Couples That Work
‘Couples that work – how to thrive in love and at work’ by Jennifer Petriglieri really got me thinking about how to make my marriage work now and over time. The premise that relationships evolve and constantly need work, is one that isn’t new and is one that I am very aware of. However, this book looks at it through the lens of dual-career couples and how we need to pay particular attention when we want to ensure our careers AND our relationship survive.
More and more relationships are made up of dual-career couples who are having to navigate ‘life admin’ and work commitments, in a way that is very different to previous generations when it was more common to have a “bread-winner” and a “stay at home partner” (with the split usually determined by the gender of those involved).
Petriglieri espouses that dual-career relationships go through three transitions. These are:
- The “move from having parallel, independent careers and lives to having interdependent ones”
- The shift of focus “from conforming to others’ demands and expectations” to figuring out what “each really want out of their careers, lives and relationship.”
- The transition to “reinvent what … each really want out of their careers, lives and relationship.”
Each of these transitions trigger a question that needs to be answered:
- How can we make this work?
- What do we really want?
- Who are we now?
At the end of the section about each transition there is a clear summary which details the nature of the transition, likely triggers that caused the transition, the defining question, the traps people face when making decisions, the potential resolution, tools to help and reflections to take away. These summaries allow you to dip back into the book as and when needed.
The first transition tends to occur due to a shared major life event – this might be the arrival of a child or a big career opportunity that requires a move and suddenly the parallel lives you have been living no longer work. Instead you need to start making joint decisions and be looking out for each other. In order to do this you need to understand what you both really want and how this is compatible. Petriglieri says that creating clear boundaries and being very clear on the fears you both have is essential to doing this.
The second transition is when both people in a couple want to focus on their own interests and desires, rather than just a shared life. There are times in all our lives when what we have been doing is suddenly no longer working/ no longer enough and learning how to negotiate this with someone else (especially someone who might feel that life is still going great) is difficult. It can be easier to stay with the status quo rather than risk upsetting the apple cart and yet so often this backfires in the end. Petriglieri talks us through how to manage this process in a way that allows you to change and to support your partner through this change.
The final transition occurs due to role shifting and people needing to fill a void left by the loss of a significant role (eg being empty-nester parents, work responsibilities changing). At this point people need to find new ambitions and priorities and Petriglieri suggests finding a shared passion can be really useful.
I am currently at the stage of life where most of my friends and I are going through (or have recently gone through) the first transition. Family and careers means that we are trying to create interdependent lives and determine what actually works for us. There are a lot of discussions about how chores and childcare can be divided in a way that best suits. Career priorities are changing with decisions being made about what is best for the individual AND the couple/ family. Watching these transitions is a source of endless fascination to me and why I frequently recommend this book. And as our lives go on and we hit different transition milestones, I am sure that we will continually be coming back to it.
