What is Financial Infidelity?
Financial infidelity simply means you or your partner is hiding something about finances. This can look like: hiding debt, hiding a bank account, a secret credit card, making financial decisions without your partner, or hiding or misrepresenting income or assets.
The definition is simple, but the reasons for financial infidelity get vastly more complex. And just to be clear, financial infidelity is something that relationships can come back from.
In this article we’re only talking about financial infidelity within an otherwise healthy relationship. Financial abuse frequently incorporates financial infidelity, and within the coaching I do with couples, is treated much differently.
Signs of Financial Infidelity
Financial infidelity often doesn’t start with a big betrayal. More often, it begins with something small: a moment of hesitation, a choice not to share, or an effort to protect peace, autonomy, or a sense of control.
If you’re wondering whether something is being hidden, or if you are hiding something, it can help to gently tune in to patterns of behavior that might signal a lack of safety or trust around money. These signs aren’t proof that something is wrong. They’re simply invitations to get curious.
Here are a few things to pay attention to:
- Avoiding conversations about money
This might sound like “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” or it might just be a quiet shift away from topics that used to feel easier to bring up. - Withdrawing emotionally or energetically during financial conversations
A partner might seem distant, distracted, or even shut down when the topic of money arises. This can be a protective response, not a signal of betrayal. - Reluctance to share account information or financial decisions
Keeping financial activity separate can sometimes come from a place of independence or fear, not deceit. - Making unshared purchases or financial commitments
One partner may make decisions on their own out of urgency, shame, or the belief that they’re sparing the other from stress. - Small secrets that snowball
What starts as not mentioning one purchase, one overdraft, one forgotten bill, can slowly become a pattern. Not out of malice, but out of fear of how the truth will land. - Changes in tone, urgency, or language around money
Sometimes it’s not the behavior itself, but the emotional charge behind it that points to something tender or unresolved.
These signs aren’t about catching someone in a lie. They’re about recognizing when the emotional and relational environment around money has become less safe. And from that awareness, choosing compassion over blame.
If you’re seeing yourself in these patterns, that doesn’t make you bad. If you’re seeing your partner in them, that doesn’t make them a villain. In most relationships, these signs are less about deception, and more about protection.
It is important not to assign blame to either partner when it comes to financial infidelity. Blame, accountability, responsibility, are all things we think are going to “solve” the financial infidelity, but secret keeping is only a symptom of the larger problem, not the problem itself. At its core, financial infidelity is not a personality defect but an attempt to protect.
The Emotional Impacts of Financial Infidelity
Financial infidelity is rarely just about money, it’s about the rupture it creates in the emotional fabric of a relationship. The discovery (or disclosure) of a financial secret can feel like a betrayal, and that hurt often runs deeper than dollars and cents.
For the partner who discovers the infidelity…
You may feel shock, anger, sadness, or fear. Your body might tense up, your mind might race, or you might go completely numb. These are normal trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, fix or fawn kicking in to try to protect you.
- You might fight, demanding answers or lashing out.
- You might freeze, unsure of what to say or do next.
- You might flee, physically or emotionally pulling away.
- You might feel compelled fix everything, and fix it RIGHT NOW and you both end up feeling pressured.
- Or you might fawn, trying to smooth things over and minimize the conflict, at your own expense.
These reactions aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signs that your nervous system has registered a threat to safety, stability, or connection.
For the partner who kept the secret…
You might be carrying heavy shame, anxiety, or guilt. You may be terrified of being judged or rejected. You might have tried to “fix it” quietly, hoping no one would find out. Or maybe you’ve been waiting for the right moment to confess, but it never felt safe enough.
It’s common to experience dysregulation, where your emotions feel too big or too distant to manage. You might dissociate, over-explain, shut down, or even turn the focus away from yourself in self-protection.
For the relationship…
Financial infidelity can create a sudden sense of emotional distance between partners. One person might feel like the ground has shifted beneath them. The other may feel exposed and uncertain how to rebuild trust. It can be hard to stay present with each other when you’re both hurting, especially if you interpret the other person’s reactions as proof that you’re unsafe or unlovable.
That’s why healing requires more than just transparency, it requires care. Nervous system care. Communication repair. Space to feel hurt and space to be held.
Financial infidelity is not the end of a relationship. But it is a moment that calls for deep gentleness, especially when every part of you wants to react fast. Slow down. Breathe. You don’t have to have the perfect words right now. You just have to start with honesty, and safety.
Let’s look at some reasons financial infidelity happens
Reason #1: We are trying to protect normalcy
Humans are weirdly adept at doing whatever it takes to keep up what is normal or common in our lives, even if our normal isn’t healthy. This isn’t even really about how we are perceived by others (The Keeping Up With The Joneses idea). This is the very human survival instinct that there is safety in things not changing. Change is scary and bad, and our brains know that. Keeping things the same represents safety. The more pressure our brains and nervous systems are under, the more likely we are to value normalcy.
Even slight “irregularities” in our finances can be deeply humiliating, so of course we try to protect ourselves by hiding them, especially from the person closest to us.
Reason #2: We are trying to protect ourselves
It cannot be understated how deeply money is connected to our sense of survival. It is, after all, the one resource in our modern lives that we can exchange for lots of other resources. Guarding that resource (hording) for ourselves is an attempt at protecting ourselves.
To further protect ourselves, we switch over to hyper-individuality… feeling like we need to do it on our own (or is no one else’s business). We must, above all, not let anyone know something is wrong.
Here’s what that can sound like:
“I’ll just take care of it myself.”
“This is just a temporary state, no need to worry my spouse.”
Reason #3: We are trying to protect our partners
I’ve rarely seen an instance where someone is keeping financial secrets in marriate to be malicious (financial abuse being the exception). Financial infidelity is overwhelmingly an attempt to protect the relationship, protect ourselves, protect a partner, or protect the status quo.
Like lots of things in our relationships, however, the things we do to protect ourselves can be perceived as a threat by our partner, and even ourselves.
“I was trying to protect you.” may be an absolutely honest intent, although the impact will often be exactly the opposite.
Reason #4 Fear, shame, and guilt
Fear of shame, guilt, and judgment are preventing an open conversation. We apply plenty of shame and guilt about our finances to ourselves, we don’t need someone else doing it too!
We often think that judging ourselves or someone else’s decisions is a good way to make better decisions in the future, but it does not work. If shaming ourselves or others worked, we’d all be fantastic at this life thing.
A symptom of a larger problem
On its face, financial infidelity looks like a simple problem of a breakdown in financial trust. And while that is true, it goes deeper than that. Like so much of our lives with partners, a lack of trust boils down to a delicate, fragile, painful connection to our partner. That fragile connection is a symptom of an even larger issue… safety.
How safe do you feel coming clean to your partner about the debt, savings, or decisions you made without them? How safe do you feel when you suspect they are hiding something from you?
How to Start Repairing
If you’re reading this after discovering or revealing a financial secret, first: pause.
You’re not broken. Your relationship is not beyond repair. But you both might be tender, guarded, or overwhelmed right now, and that’s okay.
Repair doesn’t start with a spreadsheet.
It starts with safety; emotional, relational, nervous-system-level safety.
That means:
- Having conversations in moments of relative calm, not during a fight or shutdown.
- Checking in with your own body: Am I regulated enough to listen, or share, or ask?
- Accepting, as best you can, your partner’s emotions, even if they’re different from yours. Just because their reactions are different than yours doesn’t mean that they are invalid or unsafe.
Instead of trying to “solve” the infidelity immediately, try asking:
- “Would it feel okay to talk about what’s been going on with money?”
- “Can we agree to go slow and stay curious, even if this is hard?”
- “What would help you feel a little safer having this conversation?”
Financial infidelity doesn’t heal through punishment, shaming, or a single confessional moment. It heals through connection, through slow rebuilds of trust, and through honoring each person’s pace and pain.
You don’t have to figure this out alone, and you don’t have to figure it all out today.
What not to do next
Counterintuitively, I recommend not coming clean all at once. Just ripping off that band aid might feel good to you, but it may be devastating to your partner. In this article I talk about the 10 skills every couple needs to feel safe when talking about money and by extension, financial infidelity.
What you CAN do right now
Go slow. Be gentle with yourself and your partner. I know what I’m asking for, and I know how much this hurts you (yes, even if you’re the one hiding things). Being patient with yourself and others is much MUCH harder than just exposing this wound, and potentially wounding your partner.
Want to just unload on someone for 15 minutes?Let’s talk.
You can schedule a free call with me and just share. No judgment, no commitment, just listening.
One last thing…
You are so much closer to being on the other side of this than it seems right now! I’ve seen many couples begin the conversation around financial infidelity so deeply hurting that it doesn’t seem possible that they could ever feel safe with each other again, and then a few months later they are past it and working on shared goals as a team.
Imagine making decisions with your partner and feeling heard and safe. Whether you are taking it slow on your own or working with a trauma-informed couples financial coach to smooth the process along, you CAN heal from this!
Last updated August 2025