Cortez 1

Stephanie Cortez
Eric Kufs
English 114 B
03 May 2016
Money Does Not Equal Love
People in our society constantly wonder when and who they will marry in their lifetime
and there are tons of questions about the concept of true love. Many young and un-married adults
in our society grow up meeting people with standards and expectations pre-built in their minds.
Before getting to really know someone and the characteristics they carry, they judge a person by
their appearance. Many times, people are more interested and concerned about how much money
the other person is making. By asking the other person what they do for a living can make them
feel less attracted or do the opposite, make them feel more attracted. If these are the first
impressions we get from people, then this will lead us to thinking that money equals love. People
base off their success in a relationship by the money they both have. In my personal experiences
and teachings from my family, we believe money should never equal love and by this I mean, do
not be with someone because of their money. A person can create their own definition of
happiness.
Of course everyone has their own definition of love and happiness but here is my take on
how love should be. I believe an individual creates their own way of happiness. When you start
depending on someone else to make you happy then it starts to feel impossible that you can be
happy on your own. There are so many times in our lives where things go wrong and we feel
someone else is supposed to make things better instead of fixing things ourselves. There are also
many times where people do not feel any type of reciprocity within their relationship. One
partner feels they are doing everything and the other shows no effort in being in the relationship.

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This will create an unbalanced giving of love and affection where trust issues can arise. When we
forget that money comes and goes, we place our relationship in the same category of coming and
going. I believe if you choose to be with someone, then you will do anything to make things
work. Why fight over something that is temporary like money? Why not work on something that
you want to be permanent? Money is an important factor but because it is super important it
sometimes can become a huge reason to marital problems. Having or not having money is an
everyday work in progress but does not equal your happiness or love you have with your partner.
Love is a feeling you get when you see someone. It is a comfort zone to share with someone you
can love unconditionally. It is a companionship filled with mutual, honest, positive feelings.
Now that I have given my idea of love, here are a few sources that speak upon love and
money. According to Pew Research Center by Belinda Luscombe, people in 2014 were surveyed
and they answered what the main reasons were as to why they were not currently married. Their
ages were from eighteen to twenty-four, twenty-five to thirty-four, and thirty-five and older. The
oldest bracket voted that they have not found what they are looking for as to why they were not
married. This was a forty-one percent voting rank. The lowest percent came from the youngest
age bracket, eighteen to twenty-four. Twenty-five percent of eighteen to twenty- four year olds
said that they have not found what they are looking for. There is a sixteen percent difference
here. It may be that people that begin to grow older and reach their late thirties and early forties
are still way too attached to the standards they have created in their head. If they would be more
open minded to different types of people, maybe they would have found the one they wanted to
marry instead of still looking.
Another source of research comes from Sonya Britt. Britt says despite the amount that
someone makes, the top predictor for divorce is money, because it happens at all levels of
income. I completely agree with Britt here in this statement. All types of people argue or discuss

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money, so questioning if you will marry someone or not just because of their financial status, is
not a smart thing to do. Like I said, money does not equal love. Being attracted to someones
money is wrong. You should be attracted to a person for the characteristics they own. However,
Britt displays a chart that shows the percent of how less likely a couple will be to divorce based
on their annual household income. According to this chart presented by her research, it is fiftyone percent less likely for a couple to divorce if their annual household income is one hundred
and twenty-five thousand dollars or more. In contrast, it is thirty-one percent less likely for a
couple to divorce if their annual household income is between twenty-five and fifty thousand
dollars. In other words, the more money you and your spouse make, the less chance you will end
up getting divorced. Many people refer to the saying, more money, more problems but I have
chosen to neglect that statement and transform it to a positive outcome of my own. I have
constructed this idea with my significant other that goes like this, More money, more
opportunities. If all couples stay focused on the bigger picture, that of financial stability and a
happy future, then they would be arguing less. Of course, there will always be disagreements and
moments of frustration, but the fundamentals and the principal of the relationship should be set
strong and created out of love.
The third source comes from the one and only, Oprah Winfrey. She speaks to her crowd
of a lesson titled, Money and Marriage on May 4th 2009. Oprah begins her video with, Lying
to your partner or spouse about finances is a recipe for disaster. She incorporates a real life
scenario by demonstrating a couple that wishes to get married. Eric, the soon to be husband, does
not know Anastasia, his future wife, is about fifty thousand dollars in debt. Eric finds out this
information the day of the interview from Oprahs producer. One of Oprahs guest consultants on
the show responded to this couple with if they can afford a wedding or not because this was their
initial concern. However, Oprahs consultant said that there were bigger problems than if they

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could afford a wedding or not. Just before the show aired, Oprahs consultant asked Anastasia
how much credit card debt she was in, and while streaming live, the answer she had given before
the show was way lower than what was displayed on the screen projected to the audience.
Oprahs consultant said that Anastasia not being honest with Eric is a huge problem and will lead
to them having no trust in one another. Now, this brings me back to my main point.
If you are not focused on the principals of your relationship like being honest, being
respectful, trusting one another, and loving each other unconditionally, then there will be leading
future marital problems. The idea of being married only scares or intimidates people because
they cannot look forward into the positive and beautiful aspects of their future. We should be
smarter and make better life choices in our relationships. Money can only be and should only be
seen as a tool for opportunity, never a problem. So as to find a solution to the problem of money
taking over a couples relationship, we can grow in our relationship, work on loving better, and
not give a person a price tag.

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Works Cited
Britt, Sonya. "Kansas State University." Researcher Finds Correlation between Financial
Arguments, Decreased. Relationship Satisfaction. Kansas State University, 12 July
2013.Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
Luscombe, Belinda. Why 25% of Millennials Will Never Get Married. Time. 24 Sept. 2014.
Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
An Oprah Show Lesson in Money and Marriage. Oprah.com. Oprah, 2009. Web. 15
2016.

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