Hidden Traps for Life Partners
Who Work Together
by Laurie Weiss, Ph.D.
You may think that it would be wonderful to be in business with your spouse,
but the truth is that when life partners become business partners unspoken
assumptions can cause significant problems.
Neither couple I describe knows the other couple, but their stories are
strikingly similar.
Craig and Warren are both recently retired executives. Craig’s wife, Marcy,
owns and operates a website design firm. Warren’s wife, Sharon, owns an
exclusive gift shop. Both businesses are successful, and each woman finds
business ownership personally satisfying and rewarding. Both women requested
couples coaching for similar reasons. Their husbands were interfering in their
businesses.
Craig and Marcy were newlyweds. It was a long distance romance, and they both
were delighted when his retirement allowed them to be together. His unspoken
plan was to help her with her business so that she could work less, and they
could spend more time together. Her plan, also unspoken, was to continue to
develop her business in order to sell it in a few years and fund her own
retirement.
Craig enthusiastically earned his certification in web design. He found the
new information fun and refreshing after years of heavy corporate
responsibility. Marcy was delighted that he was busy and happy, until he started
to help her with her work. She found his suggestions insulting. It was her
business, she was the expert, and she supervised many designers and negotiated
profitable contracts. Now he, a novice, was trying to tell her what to do!
Warren and Sharon did talk to each other about their plans and goals. Warren
felt that his expertise could be put to good use in Sharon’s business. He
convinced her, against her “better judgment,” that expanding the business would
create long term benefits for both of them. She decided to go along with his
ideas.
They made plans together, expanded their capacity, hired several new
employees, and Warren started pressuring everyone to be more productive. Sharon
began to hate going to work. She had loved the personal contact with her
customers, but now she spent most of her time managing employees and trying to
keep Warren calm.
Both women knew they were angry about their husbands’ interference, but
neither could communicate about it effectively. Each was trying to balance
keeping the peace, supporting their husbands and taking care of themselves and
their businesses. Each time the women tried to discuss their own discomfort,
their husbands would logically explain that they were only trying to help their
wives.
During our sessions we uncovered the hidden assumptions and discussed them.
When each man discovered the cause of their respective spouse’s feelings they
was astonished to learn about the negative effects of genuinely trying to help
their wives.
Neither of the men had thought much about how they were going to find a
meaningful way to fill their time after retirement, and simply picked up what
was convenient—their wife’s business. As the women learned to protect their own
boundaries, a new conversation emerged. Each man needed to explore their own
options for finding their own fulfilling activities.
Laurie Weiss, Ph.D., is an internationally known executive
coach, psychotherapist, and author. She is the owner of Empowerment Systems, 506
West Davies Way, Littleton, CO 80120. Phone: 303-794-5379 Fax 303-794-5408.
Visit her website at
www.empowermentsystems.com or send email to
laurie@laurieweiss.com.
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