Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Let’s talk about the prenuptial agreement. That document that preserves the gaps between partners even when life has already moved on. That stage where love is forced to speak the language of accounting. That moment when money is no longer just money but also a measure of love. How far is the love of my life willing to go for me in our prenup?
And here I am, even though several years have passed since we signed the agreement, the burning feeling still remains in me every time I remember that difficult period of our lives. It stretched over several months of intense negotiations meant to define boundaries, boundaries that still exist in our lives every day. Present. Sometimes even painful. Want an example? One day, while I was talking with my son about spending and expenses, he suddenly straightened up and said, “That’s not your money; it’s Dad’s money.”
In my parents’ home, a typical middle-class family, all property was shared. Everything was simple. What’s mine is yours. What’s ours is ours. It was not even in my vocabulary that I would live with someone and not share everything. On the contrary. Most of it would not be shared. Countless romantic series taught me that once there is love, the couple gets married and lives happily ever after. No one talks about a prenuptial agreement. No one stops the background music and says, “Wait, let’s sign Appendix C.”
I vaguely remember that the first time I encountered the term was in my twenties. A woman I worked with as a waitress was about to get married and her partner wanted her to sign a prenup. They broke up. I understood her at the time. It felt like an insult to love.
Years later, I met N. The love of my life. But the love of my life had already been burned once, divorced, and shared a substantial amount of his assets with his ex-wife. He was not willing to share his property again. Moreover, N. is a very successful business owner, while at the time we met, I was an employee. A senior one, but still, my salary did not match his income. Logic says it was only reasonable and legitimate for me to sign such an agreement given the gap between us. But emotion shatters when the dream of partnership in the style of “you and me against the world” slowly fades away.
When you sign a prenup, you do not know what the future holds, but you have to guess what it might be in order to ensure your future is secure. Hours of uncomfortable conversations about what would happen if we separated, what would happen when we have children. Hours of arguments over “you will receive this or that” drained all the air from our lungs. It feels like exhausting warfare, and you wonder whether this is what your married life will look like even before it has truly begun.
The truth? All those arguments are not even the most painful part. The most significant and painful consequence of such an agreement is that no matter the quality of your relationship, how much you love each other or how many children you have, there is always a gap between you. You are never equal. That gap is written black on white in a contract, but more than that, it exists in the air between you, shaping the balance of power and the division of roles in the home.
I have a friend who wanted to leave her husband. She does not do it. If they separate, she would not be able to afford the life she has become accustomed to over the years of marriage, nor provide her children with all the good things they currently have. So she stays and suffers.
Another friend was forced to sign a prenup after her husband made an exit, already married with two children. In the middle of their shared life, he came with a prenup so that, God forbid, she would not receive too large a share of the exit he made. It was a slap in the face. I am not sure she has recovered from it to this day.
Interestingly, when it is the woman who brings the money, there is less tendency to sign a prenup. Women tend more toward equality in relationships. Less greed, more romance. Of course, what I am saying is based on personal impression and not empirical data.
Recently, I read an article about someone who encourages women to be involved in all financial matters of the household. To know all the passwords to bank accounts, to be aware of all savings, pensions and so on, so that if something happens, you are in control, you know how to manage and can get by.
A nice idea for ordinary couples, not for couples who have an invisible barrier between them over money that belongs only to one of them. And what if you do not have access to all bank accounts? What if some of the accounts belong only to your husband? You are always living with the feeling that there is a black hole you cannot access. You can be the most feminist, progressive and educated woman, and still not be able to touch or see his private corner of the world. Because it belongs only to him.