203: Your Money or Your Freedom

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy, and I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgements.  

If I’m thinking about things correctly, and I’m pretty sure I am, this episode is going to come out the week before Thanksgiving happens in the United States.  So depending on where you are in the world and what holidays you celebrate, we are right on the brink of what we tend to think of as THE holidays.  And although navigating your infidelity situation can be difficult at any time of year, this may be a particularly challenging time of year to deal with all of the ins and outs of whatever you’re doing that counts as infidelity.  My suggestion is that you deal with holiday-related challenges or potential challenges as proactively as you possibly can.  With a bit of planning, and with the right tools at your disposal, dealing with infidelity during the holidays can be a lot easier.  And if you need help making a plan, and if you are in need to tools to help you get through the holidays, let’s work together. 

There are two ways you can have me as your coach.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my online course, You’re Not the Only One.  Either way, I’m going to teach you how to approach your infidelity situation differently so that you start to feel RELIEF, and a little more ease, and so you can start to handle whatever you have in front of you in a way that you feel great about.  To get started, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  

Okay.  Today we’re going to talk about one of the ways money considerations can play a role in infidelity situations.  And I’m also going to answer a question from a listener about age, and how age matters in infidelity situations.

There are lots of money considerations that can come up related to infidelity, but what I’m going to focus on today is the reluctance some people feel about leaving their marriage because they don’t want to give up half of their wealth, even though they really want to pursue a non-affair relationship with someone other than their spouse.  Maybe they have an affair partner and they really want to share a life with them.  Or maybe they’ve been cheating on their spouse with various different people, and the point isn’t that they want to leave their spouse so they can pursue a relationship with a specific person, they just know that they want the option to pursue new relationships with anyone they want to.

But for a lot of folks, doing that means getting divorced, or at least separated, and for some people, that includes financial changes that seem significant and undesirable.  When clients in this kind of situation first start talking to me, their thinking boils down to, “I don’t want to lose half of my wealth,” or “I don’t want to have to give up half of my money.”  Sometimes people are even a little more dramatic and they say, “I don’t want to give up EVERYTHING.”

Now, before I go much further, I want to mention that some of my clients are considering divorce and are totally unfazed about the financial implications of divorce.  I say this because I think it’s helpful to consider that some of your fellow humans do not consider the financial implications of divorce to be a problem at all.  And that’s not to scold you for thinking whatever you’re currently thinking about money if you are super freaked out about the likely financial implications of a divorce.  It’s just to say that it really is possible for you to look at your finances in a different way, and you might gain a lot from doing so.

The other thing I want to mention right out of the gate is that I do not see a correlation between the amount of money people have and their concern or lack of concern about the financial implications of divorce.  I work with some folks who don’t have a ton of resources.  And some of them are very concerned about the financial implications of divorce, and some of them aren’t.  I also work with some folks who are in the top five percent, top one percent when it comes to financial resources.  And what I see is that some of the people who have multiple millions of dollars to their name are no less concerned about the financial implications of divorce than people who have far less money.  And sometimes, the folks whose assets are in the millions of dollars are EXTREMELY concerned about the idea of losing half of what they have.  Some people who have this kind of money are like, whatever, I have so much, ending up with half of what I have is totally fine with me.  But some people really don’t want to have less than what they currently have, even if what they currently have is in the multiple millions.

So if you’re in that boat, I’m talking to you very specifically today.  But even if you aren’t in the situation of having multiple millions of dollars in assets and you’re worried about losing half of them, today’s episode will still probably speak to you in some interesting ways.  Because what I’m talking about today isn’t just about having a certain amount of money, or not having a certain amount of money.  It’s also about getting clear on what important to us and why, and deciding what we want to do in the service of what’s important to us, when our desires are in conflict with each other. 

So anyway, pretty regularly, a client will say something like this to me:

I REALLY want out of my marriage.  I KNOW I want to live a different life.  I love my spouse, I care about my spouse, I want the best for my spouse, but I do not want to be married to them anymore.  I REALLY want to experience a different way of living.

Sometimes the person YEARNS to have a life with a specific someone else they’ve met.

Sometimes the person doesn’t have a specific someone that they want to share their life with, but they’ve been seeing other people without their spouse’s knowledge, and they know there’s a big world out there, and lots of interesting people in it, and they want to get out of their marriage and live differently and love different and fuck differently and do all the things differently.

And when I say people want to do these things, I mean they KNOW they want to do these things.  They are as sure as they can be that they really want to experience life beyond their marriage.  

But they also don’t want to have less money.  They REALLY don’t want to have less money.  Some people tell me that having a certain amount of money, or a certain amount of wealth is THE most important thing to them.  

And if that were 100% true, that wouldn’t be a problem.  The problem is that if they’re talking to me, they’ve usually started to get the sense that something else might be as important if not more important to them than keeping all of their wealth.

When I talk to people who are really concerned about having less money, one of two things often happens.  Some people will say, “I know it’s really shallow to care about money so much,” or “I know I shouldn’t care about money as much as I do.”  Or people tell me all the reasons WHY they care about money as much as they do.  Some people grew up punishingly poor and then created a lot of wealth for themselves, and they tell me they are terrified of seeing any decrease in their net worth, because they are so afraid of finding themselves in poverty again.

Here's the deal, people: telling yourself it’s shallow to care about money as much as you do probably isn’t helping you very much.  And similarly, telling yourself that it’s totally reasonable for you to care about money as much as you do may not be helping you all that much either.  We want to recognize your current perspectives without judgment, but then we want to start to explore your ideas about money.  We don’t want to keep scolding ourselves for thinking whatever we currently think, but neither do we want to justify continuing to think what we currently think.

And then we want to get clear on what you get out of having however much money you have.  Sometimes people try to tell me that the value of having a certain amount of money is obvious, or self-evident.  But that’s not exactly how it works.  Having a certain amount of money, or a certain net worth is a neutral circumstance.  Let’s say your net worth is thirty million dollars.  If that’s a verifiable fact, then that’s a verifiable fact.  But what that thirty million dollars means is based upon our subjective thinking.  Some people think, “Thirty million dollars is a LOT of money!”  Some people DON’T think it’s a lot of money.  Some people think they could live out all of their wildest dreams if they had thirty million dollars.  Other people don’t think it’s enough for them to live the way they want to.  And what you think about the amount of money you have is up to you, and it matters a lot.

So let’s say you’ve got thirty million dollars to your name and you really want to get divorced, but you don’t want that to go down to fifteen million.  It’s important to figure out why you don’t want to go down to fifteen million.  When I ask people this question they often say, “BECAUSE I’LL HAVE LESS MONEY!”

And to that I always say, yes, that is true.  And it’s so important to recognize that in our advanced capitalist society, the idea that it is fundamentally better to have more money than less money is often accepted as an absolute, non-negotiable truth.  And a lot of us have absorbed this way of thinking and have never really questioned it.

Now, if you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you may have heard me talk about how important it is to respect your own preferences.  It’s okay to like what you like.  If you simply like the idea of having more money than less money, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  It’s not a problem if it’s not a problem.  But when we find ourselves having to choose between keeping a certain amount of money and something else that we consider really important, we probably need to interrogate our thinking about the value of money.  

So one of the questions I ask my clients to help them better understand their thinking about the value of money is, if you went from having 30 million dollars to having 15 million dollars, what specifically in your life would change?  

And sometimes people respond by saying something like, “Well, I won’t have ANY MONEY” and I say, “Well, that’s probably not quite true, right?” and we work on getting their mind to see that in all likelihood, they still will have money.  We shift from the really extreme thinking to less extreme thinking, and if we need to do it bit by bit, we do it bit by bit.

When people are a little less freaked out, however, they often tell me that if they get divorced and lose half their wealth, they won’t have the money to do all the things they want to do, or they won’t be able to do the things they want to do in the way they’re currently able to do them.

So if this is the concern, the opportunity lies in getting really specific about what it is you don’t think you’re going to be able to do.  It’s really easy to get lost in the vague but powerful fear that we wouldn’t be able to live the way we want to anymore if we were to give up half our wealth, and to become paralyzed by that fear, and to stay married because we’re so paralyzed by that fear, even if we really do want to experience life outside of our marriage.

So we need to get SPECIFIC.  How will your life actually change if you’re working with less money?  People often tell me is they won’t be able to travel as much, or they won’t be able to travel in the style they’ve grown accustomed to as often as they’d like to.  That’s a good start, but from there we need to get even more specific.  How much would you ideally like to travel, in a year?  And how much less would you end up travelling if your financial situation changed?  We’ve gotta get really specific about what you anticipate is going to change.

Then we get to ask ourselves how much these changes matter to us.  Let’s say you like to travel abroad six times a year, and you like to fly first class, and you like to stay at five-star accommodations.  And you like to be able to dine at the best restaurants and order any bottle of wine off the wine list without looking at the prices.  And let’s say you really like shopping, and you like buying nice things when you travel.  And let’s say if you got divorced, you would find it financially feasible to make these kinds of trips three times a year, rather than six times a year.  

If this is what you determine, here’s the next question: is this a problem for you?  Is travelling in the style you like three times a year rather than six times a year a problem for you?  You get to decide!  There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this kind of question.  You are allowed to value whatever you value.  The point is just to get really clear on what you value, and what you want to do about it.

You may really not like the idea of cutting back on your travel schedule, or adjusting the manner in which you travel, and that is fair enough.  But here’s a question for you to consider: is it that you don’t like the IDEA of cutting back on your travel, or because you don’t like the idea of something being taken away from you?  Or is it that travelling in a certain way, with a certain frequency is deeply important to you and makes your life worth living?  And if it’s the latter, how bad will it be for you to have less of an experience that’s really important to you?  Sometimes we’re okay with having less of something we really value, and sometimes we aren’t.  And often we don’t make this decision consciously.  We don’t like the IDEA of not having something, or the idea of having less of something, so we make that mean that it’s truly important for us to not relinquish that something. But sometimes we’re actually just fine if we have less of something – even if it’s something we really value!

And often, one of the big reasons why we’re fine with having less of something we really value is because it’s being willing to have less of that thing enables us to have or experience something ELSE that we value.

If you’re really concerned about hanging onto your money, you don’t need to judge yourself for that.  You’re allowed to prioritize keeping all of your money, even if that means choosing to stay in a marriage you’re not all that excited about.  

But you may want to ask yourself what ELSE you value, aside from money.  And, most obviously, if you’ve been cheating on your spouse, one of the things you may really want is the freedom to have a non-affair relationship with someone other than your spouse.  Or to be able to have a relationship with whoever you want.  Or simply to have an experience of life that doesn’t include being married to your current spouse.  And there may be a lot of reasons WHY you want to have these experiences, and all of those reasons put together may mean that you REALLY value the opportunity to experience this particular sort of freedom.  

And you get to ask yourself what that’s worth to you.  Maybe you critically consider that question and you decide that actually, you don’t want the experience of living outside of your marriage THAT badly.  Maybe you decide that actually, you really do like the money better than the freedom – even if it’s mostly about the idea of having a certain amount of money.  But then again, maybe really DO want the freedom to live life outside of your marriage that badly!  Maybe you want nothing more than to live in a different way, and to have the option of having different relationships, and a different experience of your own autonomy and individuality.  Maybe you really, really want that.

Maybe it’s worth it to have less money to be able to live the way you’d rather be living.  As far as I know, money is a renewable resource.  But time isn’t.  If you want to experience life in a particular way, waiting to do that means you’re giving up time in which you could already be doing that.  And as far as I know, we don’t get time back.  However, money is something that we can create more of in our lives.  It’s fair enough to not like the idea of relinquishing some of the money you currently have.  But if you’re really stuck on that concern, I want you to think seriously about the opportunities you have to replenish your coffers going forward.  I bet that if you think about it, you’ll probably start to see ways that you can create more money a lot more easily than you can create more time.

Another thing that I really want to share with you is that sometimes it turns out that it’s not actually all that likely that the person who fears they won’t be able to live the way they want to live truly will not be able to live the way they want to live, even if they have less money.  For instance, someone who loves travelling and loves staying at ultra high-end hotels may tell me about how much money they need for the kind of travel they like, and then a moment later say, “Well, I only take a week off a year anyway.  I love to work.  It’s not like I’m travelling all the time.  Having less money will actually not make any difference in the amount of travelling I do, or the style in which I travel.”  Right?  

Also, sometimes people will tell me, “Well, actually, the difference in my wealth won’t make ANY difference in my life right now, it’ll only matter when I retire… but I’m not planning to retire immediately, and I know I can make a lot more money before I do.”  Sometimes all it takes is a little critical investigation of our thoughts to see that relinquishing some of our money if we get divorced isn’t as much of a problem as we might have initially thought.

The really cool thing about examining our thinking about money is that we may find that we actually enjoy our wealth even more when we aren’t quite so desperately attached to it.  AND, for another thing, when we are willing to investigate our thinking about the value of our money, we may give ourselves the opportunity to pursue things that are worth even more to us than money.  We may give ourselves the opportunity to live a richer life overall.

It's really important to know that making choices that prioritize one thing that we value over another may not be comfortable – at least, maybe not immediately.  Sometimes it’s really uncomfortable to relinquish something that we value, even if doing so is what enables us to experience something ELSE that we value.  

And we don’t have to feel sorry for ourselves when we find ourselves in this position.  We don’t have to entertain the idea that it’s not FAIR to find ourselves in this position.

If you HAVE been thinking this way, I’m not scolding you.  To echo something I said earlier, there’s a really common idea out there that holding onto certain resources, or maintaining a certain standard of living, or having a certain amount of money is intrinsically good.  This way of thinking is definitely out there, and if you’ve absorbed it, there’s nothing wrong with you.

And I don’t think that way of thinking is TOTALLY off target.  For instance, would I rather have money in the bank than not have money in the bank?  Sure.  Would I rather have assets rather than debts?  Sure.  Would I rather have more money than less money?  Again, the answer is yes.  However, this logic may not always help us.

I’ll give you an example from my own life.  The last two jobs I had before I became fully self-employed as a coach provided me with some of the best employer-sponsored health insurance that a person could possibly have, and my employee contribution to my insurance premiums was very modest.  Was my salary amazing in either of those positions?  No, especially not by San Francisco standards.  But I had excellent health, dental, and vision coverage for myself and my spouse, and I valued this a lot.

And I valued this excellent health care coverage for a lot of reasons.  For one thing, I believed – and still believe – that excellent health insurance coverage is a very nice thing to have.  My work as a sociologist extended into health care and health policy and health insurance, and I believed – and still believe – in the importance of being protected from financial ruin through good health insurance.  I believe in the importance of access to quality health care, both for everyone in general, and for myself in particular.  And, since the health care system in the United States is the way it is, my ticket to excellent health insurance was through employers.

Now here’s the thing that’s important to point out.  Even though I was and still am ideologically in favor of good health insurance coverage, and even though I really liked what I thought of as the security of having good health insurance coverage, my little family doesn’t use that much health care.  Neither my spouse nor I have chronic health issues.  Knock on wood.  Neither of us have really needed our excellent benefits, or benefitted from our excellent benefits, in the way that some people do.  But that didn’t matter to me.  What mattered to me was the security I imagined I got from having my super awesome health insurance.  I liked the IDEA of having the health insurance that we had very, very much.

The only problem was, I did not like the SOURCE of my excellent benefits.  I had no love for the jobs that provided me with my wonderful health insurance.  And for me, this was a problem.  For me, being able to do work that I love is really, really important.  Like, existentially important.  So although I really liked having my awesome medical, dental, and vision insurance, the misery tax that I was paying to keep those benefits was REALLY high.  

When I was still working at the second of these two jobs that provided great benefits, I started coaching, and when my practice started to grow, I went down to part time with my employer, and I was able to keep my benefits AND have a bustling coaching practice.  And although this was the sort of compromise that could have worked well for some people, it just wasn’t a solution for me.  I really didn’t want anything to do with the job that provided the great health insurance.  The only thing I got that I valued from that job was the benefits.  And on the other side of things, I really WANTED to devote myself to my coaching practice full-time.  But the idea of those benefits being such an important source of security for me kept me in that job for longer than I would have liked to have stayed.

But I knew I wanted to be done with that particular form of misery, so I did leave the job, and when I did, I took my benefits through COBRA.  At the time, paying for the employer-sponsored benefits I’d had for myself and my spouse through COBRA cost about $1800 a month.  Maybe $1900.  And taking the leap to paying for that out of pocket was a little dauting for me.  I was determined to make it work, but that was a significant amount of money to add to my household’s monthly expenses, and I was definitely nervous about taking that on.  But I was willing to deal with that nervousness and figure out how to make it work, and that’s what I did.

Then, when my cobra ran out, I learned that I couldn’t even buy the kind of coverage I had through my employer and then through cobra at ANY price.  And I guess I should have known that, but somehow I didn’t, or I’d forgotten about that, and I was NOT HAPPY.  I wanted the sense of security that I associated with my awesome insurance coverage, and I was willing to consider paying even more money for it.  But that turned out to not be possible.  So now, guess what, I pay even more money than I was paying for cobra for far, far, far less good health coverage.  And I no longer have dental and vision coverage.  If you know about health insurance and self-employment, you know all about this, and if you don’t know about this, you really don’t want me to bore you with the details.

And let me tell you, people, I am PISSED about this.  I’m angry that I personally don’t have access to the awesome coverage that I used to.  I’m angry that other people also can’t buy the kind of health insurance policy that I used to have.  I’m angry that health insurance is the way it is the United States.  And approximately every two to four days, I think about all of this, and I get super pissed off, and I have a moment of being angry about my health insurance situation in particular, and the health insurance situation in the United States in general.  

Now here’s the thing.  At the moment, anyway, my shitty, expensive health insurance, and my lack of dental and vision coverage have not had a major impact on my life.  Do I dislike the idea of paying more for less?  Sure I do.  Would I prefer to have access to a different plan?  Yes I would.  But – again, knock on wood – I don’t have major health issues, and neither does my spouse.  Yes, our premium costs more and covers less, and I don’t like that.  But my rabid DISLIKE of this situation causes me more trouble than the situation itself.

Could that change if I got into a really gnarly accident, or came down with a major illness, and our medical expenses shot way up?  Sure it could.  But there are ways that I can prepare for that possibility without getting too worked up about it.  And if that were to happen, I could deal with it in the present, one step at a time.  Which is really the only way we can deal with anything.

And I will tell you that what I get in exchange for giving up my beautiful amazing employer-sponsored health insurance is VERY valuable to me.  I don’t have to work for an employer that I really don’t want to work for.  I don’t have to do work that I’m not interested in or excited about.  I get to spend my productive time doing things that I’m passionate about doing.  That’s pretty darn important to me.  So even if the idea of giving up this thing that I really valued bothered me and still does bother me, what I get from being willing to not have that thing anymore is worth a LOT.  I would like to think that if I really wanted to, I could get myself a job, through an employer other than myself, and I could get myself some kick-ass health insurance again if I wanted to.  But do I want to?  Absolutely not.   

Now I’m going to answer a question a listener sent in.  Here it is:

“Are the stakes higher for the over-fifty crowd when it comes to making the decision to stay and work on the relationship, leave it, or stay with a LT affair?  (By “LT” affair, I assume this person means long-term affair.)  What are your thoughts on the topic of being trapped by time?”

The first thing I’ll say in response to this question is that my clients, over the years, have ranged in age from their mid-twenties to their mid-seventies.  Off the top of my head, I’d say that more than half of my clients have been in their forties or fifties, but that’s just a very rough estimate.  So when I put together these podcast episodes, I’m thinking about trends in my clients’ experiences.  I’m thinking about common issues that my clients deal with.  And the kinds of infidelity-related opportunities and challenges I talk about on this show are things that clients of all different ages contend with.  I actually don’t come across too many age-specific concerns, or concerns that appear primarily within a particular age group.  And I think the reason for that is quite simple. 

And that reason is this: age is a neutral circumstance.  And what I mean by that is, it isn’t inherently meaningful to be fifty years old.  Or older than fifty, or younger than fifty.  Now I know there are a lot of messages out there that will tell us otherwise, but age really is just a number.  However, what you make that number mean matters a LOT.  If you think the stakes are higher for you because you’re over fifty, that belief will guide the choices you make.  And the choices you make will have a real impact on your life.  

The really interesting thing is that the idea that “the stakes are higher for you because you’re over fifty” can be leveraged in a number of directions.  Some people tell me, oh my god, I’m fifty, I am pretty sure I have less life in front of me than behind me, so this means it’s time for me to go after what I really want!  I can’t waste time anymore!  I’ve gotta get busy living!!!

On the other hand, other people think, oh my god, I’m fifty, that means I’m getting old.  And since I’m getting old, that means the stakes of my choices are higher, and THAT means I need to be really conservative in my choices.  I need to avoid anything that I think could be risky.  And I think any big changes in my life could be risky, so I’d better avoid anything that I think counts as a big change.  

So I want you to consider the possibility that we’re only as trapped by time as we think we are.  And if you think you are trapped by time, what I suggest is that you get really clear about what exactly you mean by that.  What does it mean to you to be trapped by time?  Without getting more specific, this is a pretty vague idea, and scary but vague ideas can limit us in all kinds of crazy ways.  So break down what you mean by being “trapped by time.”  And then, you may want to start to consider the ways in which you are NOT trapped by time.  You are allowed to think that you are trapped by time if you really want to, but if you do want to think that way, at least give yourself the chance to consider the ways in which you are NOT trapped by time.

Finally, it may be useful for all of us to remember that we don’t know how much time we’ve got.  To quote the Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, “Death is certain.  Time of death is uncertain.  What matters?”  Sure, it may be fair to say that if we’re 50, it’s more likely that we have more life behind us than in front of us than we do if we are thirty.  But we really don’t know for sure, and no matter how old we are, the question of what matters to us may be the question that matters the most.

All right people.  That’s just about it for today.  When this episode comes out, it’s going to be pretty late in November, and if you have been thinking that you would like some coaching from me before the end of this year, now is the time to sign up for an introductory coaching session with me.  The holidays can be a particularly difficult time to be in the midst of an infidelity situation, and if you think you might want some help getting through the holidays this year, I encourage you to be proactive and book an appointment with me now.  Or, you can enroll in your self-guided course right this minute and get access to powerful teachings and assignments that go beyond what I cover on the podcast.  Whichever way you choose to work with me, I encourage you to be proactive about finding yourself some relief and a clear path forward.  You are just a few mouse clicks away from starting to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about.  And of course, to get started working with me, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com. 

Thank you all so much for listening!  Bye for now.