Do you remember the old marriage ceremonies that used to include that quaint phrase: “all my earthly goods I give to you?”

It didn’t mean much if all you owned was a secondhand sofa and a few cans of pork and beans. But the sentiment was supposed to symbolize something: There is a financial union in marriage. “The two will be one…” is how the Bible puts it. We are not just two individuals; now we are a unit. We share everything equally now.

Can we really share the money?

But we? Many of us don’t like the idea of ​​”our” money as much as “his” and “hers.” We live in a society where our worth is largely determined by our jobs. And clean runs when toddlers don’t go potty don’t count either. This attitude certainly has detrimental effects on stay-at-home parents’ self-images and their marriages if their spouses also fire the work they do. But it also affects our financial arrangements.

I have known women who did not have access to bank accounts because it was “their” money. (Don’t let her husband do this; it’s often a precursor to abuse!) Other women suffer from the opposite problem: even though they stay home with the children, they find it difficult to trust their husbands because that kind of trust is scary. Who am I without work? Or, even worse, what if he leaves me? We should all be trained for a job, but living our lives by what-ifs ensures that we always live in fear.

do what you are good at

In reality, marriage is not a financial trap for either spouse. Instead, researchers Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite found that when couples pool their skills, everyone is better off. In an ideal world, each spouse would do 50% of the paid work, 50% of the childcare, and 50% of cleaning the potty. But the real world is not like that. What happens if one of the spouses earns more money? What if one can’t go part time? What if you can’t do laundry without shrinking something? This is where partner benefits come into the picture. Everyone is free to do what they do best and, in the end, everyone is better off.

Specialization is better than a legalistic 50/50 split

This doesn’t mean you should never have to change diapers or clean a toilet, just that it’s okay to split up the work in whatever way works best for your family, as long as you both work equally hard. In our house, that means my husband doesn’t touch the clothes (he doesn’t let me mop either). But he makes most of the money, because being a doctor makes a lot more than being an author! It’s all getting done, we’re both working, and the family is better off than trying to legally split everything in half.

A couple we know decided that they would each contribute 50% when they got married. And that worked fine, until she got pregnant! But he still felt that she should contribute her share, so he left the baby with Grandma and went back to work. He spent his money on golf games; she spent hers on diapers.

Not surprisingly, they are no longer together. If instead they had realized that they weren’t just two halves getting into a relationship, but two people coming together, maybe they could have let go of this silly 50/50 arrangement. Instead, neither ended up with much of anything.

In marriages, there are often few magic bullets; there are only compensations. Sometimes, though, in relationships those trade-offs aren’t really that bad. One plus one can actually be more than two. So let’s celebrate that we have someone to share with, instead of obsessively trying to do everything ourselves!