I married a man with no money, and here's what I learned

When I met my ex-husband, he had tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, personal loans and student loans. He shared a shabby apartment with roommates and was on the verge of getting fired. He would never admit it, but the marriage was his harbor and pivoted his life path. I would not admit it at the time I wanted love and marriage so much that I honestly would marry anyone. Of course, now I laugh at myself.

He proposed to me in New York's Central Park. He said it’s a place that would never go away, so we could always come back for our anniversaries. I used all my savings for the down payment of our apartment and put his name on the title. In hindsight, it wasn’t very smart, but at the time I really did want to build a home with him.

We went back to Central Park for our first anniversary, then two months short of our second anniversary. He asked for a divorce, and he already got an attorney. His ask: cash, split of the apartment, alimony AND reimbursement of his legal fees. Basically, he wanted my money and wanted me to pay him to do that.

I grew up poor, and I saved my money little by little by planning my career and spending carefully. Money never came easy for me. The apartment symbolized my dream of family building. His demand in the divorce felt like a slap on my face. And the irony was he made money - he built a side business with my help and it was turning a profit that’s more than his day job salary. He tried to hide the business, but he was busted. It was a long divorce that dragged on for over 3 years. Here’s what I learned:

Both marriage and divorce center around finances.

Historically, marriage has always functioned as a means of protecting property and raising children, with considerations of love being secondary or even irrelevant. In many cultures, marriage arrangements were designed to secure alliances between families, ensuring that assets such as land, money, and titles remained within the family lineage. In modern times, there's a growing emphasis on personal fulfillment and emotional connection in relationships, and marriage becomes about finding love and living happily ever after. Marriages now go across different social classes, races and cultures, but if we actually look at day-to-day marriage life, all essential decisions are still about money. Do you rent or own? Do you send your kids to private or public school? Where does the family go for vacation? What do you do with premarital loans? In a divorce, it’s about who gets to keep the house and how you and your spouse divide up marital savings and debt. This is also why matrimonial and family law are never about who cheated on whom, or who’s toxic in the relationship, but ultimately it’s about property division. Whether you are getting married or divorced, it’s very important to differentiate your separate property (assets you acquired before the marriage) and understand the legal indications of marital income. 

So how do you do that? You can work with an attorney or a financial analyst, but that will cost $5000 to $10,000. Or you can use Anew at a fraction of the traditional costs. You will get a full view of your finances and have a set of tools to plan for different scenarios, like what’s gonna happen to your mortgage and that joint bank account. That will help you understand the legal frameworks and true consequences of each option.  Anew is all about enabling you to make informed decisions. Go to loveanew.co/truth and get your free 7-day trial.  

When many men go from “no money” to “some money,” they really want to be seen in a different light by different people.

If we have seen them at their poorest and worst, it’s hard for them to feel validated with this new-found sense of self-worth. The only way for them to feel “stronger, richer and better” is finding new people who only see them where they are now. This is brutal and sad. But it’s not about us and it really is about them. Of course, there are still many men, with or without money, are just loving husbands and dads. If you have one, you are very lucky and I hope you cherish him.

Romance and love are great, but a bigger life presents so many more interesting things.

If one thing I wish I could change about my 20s is how much importance I put on finding love. I had so much eagerness to be married at the time, because I was feeling lonely and insecure. No matter how far I went, deep down I was still the awkward teenage me with acne. I wanted a marriage that could save me from all this insecurity and uncertainty in life, and I wanted to know that I was loveable. But we all know how it ends - no one is coming to save us. We’ve only got ourselves and that’s okay. We need to love ourselves first and that’s what really matters. I still believe in love. I believe people can stay together forever. It’s also okay that it doesn’t happen to me. There’s so much more to life.

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