Partner doesn’t have the beauty of the word friend. It lacks the sexiness of the word lover. It sounds cold and distanced. On the rare occasion in which a person thinks of the aspect of partnership within marriage, they consider it a necessary evil. To make life work, you have to be partners in order to be able to do what you want.
But partnership is far more than a necessary evil. For many couples it is a place with tremendous potential for growth. When a couple appreciates the possibilities of partnership and what it can do for their relationship, they can grow closer in ways they never thought possible.
Partnership is not just about work and parenting. Although those two aspects are very important, partnership is more than that. It’s about creating the life you want.
We live in a fascinating time in which most readers of this book have more control over their lives than any generation before. The opportunities are not endless. There are still plenty of setbacks that prevent people from doing or being exactly what they want. However, the opportunities are plentiful. The average couple has tremendous freedom to choose the life they want to live.
Marriage should be a catalyst that propels us toward our dreams. One of the most fun aspects of marriage is waking up every day knowing someone else wants you to succeed. This should be a characteristic of every marriage. You should be your spouse’s greatest cheerleader and they should be yours. If that element of the relationship is missing, something is wrong. We root for those we love. We cheer on those we have affection for.
In a healthy marriage, each person is doing everything in their power to make the other person’s dreams come true. They are giving support and assistance for their spouse to experience what they have always hoped for.
Every year, Jenny and I take a vacation without the kids. Half the fun is choosing where to go and anticipating the trip. Jenny’s favorite recreational activity is hiking, while I love to play golf, so we generally try to vacation in a spot where we can do both.
Recently, after putting the kids to bed, we both got on our laptops and started researching potential vacation spots. After a few minutes, Jenny asked me what I was researching and I said, “I’m looking at a list of the top national parks in the US. I figure I can find a good golf course nearby. What are you looking at?”
She laughed and said, “I’m looking at a list of the top ten golf courses in the US. I figure I can find a good national park nearby.”
Whenever I think of who we want to be as partners, this episode comes to mind. This was us at our best (though there are plenty of other stories of us at our worst). At our best, neither of us denies what we want as individuals, and we try to make those things happen. But we seek what we desire as secondary to what our spouse wants.
This is marriage at its best—looking out for the interests of the other more than self, submitting our hopes and dreams to those of the other person even as they submit in return. When two people consistently—not perfectly but consistently—do that, the marriage can flourish.
It’s when we begin to put ourselves above our spouse and use them as a tool for our own personal gain that marriage becomes destructive. In mutual submission, both partners are equal, but when the submission is one-sided, the relationship loses its equality. When my hopes trump the hopes of my wife, our relationship is out of balance.
Of course, there is a prerequisite for making this happen. In order to assist our spouse with their dreams or to gain assistance with our own dreams, we must have an intimate understanding of one another. We have to create a climate in which it is safe to truly risk communicating those hidden secrets and desires.
Many couples fail to be good partners in part because they never consider who they want to be either individually or together. They never define success.
A Prerequisite for Success
Who do you want to be? What do you want to accomplish? What legacy do you want to leave? These are questions that must be asked for a marriage partnership to be effective.
Consider the benefit of a budget. From a financial perspective, few things are as useful for most households as a budget. When couples go from haphazardly spending their money to consciously choosing what is important, they feel a sense of control over a previously uncontrollable situation. Without a budget, many households spend money without serious thought and often struggle paycheck to paycheck. With a budget, a family prioritizes what is important, puts their money where they want it to go, and begins to chip away at long-term goals.
As it is with money, so it is with marriage. Most couples do not define their hopes and dreams. They fail to describe success in a meaningful way, so they haphazardly make decisions in the moment rather than considering their long-term desires. They react to life rather than building a life.
Consider how little time most individuals or couples give to the following questions:
What does a successful marriage look like to you?
Who do you want to be as a husband/wife?
What are some skills you need to learn to become a better couple?
What are some personal goals you hope to achieve?
What are some goals you hope you and your spouse achieve?
What is something you hope to achieve over time?
What are some small steps you can take now to begin to achieve your goals?
Without discussing these questions, most couples are simply hoping they luck into success. Rather than building the life they want, they are reacting to the life given to them.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. If a couple will work on a definition or description of success, they can begin to walk toward what they desire. Even if they can’t define it, the very process of discussing success will make it more likely to happen.
Too many couples do not even know what success would look like if they experienced it. They assume it’s more money or a bigger house or a better job title, never realizing that those things will not lead toward more life satisfaction but likely will further exploit weaknesses that exist in the marriage.
Without a picture of success, they don’t even know what they are chasing.
Stop Spending Your Spouse’s Dreams
If a couple has a clear understanding of what they want, an immediate practical change can take place. Without a clear direction of where they would like to go, they act in a haphazard way. Nowhere is this seen more than with finances.
Any couple who lives by a few basic financial principles can experience an easier marriage. If someone would save six months’ worth of expenses, invest in retirement, give generously to others, and live off less than they make, then most fights regarding money would disappear.
Yet there is a connection that many couples fail to make when it comes to money and their dreams. Every dollar saved today can be a dollar spent tomorrow on a dream or on taking a risk. Yet every dollar foolishly spent today hinders our opportunities tomorrow.
Obviously we must spend money today. It’s impossible to save every dollar we make. However, the sooner we learn to make wise choices regarding our finances, the greater our opportunities may be regarding what we hope to do and achieve.
When Jenny and I first got married, I met with a financial planner. It seemed like a pointless meeting since we didn’t have any finances to plan for. However, the expert gave me some advice. Beyond providing a few basic principles, he urged us to save more than our peers, not for retirement (although he encouraged aggressive retirement savings) but for what he described as “opportunities you will experience a decade from now.”
Having assisted many people with their finances, he knew that as a person matures into adulthood, families are established, and roots are put in place, opportunities will arise.
He was right. We saved extra money in an account that was neither for retirement nor for any other known expense. It was for unknown opportunities.
Sure enough, about a decade after we married, opportunities began to present themselves—friends were starting businesses and looking for investors, popular stocks hit all-time lows, a piece of investment property was for sale.
We couldn’t do everything, but we did have the option of doing some things. Eventually an opportunity presented itself that we had never considered. Jenny had been very successful in her career, but she was burning out. She considered quitting when one day the thought hit her: Why not start my own company? She is a worker by nature, so she knew she would do something. Why not do something where we would more fully reap the benefits?
We took our time and made our plans, and Jenny started her own company. We had no idea how long it would take to get off the ground, or even if it could get off the ground. Yet because we had saved money, there was no pressure. We had enough money saved that she could take two years to establish the company without it negatively impacting our daily lives.
Because we saved, Jenny was able to accomplish a dream she didn’t even have when we began saving.
Whenever we fail to live by good financial principles, we are doing more than just straining our relationships; we are also suffocating our dreams. For many, even if the perfect opportunity presented itself, they would not be able to take advantage of it because they could not go two weeks without a paycheck, much less two years.
Sadly, foolish decisions shackle us later in life. Bad decisions today can close the doors of opportunity tomorrow.
Interestingly, whenever we see saving money as an investment in our dreams, it is easier to do. But when we lose the connection between saving today and dreaming tomorrow, it becomes much more tempting to make poor choices today.
Healthy couples have an ability to delay gratification. Unhealthy couples do not. As their marriage suffers, the temptation grows to find any type of satisfaction today. Commonly, the result is poor decision making regarding finances.
Unfortunately, when we seek happiness today at the expense of happiness tomorrow, we often end up with it neither today nor tomorrow. But when we are satisfied enough in our relationship today, we can make sacrifices in order to experience success tomorrow. Then we often find happiness both today and tomorrow.
Partnership and Money
When most people hear the word partnership, they quickly associate it with money. And rightfully so. How a couple handles their finances will play a big role in their satisfaction with their marriage. However, it plays a different role in marriage than most people think.
Nearly every survey shows the number one source of conflict for married couples is money. Yet no marriage truly ends because of money. Money is never the disease; it is always the symptom.
When I was in college, a friend broke up with his longtime girlfriend. The breakup surprised me, so I asked my friend about it. He said, “She wants to be a doctor. I can’t marry someone who is going to make more money than me.”
I laughed and said, “Can I have her number?”
While a man is free to date or not to date whomever he wishes for whatever reasons he wishes, I found my friend’s thinking to be a little foolish. In a partnership, both spouses contribute equally to the success of the marriage. One might bring in a larger salary than the other. One may not even receive an official salary, but both contribute to the success of the relationship. The equality of the couple is not determined by salary. It is determined by their equal work, passion, and contribution.
Healthy couples always talk about money in a similar way. They discuss “our money.” Whether in power couples where both spouses have six-figure incomes, or in traditional families where the husband works outside the home and the wife works in the home, the philosophy is the same: “We are a team, and we own everything equally.”
In a true partnership, it doesn’t matter who makes the most money. The money belongs to both spouses as each contributes to the success of the whole. How money is spent is also agreed on by both partners. They might experience moments of disagreement. They might have to regularly negotiate some expenses. They might even have to seek an outside advisor to help determine the best course of action, but they do find a working agreement on how much to spend, where to spend it, and what priorities take precedence.
If you ask Wendy, she and her husband divorced because of money. They never could agree on it. Both she and Devin assumed if they just made more money, most of their problems would go away. Yet every time one of them received a raise, the money seemed to disappear.
They constantly fought about the issue. Devin said Wendy was irresponsible and selfish. She couldn’t control her shopping, and the credit card bills piled up. Wendy thought Devin was a hypocrite. Sure, he would go months without spending a dime, but with one quarterly purchase, he would spend more than she had in all those months.
The fights began to influence every aspect of their relationship, and eventually they’d had enough. Anytime Wendy reads a survey about marital problems, she isn’t surprised that money tops the list.
Actually, Wendy and Devin are wrong. They divorced for several reasons, but none of them were about money:
Lack of communication. They never learned how to properly communicate about money. Every discussion got personal quickly. They could not understand each other and why money was a struggle.
Apathy. Neither read a finance book. They never went to a financial planner or reached out to a mentor couple. They never took a class together to learn about personal finance.
Selfishness. Both assumed the other person was the problem. They each believed they deserved to spend the money they were spending, but the other spouse should have to cut back their expenses because of the couple’s debt. When one spouse is unable to submit their desire to what is best for the marriage, it will often be revealed in how they spend their money.
Addiction. Wendy and Devin were both addicted to spending. It expressed itself in different ways—Wendy with near daily purchases and Devin with occasional large purchases—but it was the same issue. In response to a poor marriage and the loneliness it created, both partners found meaning in money. They coped with their stress by spending, and their poor coping created more stress.
Money was the symptom. Both Wendy and Devin saw it, but what neither saw were the underlying diseases that ultimately destroyed their relationship. People do not get divorced because of money, but it is regularly the symptom they notice in a bad relationship. Money reveals our hearts, and a couple who constantly argues over money has a problem at the heart of their relationship.
An Example of Partnership: When Dad Works and Mom Stays Home
Whenever I speak about partnership with couples, a common question arises. While the question doesn’t apply to everyone, the principle behind it is applicable to every couple. Partnership is clearly one of the cornerstones of a healthy marriage. When both spouses feel as though they are not alone in this life but are jointly pursuing similar goals and aspirations, their marriage can flourish.
Inevitably when considering these ideas, a man will ask, “How do we feel a sense of partnership when I work and my wife stays home?” Many women do not love this question, but I do, because it allows me to make a very important point regarding money, partnership, and the core concepts of what marriage is all about.
The question itself shows biases that hinder the couple from experiencing the true benefits of partnership. It unearths two assumptions that create tension in marriage, both of which are tragically wrong.
The first assumption is that when one spouse receives a paycheck for their job and the other does not, then only one spouse is earning money.
For a married couple, money is never “hers” and “his.” One or both spouses might receive a check with their name on it. Separate checking accounts might be kept because it’s the best financial plan for the couple. But all the money belongs to both spouses because all the money is earned by both spouses.
I have a job outside the home. Twice a month I receive a paycheck with my name on it. But I can’t do my job without my wife. I do only half of the chauffeuring around of our kids (and actually less than half because of my mom’s help). I do only some of the housework. There are some specific places where I take the lead responsibility to run our house. In order to free myself to work, I do only some of the things at home.
The same is true for Jenny. She doesn’t take the kids to school or run them to every extracurricular activity or do every aspect of housework. She does a lot, but she doesn’t do it all. She can’t, because she needs time to do her job.
There are times when I am taking care of our private lives so Jenny can take care of her business. At the same time, Jenny is taking care of other aspects of our private lives so I can do my job. Without the other person we would still do our jobs, but many changes would have to take place.
The life we have together, we have built together. No matter who makes more money or less money or no money, every dollar earned by one of us is a dollar earned by both of us.
This is true for every couple. When Dad works and Mom stays home, Mom is playing a key role in the money Dad earns. The paycheck might be in his name, but it is their money. He has no right to assume he is making all of the money. Together they have designed a life based on one paycheck, but they jointly share the responsibilities to make that life happen.
This is why the courts rightly split the possessions 50/50 when a divorce occurs. The man doesn’t deserve more just because he went to work.
One of the first steps to experiencing true partnership with your spouse if one of you stays home and the other works outside the home is to recognize the contribution the other person is making toward what you do. If a husband’s paycheck allows the wife to stay home, she should recognize with gratitude the opportunity he gives her. If a wife works from home while her husband goes to work, he should recognize with gratitude the opportunity she gives him.
The second assumption the above question reveals regarding partnership is that it is primarily about money. It is not. Money is important, but it is not the main aspect of partnership. Partnership is about life. It is about creating the life we desire. Money plays only a secondary role in that life.
Husbands and wives are life partners. Partnership should define every aspect of our lives. It’s about money and work, but it is also about parenting, family, fun, hobbies, dreams, aspirations, our home, a spiritual connection, and every other pursuit.
Even if one spouse has nothing to do with how the other spouse earns money (which is impossible), they should still feel a deep sense of partnership in multiple areas of life.
Couples parent as partners. Parenting should never be left to one parent. It is a team sport. While there might be specific roles that each person plays, there is no single issue regarding children in which both parents aren’t involved. Children should know and feel that their parents are partners. As they try to divide their parents (and they will), parents should work hard to keep the partnership intact. Not only does it make the parents feel stronger, it gives the children a greater sense of security.
Couples dream as partners. Part of a spouse’s job is to help their husband or wife experience some of their lifelong goals. Many things cannot be accomplished alone. We need help. A spouse can be a constant source of encouragement, hope, and prodding. We can refuse to let our spouse give up on themselves or on those things that are important to them. We can confront them when we feel as though they are settling for less than what is possible.
Couples play as partners. It is not important for spouses to share every hobby. It is actually beneficial if there are some things a husband or wife does without their spouse. But it is useful for couples to share some hobbies. Too many marriages get stuck in the routine of work and raising kids, and couples lose the element of fun in their relationship. Having a shared hobby can invigorate a relationship.
The Heart of Partnership
One of the greatest privileges of marriage is to wake up every morning and know that at least one other person cares about my life as much as I do. They are seeking my best as passionately as I am. It is a wonderful gift to be able to reciprocate my wife’s fervor for me with my own fervor for her.
This is the heart of partnership—two people fully committed to the well-being and success of their spouse. As they each benefit the other, they receive benefits from the relationship. Each individual thrives as the relationship itself thrives.
As often as possible, I try to ask Jenny, “What’s one way I can help you today?” Whether you have been married one day or seventy years, this question can strengthen your partnership and help your relationship.
BE INTENTIONAL