Money as a Substitute for Love and Closeness

Money carries personal, subjective meanings tied to self-perception within relationships. In conflicts, money often represents security, regulates interpersonal boundaries, and substitutes for absent childhood love. It can also signal status and power, confirm achievement, and validate self-worth. Couples argue about these underlying meanings rather than the money itself. Conflicts about money tend to arise when anxiety exists about other issues. Anxiously attached individuals may adopt materialistic values to cope with loneliness, using possessions to fill a social and communication void. Materialism cannot provide warmth, closeness, and reciprocity that human relationships offer. Anxiety is a basic human condition that intensifies under stress, so non-material worries can surface as financial disputes.

"Money has multiple meanings, and these meanings are very personal, subjective, and linked to the perception of the self, especially within a relationship. Multiple research studies cited in this post demonstrate that for people, money serves as: a security guarantor; an interpersonal boundaries regulator; a substitute for love that was absent in childhood; status and power over others; confirmation of achievement; validation of self-worth."

"So, by extension, when a couple argues about money, they argue about these very things. We turn to conflicts about money when we are anxious about something else. Norris et al. published an interesting study in 2012 in which they found that anxiously attached individuals-those who are unsure and worry about the security of their personal connections-tend to adopt materialistic values as a way to cope with loneliness, essentially substituting material possessions for people."

"Materialism fills a communicational and social void but fails to provide what only human relationships can: warmth, closeness, and reciprocity. Why is it relevant to couples' communication about money? It is because not only anxiously attached people tend to get anxious. If we believe existential psychology, anxiety is a very basic human condition that gets aggravated at times of stress."

"Therefore, when either you or your partner gets anxious about non-material things, such as not getting enough attention or feeling sexually rejected"

Read at Psychology Today