks likely.

What about children? The decision to have children is a complicated one and, in my opinion, is a very distinct one from the marriage question. Many of the concerns that men express about marriage tend to actually be concerns about becoming a father, and I think that becoming a father is a decision guys should never enter into lightly.

My opinion is that many people fear marriage for emotional reasons, but often find financial ones easier to state. Modern marriages usually are financially beneficial to both people involved.

I’ll certainly say that, in our case, marriage has been an enormous financial benefit. It was because of my wife’s stable job that I was able to make the leap to turning The Simple Dollar into a sustainable business, and it was because of that sustainable business that my wife was able to leave work for most of a year to be a stay-at-home mother. After all that, the only debt we have is our home mortgage. None of this would have happened without our marriage and the stability it has given us.

Change in another person has to come from within them, not from within you.

One of the most regular themes in emails I get from readers is a desire to somehow change the nature of the person they’re married to. “My husband is uninterested in our finances and just wants to buy more gadgets.” “My wife wants to eat out every night and tells me that the future will take care of itself.”

When people make statements and put forth behaviors like these, they’re acting upon their nature and what they believe about the world. Your husband considers finances to be unimportant and, right now, is passionate about gadgets. Your wife values dining out with you and truly believes that your bright future will take care of any problems that might come.

I understand all of these perspectives because I’ve been on both sides of them. I understand what the first reader’s husband feels like when he’s uninterested in finances and much more concerned with getting new gadgets. I understand what the second reader’s wife feels like when she believes that her future self will handle the problems and that dining out tonight seems like the most enjoyable and reasonable options. And, of course, I understand how both of their spouses feel. The behaviors of their spouses are interfering with the frugality, sensible financial planning, and beautiful future that they envision for their marriages.

How did I turn that page? It’s easy and trite for me to talk about the moment when the “switch” flipped for me, but to be honest, that was just one key moment in a long progression from being a wasteful spender to being someone more in control of their money.

First of all, I had inklings that a serious financial change was needed a year before, at least. It was not an overnight change. It was the result of a lot of observations and thinking about my own life.

If you want your partner to become more financially conscious, make a fertile ground for your partner to think about those kinds of thoughts. Talk about the future in terms of specifics – and how you’ll get from here to there. Whenever you make a purchase, talk about what you’re not getting because of that purchase.

Do not expect overnight change. The journey to financially reasonable thinking can be a very long one. Each time you encourage some positive thinking in that direction, view it as a mere step on a long journey. It could take months. It could take years.

Avoid confrontation. If it starts to be confrontational, change the subject. Most people do not like to have their beliefs challenged. In the end, it has much in common with a discussion between a liberal and a conservative on political issues: once it starts getting emotional, the conversation is nothing more than a shouting match between two people who have no real interest in what the other side is saying, only an interest in being “right” while the other person is “wrong.” When you’ve reached that point, you’re both wasting your time.

Second, even after reaching that tipping point, it wasn’t all smooth and perfect. Simply put, there were a lot of individual bad habits that I needed to disrupt. It was not as if I were immediately a financially wise frugal Zen master when I woke up one morning.

For you, this means be patient, even after your partner is starting to make positive moves on their own. They might be getting it, but then they’ll go buy a gadget or go out for an expensive dinner. Don’t blow up – be patient. Give it time and look for ways to find balance between what you want and what they’re becoming.

Plant more ideas for them. If your partner is a reader, put books like Your Money or Your Life or my own book on their bedside table and let them read the books at their own leisure. Send them a link to The Simple Dollar.

The key thing overall is to be patient and don’t give up on them. A radical change in a person’s perspective on how money and the world works never happens overnight. Instead of expecting a thousand mile journey at once, look for the small steps and encourage them.

Eventually, you’ll have a partner who isn’t merely doing things just to please you and get you out of the way, but making financially wise choices for their own benefit.

As I’ve said many times on here, my wife and I have a small handful of major goals that we share going forward in our lives.

We both want to eventually live in the country with some wooded area and a small barn.

We both want to focus on raising our children as well as we possibly can.

We both want to achieve complete debt freedom (we currently just owe on our mortgage) to give us even more career and personal flexibility in the future.

Here’s the interesting part: these goals do not reflect everything I want to do in life, nor do they reflect everything Sarah wants to do in life.

Instead, they’re the goals we share together and because we both share them, there’s a lot more power and mutual motivation and mutual benefit in achieving those goals.

How did we get there from each having our own goals? Here’s the process we went through – and are still going through.

We each sketched a picture of what we wanted our future to look like. What did I want my life to look like in five or ten or twenty years? I spent some time really thinking about that question. I made a list of some of the things I wanted to happen in my life over those timeframes. I had career dreams and family dreams and personal goals I wanted to achieve.

We compared our pictures of the future. What we found is that some of our goals overlapped, some of them did not, and some of them were personal goals that affected our partner in various ways.

So, for example, we both had a dream of living in the country with woods and a small barn. I had a dream of building a fully self-sustaining farm there (with wind power, geothermal heating, and so forth), but Sarah didn’t share that vision as strongly: “It’d be cool, I guess, but is it really worth the cost?” I also had career goals that impacted Sarah a little bit (because of the time and energy investment), but not too much.

We agreed to focus on the larger goals we both shared. I listed those above. Those goals are not a list of the goals I came up with – if I listed all of the things I wanted myself, the list would be longer and have a much different flavor.

However, a big lifelong goal that your partner is not on board with is not only much more difficult to achieve, pushing hard for that goal can put problems in your relationship. On the other hand, sharing a goal and both working towards that same goal encourages an environment of mutual support. Focus in on the goals you both deeply share – and you identify those by coming up with your own list of goals on your own, then sharing and comparing them.

Our next step was to settle on a small handful of key goals that we both shared. For us, this was very easy. We had three very obvious key goals that we each individually wanted – a house in the country, complete debt freedom, and strong parenting.

If you find that you’re coming up with a lot of shared goals, that’s a good thing. I recommend settling on just a few – the ones that are most deeply important to both of you.

If you find that you’re not able to come up with shared goals, I would suggest spending more time together and focusing on building your relationship with each others. Not having shared goals is a sign of being on diverging paths in life – and that means if you take your relationship seriously, it needs some work, whether you can see that on the surface or not.

Once you’ve figured out those shared goals, work together to keep them front and center. Remind each other regularly of the goals you share and the little steps you’re both taking to make it happen. If you’re not both engaged with a goal and working towards it, it’s hard to do it alone. You’ve got to be together, and if it’s a goal you both share, reinforcing each other and helping each other should come somewhat naturally.

A final tip: revisit your goals on occasion. We talk about ours all the time. Usually, it’s motivational. Sometimes, we refine the goals a bit – for example, we’ve been thinking about the location we’d like to move to. The key thing, though, is that we talk about it together, cement our bonds to each other, and motivate each other to move forward.

It’s a lot easier to reach for something great if you’re doing it together.

Archie writes in:

In our marriage, my wife and I have agreed not to open financial statements addressed to each other. We supposedly did this so that we would be able to hide things like gift purchases from each other. Whenever we talked about our finances, we just talked about balances on accounts and didn’t worry about individual items on each other’s bills.

Over the last few years, I’d noticed more and more bills from various banks sent to my wife, but I hadn’t really thought too much about it. Yesterday, we received a call from someone from Citi who wanted to speak to my wife about her account and made it clear that the account was overdrawn and past due.

I was frustrated and worried, so I dug through the mail and found her most recent statement from Citi, which was unopened. I opened it. She had a balance of over $7,500 on it. I was just shocked, so I opened some of the other statements with her name on it that I could find. From just what I could gather in a few minutes, I found that she has $30,000 at least in credit card debt.

I put all of the statements in my bedside table for now. I don’t know what to do next. We certainly don’t have $30,000 to pay these off right now and even the minimum payments are difficult. It looks like my wife has been juggling accounts a lot because there aren’t many payments on our recent bank statements.

What do I do next? I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid of the big fight we’re going to have.

I originally included Archie’s note in my reader mailbag for this week, but I had enough to say about his situation (and I figured readers would, too) that I decided to devote a whole article to it.

First of all, this isn’t just about your discovery of the credit card debt. There has been a long history of dishonesty here – and that’s what I would call it, dishonesty. Marriage is a union based on trust and $30,000 in credit card debt is a pretty strong violation of that trust. It is going to take a lot of work to dig out of that debt.

In short, my suggestion would be that you seek marriage counseling, first and foremost. You’re in a situation now where you’ve both violated the trust in the marriage – your wife has been hiding tens of thousands of dollars in debt and you’ve opened up private correspondence to her. You have a perfectly good reason to feel that your trust has been violated and to feel upset. So does your wife.

This means your marriage has some very serious trust issues that you need to work through in order to be able to move forward successfully with a financial plan.

Why? A financial plan in a marriage only works if you can fully trust one another. You need to be able to trust that your partner is actually working towards the same goals with the same methods as you are and that if either of you run into trouble, you’ll work it out together. If you can’t trust each other, then a financial plan cannot work.

The first order of action, then, is to re-establish the trust.

If you’ve reached a point where you feel that you can trust each other again, then turn your eyes to your financial situation. View the past as water under the bridge; instead, focus on where you’re at now and how you can make your situation better from your current position. What-ifs don’t help with the here and now.

The first step to recovery would be a mutual commitment to spend less than you earn. Remember, of course, that part of your required spending is the debt repayment and also remember that you (as a couple) are spending far beyond your means (witness the $30,000 in credit card debts). Thus, this will be a lot harder than you might think. This step will take some serious work on its own. You’ll both have to face your spending head-on and make some difficult choices. But you have to get that spending under control.

Second, you need to create a debt repayment plan. A debt repayment plan is easy to set up and helps you develop an orderly method for paying your debts down.

Finally, and most importantly, the two of you need to discuss goals together. What do you want for your mutual future? Where do you see yourselves in five years or ten years or twenty years? What exactly will it take to get there? Obviously, getting control over your spending and getting rid of your debts are two big steps, but those are just two steps. You need to work together to figure out what comes next and how to get there.

Good luck.

Charlene writes in:

I’m getting married in March. My future husband and I are talking about when and how to merge our finances and we’ve had some difficulty coming up with a plan. What did you and your wife do? What would you suggest for other couples on the cusp of marriage?

First of all, I’ll point out that when my wife and I were first married, neither one of us had any clue about how to manage our money. We basically left all of our accounts the same, keeping accounts and direct deposits at separate banks and without any sort of shared savings or checking accounts. This worked for us for a while, but it had serious disadvantages, chief among them the fact that it was hard for either one of us to really get a grip on what our true financial situation was.

I would not recommend doing that unless you have a very good, clear reason for doing so. It’s very clear in that wonderful 20/20 hindsight that the disadvantages of such a split far outweigh the advantages.

Instead, I would fold your accounts together at whichever bank the two of you already use that offers the best customer service. Don’t worry about things like savings rates and such for your primary accounts – if you want to seek out a great savings rate, seek that out separately and use a second bank for your savings purposes. The most important factors on your primary checking account and bank services are the customer service provided to you and the lack of fees on the account for various things (keeping the account open, ATM use, and so on).

I would not do this until you’re married, but I would follow through with the plan pretty quickly after you’re married. Before you’re married, you’re basically opening yourself up to the potential for a very sticky situation without any real benefit other than just a bit of short term convenience.

Instead, invest your time coming up with a detailed plan before the wedding so that you can just quickly execute it after the marriage, getting your affairs in order as quickly as possible.

You may also want to consider a prenupital agreement. You may be deeply in love right now, but people can and do change. A prenupital agreement makes any divorce process that may happen much simpler and less fraught witn anger and emotion, both of which you can surely live without in such a situation. If you find agreeing on a prenupital agrangement is difficult, you may want to step back and have some discussions about why this is – and what that might mean for your relationship.

Another thing worth considering is life insurance. Now that you’re merging your financial lives, you may find yourself investing in things that you may not be able to afford individually, like a home, more expensive cars, or children. A term life insurance policy can ensure that your partner is not stuck in an incredibly difficult financial situation should you pass away unexpectedly. Even if you don’t have such expenses now, term life insurance is still worth considering because the cost of a policy is much lower when you’re young than when you’re older (or have pre-existing conditions that may be discovered later on).

It might seem strange at first glance to suggest this as financial advice, but I would strongly encourage you to have discussions about such issues as having children now rather than after you’re married. If you have differing feelings on such key issues and haven’t come to an understanding about them (and trust me, quite often one side thinks there’s an “understanding” and the other side does not), they can fester within a marriage, turning a loving situation into something painful and often quite financially costly for everyone involved (well, except for the lawyers – they clean up). Talk things through – items such as future career plans, dreams, ambitions, children, and so on should be discussed and understood and both partners should at least understand each other’s positions, even if they’re not fully on the same page.

Marriage isn’t something that benefits from being entered into lightly. Merging your accounts is just the first step – you’re often merging lives in ways you never even considered before. Take the time now to at least consider these changes – and talk about them – before you take the plunge.

Whenever I mention that I’m self-employed and work from home while my wife works outside of the home, I usually receive a question or two from readers who are thinking about a similar arrangement. They want to know about how we balance things. How do you balance household chores? How do you balance parenting chores? Does it change how you socialize?

Here are seven things we’ve found to be true about our marriage once one of us became self-employed.

“Keeping score” is dangerous. When one person shifts to a completely different lifestyle, the various dynamics of the marriage will shift. This is true of any major change – stay-at-home parenting, a major career shift, even a significant change in the hours worked.

Dynamics change (and I’m going to talk about some specifics below). Don’t “keep score” based on what the previously-established norms were. Instead, focus on figuring out the new norm and forget about the old ones, and talk about it carefully along the way.

The balance of household chores subtly shifts towards more chores for the self-employed spouse. Here’s an example from our own life. I’m about to start my day, so just before I begin, I’ll toss a load of laundry into the washing machine. Then, at lunchtime, I’ll go downstairs and toss the clothes in the dryer. During my afternoon break, I’ll fold those clothes and put them into the kids’ drawers. Still, after work is over, the remaining work is split 50-50.

It’s easy to say that such an arrangement is completely reasonable – after all, the self-employed partner has the time to do this, right? Well, on the other side of the coin, the partner working outside of the home is also taking breaks but not filling them with housework.

It’s unsurprising that, over a long period of time, the self-employed partner may feel some sense of … unbalance, while the partner working outside the home still feels the arrangement is 50-50. This can easily create hard feelings. The best way to handle it is to talk it out.

The social needs of both partners change. When both of us worked outside the home in fairly social environments, we had similar feelings about how much to socialize with others on evenings and weekends.

Then, when I began to work solo, my ideas in that area changed. During my work day, I interacted with others much less than I did before and thus, after work, my desire to socialize went up quite a lot. At the same time, Sarah’s desires remained unchanged.

Our solution has largely been that we invite people over a bit more often than we used to. On top of that, I’ve started to become more involved in community groups and organizations of all kinds, even taking on significant responsibility in one of them. This balance works out well for both of us.

When children are sick, the self-employed parent ends up being the nurturing one most of the time. As I write this, my son is currently watching a program on PBS (Caillou). He’s home sick for the day and I’m busy trying to get some work in.

While this means I’m rushed a little bit, I am the partner with the more flexible schedule, so when the children are sick, I’m almost always the one that steps in to take care of them. This, of course, means that my wife is less interrupted by such things at her work.

Again, this can sometimes feel unbalanced and, if left undiscussed, feel unfair. The instant one partner begins to feel things are out of balance, it should be discussed openly. Such things can easily fester.

The work of the self-employed partner can often bleed into time that used to be shared doing other things. Today, I’m spending much of my time with my son. I’ll make him snacks, make him lunch, put him down for a nap, and if he feels better this afternoon, I’ll play some games with him and work on writing the alphabet with him.

That means that, unexpectedly, I’ve lost most of a day’s worth of work at a time when I can’t really afford such leakage. So, this evening, I’ll need to make up for it. As a result, Sarah will find herself doing solo things. Thankfully, she doesn’t mind this – she’s an avid reader – but it does mean that we won’t be able to do something together, like play a board game.

It can become harder to discuss work. A few times a day, I’ll go do something completely unrelated to my work, simply because I need the mental break. I’ll read the rules for a board game. I’ll wash dishes. I’ll read a book for personal enjoyment. I’ll visit messageboards.

At first, when I told Sarah about this, she was fairly annoyed. “Why are you wasting time?” was her immediate response.

Here’s the thing, though. Most workplaces do offer breaks – and quite often, other break times are squeezed into work times. We gather around the water cooler and chat. We stop in another worker’s office or cubicle and see what’s going on. We go to meetings. In other words, most “real” workplaces have tons of time for mental breaks.

Since I’m self-employed, I don’t have nearly as many opportunities for those kinds of breaks, so I have to make my own. This usually involves things that would be seen as a time-waster in other environments. Again, this is something that’s worth discussing openly.

Here’s the most important thing to remember if you make this change. It offers a lot of benefits, but it changes countless dynamics within your relationship. The best way to deal with this is to talk about it. If one of you is bothered by how a dynamic is changing, say so. Don’t let it fester and grow and become something seriously problematic.

Good luck!