Charlotte didn't mind being given an 'allowance' by her husband. Until she couldn't afford a new bra.

When Charlotte Ree's partner accepted her marriage proposal — which she had spelled out, rather inauspiciously, via a game of hangman — his 'yes' came with two conditions.

One: she needed to get her driving licence; two: they needed to join their bank accounts.

Despite "adamant" warnings from her mother about the latter, Charlotte, then aged 27, agreed. She pooled her much-larger income with her husband's, and together they worked towards his vision for their financial future.

"His goal was that he would retire by the time he was 40, and he would have a property portfolio," Charlotte, 32, told Mamamia’s No Filter podcast. "That was what drove him."

Watch: Charlotte Ree on Mamamia's No Filter podcast. Post continues after video.

Besides, his agreement brought her a step closer to realising her own plan. With the successful career in publishing well underway, all that was left was to be married and have a baby by the age of 30.

"I think I just went in blindly, willingly, hopefully," she said.

But as Charlotte chronicles in her memoir, Heartbake, over the next few years, she found herself steadily losing control over her own hard-earned money and questioning whether, like the hanged man she'd sketched as her proposal, their marriage was condemned.

"I had such shame."

Charlotte said there was a narrative within her relationship that she was 'reckless' with finances. She didn’t have debts. She hadn’t made bad investments. She said she simply treated herself occasionally.

"I think I come from a mindset that I don't want to deprive myself," she said. "I’ve worked really, really, really hard. And if I want to have that bottle of champagne, I'm going to have that bottle of champagne."

Meanwhile, her husband, she said, remained militantly focused on their household budget.

And that’s where the allowance came in. One hundred dollars each, per week, for discretionary spending.

At first, Charlotte followed along. But there were instances that got under her skin. The first, when she needed new bras.

"I have big breasts on a tiny body, and you can't just walk into Kmart and grab something off the rack. Bras, for me, cost like 90 bucks, 150 bucks," she said. "I remember saying to him, 'I don't think that should come from my $100.' And he said, 'No, no, it has to has to...'"

The second was when she wanted to see a psychologist.

"It was this battle to justify that money," she said. "It was incredibly difficult, because it was my first time advocating for myself in that way and fighting for myself in that way. And then, when I realised that I really needed [to see] someone and I needed that person to go from once a month to twice a month, I started to hide money.

"I don't like being duplicitous. I don't like being deceitful. But I didn't have anyone to talk to."

Charlotte hadn’t told friends or family about her concerns with the way her husband was handling their money. Many of them are only learning about it now, with the publication of Heartbake.

"I had such shame," she said. "I feel such sadness for her, for that version of me."

Charlotte doesn’t believe her husband had malicious intentions. And she stresses she had access to their bank accounts, that she could have "absolutely removed it, touched it, done anything." Still, she didn’t. She felt she shouldn’t.

"He just was so driven to purchase a house. That's what he wanted. And anything that came between that he couldn't understand," she said.

Instead, she continued to hide the money she earned from work bonuses and her baking side-hustle. It was her way to preserve a little for herself, to dream of something beyond his narrow vision of their future. One such dream was a sabbatical in Paris during her looming long-service leave until…

"[My husband] said, 'You know, I'd really love you to have Paris, but all of that money just has to go into our savings.'

"And I just looked at him in that moment, and I just knew. People talk about moments that changed them. And that was the moment that I knew I was going to leave my marriage."

Charlotte moved out of their home in March 2020, on the eve of COVID-19 lockdowns. As she details in Heartbake, she threw herself into cooking, therapy and, eventually, dating.

On the other side of it all, she can see more clearly the problems within her marriage. She does not regret marrying her ex-husband.

"I loved him so much," she said. "Did we enter that [marriage] for the right reasons? And did we marry in the best possible way for each of us? Maybe not. But I can sit here and say I gave my relationship everything."

Want to know more about Charlotte's story? Listen to No Filter below.

Feature Image: Instagram @charlotteree.