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The dangers of defaulting finance stuff to men is perfectly highlighted in Reesa Teesa's 'Who TF Did I Marry?'
You don't need to have watched any of the 50 viral TikToks for it to hit home (no spoilers)
I hope you’re enjoying As I Was Saying with Poorna Bell. If you’ve liked the writing, it is worth knowing it’s entirely a reader-supported and funded publication. If you’d like it to support it, and have access to all posts and regular community chats, the best way to support is through a paid subscription. And what better way to support a woman than around the time of International Women’s Day!
Initially this was going to be a post about International Women’s Day (IWD), and the rage and anger I feel that this year, it has slid wordlessly into some unmarked bucket, dropping off company agendas. But concurrent with that, I was introduced (belatedly) to the world of Reesa Teesa, the woman whose story about marrying a pathological liar went viral on TikTok last month. The reason it’s remarkable is because this isn’t a one-off video – she uploaded 50 videos, each 10 minutes long, each with millions of views.
You don’t need to have TikTok, or to have watched Teesa’s videos to understand what I’m writing about, because the subject matter is pretty universal, which is: do not automatically hand over your trust to men around your finances simply because they are men. This doesn’t just apply to the heteros; this can include your father, brothers, male cousins.
While I may not be writing about IWD directly, I am writing about one of the most significant things in the liberation of women, whether that’s being paid equally or how we approach our finances when they are entangled with men, and that’s financial independence and empowerment. Somewhere along the way, IWD got confused with the Yaas Queen Celebration of Women, but for me it has always been about how we break down gender stereotypes, and in particular for women, the ones that limit and hold us back.
Women on the whole, have lower financial literacy than men, from our knowledge around savings, financial terminology, to our approach to saving and socio-economic barriers. In addition, we tend to be focussed more on short term finances whereas men are more likely to think about the long term. We’re good about thinking of our financial present, but not our future, and some of that may also be role-modelled by our own mothers. Those inequities sharpen when we look at women from ethnic minorities.
When you consider that the gender pay gap exists in every region on Earth, and that overall women live longer than men, there is a strong imperative to take control of our finances and not default it to others. Of course, there are those of us who are dependent on a man financially with no clear way out of it, but in those situations, I would say knowing your partner’s financial situation is imperative.
If a long-term partner or spouse doesn’t want to show you their finances, that is the mother of all red flags. And not doing so can have devastating, life-altering consequences on your own life.
I’m not the only one who has been socially conditioned somewhere along the way to believe men know more about money. This stuff is insidious from imagining what a banker looks like to newspapers overwhelmingly using men when it comes to quoting experts on finance, law, business, and politics.
I mean, in 2024, we still live in a world where men don’t trust female pilots because their brains cannot conceive a woman can fly a plane. Where women still fear lifting weights or becoming too muscular because they ‘don’t want to look like a man’. This stuff is sometimes overt and sometimes it’s insidious, and my work has always been around the latter, unravelling those invisible threads that bind us.
I’m halfway through Teesa’s videos, and while I won’t write any spoilers, what has shone through in almost every video she’s uploaded, is how her husband got away with lying to her about some major things from buying a house to offering to pay for her car. Some people have commented around how naive she was, and how did she not see the signs sooner?
But I understand exactly how she ended up in the position she was in. My situation wasn’t the same as hers, because her ex-husband lied so much about himself that she actually married a fictional character, but I was lied to catastrophically by my late husband around his finances and other aspects of his life.
My husband Rob was a heroin addict, and for three years, I had no clue. When you tell someone something like this, their first reaction is How could she not have known? I remember when Peaches Geldof died from a heroin overdose (which isn’t how my husband died but it wasn’t unrelated), and people whispered about her husband and how he should have known. (He didn’t - in my own late husband’s words, when actively using, drug addicts are masters at concealing and deception).
I also remember when someone asked me this question on a radio show about my late husband: surely you must have known? I didn’t, I replied. What would I have to gain from lying about it? I wanted to say, and be mindful that you’re asking me about one of the most painful parts of my life. But I didn’t say any of that.
I didn’t know about Rob’s addiction because not only did I not do drugs and therefore had no real knowledge of the signs at the time, but because when you’re married, you err on the side of trust. What is easier to believe? That your partner seems to be prone to getting sick and lying in bed all day, or that they have a full blown addiction not just to any drug, but to the scariest drug of them all, and have constructed a house of lies to protect their drug usage?
Money was a major part of this. I worked in an office, while Rob worked as a freelance journalist. When we met, his business was thriving. He had just bought a house, and he seemed responsible and on top of his finances. He used an accountant, had folders neatly stacked in his office with all his invoices. He seemed responsible, and without his addiction, he was.
At the beginning of our relationship, and even just before getting married, we’d never had a conversation about finances. I was terrible with money at the time, and was in debt, and had no financial literacy around how to get myself out of it. Because my salary was so low, and the banks seemed to have no interest in genuinely helping people to get out of debt, I eventually resigned myself to the fact that perhaps I would be in debt forever. I also told myself that I was ‘bad with money’, as if it was inherent, and inevitable.
By contrast, Rob seemed to be on top of his finances, and so by default I trusted him. And despite being a card-carrying feminist, because we live in a society where men are so defined by their economic output, I’m loathe to say that I automatically assumed he would be better at it than I was.
After we got married, we talked about moving house. He part-owned the house we were living in, and we wanted to own our home outright. Some time after looking for houses, he eventually said that he had acquired a lot of credit card debt, and needed time to pay it off. “Perhaps we rent for a year, and then look into buying,” he said with absolute certainty.
When I asked how he had accrued this debt, he replied: “Our wedding.” But it made no sense – our parents had paid for about 90% of it. Still, I had put part of my wedding dress on my credit card, and had acquired a lot of debt from random purchases that I justified as being necessary for getting married, so who was I to talk? When I asked to see his bills, he laughed and said: “No way.” He was so nonchalant and flippant about it that I didn’t question it. Besides, he knew better, didn’t he? He wouldn’t land us in a tricky situation, would he?
It turns out that like Reesa Teesa, who ignored red flag after red flag, I was wrong. When Rob finally confessed about his addiction, I discovered the debt was not wedding related at all, but to cover up for vast periods of not working due to trying to withdraw from drugs, as well as money on drugs. Moreover, even after he had paid off this debt from the sale of his house, he acquired another £30,000 in debt that he kept hidden for a couple of years.
When I found out, I felt like I was going to be sick. Because the lie society tells you is that the best things in life are free, and that love is the most important thing. It makes you feel as if your relationship should run on air and optimism, when the reality is that when things go wrong, and one of you is ill, what you need is money to give you options. And we had none – not to tackle his addiction, his chronic depression or to move from the area we lived in that crawled with drug dealers trying to suck him back in.
Even after it all came out, and I tried to help him with his recovery, there were still periods when he would lie about how his finances were going. I’ve wondered about how it got to the level it eventually reached, where he was about to file for bankcruptcy. Was part of it male pride? Part of it my own refusal to believe he could behave like that? It’s painful to think about so I won’t labour the point, but I have had to examine my own behaviour in all of it, and why I ignored so many red flags when it came to how he handled his finances.
Part of it was being in a marriage and the default trust that comes with that bond, but part of it was that I didn’t want to deal with it. I was bad with my own finances, and it felt easier to let him handle it. And now, having seen how catastrophic the impact of that can be, I will never, ever make the same mistake again.
I hope you’re enjoying As I Was Saying with Poorna Bell. If you’ve liked the writing, it is worth knowing it’s entirely a reader-supported and funded publication. If you’d like it to support it, and have access to all posts and regular community chats, the best way to support is through a paid subscription. And what better way to support a woman than around the time of International Women’s Day…
Part of that has to be acknowledging my own part to play in it. To that end, I tackled my debt, engaged with financial literacy accounts on Instagram – my favourites are My Frugal Year, This Girl Talks Money, and Thrifty Londoner. I even took a couple of money workshops to help me work on the fear and terror I felt around money. One of my favourite money experts is Ramit Sethi whose work I’ve found very useful and soothing, and I also downloaded a couple of savings and investments apps, after working out that I really like app-based money accounts.
But part of that is also setting boundaries and non-negotiables if I ever get into a relationship again. It’s the same thing I would advise any woman. Ensure that you talk about your finances before getting into any relationship that will include legalities around ownership and/or marriage. Be honest about the debt you are in. Discuss your assets. Where possible, have a conversation about how you’ll split bills and how that will be done.
Due to the ramifications of gender inequality, a significant number of women may end up being financially dependent on their partner, but be cognisant of how that plays into the dynamics of your relationship. Remember that money is only one form of currency – what you do in terms of domestic and emotional labour also costs time, and has value. And where possible, always remember that money is transactional – and what it purchases is your voice and your say, so think long and hard about how to make your position the strongest it can possibly be.
And before I forget, Happy International Women’s Day – liberation for all!
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Social commentary and essays from career to mental wellbeing, capturing the general WTF of life and topical news, by award-winning author, former HuffPost Exec editor and lifter of heavy weights, Poorna Bell.
Great advice, Poorna.
The strongest suggestion I made to my two married children (daughter and son) before they were married was to have mutual transparency around their and their spouse's finances. Once you have that disclosure and maintain it, it removes many pitfalls around money as a source of conflict and marital stress.
Wow. This is such a helpful, hard hitting and oh so necessary article to read. Thank you for weaving in such personal stories to make the message so, so clear. A ‘and now I need to sit still to let the message fully land’ article. Thank you 🙏