The last thing I want to talk about is the taboo we’ve placed on money conversations. I’ll grant you that we may spend a lot of time talking about other people’s money, but I get the sense from many conversations I’ve had all over the world that we still aren’t comfortable talking about our money.

Maybe it comes from the adage that we shouldn’t talk about money at all. It’s rude in some way. But again, if it really is about numbers, then what’s the problem?

I’d suggest it’s something simple, but not easy to accept. If money conversations aren’t about the numbers, then they are about how money makes us feel. Maybe I’m in the minority, but if my theory is correct, how many of us are excited to talk about our feelings?

Think about the people we know who divorced because they always argued about money. If those arguments were really about the numbers, wouldn’t there be a solution to those arguments at some point? Instead, arguing about money is a “top predictor” of divorce.

This outcome was demonstrated by Sonya Britt, an assistant professor of family studies and human services and the program director of personal financial planning at Kansas State University. She conducted a study published in the journal Family Relations that used data from 4,500 couples who participated in the National Survey of Families and Households. To isolate the predictors of divorce, they “controlled for income, debt and net worth.” Across all incomes, arguing about money was the leading reason for divorce.

It seems like it should be easy to talk about money with someone we love and trust. But if we’re honest, it’s rarely easy to have those money conversations with our partners, especially if we don’t acknowledge what’s driving those discussions.

It may seem like a small thing, and yet I wonder what would happen to our money conversations if we acknowledged the role of emotion from the beginning? How would our conversations change if we recognized the disconnect between money, logic and emotion? Would it make us more likely to ask different questions and to not assume that the other person “doesn’t get it”?

We need to be having these conversations because it’s the only way I know of to help us make better money decisions. It won’t be easy, and we won’t always like the results. However, we certainly owe it to ourselves to try.