So many couples I know are composed of opposites, and I always find Jay’s and my equivalent in other couples we meet. There’s the solid one, like Jay, and the ‘œcreative’ (less stable?) one, like me.   It usually follows that the more ‘œresponsible’ one tends to be in an industry that suits that type of personality, often the finance industry.   Hey, if there are any goofy, creative types in the finance industry, please excuse my gross generalization here.

However, let me assert that many of us in our community exaggerate our roles in public. It becomes part of our ‘œroutine,’ often played for comic effect. In our case, I’m the irresponsible, emotional one; Jay is the stable, rational one. I run around buying incomprehensibly expensive things with wild abandon while Jay plays his role as the shell-shocked, fiscally-conservative spouse. In many ways, it parodies the roles men and women play in heterosexual relationships.

On another level, it mirrors the way in which we assume roles from an early age. It’s been suggested by child development professionals that we purposely assume different strengths and weaknesses as children so that we don’t compete with our siblings, reducing potential conflict and rivalry.   There is certainly a degree of overlap, but direct competition is avoided. (Don’t ask me why I know this. I just retain random info.) Perhaps because same sex couples are composed of individuals of the same sex we have a greater potential for competing in the same space. So we naturally begin to separate our roles and turn up the contrast between our personalities. Butch/Fem. Dominant/Submissive. Saver/Spender. But is anyone really 100% or as polarized as we’re supposed to be?

On top of this, I think we can all agree that our relationships change us‘” if we’re open enough to absorb new experiences and new ways of thinking. Maybe there’s something about embracing someone physically that makes one inclined to embrace the things that make them who they are. In my opinion, that’s the sign of a healthy relationship. So despite myself   (or the exaggerated version of myself), I found myself learning his language, the language of finance. Much of this is to Jay’s credit. I think we’ve all met those dismissive types that brush aside an outsider’s question about their industry (hate that). Jay’s not one of them. He would explain things to me in terms I could understand. Seriously, I think that’s what makes him so successful in his industry. He’s able to bridge paradigms. In any case, I began to learn.

Now for those of us outside the industry, it’s a rather mysterious world at first with its own language. Dow doesn’t refer to scrubbing bubbles, and Fidelity has nothing to do with sex. So at first, I mocked it. It was kind of easy. On television, there was that commercial with the industry professional proudly announcing, ‘œI know the Dow.’   I’d tell Jay, ‘œYeah, I know the Dow, too. It goes up; it goes down. Duh. It’s not rocket science!’   I was dismissive. I usually commented more on the hair and the (ugly) ties than the content being discussed. And then there was all that finance industry-specific humor. Ha ha. Ugh. I just didn’t get it. I proclaimed it as stupid because I didn’t understand it.

The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week and the Dow Theory Letter were always lying around the house, so curiosity got the better of me and I’d find myself reading them. Come on, you all know about that bathroom library thing, where you read things simply because you’re sitting there and need something (else) on which to focus.   It’s kind of like needing to repeatedly read the back of a cereal box while eating a bowl of it. Do women do this?   I know men do. I probably wouldn’t admit this at a cocktail party, but I believe it’s responsible for a large part of my financial education. Reading led to questions, which led to discussions, and I found myself enjoying them. I also found myself enjoying the fact that we could talk about something that is such a part of Jay’s work life and his longstanding interest. I saw him enjoying my openness to the subject. It was more than being interested in a subject. I was interested in him. It built upon itself.

There’s the more practical aspect of using this new language that came from simply sharing a life together and facing day-to-day financial issues. Jay usually took charge of all things financial, partly because I was all too happy to let him handle anything that could be vaguely construed as related to his industry. I realize now that I was unfairly lumping the entire idea of finance into one giant pile, ignoring the different things into which it could be translated, especially when it came to our personal finances. I had washed my hands of any responsibility. As my knowledge grew, so did my recognition of this. I now had enough knowledge to form my own viewpoint. I was increasingly opinionated about things I had previously ignored and the lines between our roles started to blur a bit.

I began to express my opinion and concerns about our personal finances. Were we sufficiently diversified in our portfolio? Were we saving enough for retirement? Usually frivolous me offered the opinion that charging as many things as we could on one credit card was actually prudent. We paid it off monthly and didn’t accrue any interest, but we did get back cash rebates or rewards points and didn’t have to carry around a lot of cash. It allowed us to track our purchases by downloading our monthly statements and sorting them by category (something I now do on an Excel spreadsheet). In minutes, I can explain away a heinously bill with the conviction of a defense attorney. So I garnered more fiscal trust than one might imagine me to have (with my assumed role of spendthrift). My opinions are more educated and hence weighted a little more.

So now I don’t throw the entire burden of our personal finances on Jay. We discuss it. He asks for my help, and I help. Jay watches Top Design with me and I watch Money for Breakfast with him (because we agreed that the hosts are more articulate than the ones on CNN despite being on the conservative FOX network). Am I completely fluent in his language? Not at all. Is he in mine? No. But it’s a process, and we both learn a little more about each other’s world, and it’s good. Very good.

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