Money and Self-Love: Lessons I Learned from My Rich Ex-Boyfriend
By: Anne Shark
Tags: Money Mindset, Relationships, Love, Life Lessons, Self Improvement

But the thing that sucks worst of all, even worse than the fact I’d been dumped by the guy I was planning to spend the next years making sweet love to in beach-side resorts and hotels with views of the Eiffel Tower — is that I can’t even hold it against him for dumping me.

Yes, I think he gave up too easily. One fight, and it was over. I’ll spare you the details of this fight for now, but will come back to it later…

For now, I’ll just ask, You don’t leave someone over a single fight, do you?

I don’t.

He does.

Me? I stay through first fights, and second fights, and third fights, and fourth. I believe fights can make you stronger as a couple. I realize there’s a time and a place to leave… I just don’t always know when and where that time and that place are.

In any case, we have different values, but I can’t hate him for that.

Nor can I hate him for the fact that I still hear his voice in my head saying those things he always said, things that were his own personal mantras (were he the type of person to say the word “mantras”).

Hearing him say these phrases so often, they’d started becoming mine, as well. Nearly a month after our breakup and these mantras continue to run through my head, reminding me that fantasies can become reality.

What follows are these five mantras:

1. Don’t live from a place of austerity.

I was spending about half my time at his place, and when I was there we drank freshly-squeezed orange juice that cost $10 a bottle, ate organic berries and cashews, and drizzled premium-gourmet olive oil on our salads.

At my place, there was Aldi olive oil, non-organic berries (when they were on sale), and fresh-squeezed orange juice during the rare times I made a special trip to Mariano’s where fresh-squeezed costs the same as Tropicana.

My budget doesn’t allow for fancy food all the time, but it allows for it more often than I permit myself to partake. I’m just in such a habit of budgeting and restricting myself.

This is true for a lot of aspects of my life — I don’t treat myself as well as I could, both financially and emotionally.

This mantra runs through my head now, catching me each time I try to cut myself short of giving myself or receiving from others as much love and pleasure as I deserve.

Which leads me to his second mantra…

2. Be kind to yourself.

This one is a little cliché, but I’d never had someone say it to me quite so often as he did.

Being with him, I was going through a lot of emotional healing — both because of formal therapy as well as our relationship.

We engaged in bondage and power play which acted as a therapeutic practice for me, in areas such as trust-building and processing sexual trauma.

There were times when, after he tied me up and I experienced the full range of emotions, expressing them through hysterical laughter as well as hysterical crying, I would be thoroughly emotionally exhausted.

“Why am I so tired?” I’d ask. “You’re going through a lot. Be kind to yourself,” he’d tell me.

I continue practicing that. Today, hearing his voice saying, “Be kind to yourself,” I even came up with my own little saying: Do as much as you have enough energy for, not just enough time for. In thinking this, I cut my “To-do” list of the day down from six items to three.

I don’t have to do so much, and I’ll still be okay if I follow the next lesson…

3. Ask for what you deserve and know that people are able (and willing) to give it to you.

This one was based on a conversation about money. He, a freelance lawyer, once helped me ask for a raise in my freelance tutoring work. I’d gotten an email from a student’s mom saying, “If you want to discuss the fee, feel free to let me know.”

This was a few weeks after the initial scares around COVID-19 when I transferred my lessons from in-person to virtual and, in a panic, cut my fee back to nearly half of what I’d been charging, afraid that my students would quit rather than take virtual lessons from me.

When I got that email, I asked my boyfriend what he thought I should say.

“Ask for what you deserve,” he told me. “And realize that people are willing and able to give it to you. You’ve been to her house. Does it seem that she can afford to pay you more?”

In that, I asked not just for my regular rate, but a raise. She agreed to pay me my regular rate, which I was still very happy with, and the process of even asking for the raise gave me the courage to increase my fees with new students.

This money lesson, once again, bled over into other areas of my life. It was difficult asking for a raise from this woman with whom I had developed a friendly relationship. But going through this exchange and continuing to stay on friendly terms made me realize money is one of many tools we have for communicating care. It doesn’t have to create coldness between people.

And in general, we should be able to ask for what we want and accept as much as someone can afford to give us.

If we only know what it is we want! Which leads me to…

4. Figure out what you want.

He said this one to me a lot. I had no idea how little I knew what I wanted. I suppose my attitude has always been, why want something if you don’t think you can get it?

A better question might be, how can you get something if you don’t know you want it?

This arose when he asked me, “What are the top three places you’d like to visit?” and I came up blank.

Here I was telling myself how badly I wanted to be a world traveler and I didn’t even have a “Top 3” list!

This concept came up again and again, from travel destinations to whether to walk down Street A or Street B to get to the grocery store.

5. And finally, communicate what you want and set boundaries.

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that I don’t break up with people after fights. I stay for many fights. Sometimes, I stay for way too many fights, investing more and more into relationships that aren’t good anymore.

It turns out that knowing what I want and setting boundaries is a great way to know when it’s time to end a relationship.

And I promised to tell you the details of our breakup fight…

I crossed a boundary he had around arguing. I raised my voice, said some horrible things, and smacked him. I’m not proud of my behavior, but I’m also trying to be kind to myself around it.

And just as he was able to protect himself by setting boundaries and holding himself accountable to them, I can do the same.

Knowing what you want and setting boundaries go hand-in-hand, in fact, they really should be inseparable.

If you don’t know what you want, there’s nothing to set boundaries around. If you don’t set boundaries, even in engaging in things you do want, you can easily slip into engaging in things you don’t want.

This is true in all aspects of life. In relationships, it comes up in sex, in the way you interact with each other, the choices you make together, and how you engage in disagreements.

The takeaway: Figure out what you want, and make it happen.

I was gaga crazy for this guy for so many reasons, but it all comes down to this: he had many qualities I want in a partner.

He’d talk about feelings. He had been in therapy and had emotional vocabulary and wisdom that so few, straight, cis-men have.

He was kinky. The aforementioned communication skills and emotional intelligence made exploring power dynamics with him safe. I explored bondage and submission with him, two things I’d been absolutely terrified to do with anyone else before him.

He had a thirst for travel. We shared dreams of visiting the French Riviera and being naked for weeks straight. We talked about places I’d abstractly dreamed of going but didn’t believe I’d get to visit any time soon because of money.