In the fall of 2016, I will celebrate an important anniversary: ​​25 years of work in the field of practical psychology. Sometime in 1991, while studying at Moscow State Pedagogical University. V.I. Lenin, my career began as an assistant psychologist in a private psychological center. However, the work, which was initially planned as a student part-time job, eventually became the work of a lifetime. In preparation for my professional anniversary, I decided to create a book that would include the most remarkable situations that I personally encountered during a quarter of a century of my consulting practice, or about those what my visitors said. If they carry deep meaning or just seem interesting and informative, I think it’s right to share with you. If you share my opinion with what you read, I will be very glad. And remember: the facts are completely real, but all the cities mentioned, the names of the characters and some details of the stories have been changed for confidentiality purposes. Once upon a time, in the early 2000s, a married couple turned to me for help, let’s call them Alexey and Natalya. Their only ten-year-old daughter, Evgenia, was almost run over by some dashing motorist in a souped-up sports car. With a terribly loud direct-flow muffler, he hit the girl with the bumper of his car right at the pedestrian crossing when Evgenia was crossing the road from school to home. Fortunately, the girl was not injured, but after the incident she became terrified of any vehicle, could not stay alone at home, cried and screamed at night. Alexey and Natalya turned to me for help with her psychological rehabilitation. During the conversation, Evgenia’s mother, Natalya, asked me how she could solve the problem of saving money for an apartment in the presence of a spendthrift husband with a bad character. I’ll tell you about this in detail. The situation turned out to be as follows. The husband, Alexey, the head of one of the departments in the district administration, who at that time was thirty-five years old, earned good money (salary, plus bribes), but spent even more. I visited saunas and restaurants with friends, exchanged expensive cars (using them on credit), bought expensive clothes, etc. Of course, justifying all this to his wife by the fact that these expenses are carried out in the interests of the family as a whole, since they ensure his friendship with influential people. The man managed all the family’s money only himself, not allowing his wife to plan the budget, without even telling her the entire volume of his income and expenses. Fortunately, the man was not an alcoholic or a gambling addict, and was not caught cheating. However, the fact remained: with the husband’s good income, the family still lived in a large, but still one-room apartment, and the husband did not agree to the birth of a second child due to the lack of living space. The housing issue was not resolved due to the impossibility of accumulating the necessary funds - Alexey considered it right to live one day at a time, without denying himself anything. Alexey’s wife, Natalya, who was thirty-three years old, working in an ordinary position in the cultural sector, like most reasonable people girls, considered it right to live in the future, and not in the present. She wanted to have a second child and was ready to save to expand her living space. Unfortunately, the girl herself earned little, and family life in this couple was built in such a way that the wife was afraid to contradict her husband. Alexey never hit his wife, but he easily became angry and could hurt her so much with his tone and words that Natalya was afraid of arousing his anger. She was even more afraid that because of regular conflicts about money, when her husband shouted at her: “What are you dissatisfied with?! The family has everything! Expensively dressed and shod, no one goes hungry! We go abroad every year! If you’re unhappy with your husband, leave, or I’ll leave myself!”, the husband will actually leave. This is how the family lived, but the unresolved issue of housing did not disappear. Over time, this began to negatively affect the intimate life of the couple. And behind the problems in intimacy, the cooling in the couple logically began, after which the wife began to think thatmy husband has someone else. After analyzing the whole situation, it became clear to me that Alexey was completely unaware of prices for food and clothing, utility bills, school fees, etc., while generously giving his wife money for current expenses ( this was his obvious advantage). A husband’s generosity towards his family is no less important a man’s virtue than any other important man’s virtue. I advised Natalya to begin systematically inflating the prices declared to her husband for all her purchases and payments, accumulating from twenty to fifty thousand a month rubles In order to save up funds for a down payment for a mortgage on a three-room apartment in two to three years. Natalya agreed with this scheme, but was very afraid that if she opened another bank account or began to save money on her card, her jealous husband might find out about this (he annually handed over information about income and property) and rashly consider that this was a betrayal . He may think that his wife is saving up for her own apartment in order to leave him, or has taken on a rich lover who will sponsor her in exchange for sex. In any of these options, the husband can leave her and the child. Then I suggested using my “piggy bank with a note” technique. Her motto is simple: If you don’t know how to save yourself, don’t stop someone else from saving. As part of the methodology, I advised a very kind and responsible, but very intimidated wife to save money in cash, hiding it in a place where her husband can easily find it. So that when he finds them, the thought should not even enter his head that they are being hidden from him. At the same time, put next to the money a sheet with a monthly record of the funds deposited in the home bank (so that the husband understands where they come from) and a note: “Dear Lesha! This money is accumulated from my and your wages. They belong to both of us. If you are angry with me because I stopped relying on you and started secretly saving for an apartment myself, you can take it for yourself and spend it wherever you want. But if you love me and trust me, let me save up for the down payment, after which we will manage the collected amount based on a joint decision. With love, your wife.” Natalya accepted this advice for implementation. After a month of working with my daughter, who had restored her mental balance, I broke up with this couple. Moreover, I have developed good relationships with both spouses. A year has passed. Alexey called me late in the evening and asked me to tell him how to soften the psychological blow for his daughter if he suddenly decided to leave the family. At first I thought that the man had another woman. But during the conversation it turned out that he found the same money at home that Natalya finally decided to start saving. Despite the note, the man still sincerely considered himself offended and insulted. He shouted that his wife was systematically stealing from him, so divorce was inevitable. Having invited the man to my place for a conversation, I told him that everything that had happened was one of the schemes for resolving their family problem related to improper management of the family budget. We analyzed the couple’s history in detail and found out that the birth of a daughter, marriage and the acquisition of a one-room apartment in its purest form are the merit of his wife, not him. In all these cases, the then-poor ordinary official Alexei was openly afraid and showed indecisiveness. He thought about an abortion during his first pregnancy, he delayed the wedding until the last moment, all negotiations with the spouses’ parents about financial assistance in purchasing a one-room apartment were conducted only by Natalya. The man avoided having a second child and behaved unmanly. Over time, Alexey did not mature, his family behavior did not improve, but only worsened. When he became the boss, his ego inflated beyond measure, he morally suppressed his wife, forcing her to remain silent when discussing family matters. Thus, worsening his own situation: after all, without solving the problems of the family, without showing initiative in this, without allowing his faithful and reasonable wife to solve them, Alexey drove!