Snapshots

Husband and I are going over the finances. It's a bit of a tight time (I say this, mind, knowing that we are trying our damnedest to land round two Penguins playoff tix, and have already bought Pirates-Yankees tickets, and things like how I have been on the lookout for a cute new headband/scarf lately -- so we are not poor, just cutting it a little close).

He and I did argue a bit for a few days about how to handle the finances. We already use Quicken -- something we both refer to as "the best investment we've made" (bought mere days after I moved in) -- but we use separate computers. One with XP, one with Vista. And apparently, filesharing is damn near impossible 'tween those two. And I hate to "nag" at him to sit down with me and update the finances together. And so we were hitting a bit of a wall, there.

Anyway -- we are deciding to sit down together nightly (for now) -- so that I don't have to be the one "pushing" him into it, and we bypass the filesharing problems. But we were discussing, for lack of a better term, allowances.

And husband objected.

I don't know what else to call them. As I told him, it's a constant in every financial arrangement between partners I've seen -- some amount of money each partner can have to spend on items without having to run to the other partner for approval, whether it's "$20/month" or "everything I earn after the bills are paid."

But it makes him uncomfortable. Certainly in a gendered sense (the Man, Bringing Home The Bacon, giving the Wifey her little "allowance") but also because we are both sensitive to any implication of control or abuse on his part -- I grew up in a family absolutely soaked in domestic abuse and my own mother has, projecting, called him "controlling" several times.* He is constantly monitoring his own behavior for any sign of this being true. I am constantly watching my life as a whole to make sure it does not happen to me -- partly for me -- but partly, as well, because I am desperate not to pass that paradigm onto my future children.

Anyway -- just a bit of a fragment I felt like pointing out.

*See, to her, she started losing control of me, and then he showed up on the scene. I, being a mere child (a girl, no less) with no agency (even in my mid fuckin' twenties) of course cannot be the one to have gained control of my own self -- there was a MAN in my life now, so he must be the one controlling me! This is a result of the way she grew up -- this is the only concept of a man in a relationship with a woman that she has. She simply cannot understand it happening any other way. And that is just damn depressing -- and a reason I am very, very sensitive to even the slightest sign it may happen in my own life.