A couple others touched on it. I think there is a big difference between starting young to build a life together and merging lives later on. When you start with nothing, everything legally and practically is jointly owned, even if you have separate accounts. I found separate accounts worked very well as each knew the balance in the account and could spend or not spend accordingly when things were tight. Generally dividing up recurring bills according to each relative income does work reasonably well. But if the attitude is about his/her money, that doesn't sound healthy.

Later on, when starting a new relationship, each has a responsibility to set up retirement. I have 10 to 15 years left to work with potentially another 30 years of retirement living (I'm also 56). My primary responsibility is to my children to not be a burden on them. Any new relationship will need to be structured to allow that goal to be met. My expectation is any partner I have in the future will have the same concerns. How the structure ends up being would be dependent on joint discussions before hand. Legally here, any gains in assets will be 50/50 regardless of who contributed, but the underlying assets can still be kept separate. Maybe that will work, maybe not, but I think it sets up the best chance of success.

Talking about this sort of thing needs to be part of the relationship. Early on, you don't need to map things out, but you can learn a lot about how the other person views money and assets well before you get too deep. You'll know if the person has a "you only live once, so spend it before you have it" attitude, or if they have a "better have hard cash set aside for every possible problem that could happen so don't spend anything now"  attitude. I'm seeing something of a continuum regarding who pays for what when spending time together. Some want to be treated, and it's nice to treat. But some will also want to treat at times, and it's nice to be treated.