Love and Money: A Story of Venmo Requests and Financial Terror
Tuesday, February 11, 2025.
In the beginning, there was love.
Pure, incandescent love.
The kind of love that makes you say things like, "I don’t care about money, I just want to be with you."
The kind of love that lets you ignore red flags, like the fact that your partner thinks credit card points are a scam or that they insist on paying exact change in drive-thrus.
And then one day, love meets reality. And reality has a balance sheet.
The Financial Honeymoon Phase: Generosity and Delusion
When you first start dating, money is theoretical.
You go on dates, order cocktails, tip generously.
Who’s paying? Who cares! You just Venmo each other indiscriminately, tossing money around like medieval royalty at a jousting tournament.
It’s romantic, really.
You split things down the middle, not because you have to, but because you’re both modern, egalitarian adults. "Money doesn’t matter to us," you say, passing the bill back and forth like it’s a fun little game. "We’re above all that."
But are you being imprudent?.
The "Wait, How Do You Handle Money?" Phase
Then one day, you witness something horrifying.
Maybe they take out their wallet and it’s stuffed with crumpled singles, receipts from 2017, and a punch card for a smoothie place that no longer exists.
Maybe you catch a glimpse of their banking app and realize they are, in fact, a person who just lets their balance drop to $7 before payday.
Or perhaps, worse yet, they are a "multiple savings accounts" person. They have a spreadsheet for their monthly expenses. They know their credit score. They say things like, "I’m just moving some money around."
Then you ask yourself, who am I dating?
The Great Relationship Budget War
The true test of love is not sickness or health. It is not distance. It is deciding whether you should split expenses by percentage of income, go full communal, or separate finances entirely.
It is determining if it is acceptable to buy coffee out every day. It is answering the eternal question: Do we need to budget for fun or is fun a human right?
Couples fight about money because it is never just about money.
It is about childhood. It is about power. It is about whether someone grew up hearing, "We have no food at home!," while the other was sharing a New York strip steak with Rover.
And so, social media gives us relationship finance memes, the modern way to cope:
"Marriage is just two people arguing about whether an $8 sandwich is a necessity or a luxury."
"Relationships are fun because one person thinks $200 is a lot of money and the other thinks it’s basically free."
"My husband says we should check our budget before making a purchase. I say, ‘We ball until we fall.’ It’s called balance."
The Secret to Surviving Money in Love
The reality is, nobody ever fully aligns on money.
But the couples who make it? They laugh about it.
They accept that one of them will die on the hill of avoiding delivery fees while the other spends $300 on "vibes." They find the humor in their financial contradictions.
So the next time you want to murder your partner over their insistence on a Costco membership or their refusal to use coupons, take a deep breath. Show them a meme. Laugh about the absurdity of it all.
And then, for the love of all things holy, just automate your bill payments.