The Truth About Women, Money and Relationships

Why are so many women reluctant to talk openly about the role money plays in their lives and relationships? Hilary Black, a veteran magazine editor (More, Tango) was determined to find out. The result is her compelling new anthology, The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth About Women, Money, and Relationships (William Morrow). In it, a number of prominent female writers (including Julia Glass, Laurie Abraham and Joni Evans) spill the beans about money in their own lives. Black spoke by phone from her home in New York City to TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs.

It seems like there's a pattern of ambivalence because so many women were raised with this idea that they could either be an astronaut or a ballet dancer or a mom; whereas I think that men were never sent a conflicting message. So I think that women [who] grew up as the children of baby boomers — certainly, from that generation on — felt they had a lot of options, and one of the options was not to work. I think that's why so many women who wanted to make their own way in the world and did so very successfully are kind of caught up in this conflict and this ambivalence about who earns the money.

What I hope people will take away from this is the idea that money issues are inescapable and that by reading these stories, people will see themselves — aspects of themselves, ambivalence about money, anger about money, how it changes things between people. And I feel that reading these stories will help people navigate their own issues, which I think will be exacerbated by what's going on in the economy right now.