The Greedy Marriage
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
-- Erich Fromm
Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.
-- Ecclesiastes 5:10
To speak of a greedy marriage conjures up movie stereotypes: the young woman flaunting her sexuality before the wealthy older man, the handsome young man flattering the aging wealthy widow, trading love for money.
In Daniel Defoe's 17th century classic Moll Flanders, one of the first novels in English, the heroine enters into a series of such arrangements, all of them unsatisfactory. In one scene, she spends everything she has to appear genteel in a desperate effort to capture a well-to-do husband. She succeeds beyond her expectations—he's handsome, and romantic, too. On their honeymoon, however, after the marriage has been consummated, Moll discovers that he was playing the same game she was. They have a good laugh, affectionately complete the honeymoon, then say farewell to return to their efforts to find wealthy spouses.
In an unjust world, where some have more than they could ever spend, and others have less than they need just to eat, wealth will always pose problems. Greed is our name for a disordered attitude toward wealth, and it can take many forms. In Dante’s Inferno, the greedy are divided into two camps: those who never have enough, and those who waste what they have. The two groups wage an eternal war on one another. When Dante tries to speak with them, he cannot--they have lost their very individuality, swallowed up by their greed.
Dante’s war between hoarders and those who squander their money is a disturbing reflection of the internal struggles of families beset by greed. Any marriage counselor will tell you that sex and money consistently rank as the top two reasons why couples fight. In both cases, one member of the pair just can't seem to get enough of what he or she views as a scarce commodity, while the other is often cast by the spouse as being too parsimonious with their resources.
A household is an economic unit, and money is an essential part of making the household work. An inability by one or both of the spouses to put the good of the marriage, and family, ahead of their own where money is concerned can lead to fundamental problems.
One couple who came to see me regarding their marital strife started off immediately addressing the issue of finances. Grant and Amy had been married for seven years. He was just finishing his MBA when he met her in an undergraduate course in which he was teaching assistant. They dated through his graduation but then she became pregnant and they decided to marry. She dropped out of college in order to stay home with their newborn daughter shortly after his career took off.
"We're never going to make it if Amy keeps spending so much money,"Grant began.
Amy grimaced visibly and turned toward her husband. "Honey, what can I do? I try not to spend too much." Turning her face toward mine, she added, "There are so many things that we need."
Grant sighed. "We need $150 worth of makeup from Macy's? We need $200 worth of groceries a week? We need to buy new carpets for the living room and put up new curtains? These are not needs, Hon."
Amy stared at the ceiling. "Okay, the carpets and the curtains may not be needs, but my makeup and—"
Grant gently chastised Amy. "Honey, you're beautiful. You don't need to spend that kind of money on makeup."
"But that's what it costs. And I don't buy it that often." Amy scooted closer to Grant on the sofa in my office, but he pulled away.
"Are you kidding?" he frowned at Amy. "I'm so stressed out, and you think you can just cuddle up and be cute and it'll all be okay." Grant turned to me. "She's got to take some responsibility here. We are drowning in debt."
Grant and Amy had discovered that a huge gulf opens between husband and wife when one of them spends–or seems to spend—too much.
I asked them when finances had not been a problem, trying to evaluate if the difficulty with money developed during the course of their marriage or if it was brought into the marriage due to one or both having a prior issue with overspending.
Amy chose not to respond to my question but rather to defend herself. "I think I'm doing better." She pushed her hair back and smiled weakly. "I've been trying to make a list before grocery shopping. But this last trip I spent more on groceries than we planned. Like giant containers of detergent and fabric softener and stuff."
"So," Grant responded sarcastically, "that explains why you only spent $350 bill at Cosco instead of the usual $400."
"Yeah," Amy said.
"How long do fabric softener and detergent usually last us?"
"At least three months."
"So it's not something we have to buy every 30 days," said Grant.
Amy shook her head. "No, no."
"Then why do you buy it every trip and store the boxes in the basement?" Turning toward me Grant again asserted, "Amy has a serious compulsion to overspend. Then she stockpiles her excess in the basement."
"Oh," Amy giggled nervously, "Grant teases me about stockpiling for the apocalypse. I don't really do that. I just like to cash in on sales."
Grant threw his hands up. "I've put her on a budget. I've limited her access to the car. I've talked to her friends about making get togethers at one another's homes instead of at the mall. I don't know what more I can do."
Amy's eyes filled with tears. "I recognize I'm losing him. He's so angry with me whenever I can't meet the budget restraints. We have really big fights every time the credit card statements come in the mail."
"I've even discovered her throwing them away in order not to have to discuss her spending," Grant said.
"I know things need to change but Grant makes a lot of money. He's ridiculously stingy with me. But then if he wants to spend money on new golf clubs or some new techno gadget, money is suddenly available."
Grant looked at me soberly. "What if I lost my job?"
As counseling continued, it turned out that the couples’ inability to budget stemmed not only from Amy’s almost compulsive spending, but from Grant’s unwillingness to be “controlled” by a formal budget. Grant spent less often than Amy, but he nonetheless impulsively purchased occasional high-ticket items or took friends out (“I’m buying”) to the same expensive restaurants at which he wined and dined clients at company expense. While criticizing Amy’s overspending as “waste,” he was nonetheless unwilling to subject himself to the same kinds of discipline he routinely used at work when evaluating company spending.
Grant and Amy are struggling with a common issue caused in part by the consumerism so prevalent in our society. As individuals, they learned to prize the fleeting gratification of owning stuff. Then, as partners in a marriage, they struggle to subordinate this gratification to the long-term security of a solid relationship built on love and a common mission for family progress.
In a marriage suffering from avarice, the overriding issue is about overspending regardless of the damage done to the stability of the family. In the worst cases, there is a competition between the spouses over spending.
There are a variety of reasons to develop psychological issues about money and overspending – a deprived childhood, leading to a desire to have the things one couldn't as a child; a privileged childhood, leading to a sense that one is entitled to things; a means to cope with depression; a technique of insulating oneself from anxiety; the thrill of spending and acquiring. However, at the core the individual is in search of some kind of security. The greedy person feeds on the thought that money—and the goods it can buy—will make one stylish and popular, accepted, and above all, safe.
Greed is not a desire to have nice things and to work to pay for them. It is an inordinate desire for wealth, and the things that wealth can buy you. People who give in to greed find the pursuit of wealth has become an end in itself, replacing the ends for which the wealth was originally sought. People who obsessively pursue wealth as a way to care for and protect their families often lose their families along the way. The bored, indulged spouse seeks affairs, the children drop out, get into drugs, and unproductive, unfulfilling party lifestyles.
People often misquote the old Biblical proverb about money. Money is not the root of all evil; having enough money to live a comfortable life is a good thing, a blessing. Marriage has always been in part about couples laboring together to create their shared vision of a secure and comfortable home life. It is love of money the Old Testament describes as the root of evil. Love of money is not love at all, of course, it is replacing a real beloved with something else.
The greedy marriage involves replacing a covenantal marriage for a contractual marriage with wealth rather than mutual self-giving at the center. A marriage for greed occurs any time one or both of the partners in a marriage enter into their coupleship for economic gain.
A marriage for greed can be a civil and pleasant contract so long as both parties hold to their part of the contract. What it cannot be is covenantal, a marriage of self-sacrificing love. Note how carefully Grant is tracking Amy's expenditures, and how quick she is to turn to talking about his spending in self-defense. In any marriage troubled by greed, each side is necessarily always keeping track to ensure that they are getting at least as much as they are giving.
The coupleship that God calls us to, by contrast, is one in which each gives everything to the other, ensuring that both always have an overabundance, and in which time and energy and devotion, not money, are the important currency.
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