If your husband is a decent man, money never becomes a bargaining chip. If he isn't, full financial dependence turns into a painful trap.
Is financial dependence on your husband normal?
The short answer goes like this.
If your husband is a decent, reasonable man, money will never become a tool of manipulation or a bargaining chip.
If your husband is neither decent nor reasonable, then complete financial dependence on him becomes a painful trap.
In my sessions I meet women who are in a relationship with a man they no longer want to be with. He cheats, or he drinks, or he lies — in short, he behaves badly. The situations differ, but the outcome is always the same: without her own income, a woman is afraid to walk into the unknown with her children, so she puts up with things as they are.
She has to make a very unpleasant compromise with herself: “I’ll keep up the illusion of a family to buy myself some time and figure out what to do next.”
Sometimes, in a relationship like that, a woman simply tries to set aside some money for life after the divorce. Sometimes she frantically starts studying and looks for a quick side job. And sometimes, burned out emotionally, she starts convincing herself that all men are cheating scumbags and there’s nowhere to go anyway.
In those situations I always explain to my clients that self-respect is worth far more than any comfort or financial stability. If you’re in a relationship where you’re cheated on, lied to, or physically hurt, you get used to living in that horror. Your psyche gradually adapts to being treated that way, and it becomes your normal.
You can’t reset or fully forget that experience afterwards. I think you shouldn’t take a single action that lowers your own level of self-respect.
I’ve seen more than once how a mother of three left a husband who fully provided for the family but treated her appallingly.
At first those women were terrified. Deciding to take that step was extremely hard. But then work turned up, and help with the children (from relatives and friends), and later a normal man who doesn’t hit and doesn’t cheat.
Compromises with yourself cost a person more than anything else.
In my “Financial Literacy” course I share some tools that help a person become more autonomous and reduce the stress tied to money.
Are there women among the people you know who, for lack of their own income, are stuck in an unpleasant dependence on a man behaving badly?
P.S. An important disclaimer: I’m not urging anyone to stay in a relationship or to end one. We’re all adults and can decide what to do with our own lives. I’m only sharing my observations.