Chapter 8
How Two-Career Couples Stay Happy
More and more of us live in two-career households. Almost half of the married couples in the United States are dual-career, along with roughly 70% in Canada and around two-thirds in the United Kingdom. And these couples often struggle to balance work and home life.
We’re part of that cohort, and we’ve had many discussions about what it means to manage a relationship and our careers. Being a former marriage counselor, Jackie has seen problems other couples face—determining who will drop everything to pick up a sick child at school, dividing the household chores, deciding whether to move for one partner’s job, and so on. We’ve experienced those challenges and others, from living in different cities to coordinating crazy travel schedules. And because we each have unique needs and our own ideas about what we want from our jobs and home lives, we know that conversations about dual-career trade-offs can quickly become tense. But balance is possible, and you can thrive. The following tips will help you navigate the stresses of a two-career relationship.
Actively manage expectations
In relationships, unspoken assumptions often lead to disappointment and frustration. By clearly communicating those expectations up front, however, two-career couples can answer key questions before they cause tension. For example: How many meals should you eat together, and who will prepare (or buy) them? Who pays which bills? Do you need quiet time to decompress in the evening, or do you want to talk about the day’s events with each other? Do you prefer frequent, brief interactions throughout the day (texts, instant messages, phone calls), or would you rather have lengthier conversations and more time together when you get home? How will you divide childcare responsibilities (drop-off and pickup, sick days, school vacation coverage)?
It’s essential to have open and honest discussions about these things, but they won’t always be smooth sailing. Neither person will get his or her way all the time. If you prefer one approach but your spouse or partner wants another, determine the areas in which you’re able to be flexible. At each impasse, instead of focusing mainly on your needs, actively listen to your partner’s preferences and concerns. The way you talk through these expectations and conflicts is extremely important. John Gottman, a leading researcher in marriage and relationships, says he can predict divorce with over 90% accuracy solely by analyzing how couples talk to each other in the first five minutes of an argument. And he has more than 35 years of data to back that up. While Gottman finds that the frequency of arguments is not a predictor of divorce, negative patterns like criticism and contempt are. Managing expectations through thoughtful discussion will help you argue constructively, not destructively.
Schedule time with each other
The average person spends 8.8 hours per day on the job—and for many of us, that number can double. To make sure everything gets done, we live by our calendars: We schedule meetings, reviews, time to complete tasks, trips to the gym, volunteer work, and breakfasts with friends. Most of us don’t make appointments with our significant others, because we take it for granted that we’ll see them. Research by Kingston and Nock, however, shows that one of the healthiest things you can do for your relationship is to put as much effort into booking time with each other as you do into managing your work schedules.
Recognizing that our professional obligations could theoretically take up all of our time, we’ve made a deliberate effort to schedule time together. Even with an infant at home, we commit to at least one date night per week, typically on Fridays. We regularly send each other Google calendar invitations for events we need to attend together or even uninterrupted time we’d like to spend with each other. Before we started doing this, we often forgot to communicate these requests effectively, leaving one or both of us frustrated and disappointed. But regular scheduling makes each of us feel prioritized by the other person and gives us time to look forward to each week. This keeps us happier at home and more relaxed at work.
Cheat on your job
Despite your best scheduling efforts, work can creep into your personal time. How many times has a meeting at the office conflicted with something you’ve scheduled at home? How often do you need “just a few hours” during evenings and weekends to catch up on e-mails or assignments? We often “cheat” on our families by putting in a few hours of work when we’re at home; there should be corollary times when we cheat on our jobs. Try meeting occasionally for lunch or letting a scheduled date night trump an optional work event. Scheduling ensures that you spend time together—but spontaneity matters, too, and it can make these opportunities even more fun.
We work in different areas of town, but whenever Jackie’s meetings are near John’s office, she’ll call to see if she can stop by to say a quick hello. Little gestures like this can make partners feel valued. And impromptu breaks from work for family may even improve work performance. Researchers say that willpower is like a muscle that can get fatigued—taking a quick breather from work can actually boost self-control and productivity on the job. With renewed focus at work, you can both manage your professional stress and keep your relationship fresh.
Integrate work and home
Dual-career relationships can become more difficult when work and home occupy completely separate spheres. Not knowing each other’s colleagues can lead to feelings of alienation and disconnectedness. You might feel out of touch with each other’s day-to-day concerns, for example, or not understand inside jokes from work. Or it can be more serious than that: In an informal Vault.com survey, 32% of respondents reported having an “office spouse,” a coworker with whom one has an intimate (nonphysical) relationship. These intimacies can sometimes cross a line. In her practice of more than 20 years, marriage and family therapist Shirley Glass found that 46% of unfaithful wives and 62% of unfaithful husbands had an affair with someone at work.
Even if cheating isn’t an issue, you and your partner may be uncomfortable with each other’s long nights at the office, business trips, and bonds with unknown colleagues. To avoid this, find ways to introduce your colleagues and your partner (or your family more broadly). Plan occasional dinners after work and encourage your coworkers to bring their spouses. Share anecdotes about your day and your coworkers with your significant other. Attend work-related social events together. These are just some ways in which you can build trust with your partner and humanize and deepen your professional relationships.
Share the compromises
Compromise is essential to healthy two-career couples, but sometimes it falls too consistently on one person. It’s quite common when children arrive, for example, for one partner (often a woman) to forgo career ambitions while the other gives up time at home. If one person sacrifices more—or even feels that way—frustration and resentment can build. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, but by speaking frankly about how much of the load you each feel you’re shouldering, you can prevent one person from making all the concessions.
Some big questions to consider: Whose job should you relocate for? Whose family will you live closer to? Does one partner feel responsible for supporting the family financially while the other has more flexibility to pursue what he or she wants, regardless of financial benefit? Who will bear primary child-rearing responsibility? If you look back over a catalog of these decisions and one partner is consistently sacrificing for the other, it might be time to assess whether that’s what you as a couple intended or whether someone is feeling undervalued. Even small compromises add up: Whose family do you visit on which holidays? Who does which household chores? Periodically track these things for a week or two or simply discuss them to make sure the relationship really is a partnership—with decisions and compromises shared fairly.
Reassess
Just like a year-end review at work, regularly carve out time to assess your relationship and your priorities as individuals and as a couple. Keep the lines of communication open and adapt your plans as needed. How are things going? If your spouse or partner could change something, what would it be? Do you both feel connected? What’s working well? Overall, how is your partner feeling? Asking questions like these shows that you’re making the relationship a high priority. And that will help you manage dual-career stress and can keep things on track at work and at home.
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Jackie Coleman is a former marriage counselor and currently works on education programs for the State of Georgia. John Coleman, her husband, is a coauthor of Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011). Follow him on Twitter: @johnwcoleman.
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Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on July 27, 2012