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Book Description

Finding fulfillment in both love and work isn't easy--but it's possible.

The majority of couples today are dual-career couples. As anyone who's part of such a relationship knows, this presents big challenges: trying to raise kids and achieve career goals while caring for and supporting your partner can seem impossible. Yet most advice for dual-career couples fails, framing the challenges as a zero-sum game in which one partner’s gain is the other's loss and solutions feel like sacrifices or unsatisfactory trade-offs.

This book is different. In Couples That Work, INSEAD professor Jennifer Petriglieri rejects conventional, one-size-fits-all solutions and instead focuses on how dual-career couples can tackle and resolve the challenges they face throughout their lives--together. She identifies three key phases of exploration and personal growth in every couple's work-life journey, showing how partners must navigate these together to strengthen their bond. Each phase is crystallized with a question:

  • How can we make this work? The first phase focuses on the logistics of combining two busy lives and often involves the demands of young children.
  • What do we really want? In the second phase, couples learn to navigate their midlife crises in ways that allow each partner to continue to feel happy and fulfilled.
  • Who are we now? With careers winding down and kids grown up, this last phase offers new freedoms--and uncertainties.

Based on a five-year research project, the book includes interviews with couples from over thirty countries--from executives to entrepreneurs and from twentysomething newlyweds to dual-career grandparents.

Filled with vivid real-life stories, keen insights, and engaging exercises, Couples That Work will help couples develop their own unique answers to that most pressing question: How can we successfully combine love and work?

Table of Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. 1. The Three Transitions of a Dual-Career Couple
  7. Transition One: How Can We Make This Work?
    1. 2. When the Honeymoon Ends
    2. 3. Struggling to Do It All
    3. 4. Achieving Interdependence
  8. Transition Two: What Do We Really Want?
    1. 5. Hitting the Wall
    2. 6. Turmoil and Conflict
    3. 7. Transitioning to a New Path
  9. Transition Three: Who Are We Now?
    1. 8. Loss and Limits
    2. 9. Exploring Wider Horizons
    3. 10. Couples That Work
  10. Appendix: Studying Dual-Career Couples
  11. Notes
  12. Index
  13. Acknowledgments
  14. About the Author
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