MY PARTNER AND I are moving in to a flat together. I earn three times as much as she does, so I thought I should pay three quarters of the rent. Reluctantly, she agreed. I thought the same should also go for council tax and utility bills. Now we need furniture. Should we split this 75:25 as well? Where do we stop?
What does your partner think? Having reluctantly agreed to the 75:25 split so far, is she, too, having doubts about now extending this regime to sofas and steaks?
Of course, a pure human spirit would not much care who paid for what, so long as all the bills were cleared and you were both happy. It’s when the bliss begins to wane that financial friction might arise, becoming a sort of continuation of estrangement by other means.
When you’re splitting the bill in a restaurant with friends, and someone orders lobster, nobody minds. It evens out: some drank more, the person who had only a salad swallowed two puddings. But do you feel as magnanimous if the lobster-orderer is a relative stranger?
You have shown great generosity, which your partner has accepted with grace. Push it much further and you risk one day resenting the arrangement. She, meanwhile, may begin to feel as though she is inescapably in your debt. You could always chip in more informally, by picking up restaurant bills, or paying for cinema tickets.
In The Threepenny Opera Brecht says that “a man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll be only a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time he’ll cold-bloodedly have him handed over to the police”. Odd thing, human nature.
Have you dilemmas of your own? Write to: Modern Morals, Times Features, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. E-mail: modernmorals@thetimes.co.uk.