 I mean there's a simple answer to the question in one way from my point of view which is that there's plenty of evidence out there that when you ask people about things going wrong with their relationships one of the top reasons they give is arguments over money. Absolutely and we know what the key stresses are on relationships and money worries is one of those big key stresses but it's what does that mean in the internal workings of that relationship in the couple dynamic. I think there's another side to it as well which is that money isn't just money money money stands for all sorts of things one of the things that myself and a colleague at University College of London did is we did this really big survey and we've got 109,000 people who told us through a questionnaire things about their emotional and psychological relationships and money. One of the things we're interested in is what did money stand for for them and we we were broadly able to divide people up into three kinds of groups. One group was people who saw money primarily about security it's about putting stuff away for a rainy day it's about making sure you've got enough for your pension. There's another group a very different group for whom money was all about freedom it's about the freedom to do whatever you want the freedom actually to tell your employer to go hang and I don't have to care about whether I keep this job or not because actually I'm okay financially. A third group saw money as primarily about power and status. You know these are the ones who who were very keen that people saw them in a flashy car or that they were able to get their way because they've got lots of money. Money also about love. Money as the giving and receiving of love about generosity. I think if we're thinking about what does money do in relationships yes money trouble can cause the stress but actually the very different ways in which people see money can I think be also a source of friction. No absolutely and I think what what we found I mean we did this stay called the enduring love study and it was about how couples sustained their long-term relationships and people were mentioning especially women were mentioning arguments about money were one of the biggest things that they disliked about their relationship but what was interesting is once couples work together to resolve a financial problem then their relationship seemed to be positively impacted from that kind of economic deficit in a way and they had this idea of the relationship horizon where something would change later on one partner would get a job their financial situation would get better and it was you know against all adversity they were stronger and I think that's that's really interesting about how many worries actually can be a positive thing when couples work together as well people often are in relationships with people who are quite different from them sometimes that's what's attracted them in the first place and the issue is not are you different but do you find ways of talking about it and negotiating your way through that you know so if you've got someone who sees money is all about security and their partner sees money is all about freedom to do what they want then that you know that in a sense is a recipe for lots of arguments and lots of difficulty but like anything in a relationship it's it's there to be negotiated through and obviously you know that's usually gendered you know we you know we know that the pay gap if we're looking at in terms of parenting households as well that it is more likely to be the woman the mother who stays at home and then the disparity in income and quite often resentment that you know I used to have a good job and now I don't and so suddenly I am dependent on the income coming in from the primary breadwinner that you know that is I agree and I think this that there can be some quite toxic combinations you know see if you've got somebody for who sees money is mostly about parent status and they're the one earning all the money in a relationship you can see that that being quite a toxic combination what was interesting for me as well was when people were talking about this what they then saved or how do they rebalance the scales when you know when you've got such different in difference in finances one woman was actually talking about was she was withholding her intimacy she was withholding the love that she could give because it was the only way of retaining the power she felt she hadn't got so it's interesting how money can be matched by something which isn't money and it's I think it's it's not just about couple relationships you know if you look at wider families you know often often the the death of a parent can be an occasion when that trick is all sorts of arguments between siblings about money entangled in all of that is all sorts of stuff about oh well they always loved you more than me and it becomes a proxy for that absolutely and it turns that the old adage you know money talks completely on its head it speaks volumes and the volumes it speaks about the emotional currency of money rather than the actual monetary value if you think also when the times of year post Christmas people have spent a lot of their money and we know the divorce spike is post Christmas but that isn't so much money that's about the intensity of the occasion the huge cultural expectation that we're all going to spend all of our time together and it's going to be quality time but it's in forced quality time that we're used to not spending together most families spend vast amounts of time apart and suddenly they're in this contained environment so I'm not convinced it's entirely about we spent all the money and we realise we haven't got any by the end of January I do a lot of work around financial capability financial education and so on I think in that world one of the things that often gets easily forgotten is that yes of course there tend to be less money troubles where people are able to manage them but that's is almost completely drowned out by the fundamental issue which is when you've hardly got any money that that is the in itself the cause of the problems and I think that one of the things that I suspect is really important is that in relationships where you're really only just managing day by day or really struggling to manage or not managing that the money becomes a focus of those difficulties and those stresses in ways that it doesn't otherwise but it also gets tangled up with all of the other stuff I wanted to do the best for your kids if you've got children and just not being able to meet the ideal that we have as the cultural norm which is the generosity of parenthood but I mean what was interesting about the study the qualitative study we did was that people were saying that the emotional value that the couple relationship value of small gestures and they were very dismissive of grand gestures so forget the big you know interfloor bouquet it was the very small flower that was picked from you know a garden and I think that's where money is you know you can really see that it isn't the problem yes I completely agree if you've got none actually it's just hard work when you're having to think about how can you feed your family but it isn't money per se is the dynamic of the couple which is the problem I think that not only is money inherently very emotional how you manage your emotions makes a real difference to how effective you are financially you know for example one study we've just completed shows that people who are bad at managing their emotions will often find other ways of doing it well we know also you know that people do do things like comfort eating and turn to drink or drugs or but one of the things that people also do is turn to things like buying buying impulsively you know you know paradoxically people in money difficulties will often cheer themselves up by going out shopping we know that people who understand their own emotions and other people's emotions are are actually better at handling their finances what was interesting for me is the way that people were talking about their relationship so we had one couple for example who would talk in a very clear-sighted way about it's like having money but you have to put affect you put your emotional wealth together you you put your energy into a relationship and then when times are really hard when things are lean emotionally you control on that you control all of that so I think people are making very sophisticated associations between money and economic value of things but there's also a burden of social expectation that people are dealing with and they're constantly being flooded with actually very clever emotionally manipulative advertisements for example about you know to have happy life you've got to have this you could have that I mean I think that's true but I mean if we think of some of the other adverts where it's just about this cultural expectation of everything's going to be rosy and everything's going to be great and what was interesting in our research project the enduring love project was that people were saying all media representations of rubbish we don't relate to them at all we just have no affinity with these because these aren't real people what we do on an everyday basis is we just get on with life we muddle on and what works in a relationship isn't those things that can be identified in the cultural sense what works in a relationship are those things that only that couple know for example so the very very small gesture and I think that's what's different about the media it's sort of it's out there but it doesn't in a way impact on the personal relationships in the way we might think it does so I'm not sure about the advert well there's lots of evidence they're quite successful in getting people to buy stuff this idea that came up in our research of people equating money with love if you're not able to spend money on your family on the people in relations with somehow you don't love them enough I do worry about the way in which as a society we seem to be constructing our expectations of the role money should play in a relationship where I and colleagues started with all of this we weren't studying emotions at all we were studying or certainly not relationships we were studying the risk-taking behavior of traders in investment banks and what staggered me was just how much time these traders spent talking about their emotions and the emotions of managing these very large sums of money you know so this this idea so I think you know you studying relationships myself studying the way in which people professionals and ordinary people behave in relation to money have come from different directions to this idea of just how important emotions are in all of it yes no absolutely and the cultural value that is assigned to emotional value so definitely we agree I don't think we were supposed to oh dear