If I Take Away His Money

The question came from a woman in her fifties who had been married twice. She said she used it on every man she dated after her second divorce, silently, around the third month.

If I take away his money, what is he giving me?

She didn't mean it cynically. She had nothing against money and liked men who had it. She meant it as a test of what was left once the most visible thing was removed, because she had been married to a man whose answer, it turned out, was nothing.

A method, not a mood

I've since started using her question in interviews, and it works better than almost anything else I ask. It's a way of separating two things that are easy to confuse: what a partner pays for, and what a partner does.

Ask it about a relationship and people start listing. Some lists are long. He notices when I'm tired. He handles his own family. He cooks on Sundays without being asked. He tells me the truth when I don't want it. Some lists stop after one item, and that item is usually a version of he makes me laugh.

The length of the list isn't the point. The point is that the woman answering usually learns something she half knew. The money had been doing a lot of work in the picture she held of him, and some of that work was covering for things that weren't there.

Why money hides so much

Money is the most legible form of contribution. It has a number. It arrives on a schedule. It can be compared, and it shows up on a bank statement, as I wrote in What the Wallet Actually Signals.

Almost everything else a partner gives is harder to see. Attention, reliability, protection, the habit of thinking ahead. These leave no receipts. So in a relationship where one person earns well, the earning can stand in for the rest, both in her mind and in his. He believes he's providing because the money proves it. She believes it too, until she asks the question.

What women find when they ask

When I put the question to women, three kinds of answer come back.

Some find a full list and feel relieved. The money turns out to be one gift among many, and possibly not the most important one.

Some find a thin list and feel guilty for noticing. These are often the women in comfortable marriages I described in The Millionaire Problem, who feel they aren't allowed to want more than what a large salary buys.

And some find that the question changes direction. They start asking what they would still be giving him if their own money disappeared. Often the answer is a great deal: the planning, the remembering, the emotional upkeep of the family. The question that started as a test of him becomes a measure of what she has been carrying.

The question he could ask

Men rarely ask this about themselves, and I think they should. Not as a guilt exercise. As an honest inventory.

If your salary vanished tomorrow, what would your partner still be getting from you? Would she lose a provider, or just an income? Most men I've asked this have gone quiet for a moment and then said something true. One said, I think she'd lose the bills being paid and not much else, and I don't like that answer.

He didn't like it. But he could do something about it, which is more than the woman who first told me the question could say about her second husband.