To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down. – Woody Allen

I am sure we have all heard about the old man who squandered his golden handshake money with a young girl who pretended to be madly in love with him only.... or about the elderly divorcee woman who lost all her fortune on a younger man she was madly in love with. It is no secret that we have members of our society who have gone into debt because of the relationship they were in.

Sexually-transmitted debt or relationship debt is debt you “catch” from your boyfriend, girlfriend, partner or spouse by:

• Lending them money
• Acting as guarantor for a loan
• Taking out contract or loan for them
• Sharing a bank account or credit card on which they run up debts for their benefit

There are different reasons why people end up in relationship debt:

Wanting to help: I have no problem with someone coming to the rescue of a loved one who is in a financial crisis, what would be more natural than wanting to help out? The problem arises where you chose to help to the extent of going in to debt to do so. Mother’s are ever willing to financially bail out sons who are poor at managing their money. They would even borrow from the “chama”, thus going into debt, to help out their sons.

Wanting to be loved: Have you heard about the “momo” sugar mommy who constantly puts herself in debt to lend money to her boyfriend.  Would it surprise you to know she has issues with self-esteem? Sadly, there are people who think that the only way they can keep Mr. Right or Ms. Right is if they buy them lots of expensive stuff or act as their personal ATM. We also have people who seem to believe they’re not good enough to deserve someone who is both loving and financially solvent.

Optimism: Love is blind and sometimes just a little stupid. Your spouse might have this brilliant business idea and to help her out you give her the startup capital, she might even strike it rich, in which case you’re both living on easy street. The question is whether you’re applying the same hard logic to her idea as you would to your other investment choices. Even where there’s a clear history of poor financial management, people in love can delude themselves that this time their partner has really changed.

Intimidation: Sometimes people, generally women, are threatened, forced, or emotionally blackmailed into debt. It can involve physical violence, threats of violence towards others, threats of self-harm, threats to end the relationship, or emotional blackmail about the consequences of not providing the money. I have an aunt who was forced by her violent husband to take out a loan to help boost the husband's business. She did so and after a couple of months the husband left with another woman.

Ignorance: Sometimes we don’t pay much attention to what we are signing, especially when it involves our significant other. Haven’t you heard about the man who unwillingly signed over his house to the girlfriend? Sometimes, while in a relationship, we co-sign a loan thinking that we are responsible for half of it when in actual sense each party is responsible for all of it.