An Awkward Corner

Dating, Marrying, Spending

A colleague walked up to me yesterday and asked: "What is the secret of a successful marriage?"

This was not the begining of some existential discussion on the battle of the sexes but rather some very primary research for something she was working on.

I gave a typically facetious answer: "The secret to a successful marriage is a patient husband." But I promised to come up with something better soon.

I still do not have an answer, even though I have been happily married for close to 15 years.

But I did later stumble upon this recent paper by three professors on Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction: Spenthrifts and Tightwads In Marriage. (downloadable)

Scott Rick, Deborah A. Small and Eli Finkel say that fiscal opposites attract in marriage --- spendthrifts tend to get hooked to the tight-fisted, a volatile combination at all times.

They cite social psychology research that shows how people tend to select spouses with similar demographic characteristics, similar attitudes, similar values and even similar names. Birds of a feather flock together and all that.

But then comes the great financial divide.

This means that there is now one spouse who is unhappy because he/she is forced to spend more than he/she is comfortable with and then there is another spouse who is unhappy because he/she is forced to spend less than what he/she is comfortable with.

"The marriages that result appear to make tightwads and spendthrifts about as happy as the hoarders and wasters in Dante's Inferno," the three researchers conclude.

They are referring to this piece from the poet's epic:

They strained their chests against enormous weights, and with mad howls rolled them at one another. Then in haste they rolled them back, one party shouting: "Why do you hoard?" and the other: "Why do you waste?"

But why do these opposites tend to get married?

I have an unproven theory.

The young meet in circumstances when they know little about each other --- the office party or the initial meetings in an arranged marriage.

There is huge information asymmetry out there and they need to signal to the other what their true worth is. Signalling is the process by which people convey information about themselves to others. It is why we wear certain clothes, choose club memberships, wave educational qualifications or even buy lots of medicines (to tell people we care for those dependent on us). For a easy introduction to information asymmetry and signalling, read this and this.

So courting couples signal like mad: the tightwads tend to spend more than usual to impress their future partners while the spendthrifts tend to hold back to make their mark.

It is only later that true information starts flowing between married partners: "Have you seen the credit card bill?" or "I just cannot understand why we cannot buy a new car."

Anybody out there with leads to more research on this?