The Deliberately Single Man - Part VI

Love for Financial Autonomy, Continued

This is the sixth in a series that highlights my framework for well-rounded single manhood that I’ve called “The Deliberately Single Man.” Originally published at Medium on April 10, 2022.

Love for Financial Autonomy, Continued

Love for financial autonomy grows when a man has the resources to create a home that is a shrine to his values. It grows when he makes purchases and allocates his resources in a way that makes sense to him and leaves him feeling entirely comfortable and relaxed in his own skin. And it grows continually stronger when he realizes he now has the power to not just replicate the stories of his past, but can build a future on his own terms.

Like all of the stories of our younger years, our stories around finances and money are dictated to us, and we absorb those stories as if they are God’s spoken word. Kids quickly discover that they are either “rich” or “poor,” with the consequences of these definitions stretching far beyond the amount of money in their parents’ bank accounts. Those same kids then grow older in a culture where talking about money is still taboo and formal financial education is almost non-existent.

The consequence of all this? Reaching adulthood with the feeling that money is something that just happens to you, that you have no real agency over it, and that the best you can do is replicate the patterns of those around you and those you observed in your past. As the deliberately single man grows past this conditioning, he starts to see one thing very clearly: running his financial life is just like running his own small business. As such, it pays to think and act like a principled, educated businessman.

A smart businessman always tries to be aware of existential threats to his business. Love, as it is practiced in this culture, is one of those threats. This goes beyond complaints about the cost of dating and the like. These are things that merely impact the bottom line; they aren’t a threat to the whole enterprise. The main issue is the ways that we are taught to treat our financial and business decisions when love is involved, which to me seem certifiably insane.

This is because culturally, we’re led to believe that when romantic love persists long enough, we’re to demonstrate our maturity by entering into a contract provided under law that comes with a host of rights and responsibilities and drastically alters the legal landscape around our finances. This is what’s known as marriage.

Let’s look at how the corporate world looks at mergers of these kinds. When one company proposes buying another, the lawyers and accountants fly into action. If the buyer doesn’t do its required due diligence and work to get a true picture of the seller’s balance sheet, or the seller works to hide negative information, there is the real possibility of criminal or civil charges. At the very least, the parties involved would be tied up for years in litigation from shareholders.

Considering all the legal implications that come with marriage, one would think that a similar process would take place. Instead, it seems like it’s undertaken as the business equivalent of one company buying another without having any idea what its books look like. And further, wanting to buy this particular company because you like its logo and you think their corporate spokeswoman has a nice personality.

An alternative to this madness is to normalize a more rigorous approach when two individuals wish to merge the “small businesses” of their lives. Public records searches? Of course. A full and open accounting of assets, debts, and income? Non-negotiable.

This just in…I’m being told that I just killed the mood. It seems that when love is involved, we get told constantly that it is both unnecessary and unattractive to be so demanding when it comes to financial transparency. It’s unnecessary because we’re trained that when we tell someone “I love you,” we’re also automatically and implicitly saying “I trust you.” This of course applies to all matters financial, even if you have very little hard evidence that the person you love is actually trustworthy in this regard. Does this give you pause in your relationship? Never fear! Somehow, love will do the heavy lifting and things will magically work out. Still not convinced and want to raise the issue with your partner? Be prepared to see that implicit link between love and trust on full display, albeit in reverse. In this situation, telling someone “Don’t you trust me?” is automatically and implicitly saying “Don’t you love me?”

An unscrupulous person can easily manipulate this implicit link. If you questioning my trustworthiness is equivalent to questioning our love, then I can threaten to withdraw love until the questioning stops. And, since we’ve been so relentlessly told that being outside of love’s good graces is one of the worst places for a human to be, we’ll quickly learn to keep our questions to ourselves and fall in line.

All of this is often regarded as unattractive, as well. This is not just about the general taboos of talking about money, especially in the early stages of romantic relationships. It’s also about the bizarre cultural shorthand that substitutes “accounting” for “unsexual.” Need to drive home the point that a male character on a TV show is dull? Make him an accountant. The band Bowling for Soup, in their 2004 song “1985,” describes the depressed, dull state of the song’s female subject by noting that her husband is a CPA. Apparently, FDA-approved contraceptives include condoms, birth control pills, IUDs, and IRS form W-2.

But at least there’s evidence that avoiding financial transparency like the plague for these different reasons works well for couples, or else we wouldn’t be constantly doing it, right? Unfortunately, strife around money is still a leading cause of marital tensions and divorce, and surveys show that “financial infidelity”- the hiding of debts, assets, spending, and income from a partner – is rampant among American couples.

What do we have to lose by changing this dynamic? We as individuals, of course, have nothing to lose, but the social order, and those who fight every day to make sure it changes as little as possible, have everything to lose. Financial autonomy, and especially the love of it, threatens to upend one of the remaining powerful tools this establishment has to keep us dependent. Conservatives say they don’t want people dependent on government, but they, along with a healthy share of liberals, want us all dependent on romantic love.

This of course is not a commentary on human interdependence or even on romantic love itself; as I’ve mentioned before, none of this is love’s fault. What they want us dependent on is the prevailing ideology of romantic love. This is the ideology that strips us of our financial autonomy even as it tells us that’s what’s best for us. This is the ideology that fears the deliberately single man who loves his financial autonomy, because he will not be cowed to give that autonomy up for the promises the ideology makes. And a man who can’t be cowed is a man who can’t be controlled.

One final note on this topic. Recently, Kay Jewelers ran a national ad campaign with the tagline “Love is Unstoppable,” with the idea that love can go on even in the face of a global pandemic. However, ads like these also play out in the larger context of the cultural messaging around love. Considering that, this ad’s tagline can easily be interpreted as: Love- it’s coming for you. No matter what you say or think or do now, when your time comes, you will get in line. Because it’s a force that can’t be denied, even if you try. And why would you try? It’s a universal good. And why, if you tried, do you think you would succeed? Who do you think you are?

The deliberately single man knows exactly who he is, and knows that his financial autonomy and the power that the love of it brings will not be relinquished at fire-sale prices in exchange for the fantastical promises of an ideology.