Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Rich Woman Rising podcast. I'm your host and new money bestie, Eloise Tompkins, and I'm a money coach and psychologist, and I help women to heal their relationship with money through body-based techniques where we really shift your relationship with money at the subconscious level so that you can actually make the money that you want in your business and have fun while you do it because it's no longer feeling like so anxiety provoking and scary.
But today we are going to be diving into a topic that Oh, honestly, it's something that I really wish we didn't even have to be talking about. However, I just see it come up time and time and time again in the work that I do with women. So I want to talk about it. I want to shine a light on it and talk about something that you might find yourself not talking about all that often. Just recently, I was in a Facebook group and I saw someone post about this anonymously because It is really tough to talk about. And it's when your partner isn't supportive of your business growth. What the fuck do you do?
Before we dive in, though, I just want you to know that if you are experiencing this, you are not alone. I have this conversation with so many women, both directly and indirectly. And what I mean by that is, you know, some women know and they'll tell me, they're like, oh, my partner just does not support me at all. Or some will say it indirectly, like, oh, I want to be able to do more speaking gigs, but my husband says that it's going to be too difficult with the kids, so I don't do it. And they're not even aware that that's them being held back because they think, oh, well, I'm just compromising. And of course it makes sense for me to be home with the kids.
The conversations break my heart because I see so many capable, brilliant, smart women who dim their light and play small in their business because they're just trying to keep the peace at home. And I just want to disclaimer that this is a dynamic I often see in hetero relationships. Not to say that these dynamics don't happen in queer relationships, but a lot of the women that I am talking to about these conversations are often in hetero relationships with men.
So in today's episode, we're going to have a chat about how this dynamic plays out. We're going to talk about how it is impacting your relationship with money and how your money stories, both of yours, are impacting into this. And we'll also talk about what you might be able to do about it. Because it's going to be important to be able to stand in your power and build the life, the business, the financial freedom that you want even when you're facing that resistance at home.
Because the thing is, you are going to be able to heal your relationship with money, even if your partner isn't on board. You can grow your business, even if you don't have their emotional support. And, you know, the interesting thing that I find is that even if they're not on board, when you start to show up differently in your relationship, when you start to hold different boundaries, around your business and your personal growth, then interesting things can start to happen in your relationship too.
Now your partner might show up in different ways. And I've had clients who have said lots of different things to me. I've had a client and I, gosh, remember her talking to me about how she was trying to run a multiple seven-figure business with two kids who were in, I think, primary school. And at the same time coming home from work, being expected to cook, being expected to shuffle the kids around to all of their sporting events and was the primary breadwinner in the family. And her husband would come home and expect her to have food on the table, a clean house and all of those things and would refuse to get a cleaner, would refuse to do things to make her life, their life, their family life easier because it would cost money, even though she was the one bringing in said money. She was the primary income earner.
And that is an example of where your partner's money stories can influence your own experience in the household because we all bring our own money stories in. We have our own childhood experiences, our own childhood conditioning, our own subconscious blocks that we are or aren't aware of, and bring two people together and they'll be there.
I see this with my friends all the time, and you might see this with your friends too, in addition to your partner, because sometimes it's harder with your partner. And I'll say this with my friends where I'll see something for fifty dollars and I'll be like, oh, that looks good. And then I'll have a friend that will be like, oh, my God, that's so expensive. Or you go to a restaurant and what you think is a reasonably priced restaurant, somebody else might be like, oh, my gosh, that is just way too much.
Your money stories are coming out all the time and we don't need to absorb another person's money stories. It's much more difficult though when it's your partner and you're living together, you've got a shared household, you've got some shared expenses and you're trying to navigate two different money stories that you're not consciously aware of. And money is one of the biggest stresses that couples face if they're not on the same page because they've just got two completely different sets of money stories. And sometimes those money stories are just so different that it can be hard to bring them onto the same page.
Now, if we think about just society and conditioning and the role that women have traditionally played over the years. There has been this real sense that women are passive, women are nurturing, women are caring, and that's just meant to be inherent traits of women, right? Like that's kind of this bullshit that we've been fed. The thing is women are not inherently passive, nurturing, kind, caring, we are taught to be that from a very young age.
As soon as we find out that we're like, as soon as a person who's pregnant found out that they're a girl, that conditioning is already beginning. And then you're born, that conditioning is beginning. You go to school, you get praised for sitting quietly. And then you hear comments, boys will be boys. Boys are more impulsive. Boys are just rat bags or, you know, all of those things. That conditioning sets in.
So women are learning that messaging and men are learning different messaging about how they should be. And this is also true of relationship with money. There's this real sense of men feeling like they need to be that financial protector, the one to provide financially because that's their air quotes role. And even though it's not, and even though they might consciously go, Oh, I don't buy into that. There's still this sense of masculinity around wanting to be that person.
And it can come out in really subtle ways. It can come out in ways that are passive aggressive. It can come out in ways that subtly undermine you, or it can come out in overt ways where they'll hold you back or they'll say, oh, your business, your business isn't bringing in any money. I think you should quit. Even though it takes time to get a business off the ground, it's not an overnight thing where all of a sudden you're going to be bringing in money. Or you might let your partner manage the finances because you think you're bad at it. Like all of these things are part of our money stories that are coming into it.
These aren't things that we're consciously thinking about. These aren't things that are going around in our minds, in our relationships day to day. And if you brought this up to your partner, they'd probably say, no, I don't think so. Because it's so deeply embedded in the fabric of our society that we're not even aware of it, that it's happening.
It's interesting because I remember talking to a friend and she was studying, um, I can't remember the name of it, but like she was studying some sociology topic and she was talking about how it takes generations for ideologies and beliefs to shift. And there's just such a strong undercurrent of all of these beliefs. And as a society from a surface level, we think, oh yeah, things are changing because women are equal. The reality is we're not. We are absolutely not. There's so much that needs to be done, so much that needs to shift.
And this is why in relationships there is this dynamic where your partner might want to support you and might think they are supporting you and might not see that they're holding you back because it's that underlying belief system that hasn't yet been shifted. And we need to shift that from both ends. I hope that makes sense. But that then impacts your business and your growth because as women, we're also conditioned to want to please.
And so what that means is you place so much value on the relationship and trying to make it work. And just to give you an example of this, so as a psychologist, I would work with both men and women individually, not the couple's work. And the difference between what men would come and talk to me about their partners versus what women would come in and say about their partners, again, in hetero relationships were just wild.
Women would come in and they would say things like, oh, I'm having this difficulty with my partner. I'm having these relationship issues and what can I do to fix it? How can I change? How can I be better? How can I be a better partner? How can I be a better wife? What can I do to make my relationship better?
Men would come in and I kid you not, men would say, I am doing so much. I am doing, I am working, I am doing this, I am doing that. And her, she's not doing nearly enough. And she wants this lifestyle. She wants to maintain this kind of house. She wants to live in this suburb. So how can I tell her that she needs to earn more money? How can I tell her that she needs to change this part of her behaviour?
I wish I was kidding. I am not kidding. That is what I saw in the work between men and women. And I found that fascinating because it really highlighted the people-pleasing nature that women had and the entitlement of men that women would just change for them. And we need to let that people-pleasing go. Because when we're pleasing someone else, our partner or clients in our business, we're not actually being true to ourselves.
We're not actually taking up our own space. And gosh, that's fucking like, no wonder you're frustrated. No wonder you're feeling resentful. And no wonder you're like that sense of self-worth lowers, right? Because you're not actually living in alignment with who you want to be. It's kind of like, I'm imagining a bird trapped in a really small cage, unable to open its wings, spread out its wings and fly.
And be the bird. Like, well, you are the bird, but at the moment you're trapped. You need to get out of that cage. Because if you are playing small and not achieving your goals, I mean, it's going to impact you at all. It is impacting your relationship, I would be imagining, right? Like you're not ever going to be that perfect person ever. Like it's just not possible for your partner.
And the only person you're hurting is yourself. Because you might be giving them what they want. But what about you? Because you're all so important. Your needs are all so important. You bring value to the table. You're allowed to have your own goals that are separate from what other people want. Your identity shouldn't be tapped out and attached to your relationship. Your identity shouldn't be tapped into your business either, or your children. I see that a lot, women and their identity tied into their children. Your identity is you. You are your identity.
So how can you be you, right? Because it's exhausting trying to be all of these things for other people like it's just such a mental head fuck oh my gosh like I just I think to all of my clients that I have worked with and I just see that exhaustion that energy that it takes to be this person for everyone else and not for you it's tiring. Like imagine what it would be like to just drop that rope, how freeing that would feel.
And you know what? It'd probably feel a little bit scary because it would mean doing things differently. And you don't know what the outcome of that's going to be. And I remember talking with someone once who said to me, Ellie, if I ever worked with you, I would probably divorce my husband. And it got me thinking because that was a really like I was my heart broke when I heard that because I thought, wow, that is a really miserable place to live. That doesn't sound like it would be a very fun place to live. But we sometimes spend so much of our life living in this place of miserable comfortableness, even though we don't like it, there's some element of it being comfortable and it can be hard to shift away into something that actually lights us up because we're scared.
And I get it. And I'm assuming that at this point you are wanting to stay in your relationship and you might not be, you know what? And that's, I get it. But if you want to create a thriving business, and if you do want to have it all, which personally, I think you can, I am a firm believer that you can have it all, then something needs to change.
And the thing that really needs to change is your ability to set boundaries with your partner and learn the difference between compromise and sacrifice. Because I think sometimes as women, we get so caught up in what we think is compromising, but it's actually sacrificing. Sacrificing our own needs, our own desires, our own wants, our own financial security in our future.
Did you know that women over the age ofāBecause that's a time where a lot of marriages end and men end up more financially secure than women because of this dynamic. Because women have self-sacrificed and they have put everyone else's needs ahead of their own and then women end up financially fucked in their mid-fifties.
I don't want that for you. I'm not saying that is going to happen for you, but I don't want it to happen. If you do end up divorced, like at least be frigging set up financially. So you can do that by making sure that you don't sacrifice your own wants. Put yourself first. You're allowed to put yourself first. In fact, you should.
And that includes your kids as well. And what I mean by that is, You can't fill from an empty cup. Your cup has to be full first. And what that looks like is if you want to go to that speaking gig interstate and your husband says, oh, I can't manage three kids on my own. That is an example of sacrifice, not compromise. Because he's a grown man. He can handle three kids on his own. I'm pretty confident that he can, he can do that.
But if he says that he can't and you're saying, okay, well, I won't go do that speaking gig. That's an example of a sacrifice because you're sacrificing your own needs. If for example, it's something like your kid's turning one or sixteen or some milestone birthday and you've been invited to a speaking gig, but your value is that you just want to be there for that milestone, then that might be a compromise. You might say, okay, I'm going to stay.
The difference between sacrifice and a compromise is a compromise is something that both parties win on in some way. It doesn't mean that you get what you want or they get what they want, but it works for the both of you. Whereas sacrifice is where it works for the other person and it doesn't actually work for you at all. But you go along with it because you think it's what's expected of you or it keeps the peace or it's easier.
And a compromise is something where you actually can have an opportunity to meet in the middle in some way. Or maybe, you know, it's a seventy, thirty percent or forty, sixty. But there's more of a balance. And you should be finding that compromise is what you're after, not sacrifice. Because the more that you sacrifice is going to just lead to more feelings of resentment.
And being able to set those boundaries and being able to compromise requires self-worth, requires you to know that you are worthy of being able to take up that space and to be able to say, you know what, yeah, I want to go to that speaking gig and, yeah, I'm worthy of doing that. And I know that my partner is capable of looking after the kids, managing the household for a couple of days. And I'm going to go.
And I'm just kind of, as I'm talking, like I can't help but wonder how you're feeling as I'm speaking about this. Cause it's really interesting. I honestly had this conversation with so many women and as I'm talking, I've just got like, floating bits of conversations and people that I've spoken to about this. And all I'm thinking as I'm talking is I really hope that this is helpful.
And I think it's one of those things that easier said than done, because trying to shift up that dynamic with your partner when things have been the status quo for such a long time can feel really confronting.
And it reminds me of things that I've seen on Instagram. I don't know whether you've seen these, but there's this account that pops up every now and again of a woman who does little skits about the mental load with her husband. And she'll do things like explain how she takes on all the mental load and how to get the partner to take on the mental load. And in the comments, there's all these men that are like, oh, this is ridiculous. Like this is stupid. It doesn't make any sense. I don't like, why do I have to add milk to the list without asking my partner first? And I'm like, oh, men, like they just don't get it. They just, they don't, they don't get it.
So I get that this is like easier said than done. But I hope it's got you thinking or at least recognising that you can have a healthy relationship with your partner. You can create that successful business. You can set boundaries. And boundaries, oh, my gosh, that is just a topic in and of itself because I think a lot of times we think that setting a boundary means we're going to tell our partner to do something and they're going to do it and that's a boundary. No, that's not a boundary. That's a request.
A boundary is where we know our limit and our line in the sand and communicate that to the person. And if the other person, our partner, our friend, family member, whoever it is, pushes past that line that we've drawn in the sand, then there's a consequence for them going over. And that consequence isn't about them, it's about us.
But oh my gosh, the boundaries could be a whole separate podcast in and of itself. In fact, I do have an episode on boundaries. I'll link it in the show notes if you want to listen to that as well.
If you do feel called from this episode to dive deeper into any of this, reach out to me, send me a message and we can organise to have a chat. I do coaching one-on-one and this is stuff that comes up all the time in my one-on-one coaching. So I'd love to be able to support you through that if possible, that feels relevant for you. Otherwise I will see you next week with a more inspiring episode that hopefully feels a little bit less, uh, less deep than this until then take care of yourselves. Bye.
