More money will certainly mean more problems in your relationships, financial experts say—especially a marriage

It's obvious how financial instability can negatively affect relationships – less money means more compromising. But a financial upswing can also pose challenges in marriages and long-term partnerships.

Coming into a "life-changing" amount of money can be disorienting, says Susan Bradley, a certified financial planner and the founder of Sudden Money Institute.

"It stirs up beliefs and value systems, which, maybe have been there all along, but you didn't have the opportunity to talk about them," she says. 

In opposite-sex marriages, which partner makes more money can also be a source of stress, especially if it's the woman.

In almost half of opposite-sex marriages in the U.S., women are earning the same as their husbands or out-earning them, by an average of $53,000, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Regardless of who the breadwinner is, couples who want to make long-term decisions as a unit can feel frazzled by all the doors that extra cash will open up.

Once you have the funds for a new house or ritzy private school, the choice to spend money is less about practicality and more about priorities. 

For many Americans, jumping from being a "have not" to a "have" means abandoning your socioeconomic "tribe," says Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and financial psychology professor at Creighton University.

"I usually tell people, 'You either have to get rid of all your money or get rid of all your friends,'" he says. "That's an extreme statement but it seems to hold true a lot of the time." 

For many, a significant increase in salary or inheriting a large sum of money often means they can now indulge in some activities that their friends can't.

The couple you always vacation with might not be able to afford the luxury hotel you want to stay at or the new restaurants you want to try. 

Friends might start expecting more favors, too. 

"You don't belong to your tribe anymore so they start treating you differently," Klontz says. "When you go out to lunch are you supposed to pay all the time now? People say, 'Of course I would, these are my friends.' Well, how many times do you do that before they start to feel weird and you start to feel weird?" 

Even family members start seeing you in a different light. Relatives seem to materialize, all asking for support. 

"My cousin wants some money for this, my uncle wants me to invest in their business," Klontz says. "That dynamic happens all the time. You have cousins you've never heard of showing up at your door." 

All of this can be quite isolating. And, because we are evolutionarily programmed to believe that losing a social network decreases our likelihood of survival, it can also be triggering. 

"We have a financial comfort zone and there are so many psychological variables that keep us in that financial comfort zone," Klontz says. "The further we get from that financial comfort zone, the more anxiety and stress we experience." 

This is why you see lottery winners blow all their money, he says: "It's this psychological desire to get back to our tribe." 

At the Sudden Money Institute, Bradley ferries clients through this situation all the time, and says many of them feel a sort of cognitive dissonance. 

Access to a new tier of life presents you with options that challenge your ethos and how you view yourself. 

"Some people believe rich people are no good, and now I'm one of them," she says. 

Within a partnership, the most common problem Bradley sees is that one partner wants to move to a new, usually more expensive, area, and the other doesn't. 

"It can be uncomfortable when there are two different beliefs about that," she says. "Where one wants to buy a house on the water and start to live the lifestyle of the people who have been paying millions of dollars for their homes. Some people don't care enough to live on the water. They don't care to make that adjustment. It throws them." 

Decisions like this can cause stress — stress you wouldn't have if that house was never an option in the first place.

But just because the change is rattling doesn't mean it's unmanageable, Bradley says. You just have to allow yourself time to transition, something many people want to rush. 

"Most transitions take five or six years," she says. 

To dull some of the growing pains, you and your partner might want to talk about how you want this money to play into your long term future. Some strategies Bradley suggests include: 

• "Anchor in" to the part of yourself and your life that you don't want to change. "Everybody needs to have that center of gravity," she says. "Even though you may be able to do many more things in terms of spending, investing, giving, sharing, that center of gravity doesn't change." 
• Think about what shifts you want to see. Ask yourself and your partner "If we get all this right, what difference do you want it to make? What difference do you think it would make if we didn't get it right?" Think about the results or consequences of your actions five and ten years down the line. Are they something you could easily handle? 
• Write a list of what you want to protect. This exercise is meant to answer the question, "What is sacred in your life," Bradley says. If you and your partner really value the community your neighborhood provides, is a move to a new home the right step to take? 

"Not everybody wants to do all this interior kind of work at the same time," Bradley ways. "These events can be off putting. You could be tired. You could feel frozen. You could feel invincible." 

But sitting down and having straight forward conversations about how this money will alter, or not alter, your priorities can make the transition that much smoother. 

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