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Financial Stress and Fighting

LHJ: Financial stress is tearing your marriage apart. Your mortgage is harder to meet. Your husband's job is getting downsized. And you can barely afford to fill up your gas tank each week. This has left your husband alternately despondent and quick to anger, while you're in a state of near panic. You don't want to go back to work, but should you? Instead of bonding together in this difficult time you're either snapping at each other or not talking. What can you do to break this marital bad spell?

Dr. Phil: The first thing you have to do is recognize the fallacies of what I call non-directional venting. We take things out on our mate because he or she is handy. Not because he or she is responsible. He or she didn't cause gas prices to go through the roof. Yet spouses are handy, so that's where you vent. Monsters live in the dark. If you talk about them it's like turning the light on and realizing you were afraid of a mouse, not a dragon. One of the things people in America are going to have to understand is you don't solve money problems with money. You solve money problems with lifestyle choices. It's math, not magic. If you've got $2,250 a month to spend and you've got $3,200 worth of bills every month, then you need to change what you're doing. There are no fixed expenses. If you need to unload a car, unload it. If you need to move to a smaller house, move. Don't live with all of this pressure because you're trying to stretch one dollar into two. And there's no reason to turn on each other about it. Solve it together.

Robin: It's important for couples to always remember: Don't assume your partner knows how you feel. Don't assume he knows you're scared or upset or mad. I think you have to take a step back and go, "Wow. We've been fighting for a week. Now why is that?" You really have to be in the marriage every day and look at it and go, "Why are we not getting along? Why are we arguing and fighting so much?"

Dr. Phil: We aren't talking about us, right? We're talking about people in general. We haven't fought for a week.

Robin: No, no, no. People in general.

Dr. Phil: Yes, dear.

Robin: We are not fighters. We choose not to fight and we don't need to fight. We truly do adore each other.

LHJ: Doesn't one of you just get sulky and stop talking sometimes?

Robin: I tried that earlier in our marriage because it worked with my father growing up -- pouting. I was the youngest girl. Very spoiled. So with my father pouting worked and he'd say, "What's wrong?" I tried that with Phillip. He didn't understand pouting. He was like, "What? Something's wrong, obviously." And I'm like, "Well, I don't want to talk about it." Finally, he said, "That's not who I am. If you'll just tell me what's bothering you then I will never do it again." And he said, "If I'm bothering you with something I want you to tell yourself, 'He's not doing that on purpose, he just didn't know that would upset me.'"

Dr. Phil: Not much bothers me, frankly. But the pouting stuff -- I said, "look, let's at least be intellectually honest. Why waste six hours going through a charade?"

Robin: When we first got married we both truly wanted to be happily married. And I told him that early on. We're going to do whatever it takes to be happy and have fun. He was a very serious man when I met him. It paid for me to learn that when he's really serious it doesn't mean something's wrong.

Dr. Phil: That old saying: life's too short. It really is true. I mean, at our age, you can count how much longer we're going to be in this world in months.

Robin: In months? What?

Dr. Phil: Well, let's just say we live 30 more years. That's 360 months.

Robin: Okay. Now I'm back with you.

Dr. Phil: When it's at a point that you can count it in digits that small, you realize life is too short because eventually we're going to die.

Robin: Jeeeeez!

Dr. Phil: Well, my attitude is, I'm going to be happy between now and then. If I die tomorrow, I'm going to say boy, I was happy yesterday. It's a crummy day today if I'm dying [laughing] but I was happy yesterday.

Robin: Wow. Well, take it from us. It works to say we're going to be happily married for the rest of our lives. Divorce is not an option for us. It never has been. We had the divorce conversation early on. We needed to make it clear: We're never divorcing. And Phillip has said, you need to look me in the eye because I'm telling you I will never leave you. And I believed him. We were married maybe six months at the time. And I remember thinking, "I have been living our relationship up to this point with, well, what's going to run him off ? Is what I did today going to make him mad enough to leave?" Even if it was just spending too much money or whatever. And then I remember thinking, "oh, I don't ever have to worry if what I did was going to run him off because I know he is never leaving." That's off the table. What's on the table is being happily married. That takes a lot of pressure off.