Put Your ‘Slutty Ass Wallet’ on Birth Control

How to handle love and money in a post-pandemic world

My slutty-ass wallet opened wide for everything and everyone: clothes, skincare, food, Amazon, Apple, Urban Outfitters…

In a recent Medium article for P.S. I Love You, Sophie crushed the title:

In the Words of J. Lo, Your Love Don’t Cost a Thing

Then Sophie nailed the first paragraph (see the slutty-ass wallet sentence). Then, Sophie hammered the article’s thesis with more creativity and conviction:

All kidding aside, you absolutely can grow and maintain your relationships (platonic and romantic) in pandemic times without spending a penny. I speak from personal experience as I made a new friend the other week in the middle of a state-wide shutdown…

Honestly, I might never go back to my old spending ways. And from what I hear from my single friends, they might never go back to their old dating ways. The new dynamics of dating feel more creative and unique than the standard 8 pm cocktails.

I have written along these lines.

In particular, I riffed about how the pandemic helped produce roughly $1,600 in monthly savings simply because I pretty much stopped spending at restaurants and bars in mid-March. This happened alongside the decision to get into better shape and eliminate carbs and alcohol for a while.

There was a time during quarantine when I thought I’d never go back to my “old ways.” As the months flew by, my extreme take on the situation shifted. If I disagree — and I use that word lightly — with anything in Sophie’s article, it’s that Sophie leaves two factors out of the relationships meet money equation.

Emotion. And the other person.

Sophie’s list of date ideas is incredible. I’m all about it. In fact, I plan to steal several of the ideas in the coming weeks. The way Sophie discusses finding common money ground with a friend or significant other works as well.

It’s just that I’m not sure we can realistically expect most people to stick to a budget and attendant lifestyle the pandemic sort of forced on us. I include myself in this group of people.

Like Sophie, I resisted takeout and delivery for most of quarantine. If I’m honest with myself, I did this less because of the savings and more because I wanted to tone my body. The financial consequences are gravy. I accept and reap the benefits.

While I intend to carry on with my enhanced personal financial style, there’s no way I can be one of the outliers who maintains the same ultra-frugal lifestyle post-pandemic.

Also, like Sophie, I met someone.

By and large, we have done things together for free or very little money. We both love the time we spend together walking, at the beach, or watching Sex and the City in my apartment. We love these things because of the company. The way we choose to be together happens independent of any money-related considerations.

What we have feels easy, right, and real. It’s as if everything we do just happens.

I must really like this girl because I tend to be a planner. This side of me still shows, however, I’m far more willing to go with the flow. Being next to her matters more than the particulars of what we’re doing when we’re together or the precise time we do it at.

It’s not forced. While every relationship requires parameters, boundaries, and an ample amount of space, these things occur more conceptually than concretely. You can’t force a healthy relationship. You can work on getting there and maintaining it, but if there’s no there there, well, there’s just no there there.

Just as you probably can’t force the relationship-y type stuff, you can’t force an extreme way of living. This comes down to the type of person you find yourself connecting with and falling for.

Would it be a deal-breaker if she was vegan? Probably not.

But what if she was vegan, hated taking long walks and muddy hikes, and thought sex was only for making babies? This makes it more difficult.

You can run up a list of these things. While no one thing would break the deal for me (you need things you don’t have in common in a relationship), a significant culmination of things we don’t have in common probably would. However, it’d be bigger than one particular thing. It’s more like the dissimilarities act as a harbinger of a larger, more structural disconnect.

In other words, we would just be different people. You can try to force this type of relationship for a while, but it’s unlikely to have legs. It’ll have a due date you’re not gonna make it past. In this spirit, you can’t force frugality, nor should you try.

For better or worse, there’s something about spending the day drinking in a dive bar, sitting next to one another in a dark wine bar, or sharing a meal at your favorite or a new restaurant. These things cost money. It sounds like a millennial buzz phrase, but you’re paying for the experience as much as the goods and services rendered.

Our customs as a culture and emotional desire to connect with others drives what has become (almost) universally-accepted, collective behavior. It’s when these things dominate your lifestyle and, subsequently, your relationship that you have issues.

Strike a balance, not just a shallow Instagram pose.

I’ll sit next to this girl along a rugged coastline another thousand times with little more than a six-pack of beer and bag of chips because I love being next to her. I’ll walk Los Angeles neighborhoods with her every single morning if she’s down — for free. Because I love being next to her.

It’s real when this balance — not only in the activities you do together — just happens. When you look up and realize balance permeates the relationship, you know you got something good.

You don’t need hard and fast rules to ensure you’re on the same page. You just are.

The last thing I want is her saying to her friends:

He’s great, but he does this weird thing when we go out. He opens his calculator to determine, to the penny, how much each of us owes.

If you’ve ever been out to dinner with a group of friends, there’s nothing worse than the person who calculates the bill for the table. You take one for the team and save conflict by ignoring the friend who always tries to get away with paying less than their fair share. Then, you throw your debit cards or some cash on the table until the tally equals the bill plus a generous tip. Don’t sweat the small stuff. It all evens out in the end.

If the person you’re with is the person you should be with, these situations — financial or otherwise — fall into place seemingly without effort. The communication to sort these things out doesn’t feel like a summit. It comes naturally.

It’s less about the issues themselves and more about how you come together on the issues.

Ideally, you have open communication about all things — including money — so you’re able to navigate preferences and the various financial situations we all face throughout life. If you’re committed to someone, you’ll pick up their slack when needed — and vice versa.

This said the aim in a loving relationship or even platonic friendship should be a financial equation where your checking account doesn’t feel a thing:

Instead of scrimping on the small stuff, maybe the goal should be situating yourself in such a way that you don’t even notice these comparatively expensive purchases. In other words, you have organized your cash flow in such a way that when you technically overspend here and there, your checking account doesn’t feel a thing.

So, if I may give Sophie my two cents.

Put your slutty ass wallet on birth control. It’s not going to sleep with every guy it meets. It’s not going to sleep with anybody on the first date. It’s going to moderate itself and find a situation it feels comfortable opening itself up in.