I want to tell you about an abusive relationship I'm in. I know I should leave, and I want to, but I often get pulled back in.
I have a problem with my relationship with money.
No matter what the sum of money, any time there is some money ventured, I am anxious.
Upon reflection I have discovered that I come from a family where most of the members of the family do not know how to manage money. We always had a little bit more than we needed to survive, and a lot of problems have had a financial component.
The place where my problematic relationship really shines is when there is some risk in the financial venture. I don't know how to spend or invest money. Any time I try to use money, I'm emotive and often make irrational decisions. I don't usually make irrational decisions in the rest of my life, but no matter how long I consider financial decisions, I find it almost impossible to be rational.
When I started suspecting I had a problem, I used a visualisation technique that I find useful for seeing relationships more objectively. It is used in an exercise called 'cutting the cord'.
Money for me was a big brown cord sitting just beneath my solar plexus, basically, my gut.
I can think about other things that are in my life and there is no obvious chord manifesting. It's because I don't have an emotional connection to these objects. They're just objects, and I think about them either rationally or not at all.
For my friends that are well off and seem to be highly rational about money, I suspect their relationship is not as emotive. Me being in the abusive relationship I am, the less I have to do with it, the better.
Since this discovery, I have effectively abolished money from my life. I have my own company that I contract money into, and it pays me a modest wage that I use to live day to day comfortably. Large purchases require once off bonuses from the company, and they only allow one a month.
Since then, my life has been remarkably improved. There are of course drawbacks, I haven't worked how to take financial risks like spending money on a gamble or education, but I'm sure I could work something out. I'm not sure what the implications of a company gambling with funds is so I have just avoided it.
I'm at a point where I might have to take a wage again, and this scares the hell out of me. I love living without money, and I never want to go back.
Some people understand money, I presume they just don't have an emotional connection to it. Maybe I'll learn how to do this in time. But I just can't yet.
