Renovate Your Way To Love

by Emily Bolls

When one commented to me that the financial burdens were taking a toll on her marriage and that all the hard work was superseding a sex life, I felt like hugging her. I wasn’t proud of my schadenfreude, but I was so relieved to know it wasn’t just us.

Another coworker and old-house owner, Monica Burke, Rejuvenation’s retail-marketing manager, recalls that when she first started at the company as a salesperson, she frequently found herself in uncomfortable situations with couples. “Often, I’d be explaining an option, and one person would say, ‘Oh, that sounds great, let’s do that!’,” she says, “while the other person would be standing there rolling their eyes and saying, ‘How exactly do you plan to pay for that? We have no money left.’”

Stephanie Badillo, interior designer at The Home Depot in New York, also finds herself playing mediator. “Often couples have different ideas and expectations that they may not have worked out or discussed prior to visiting the store,” she says.

Couples frequently exaggerate the differences, Klein explains, and end up moving further apart. “For example, one person says, ‘What’s wrong with you that you don’t want a nice bathroom?’, while the other says, ‘What’s the matter with you that you don’t care about our finances and you want me to work until I die?’” By taking a step back, asking questions, and truly listening to each other, couples often can draw out the underlying meaning of whatever has caused the conflict. A question like “What does it really mean to you if we spend that $500 on improving the bathroom?” helps the other person get to the bottom of his own feelings.

Perhaps he spent years paying off credit-card debt and is committed to staying debt-free. Or perhaps he’ll realize that $500 for a nicer bathroom really isn’t a big deal and they should go ahead with it. Once the communication opens up, the couple will be in a better position to negotiate—and maybe they’ll decide together that they’d rather put the $500 toward a vacation.