Queer Advice #63: money, money, money
"I'm getting increasingly paranoid about money getting in the way of my relationships."
Hi! I’m back with a new queer advice column. Today’s question is from someone who makes a lot more money than their friends and lovers, and is worried it’s causing conflict. If you’re new to this newsletter, this is a reoccurring feature where I answer questions about love, loss, and life from confused gay people. If you want to read a choice column from the archive, how about this one that begins: “I recently discovered that my ex-wife has been watching my Instagram stories“ and ”I'm a 33-year-old dirty slut who loves to be alone and go to bed at 10 pm.”
Also, to the person who sent me a question and asked to redact it due to ongoing dyke drama: I don’t have a way to contact you and confirm that I got your message, but don’t worry—I won’t blow your shit up. As far as advice, here’s a long treatise on becoming friends with your ex. I have written extensively about getting over breakups on here and in my zines and book, but I really think it just takes a long time and intentionally creating distance/space from your ex. The only way out is through, as they say.
Next, I wanted to share two resources that people shared in the The Ultimatum: Queer Love discussion group in response to Mildred’s behavior in the reunion episode. The first is FORGE, a resource that provides information and community support to trans people experiencing domestic abuse and other forms of violence. The second is ACON, a directory of Australian-based resources. I would also like to add Trans Lifeline and the National Domestic Abuse Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233.
If you’ve been thinking of becoming a paid subscriber, but your credit card is always the other room or you don’t want another subscription even though you open every single one of my emails and enjoy this work, I’m currently having a SALE for PRIDE MONTH to nudge you into action.
Send me a question if you’re nasty. xoxo, Maddy
I saw you asking for people to send in financial related relationship advice questions and it literally is exactly what i need right now!
I grew up sorta poor, although my parents always were very resourceful and i never went hungry or anything like that. Becoming financially stable has always been a very important goal for me, and I have a very strong "provider" instinct, and im happy to say that my income today is an upper middle class income and that my career is very likely gonna continue to be stable for the future. I hold very leftist views but while living under capitalism, I also like the feeling of doing things that used to be very luxurious to me like going to restaurants, to the hairdresser, traveling, buying clothes (although almost exclusively from thrift shops, still) etc. without having to worry about running out of money or having to prioritize economically between what i wanna do. I don't like actual luxurious things and I honestly couldn't afford doing luxurious things more than very rarely, even with my income. Nevertheless, as an adult without children, I have a lot of "excess" money right now, and no will to (or knowledge of how to) invest it in the stock or housing market. What i enjoy doing the most with my money is spending it on doing fun things with friends/partners/family (chosen and otherwise) and paying for them as well (seeing as pretty much all my friends/recent partners are poor queers). I try and tell people beforehand if I’m offering to pay, so they don't need to unnecessarily decline a hang out suggestion based off of their budget, but very often even if I didn’t tell them beforehand i was gonna pay, i get a sting of guilt when the bill comes and i end up paying anyways cause i know the money they would have spent holds much more value for them than it does for me. I will jokingly offer to "sugar parent" them, even though that's not actually the kind of dynamic I have or wanna have with my dear ones. I've met a few new people the last couple of years who've assumed they actually can demand me to pay for things, but they've been out of my life very quickly. With people I actually know and love, it's never been a problem with these kind of things, in the sense that I've never felt regret or anything for paying for a bunch of things, even if we ended up breaking up or something like that later.
However, after two sorta recent events with two different people in my life, I've started to reflect on how I should act in order for people I actually do care about to not feel like our relationship is getting unbalanced based off of me paying. The scenarios that have happened are as follows:
1) after a break up, an ex demanded to get to keep a cabin in the woods that we had bought together only a few months before breaking up, and that I had invested much more money into than they had. This felt like petty break up behaviour, but it hurt me that they were trynna argue that I was being economically manipulative for using the fact that I had payed more as an argument for getting to keep it (I was ofc offering to pay them all what they had invested in it - something they couldn't offer back to me because of financial reasons)
2) a longtime and very close friend of mine asked for a loan that I was hesitant to give (previous loans had ended up with me just telling him he doesn't need to pay me back anymore, because he didn’t follow the repayment plan and stopped communicating about it and I didn't want that to cause a wedge in our relationship). After making sure he had understood that this time I really needed clear communication around the repaying, he went on to repeat the exact same behaviour. Since I this time haven't offered to cancel his debt to me, he has instead almost ghosted me for 6 months. I think some other emotional things also lie behind him ghosting me, but I've seen him excusing avoidant behaviour towards other people before, by latching on to a comparably small thing that a person did that hurt him.
Now I'm getting increasingly paranoid about money getting in the way of my relationships, since I've seen two very important relationships that started out as economically equal, ending with economical issues being at the centre of it conflict now that I'm making a lot more money than them. I wanna be able to have my weirdo queer (mostly poor-ish) community and still be able to sometimes live a relaxed lifestyle my money allows me to have, and bring friends along for the ride. Do you have any thoughts on how I best can use my money in an ethical way around my dear ones, without them starting to expect economical things from me even when they have emotionally checked out of the relationship?
Involuntarily Sugarparenting, 28
It’s clear that you think a lot about money and how it relates to your values and politics, as well as how your money might create distance, if not actual problems, between you and your loved ones. You have some really important guidelines in place—namely, you give freely and without expectations to people you know and trust. I think a lot of people in your situation use their money to control others. This sounds really sinister, but it’s an impulse that can be as simple as feeling entitled to someone’s time and energy because you spent money on them.