Without trust, relationships can’t last. But what if you’re smart with money and your partner isn’t? Is it ever acceptable to manage your money behind their back if you’re doing “good” things?
 
Ed Coambs, a financial therapist in Matthews, N.C., and author of The Healthy Love & Money Way , says not only does that often constitute financial infidelity, but he would push back against moralizing money habits.
“This is not really about being good or bad,” says Coambs. “It’s about the breakdown of being able to connect around what to do financially. Financial infidelity is a symptom of underlying relational processes that do not work.”
He adds focusing on the acts of infidelity rather than what’s at the root of them can cost couples not just their financial security, but also their future.

Financial infidelity isn’t always what you expect it to be
Everyone enters a relationship with implicit and explicit expectations around how they and their partner will manage finances. Coambs says financial infidelity is any breach of those expectations.
That can be spending more money shopping than you’ve mutually agreed to, buying a house without the other’s knowledge or secretly investing for retirement.
“The piece that makes it infidelity is not disclosing or talking about it and hiding it from your partner,” says Coambs.
Of the couples he works with, Coambs says 70 to 80 per cent are dealing with financial infidelity, whether that’s why they came to him in the first place or it simply comes out in therapy.
It’s the same for Andrew Sofin, a psychotherapist specializing in couples and families in Montreal.
Sofin adds that while most people think of sex when they hear the word infidelity, in his practice, he’s found many are dealing with this issue without knowing what to call it.
In a survey on love and money from TD Bank last year, only eight per cent of respondents copped to keeping financial secrets from their partner. But 29 per cent admitted to hiding bank accounts, while 22 per cent carry significant secret credit card debt.
With Sofin’s clients, financial infidelity often shows up in relationships where there’s a power imbalance. The person earning the lion’s share often feels it’s ”their” money to spend however they see fit.
But whether they’re buying sports cars or lottery tickets, making those financial decisions without consulting their spouse widens that power gap.
“The person who’s not making the money feels totally dependent on the other person and it has a major impact on their sense of self,” says Sofin.
​
Couples must get on the same page
What makes financial betrayals so painful is that money is not only a deeply emotional topic, it’s also tangible and crucial to our survival.
Another therapist once told Coambs about how her mother reacted when she found out her husband had gambled away their retirement fund: “She said, ‘I wish he would have cheated on me; that would have been easier to recover from.’”
“I wouldn’t take that statement literally,” says Coambs. “But … money holds representational value. It functionally means whether I have housing, whether I can access health care in the future, if I can buy food … And so when we get interrupted in that pathway, that’s a profound loss.”
He also notes that financial infidelity looks different for everyone. In fact, we accept a certain amount of financial dishonesty in relationships. Surprise gifts for birthdays or anniversaries or splashing out on a new love are both common societal and cultural expectations.
However, Sofin counters that bringing home surprise flowers isn’t such a romantic gesture if you’re already scrimping to pay your mortgage this month.
And so the only way to ensure all your money moves are above-board is to communicate openly with your partner about money.
“If you want to have a successful relationship, you have to talk about things that sometimes are difficult,” says Sofin.
And in talking about these issues, people often fall into the trap of assuming their way is right and everyone else’s is wrong.
But Coambs says looking at it this way means couples lose out on a chance to grow both their relationship and their wealth.
“We’re not making any person wrong or bad here. Both people are right, based on their whole life’s experience … And sometimes it’s just a matter of reframing and saying, ‘This is an opportunity for us to grow and learn about each other at a deeper level.’”
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.

in Financial Post MoneyWise
by Sigrid Forberg

Tara Mandarano woke up on Aug. 6 like it was “any other day in our new COVID world,” unaware her husband would shortly be asking for a separation.
The 43-year-old writer and editor worked on her laptop in bed while her spouse dropped their six-year-old daughter off at the grandparents'. When her husband got home, he broke the news. Crying, Mandarano followed him out to the driveway in her pajamas to talk but could see the “finality on his face.”
Looking back, Mandarano says she believes seven anxious months spent at home together pushed dormant issues to the surface in their marriage. She has multiple health conditions and her husband had taken on a difficult caregiving role. Underlying resentment also simmered around parenting, with the mother often feeling sidelined by chronic pain. Instead of talking through these jarring months, the spouses retreated to their own screens at night.
“It was a perfect storm to fall apart as a couple,” Mandarano said. “My hurt and grief are amplified because I’m already shaken and unsettled by the world outside my door and how it’s transformed. When my husband said he wanted to separate, it just seemed like another disaster.”
For some marriages on shaky ground, the unrelenting stress of this pandemic is becoming a breaking point. With a second wave of infections now bearing down on Canadians, many divorce lawyers, mediators and couples therapists say they are fielding more calls from spouses contemplating separation than in years past. The new realities of job loss, evaporated child care and upended marital roles at home have pushed some in strained relationships to the edge. Amid widespread uncertainty, it’s a particularly trying time for a marriage to break down.
“The couples who were showing cracks before, the pandemic became like an amplifier,” said Andrew Sofin, president of the Canadian Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Working in Montreal, the worst affected city in Canada, Sofin is seeing a surge of couples on the verge of divorcing seeking intensive therapy.
“People are worried about going into the second wave. They’re frantic,” Sofin said. “It’s a fear of, ‘I can’t do this again.’”
During the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns in spring, Sofin said many couples were in survival mode. Through the relative calm of summer, some spouses stepped back, re-examined their time locked down together and realized, “I don’t really like you – and you don’t really like me,” Sofin said.
Some partners who used to work long office hours and are now cocooned at home are discovering they’ve grown apart, said Laura Paris, an associate lawyer with Shulman & Partners, which specializes in divorces in Toronto and Vaughan, Ont.
“People are realizing they don’t want the same things out of life,” said Paris, whose firm reported a 19-per-cent jump in new clients this June compared to last. “You get caught up in the day-to-day and you forget what it takes to maintain a relationship.”
Linda Long, Edmonton founder and managing partner at Long Family Law Group, said her firm saw more client intakes this September than any year prior.
“When these things happen the world holds its breath for a time, but it can only hold its breath for so long,” Long said. “Marriages that might have been foundering before may move to a separation as a result of this additional pressure."
Marriage counsellor Darren Wilk said spouses crammed in together at home have developed heightened expectations of each other, but few communication skills to match.
“They’re being blunt and that never works,” said Wilk, co-founder of BestMarriages.ca, which offers relationship counselling in Vancouver, Victoria and Langley, B.C. “They thought they were better friends and they aren’t.”
With a four-month waiting list, Wilk said he’s never been busier. Spouses tell him that lockdowns gave them more time to seek help, pointing to work-from-home arrangements and therapy conveniently offered over video call.
The workload has also grown intense for Awatif Lakhdar, a family law litigator and mediator with Lavery Lawyers in Montreal.
“Our work increased so that we cannot even breathe sometimes,” Lakhdar said.
Aside from new clients, Lakhdar is hearing from existing clients who want to push their separations forward. She’s also seeing new tension points. Facing financial trouble, some clients are renegotiating support arrangements. Others are bickering about child custody and back-to-school decisions. Some are accusing exes of being negligent through the pandemic, while others have raised the alarm about ex-partners who work in health care.
“We are faced with unusual, exceptional circumstances,” Lakhdar said. “People are worried about everything.”
Erin Crawford, managing partner at Grant Crawford LLP, a Toronto firm specializing in family law, said this year feels extra busy for her and her colleagues. She said a “big point of discussion” is the division of child care and domestic labour as parents struggle to work from home.
Amid serious financial uncertainty, Crawford said many exes are reluctant to negotiate final deals, with some halting the process altogether. She and others noticed more couples turning to arbitration and mediation, which are less costly than the courts, now acutely backlogged.
With so many unknowns before them, some couples are slowing down the separation process, waiting and seeing about the next few months, according to Tina Sinclair, founder of Peacemakers for Families, which offers divorce mediation in Calgary.
“People who would otherwise perhaps be separating quite quickly are trying to find ways to live under one roof in a creative kind of way and waiting,” Sinclair said. “Can they divide the house in such a way that they’re not always on top of each other?”
Newmarket’s Mandarano knows three other couples separating right now. She and her husband are hoping to end things amicably through a mediation process slated for December. In the interim, he’s found a new place and they’ve agreed on informal custody and financial arrangements.
Splitting amid the pandemic has been an isolating experience for Mandarano. She can’t confide in friends in-person and can only speak with her therapist by video call. Her mediation will play out on three computer screens: hers, her husband’s and the mediator’s.
“It seems even more cold and distant that my husband and I won’t be in the same room together as we decide our future,” Mandarano said. “It just feels less human somehow.”
​
The above article was written by Zosia Bielski, Globe & Mail, 10/12/20
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-what-covid-19-has-meant-for-divorce/ 

These are challenging times, and the COVID-19 pandemic has significant implications for all of us who provide individual, couples and family therapy.
Many therapists are switching to phone sessions and video conference sessions using platforms such as Zoom or OnCall. There will be some clients that will still need to meet face-to-face (if medically safe to do so). The following are a few important recommendations I hope will help you as you decide how to ensure a safe setting when meeting face-to-face with clients to provide individual, couples and family therapy and how to communicate with them regarding the pandemic:

• Please regularly disinfect commonly touched surfaces and objects in your workspace such as doorknobs, mugs, pens and armrests.
• Please wash hands for twenty seconds or use alcohol wipes between sessions
• Add additional boxes of tissues and hand sanitizer to your office to minimize the chances of unintentional transmission.
• Help create social distancing in your waiting room/area by creating more space between chairs, removing chairs or using text messages to notify clients you are ready to see them, allowing them to wait outside or in a space that allows for greater social distancing.
• Refrain from booking clients back to back so as to leave more time between sessions, minimizing clients crossing paths in the waiting area.
• Contact your clients to ask them to notify you if they have been out of the country recently, have experienced any symptoms (fever, cough or difficulty breathing), or have knowingly been in contact with anyone with symptoms of COVID-19. Use this opportunity to reassure your clients and provide factual/current information from the sources listed below.
• If you or any of your clients are symptomatic, have tested positive for COVID-19, have been in contact with someone who has been exposed or is self-isolating as a precautionary measure or as mandated by your employer or a government agency, please explore the alternative of using phone sessions or a secure video conference platform (check with your provincial regulatory body to determine their policy on using a video conference platform)
• Consider waiving any cancellation fees you might have during this time

If you are a member of the www.camft.ca we have created a private discussion forum for therapists to talk and share their challenges of practicing couple and family therapy during this difficult time.  
The 24-hour news cycle and the overwhelming number of online sources of information (excellent, good, bad, misinformed and just plain dangerous) may make some of us and/or our clients feel overwhelmed or anxious.
 PLEASE use information from these trusted sources during this challenging time:
o  Public Health Agency of Canada
o  World Health Organization

Take care,
​Andrew

Have you seen those pithy memes that describe a typical parenting day? The big, bright letters seem almost perky, as they proclaim: “Coffee. Chaos. Wine. Sleep. Repeat.”
It would be funny, if it wasn’t so damned true.

For parents in the little kid years—past the sleepless infant stage but before school age—there’s a brutal, undeniable reality to our lives. We’re so exhausted by the tending and the washing and the cooking and the cleaning and the bills and the bath times and the seemingly endless bedtime requests that each day ends in a daze. Forget keeping romance alive. The question for an overwhelming number of parents is: How do you keep your relationship alive?

It might help to know you’re by no means alone.

Andrew Sofin, president of the Canadian Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, says most of the couples who come to his therapy retreats have children under five.
“The first five years are the hardest,” he says. “You’re going through multiple changes—maybe you’re now a full-time caregiver or are juggling daycare. Time becomes the premium. Sleep becomes more important than sex. You’re going to have hard times with your spouse. It’s not if—it’s when.”

This flies in the face of cultural expectations that kids should make us happy, and romance should still be hot and heavy. Throw in the fact that when we have kids, we demand more from our partners than ever before, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
But it doesn’t have to be. By stepping back to get a more realistic view of your situation and taking a few measures to strengthen your relationship’s foundation, you, too, can make it to the promised land. Here are some ideas to get you there.

Give each other a time out
Bruce and Jen Parker were together for more than 10 years before they decided it was time to have kids. When their son Robbie was born in 2010, he arrived seven weeks premature with a serious heart condition that required surgery. At seven months old, he started having seizures. He went from being a vibrant little baby to a heavily medicated child until, at 18 months, he underwent a procedure to disconnect the two halves of his brain. It worked. Robbie is now five, seizure free and off medication, but he still has physical challenges that require regular therapy.

Over the years, Bruce has watched a number of parents they know separate. How do he and Jen hold it together—especially now that they have a second kid, Morgan, who is almost one?

“We give each other space,” he says simply. “There are days when I can see Jen is completely at her wits’ end, and there are days she sees me that way. It’s then that you have to suck it up, dive in there and give the other a break.”

Find a way to work little breathers into everyday life, and don’t try to have tough conversations with your partner in moments of crisis, he says. Even if you’re just taking one of the kids out of the house on a Saturday morning so your spouse can have a cup of coffee without someone wiping snot on her sleeve, that little bit of physical and emotional space can often be enough.

Beware of withdrawal
There’s needing space, and then there’s vacating the relationship. Sofin says emotional withdrawal is the biggest warning sign of all. The challenge is knowing whether your partner is withdrawing or just temporarily sidetracked. That’s why it’s important to keep the lines of communication open.

“The most dangerous sign is when it seems fine, but you’re really just not talking about your feelings,” he says. “You’re not as emotionally invested as you used to be.”
Often, withdrawal reveals itself when one person suddenly becomes more invested in things outside the couple or the family, or consumed by work—at least, more than their job should typically demand. Sometimes, it’s fantasizing about how much easier life was without kids (beyond the occasional daydream every parent is prone to).

If you find yourself falling into these traps or feeling distanced from your partner for an extended period of time, Sofin suggests talking about it with them, and consider seeing a family therapist. It’s normal for distance to occasionally develop between two swamped parents juggling multiple demands. What’s dangerous is not admitting to that distance when it seems to be ongoing.

“The number one thing is to stay in communication,” Sofin says. “Stop thinking you can read the other person’s mind. You can’t.”

Take care of yourself
The toddler and preschool years are some of the most demanding in a parent’s life. Kids that age have the ability to get up to mischief but lack the awareness to avoid danger. And the autonomy to play, bathe or even eat unsupervised is still years away.

So it’s no surprise that most of us end up relegating our needs as secondary to our kids’. But that, says Sofin, is a mistake. Self-care isn’t a hobby you can simply pick up again once the kids’ toys are out of the den—it’s an essential piece of a healthy relationship.

But what does “self-care” actually mean? In essence, it’s carving out space in your life for you and helping your partner do the same. (And, no, it doesn’t have to be yoga!) Maybe you take the scenic route on your bike ride to work, attend a monthly photography meet-up or start that garage band you’ve always dreamed of. Whatever it is, make sure it’s about you and not for the kids. And help ensure your partner gets his or her time out, too. Not only will it make you feel less guilty when you’re sipping a quiet latte, but it will also help strengthen the “we’re in this together” bond.

Take care of each other
You are a team, and no team will get to the playoffs if the players are always sniping at each other. Instead, try to make kindness your go-to response. That can actually be quite difficult. When you’re in the thick of the morning rush or dinnertime flurry, it’s all too easy to take your irritation out on each other.

Start to sharpen your Spidey senses so you can predict when you’re about to nitpick. Then hold it in. Whatever you were about to say can wait until you can either frame it more kindly or realize you should drop it altogether. Sofin says you should also always ask yourself what you’re gaining from lashing out.

Another tactic that is effective is to just say thank you. When you’re both working hard to keep family life chugging along, it can be easy to stop acknowledging each other’s workload. That can leave people feeling ignored or unappreciated, which can quickly snowball into resentment.

“It’s validating what the other person is doing,” Sofin says. “‘Thank you’ goes a long way in keeping the couple alive.”

OK, OK, I can hear you sighing in frustration. How are you meant to fit date nights into an already packed schedule? Isn’t that just another stress to add to your bubbling stew of busyness?

Sofin says it’s still worth it. “A lot of times, the couple gets lost,” he says. “It’s like running a daycare with someone you used to date.”

He says a monthly date night is good. And if you have a support network to help take care of the kids and can snag an occasional night away—even if it’s just to a hotel in your hometown—even better.

Another option is date days. If you can both take a day off work, consider sneaking away to the movies or visiting a gallery, or get a babysitter on a Saturday afternoon and grab a late lunch while the kids nap. A date day can be lower pressure and often cheaper—and the chances are better you’ll both be awake enough to enjoy it.

Mom of three Linnea Knight says romance in her home is a shared video game after bedtime. As she sees it, there will be plenty of time for dates once the kids have grown up a little more.

“When you’re in the thick of things and also trying to ‘keep the romance alive,’ that’s more stressful than anything,” she says. “If you don’t, then you feel like you’re failing, and that’s baloney.”

The key is to work out what suits you. Happy to catch a matinee together once a month? Good enough! Would rather splurge on weekly dinners? Do it. Talk to your partner to find the right balance, for both of you, and then ignore pressure to be any other way.

Play the long game
The hardest thing to remember in the under-five whirlwind is that this, too, is a stage. One day, you’ll wake up and your kids will be leaving for university. Keeping one eye on the far horizon as you juggle today’s demands can help smooth some of the rougher bumps along the way. The bumps don’t disappear, but they might appear less insurmountable.

“Our relationship has taken a hit,” Bruce admits frankly. “We still love each other. We don’t get the quality time we used to, but at some point in time, we will. This doesn’t go on forever.”

Sofin says pragmatism isn’t a repudiation of romance. Rather, it’s a clear-eyed acknowledgement of the stage of life your family is in.

“Right now, you’re in a busy phase. Sex and romance have shifted down the totem pole. It’s going to come back when the kids are more autonomous. It will come back.”
​
And when it does, hopefully you can turn to each other, gaze into each other’s eyes and murmur those three beautiful words: “We made it.”

As rain continues to fall over southern Quebec and the flooding worsens, one expert urges Quebecers to keep an eye out for each other and to offer support.
"For most people, their home is a safe place. It is a refuge, and when your home is no longer a safe place, that can be quite devastating psychologically," says Laurie Pearce, research associate at the Justice Institute of British Columbia, who specializes in disaster management and traumatic stress.
"For families and children, for seniors or other vulnerable or at-risk populations, being flooded can be a huge stressor and have long-term impact."
According to Pearce, flooding is one of the most difficult natural disasters to cope with.
Laurie Pearce, research associate at the Justice Institute of British Columbia, says floods are particularly stress-inducing because of their duration and uncertainty. (Submitted by: Dr. Laurie Pearce)
"Floods are one of those hazards where the stress of dealing with it goes on for a long time. It's not an incident that is something quick, like a tornado for example," Pearce told CBC News.
"With floods it's one of those creeping things, that floodwaters may continue to rise, then they recede and they rise again, so there's a lot of apprehension from people. There's a lot of uncertainty."

• Faces of the flood: Personal stories from Quebec's hardest-hit zones
• Quebec to receive Canadian military assistance to deal with flooding
• Rainfall warning issued as Quebec braces for more flooding

Then once the flooding is over, there's the cleanup victims have to carry out.


"Depending on the degree of flooding, it may at first seem relatively minor, but if the water has gone high enough to affect the electrical circuits, etc., it can be quite difficult for people to understand how much damage can be done in a flood."


Bureaucratic stress

Pearce says filing insurance claims to obtain compensation is also a stressful ordeal.


Often, many victims find out they are not covered for overland flooding.


"What that means is people are either stuck having to pay for their recovery costs on their own, or to make applications to the government for a disaster financial assistance arrangement.
"There's a deductible, and it depends from province to province and territory to territory exactly what will get covered," she said. "But there's a lot of restrictions and exclusions, and people can find that whole process of dealing with bureaucracy in post-disaster flooding can be a considerable stressor as well."
Stress symptoms

During the flooding, Pearce says, people may show physical symptoms brought on by stress.


"Stomach aches, headaches, anxious — that pit in your stomach — shaking, trembling or an increased heartbeat."


But she warns that some people may react calmly in the midst of a crisis, but have a delayed response to the stress as late as weeks, months or even years later.


"Parents may slowly become overly protective of their children. And children may be clingy and whiny and not experience the same degree of relationships that they had before," she says.


Help yourself and others

Pearce's best advice is to identify who you can turn to for support.


"The most important thing, ultimately, is to look at developing your strong social support networks," she says, adding that helping others is often a good way to overcome a traumatic event.


"Get involved as best you can and as much as you can in helping others and helping yourself to move forward. Don't sit back and expect the government and others to do it for you. That's not particularly helpful. What is helpful is for you to

origninally appeared on WWW.CBC.CA