Creating Optimism

We have been married for 25 years—a quarter of a century, and yet it seems so short—a mere blink of an eyelid! During that time we have not only happily lived together but also successfully worked together as psychologists, writers, teachers and corporate trainers and consultants. We work for many large and successful multi-national companies around the world helping them increase productivity and profits through creating environments that foster positive relationships.

People often say to us, “How can you spend that much time together? My partner and I never could. I don’t even know how I’ll put up with him or her around so much when one of us retires!”

Even as psychologists who have worked extensively with couples in the past, we find it hard to really understand this attitude. Why wouldn’t you want to spend as much time as possible with your life mate? We love giving workshops or holding meetings together and even when we’re working with different clients we do our best to meet up for lunch. And when we can’t meet up we miss each other.

We find our work/life style very congruent with our fundamental beliefs and mission, which is to enable people to have truly supportive, healing and growth-promoting relationships at work and outside of office hours. Mostly our clients see our relationship as inspiring. Occasionally clients are a bit sensitive to our arrangement and we get signals to keep the real nature of our relationship under wraps. Then we feel a bit like sneaky teenagers or Mr and Mrs Smith undercover. What fun!

Increasingly, people want to know if what we have in our relationship could work for them. Due to the economic situation and the increasing pace of corporate life, many people are losing their jobs, taking voluntary redundancy or simply opting out of an increasingly competitive and stressful business environment and seeking more fulfilling work lives. Especially if one partner is already in a sustainable solo business venture, it seems to make sense to pair up.

There are obvious upsides to this arrangement. You don’t have to call home to say you’ll be late if your partner is right beside you. You probably don’t have to worry about a pay cut or getting fired. You have lots to talk about beside the kids. However, there are some very real dangers.

Challenges of 24/7

• For some, living and working together 24/7 puts too great a strain on the relationship. Many people just do not want to spend that amount of time together. If you get into arguments while travelling, for example, working together may not be the lifestyle for you.
• One of the partners may feel they are in a subordinate role and resent it. If you can’t comfortably be equals in the kitchen, the car or the bedroom, you probably won’t be at the office.
• You want more structure or routine such as a larger company provides. And by the way, if you think a start-up requires less hours than a regular job, dream on. However, owning your own business often allows more flexibility..
• You haven’t talked about what could happen to the relationship if the business fails. If you currently tend to blame each other for problems with the house or the kids, think of the strain on the marriage if the enterprise fails.

And yet couples who do successfully go into business together are following an old and honourable tradition. Indeed for most of human history families worked and played together. The concept of leaving home to work would have seemed absurd to a hunter-gatherer. It would have seemed ridiculous to our Palaeolithic ancestors to go anywhere without their tribe.

Even after we became farmers we still retained the idea that the family was an economic as well as social unit. Only with the arrival of the industrial revolution a few hundred years ago did we become people to whom "home" and "workplace" were really different, each with its own set of relationships, rules, taboos and conflicts. With this division, and the strains that it produced, came separation and the conflicts around ‘work/life balance.’

Success story

A couple we’ll call Tom and Rowena never planned to set up business together. He was a senior partner in a large financial services firm, while Rowena had a moderately successful, fast-growing photography business, specializing in imaginative children’s portraits. Both of them enjoyed their separate careers, even though Tom’s work often kept him in the office until late at night, or sent him on extended overseas trips. Most of all he enjoyed the status that being a senior partner in a large firm gave him. Tom sometimes dismissed his wife’s photography as ‘her hobby,’ even though she made good money from it. In his mind he was the breadwinner.

That changed when Tom got laid off at the start of the global financial crisis, which saw his company instigate a vicious program of downsizing. For some months he stubbornly, and fruitlessly, knocked on the doors of his ex-employers’ competitors.

After a couple months of banging his head against brick walls Rowena suggested that he join the business as her partner, essentially being the administrator. It would, she explained, allow her to service more clients and he could help her with marketing, which she was not good at. At first he refused, seeing it as a demeaning come-down to be, in his eyes, her employee. He didn’t see it as a ‘real’ job or anything that would look good on his resume.

Eventually he was forced to agree. It started badly. He tried to take over the business and to bring in expensive, and unnecessary, ‘big firm’ practices. He would boast to his former colleagues that he was ‘rescuing’ his wife’s business. She felt he was smothering her and the business. Their relationship suffered and at one stage they even talked of separating.

As their friends, we offered our advice and assistance. We helped them to clarify each of their roles and reach agreements around how they would show each other that they respected and valued what the other person did. Tom came to learn that his new role was not as his wife’s junior partner, but rather as someone who could adapt his consultancy and marketing skills to help reorganize and grow the photography business—provided he could communicate his ideas in ways she could accept. She came to realize that she was too used to being the one-woman band and that although change was frightening, the business was greatly benefitting from his guidance.

With this new joint awareness a real partnership could begin. They also found that they actually enjoyed each other’s company and could be proud of each other’s contributions both to the enterprise and to the relationship.

The important thing to remember is that the business you do together is secondary to the relationship. We believe that our business is simply a way of us experiencing and enjoying each other more fully. Trouble really starts when couples who work together begin to see their business partnership as the driving force and their relationship as secondary.

In order to prevent that from happening, and to ensure that the union lasts even if the enterprise fails, there are a few basic ground rules that must be followed.

7 Rules for 24/7

1. Don't separate work from the rest of your life. Work should be part of a continuum, something that the couple shares together. With us, life is equally about writing a book together, teaching, seeing clients, walking on a beach or visiting friends. The idea that "work-time" and "time-off" are separate is a false distinction.
2. Maintain a nexus of friends outside of the core relationship. One of the common traps into which 24/7 couples fall into is not having the time, inclination or mutual trust to go out and make external friendships. One person, however supportive, cannot meet all your needs. Nor can one adult and some children. Women need other female friends and men need other male friends. This, too, is very much like hunter-gatherers. Men needed the hunting band to bond with (replicated at the sports stadium or the sports bar), and women needed the gathering group for support (gathering/shopping never goes out of style!).
3. Explore and maintain a shared vision. One of the most important things that a 24/7 couple must do is develop a shared vision and purpose. The goal of working together cannot just be to make money. There has to be something greater and more ongoing. Tom and Rowena decided that their vision was to draw families together and give them good memories through having their photos taken and keeping them.
4. Develop relationship rituals. Rituals are actions you take by mutual agreement and with awareness. These are different from habits, which you may not even consciously know you're doing and can be divisive. Cuddling before sleep or getting a babysitter and going out to dinner once a week, or giving each other a high-five when a big deal comes through are rituals. Yelling at your mate when he or she forgets to put the cap back on the toothpaste tube and watching TV when your partner is trying to talk to you are probably habits. Rituals renew your sense of being a tribe and your commitment to each other..
5. Work out mutually agreed roles. Who does what in the joint business is a vital question. With some couples—such as us—certain roles come naturally. With others they have to be negotiated. Both parties must get satisfaction from the part they play in the business and feel their role is valued.  
6. Be honest and concrete about what you need of each other. Never second-guess what the other person wants; it's a recipe for misunderstanding and let-down. Never be forced into the position where you have to manipulate your way into getting your needs met. Ask outright for what you need and ask your partner to do the same.
7. Plan for business failure as well as success. If the relationship isn’t the most important thing in your lives, don’t go into business together. Plan for it to survive a downturn or even a catastrophic failure. Agree that if that happens there will be no recriminations, and stick by that agreement.

We believe that if you use these tools any 24/7 relationship can be an ongoing romance, and building a business relationship with someone you love can be a wonderful rewarding experience, full of fun, meaning and personal growth.