Yahoo Finance How to Plan Your Career With a Partner
Before they married, Jorge and Nicole Valens made an agreement: If they ever had children, they both would continue to prioritize their careers.
"The one thing my wife and I were very clear about was, no matter how well we did financially or whose paycheck was the biggest, we would both work," Jorge Valens says.
That pact was tested nearly two years ago, when the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, couple learned they had a baby on the way. Nicole, a public school teacher, could take maternity leave, but it would be unpaid and only last several weeks. After that, the Valenses could send their child to day care, but the costs seemed prohibitive.
As the couple pondered what to do, a new option emerged. Jorge's boss gave him the opportunity to work from home while caring for the baby. Her reasoning? She makes the flexible arrangement available to new mothers at the public relations firm where Jorge works, and she decided she should extend the same offer to a new father.
"From my perspective, it was 'Yes, problem solved,'" Jorge Valens says. "I didn't have a problem being the primary caregiver."
Making career choices can be difficult. Add a romantic partner, and possibly children, to the equation and the math becomes more complicated.
Yet many people neglect to consider the significant influence a spouse can have on their career trajectories. Studies show that women in heterosexual relationships, especially, may find they've signed an "unconscious contract" with partners whose expectations limit their success in the workplace, says Kathy Caprino, career coach and founder of Ellia Communications.
In her job advice book "Lean In," Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg doesn't mince words on this topic: "I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is."
The good news about career planning with a partner is that it's possible to "shape both of your lives to achieve your personal highest potential and make sure your relationship is growing," Caprino says. "But you can't do it unless you're very clear about what you want and very brave to talk about it."
Honest discussion and advance planning paid off for the Valenses. For the past year, Nicole has resumed her job as a fifth-grade teacher while Jorge and daughter Zoey have balanced meals and playtime with conference calls and emails. Jorge completes a lot of his work in the morning while Zoey sleeps and sometimes meets clients in the afternoons when Nicole returns to the house.
The arrangement has saved the couple nearly $20,000 in child care costs, Valens says, and hopefully provides Zoey with an example of good partnership.
Plus, he notes, "I don't feel like my career has been stifled because I made this decision."
Read on for advice about how to express your career goals, select a partner who respects those aspirations and make decisions about work-life balance together.
Choose Someone Supportive
By the time adults choose long-term partners, they've developed attitudes and opinions about work, family and their preferred lifestyles. Yet couples tend not to discuss weighty topics, like their careers, before settling down, Caprino says.
She calls that a mistake: "If we are not really aware of what we think and what we want, it goes badly."
It's only natural that new couples neglect to talk about practical matters, because the hormones affiliated with romantic love make it difficult to see potential red flags, says Donald Cole, clinical director at the Gottman Institute, which researches relationship success and teaches therapists to counsel couples.
"Their whole brain is turned toward positive thoughts and feelings," he explains. "We find ourselves being very agreeable during that phase."
But it's worth trying to assess compatibility before committing long term. Potential partners should reflect individually about their career ambitions, then discuss them candidly, experts say. They should talk honestly about whether they'd be willing to make sacrifices, such as move, change jobs, or quit work to care for children or elderly relatives.
Ultimately, if you know your career is a top priority, "when it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner," Sandberg writes.
That person should both celebrate your professional successes and encourage you when you have job setbacks, says Adrienne Partridge, a leadership and career coach who studied women's career choices for her doctoral research in psychology.
Because it's impossible to predict career trajectories, seek a partner who has "flexibility and resilience and open-mindedness," Caprino says. Partners who are "overly attached to a particular mindset" make career compromise difficult to achieve.
Have Tough Conversations Gently
After partners have committed to each other, the success of their relationship depends in part on whether they understand and value one another's "needs, feelings and dreams," Cole says.
Many people find those three factors connect directly to their career ambitions. That makes conversations regarding work choices very important -- and sensitive.
"The most serious kinds of relationship conflict occur when our dreams are in conflict," Cole says. "A lot of time our deepest conflicts are around careers, and those are the kinds that tear us apart."
Research shows it's important to start sensitive discussions gently, expressing respect for your partner's feelings, validating their right to have dreams and not blaming them for causing problems, Cole says.
"That gentle start-up is huge," he says. "It's almost impossible to get it back to a positive conversation when it starts negative."
After that, the key to having fruitful discussions is to listen.
"Most people, when they have a problem, immediately move into problem-solving and persuading before they've really listened and understood," Cole explains. "You cannot attempt to persuade until you can understand the other person's position to the level of their acceptance."
[See: How to Be a Good Listener.]
Think Beyond Salary
When couples make career decisions, they often prioritize the job that commands the higher salary. That gives the person with the larger paycheck more power in the relationship, Caprino says. Due to wage inequality and social norms, among heterosexual couples, that person typically is the man.
But it may be short-sighted to use salary as the sole metric for determining who should make career sacrifices. The partner earning more money at any given point may not be the partner who has the most earning potential in the long run, Caprino says. Maintaining two incomes may help couples stay resilient in case of economic volatility or personal loss. Valens, for example, says he is comforted by the fact that, "if something happens to one of us, the other is in the job market." He also appreciates the career flexibility his dual-income household affords: "One parent can take a risk in their career, and another parent can go get a master's degree."
Less tangible, but no less important, is the fact that salary-focused thinking may hurt one or both partners and ultimately harm their relationship. Work provides "intrinsic rewards" beyond dollar signs that "are so valuable for people and their identity," Partridge says. Asking a partner to change or give up his or her career may elicit "a sense of identity loss."
When partners make career decisions, instead of simply figuring out who makes more money, they should ask one another, "What does it mean to have this career?" Cole suggests. The answers may illuminate a solution that is satisfying to both parties.
[See: 25 Best Jobs That Pay $100K.]
Learn to Compromise
Career planning with a partner often requires compromise.
"Creating an opportunity for both person's dreams to come true" is "as important as anything else you can talk about in marriage," Cole says. "It's one of the central themes to being successful as a couple."
Couples should be realistic and honest about what they're willing to sacrifice, he says, because partners who try to over-compromise may eventually find the agreements they've made "blow up."
Start by "clearly, simply, positively" defining your inflexible areas, Cole says: "'This is what I must have. This is a non-negotiable for me.'"
Then identify the factors that are flexible, and tinker with those until you've created a shared vision.
After the decision is made, commit to trying it out for a set period. Resist the urge to discuss it every few days.
[See: 10 Jobs That Offer Millennials Good Work-Life Balance.]
Don't Seek Perfection
It's unlikely that couples -- even those committed to fully supporting each other's careers -- can devise a wholly equal lifestyle.
"Balance is a misnomer. Things are not always going to be in perfect balance," Partridge says.
Couples who strive for literal balance may find their relationships become unpleasantly transactional, she says. Requiring your partner to make an equal work sacrifice each time you do "defeats the purpose of sharing."
Instead, she explains, couples should "recalibrate from time to time" to ensure their responsibilities and opportunities are "not mismatched continuously."
One way to do this is to make career compromises temporary instead of permanent, resolving to re-evaluate them after a month, six months or a year, Cole says.
After all, in most relationships, "it takes continual communication, honesty and a lot of forgiveness to maintain a rickety balance," Sandberg writes. She advises couples to "allow the pendulum to swing back and forth."
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