Mind On My Money

Throughout her marriage, Tatiana Boncompagni was content to leave family finances to her husband. When the relationship ended, she realized the true cost of her ignorance.

I first met Max while visiting my sister in New York over Memorial Day weekend, and a friend suggested I give him a call. He was tall with blue eyes, blond hair, and the confidence afforded by a silver-spoon boarding school upbringing. But there was also something vulnerable about him. Maybe it was the way he kept playing with the window in the cab to the trendy restaurant he’d picked that made him seem sweet. Boys hadn’t paid much attention to me as I was growing into my looks, and I remember thinking, Wow, I’m making him feel nervous? Over sushi and vegetable tempura, we discovered we had a few things in common: We both had non-American mothers and siblings we didn’t get along with and had gone to Georgetown. I opened up to him in a way I never had to anyone. He listened and made me feel understood, seen, appreciated.

Over the next two years, one during which we dated long-distance (he drove a Mercedes; I traveled via Peter Pan bus), he wooed me with glittering society benefits and champagne-fueled nights dancing in skyhigh heels that cost far more than my weekly take-home as a reporter at a small Washington, D.C., newspaper. (Some I bought myself, some he did.) There was a ski trip to St. Moritz, scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, go-cart racing and karaoke in Vienna. He kept an airy prewar apartment in Midtown Manhattan with a closet full of British shirts and Italian suits. I lived in a tiny studio rental, and my clothes came from the racks at Daffy’s.

I wanted in on Max’s world, but not just for the material upgrades. My logic was this: His family would ensure that nothing bad could ever happen to him, so if I were with him, nothing bad could ever happen to me. I’d been flying so long without a safety net of family support or money, I figured that if I tethered myself to him, I’d have the benefit of his.