When the economy takes a plunge, our libido often follows. It’s hard to feel aroused when money issues are weighing down your marriage. Whether you’re stressing over how to pay the bills or down right fighting with each other over it, money woes can take a serious toll on a couple’s relationship—especially in the bedroom. It’s no surprise that financial problems are the number-one cause of divorce, followed closely by a dysfunctional sex life.
If money problems are threatening your marriage, take a break from the stock market and invest in your sex life instead. You can diversify your portfolio and save your relationship by increasing your stock in these three marriage institutions:
Romance, Inc.
Escape your everyday stresses by planning a romantic getaway. If money troubles prevent you from shelling out the extra dough, turn your own home into a temporary haven from the external world. Turn the weekends into a mini vacation from the pressures of the week by promising to abandon all money talk and focus on each other for two whole days. By separating your feelings about money from your feelings about each other, you’ll be able to keep your marriage out of money conflicts.
Invest in small romantic gestures, such as candlelit dinners and sensual massages that will grow your intimate feelings toward one another. As long as romance is in the picture, sex won’t be far behind.
Sex, LLP
Keep things revved up by buying sex toys and other fun sexual enhancements. A small investment of $40 for a vibrator can turn into huge dividends in the bedroom. Visit a sex store and browse the merchandise together. You’ll not only find fun, cheap items like lubes and cock rings for under $10, but you’ll also find yourselves turned on and ready to use them as soon as you get home.
Money Corp.
If arguments over money are seriously threatening your marriage, invest your time into money counseling.
“Conflict and arguing over money is the most poisonous thing to a romantic relationship,” says Spencer Sherman, MBA, CFP and author of The Cure for Money Madness ( www.CureMoneyMadness.com ). Sherman holds financial intimacy workshops with marriage therapist Anne Watts to help couples work through their money madness issues together. The result is often a better sex life.
“Financial intimacy has a direct correlation to sexual intimacy because it’s the darkest part of our relationship,” says Sherman. Couples, he says, rarely have honest conversations with each other about the emotional baggage over money they each bring into the marriage. “As soon as you go into that dark place that’s causing so much friction, tension, stress and mistrust, of course the sex is going to improve because that area is handled. People have the best sex when there’s complete trust, honesty and openness between the two of them.”
If your relationship is suffering because of money problems, forget the stock market; temporarily invest in your sex life instead and watch the profits in your marriage soar.
Steve Cooper is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Hitched. You can follow him on Twitter at @hitchedmedia.
