The Color of Money... the Same as Lost Dreams

Sam’s words hit me hard. An expense I wasn’t expecting. A big one. That’s all it took and within minutes I was trembling with anxiety and the old argument, the one we’ve had 100 times since we’ve been married, the one about money, was in full swing. I said all the same things I always say and paused long enough for him to say all the same things he always says and for the 100th time we found ourselves spent and exhausted and frustrated and once again at an impasse.

We played our assigned parts and followed the script we’d carefully worked out for this particular argument, except at some point, after we’d moved from the kitchen to the living room and refilled our glasses, and thrown our early rounds of punches, Sam said something off script.

“What did you mean by that?” I asked, caught off guard by his comment. He didn’t know what he’d meant. I didn’t either, but we both realized it was significant, and the room regained some oxygen.

Not ready to let the argument go so easily, I held on with my teeth and shook my head, but the fight had already gone out of Sam and it just wasn't fun to argue by myself. So we switched gears and starting talking about this random comment he’d made. And we dug and talked and questioned and dug some more, and suddenly there were tears. The sort of tears that come when something deep, deep down is brought to the surface. The sort of tears that remind you of when you were a kid. The sort of tears that are primal and kind of scary because you know you are experiencing something sacred.

And we realized, through those tears, that although our stories are very different, we'd both made a similar sacrifice. Our sacrifices had been made grudgingly, and we’d been harboring anger and regret ever since. Neither of us felt safe talking about it, and it had felt too selfish to imagine the opportunities we’d lost. And in nearly nine years of being together, this was a conversation we had never had.

It was late and we’d already drunk a lot of wine so we went to bed and I woke the next morning with a feeling of trepidation. Had it been too much? Had we gone too far? Sometimes it’s better to leave things well enough alone.

As soon as we were both awake we starting talking again. And my worry soon faded. We talked and we talked and we talked. I understood him in a way I had never before. And for the first time he understood what I had been trying to say all these years. And we both realized it had really very little to do with money, although that’s what we’d always called it.

I love that after 8.5 years of being together we are still learning about one other. And I love that what we’re learning brings us closer together and reinforces what we’ve long believed, which is that we are twin souls. I especially love that we aren’t going to have to argue about money any more. We’ll still be subject to the same triggers I am sure, but now we’ll know what it’s really all about. And that’s a good thing.