https://www.nytimes.

com/2023/12/11/style/modern-love-spending-money-
david-yoon.html

By David Yoon
Dec. 11, 2023

This essay is part of a Modern Love project on the intersection of money and
relationships.

I didn’t grow up in a romantic household. My parents were more business partners

than lovers, consumed with the day-to-day operation of our family bodega. They
never touched affectionately, never said, “I love you.” Dad didn’t call Mom “honey.”
Rather, he called her “Hani-umma,” or “Han’s mommy,” using my Korean name.
Mom addressed him likewise with my older brother’s.

While my friends’ parents went out to fancy anniversary dinners, the only meals
my parents shared were eaten standing up in front of a busy cash register. Any
gifts they did find time or energy to buy were practical, like the buy-three-get-one-
free men’s sweaters Mom got at Sears, or downright bizarre, like the bargain-bin
vintage fox fur scarf (with attached head) that Dad, forever the clueless bumpkin,
probably mistook as Gatsbian chic.

And yet, my parents had been romantic, once upon a time.

When I was very small, I would catch glimpses of proof. For instance, they used to
shower together! And have tickle fights. Once I even discovered a used (ew)
condom in their bedroom trash can, which Dad, laughingly mortified, tried to pass
off as medicine for his “gochu,” or “chili pepper.”

These romantic shenanigans stopped as soon as the bodega business began in

earnest. My parents embarked on years of herculean commutes and backbreaking
labor, all for the goal of putting me and my brother through college. It’s no
exaggeration to say they never took a single vacation day, much less what we’d
today call a “date night.” On Christmas and my birthday, they would often hand me
raw cash and tell me to go buy something, too exhausted to think of a gift on their
own.
As a result, I grew up not really understanding what romantic gestures were. I
didn’t appreciate the meaning of a nice dinner or a surprise gift. I wasn’t good at all
the stuff that didn’t cost money, either, like the catharsis of expressing emotions
(which I kept mostly bottled up, probiotically fermenting), or the simple
validations of physical touch and compliments (both of which made me bristle).

Unsurprisingly, all of my early romantic relationships fizzled. It’s not that I wasn’t
interested in romance. (I was, deeply, and basically nonstop.) It’s just that I was
bad at it.

Then I met Nicki. We were in the M.F.A. fiction program at Emerson College and
quickly became friends, then lovers. I was scrimping off savings, having just quit a
job. She worked in finance for easily double my previous salary.

In those days, I thought it was ridiculous to spend extra money to eat at nice
restaurants: Food was food. I didn’t understand why romantic getaways cost so
much, or why we would want to “getaway” anyway: A room was a room.

But Nicki was relentless. Leading by example, she put me through a romantic boot
camp. Not only did she have the time and will, she had the hard financial
resources: money to pay for our nights out, money for our movies, money for our
trips. As her starving artist boyfriend, I would feel guilty as she single-handedly
invested in our relationship. But she never cared.

On one occasion, she bought me a $35 frog. It was a tiny silver-plated figurine the
size of a gummy bear. It wore a tiny gold crown and came in a fancy little matchbox
bearing the words, YOU ARE MY PRINCE. I had a well-paying job at this point,
but part of me still reflexively boggled at the idea of paying so much for something
so small and essentially useless. But I’ve kept it to this day precisely because it has
no other purpose than to serve as a marker, a portable folly. It reminds me that for
Nicki, love was well worth $35.

With Nicki’s prompting, I learned to say “I love you” every day. My bristling was
replaced by outright P.D.A. I expressed my emotions, via my mouth and
everything, and found myself doing things I never thought I’d do: going to
candlelight dinners, agonizing over birthday presents, planning vacations, buying
the right shoes to dance in. We ate and traveled and gave gifts. Follies multiplied
on our shelves. It’s true that I had less money in the bank as a result, but I knew I
never had more love. I also knew I wanted to get married. She knew, too.

On our one-year anniversary as a couple, Nicki was adamant that we go to a nice

sushi restaurant to hold what she called our first “State of Our Union.” Humans
across the lovestruck ages have worn their finest duds at their most splendid
feasts, and this night was no different. We put on our nice clothes and ordered
pricey sake and fish, as if to underscore the significance of the event. This was the
night we said, out loud, that we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. Then
we paid the check and left a big tip.

Now, not all was rosy. My parents didn’t approve of us. They didn’t attend our
wedding and closed me off for a decade, perhaps angry that their years of sacrifice
only led to me marrying a non-Korean girl. Not what they’d bargained for.

Our love made so little sense to them that they could only explain it as a financial
conspiracy. My parents were afraid that Nicki was only in our relationship to
siphon my money away. It didn’t help when Nicki and I both quit our jobs to
become, gasp, writers.

Skip cutscene to many years later. One day, everything turned around. Maybe it
was because my parents were facing their impending mortality, but suddenly they
began accepting us. I think our success (and the buzz it got in the Korean parental
gossip circuit) had something to do with it. Nicki jokes that it only took her two No.
1 New York Times best sellers and film adaptations for them to finally take her off
their romantic grifter watchlist. Things improved when my own novel debuted
well, too. It’s as if by proving we could pay the bills, we proved our love.

I’m talking a lot about my parents because they eventually found romance again,
late in life, and I sometimes wonder if my and Nicki’s relationship might have
given them a little inspiration. After years of wearing holes into bodega linoleum,
Mom and Dad retired, and guess what? They began spending the money they had
locked away. They bought new clothes. Gambled in Vegas. Went on a cruise with an
“incredible pasta bar.” Had a fancy dinner, alone, for the first time in decades. They
didn’t worry about the cost. They knew they didn’t have a lot of time left, and it
turned out they still liked each other.

Mom bought Dad a fancy newsboy hat to travel around in. A tweedy little number,
totally unlike the hats Dad usually wore: whatever cheap plastic trucker hat they
couldn’t sell at the bodega. She made him wear the newsboy and told everyone it
made him look cute. This embarrassed him greatly. But you could tell he loved it. I
recognized what Mom was doing. She was putting Dad through a romantic boot
camp of her own.

I’m glad they splurged on their relationship because it turned out cancer would
take Dad away only a year later. During his final weeks of hospice care, Mom
bought him cute new T-shirts seemingly every other day. Nicki stepped things up
as well, loudly barraging both my parents with I love yous, which they learned to
lob right back. Mom took things further, ordering us to kiss Dad’s forehead. All new
things, so late in life.

After Dad died, Mom sold their house and gave away everything in it in a matter of
weeks. Isn’t that revealing? That without love, the material world ceases to have
much meaning?

With her great romance over, Mom now spends her remaining savings on us,
family. She insists on giving me gas money and buying me Korean groceries. When
I argue that I’m a fully independent adult man, she says I’m still a baby and that I
should shut up.

When Mom passes away, she’ll leave behind a zero balance: zero savings, zero
debt. I like that. It means she spent every dime on love.

She often has dreams about Dad. In them, Dad’s not adrift amid boring clouds in
some spartan white robe. He’s wearing a fancy suit, in a beautiful marble hall
(Mom likes marble), where the food is incredible. He’s impatient: What’s your ETA,
honey?

Soon, Mom says.

Dad’s hat hangs in my closet, Nicki’s frog prince watches me from the bookshelf.
Lovely little reminders. Romance, I’ve come to learn, is not simply a thing to spend
money on. It is the thing to spend money on because it’s what matters most above
all. The rest, in the end, is just expense.

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David Yoon is a New York Times Best-selling author, co-founder of the Joy Revolution publishing imprint, and
co-founder of the TV and film production company Yooniverse Media.

Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.

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A version of this article appears in print on , Section ST, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: How I Learned to Spend On Symbols of
My Affection