When it comes to love money can buy happiness if you spend it the right way

Apologies to the more compassionate among you but, perspective surely demands that sympathy for the broken hearted millionaires out there, may be misdirecting empathy and kindness better spent elsewhere.

At any age and stage, a marriage/relationship break down is traumatic and devastating but on balance, honestly, surely it’s a tad more comforting to drown one’s sorrow in a magnum of Moët than the gut rot from of Chateau Cardboard.

Now, before everyone starts with the “Money can’t buy you love/happiness” rhetoric, hear me out. The reasoning is that both the Haves and the Have Nots will suffer equally when love flies out the window. One group doesn’t hurt more or less than the other. Let’s face it, it’s a devastating, heart wrenching, stomach churning period and the majority of the lovelorn go on a bender, a payback naughty weekend, a retail therapy binge or disappear for a week with close friends.

The big difference is the Have Nots usually settle for the alcohol specials, that lost weekend perhaps at the hotel/motel on Highway 97, a big spend up at the dollar store or three close friends sharing a van at the Big 4 out whoop-whoop somewhere.

The Haves may indulge in several large sips of Veuve Clicquot, knock Armani boots with a seriously good looking somebody, max out the gold/platinum Amex and probably find out if Tahiti does look good at this time of year.

Earlier, what about after she said yes? Usually the Have Nots simply begin the budgeting. Conversely, it’s certainly now being suggested that after the Haves affirm in the positive, it’s off to the lawyer’s office for the pre-nup, with a proviso, an amendment and an addendum.

The two groups differ vastly right from the get-go. However, both groups hurt like the very dickens. Both groups look to alleviate that hurt. Now, be totally honest, which group should garner your compassion?

There was much talk earlier this year about the ‘seriously rich’ and their divorce settlements. Truly, for the majority, that magnitude of numbers is only spoken of when reading mobile phone numbers. These days they speak not only in millions but in billions while ordinary folk fight over the telly and the fridge.

Nobody is declaring marriage as a financial plan nor suggesting that, in the main, the Haves enter the institution with less commitment than the Have Nots. However, strong indications imply the Haves may enjoy an advantage after the fat lady sings. It simply stands to reason that, without financial stresses and concerns, moving on, for the Haves, is the less bumpy of the two roads.

Fact: A French-prepared silken night crème filled with secret ingredients will soften those sad, bagged eyes and deep set wrinkles infinitely better than a supermarket cold crème. Sorry, but that’s the truth of the matter.

Of course it’s sad when any two people decide to end a union but, for mine, crying into satin sheets after a massage and an hour or so in one’s ‘rose-petalled’ spa bath, beats a dip in the local council pool and weeping into department store polyester bedding, any day.

In the scale of all things divorce-orientated, the human condition may be universally equal in the hurt department, but the path to recovery, when eased with duck-down feathers, peacock plumage, silk, satin and quail fluff, the Haves outweigh the Have Nots; a billion to one.

How have you commiserated a broken heart? Do you feel that the end of a relationship is easier to bear if you have the finances?

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