Marrying my husband turbo-charged my career. It’s not about being married so much as it is about being married to him. Not his connections, finances, or professional partnership capabilities – I married my husband out of love and shared values. It is about having a supportive partner, a brutally honest critic, a second (usually more grounded) perspective, and a natural hedge against all those unexpected life events. I am a better professional because of him.
I remember when I first met my husband. We were both graduate students at Yale looking for jobs, not love. Even while leaning against the bar and holding a cocktail in his hand, he stood head and shoulders above everyone else (literally – he’s 6‘5”). I was immediately smitten and introduced myself without hesitation. Instead of being put-off by my forwardness, he was endeared. And what started that night as simply a romance evolved into much more.
Initially, I thought the ‘much more’ was simply a man who could handle my work ethic with good humor and a healthy ego. As I slaved over my doctoral dissertation, he kept me laughing, dancing, and drinking (martinis usually) – and he always engaged me in smart conversation. My husband gave me reason to smile even when the data crashed or the dissertation process seemed insurmountable. Without his brilliant and delightful companionship, I fear how little joy would have accompanied the intense work.
When we took off for Tuscany after graduation to celebrate, my husband proved he was more than just an entertaining mind. Somehow I’d lost my passport on the way from my Soho apartment to JFK airport. When the ticketing agent informed me that I could not fly without it, I went into all systems shutdown, pulling apart my bags like a crazed woman and spewing profanities. My husband calmly pulled me aside and responded to my imperative for him to just leave me in NYC and board the plane, “No, Allison, we’ll stay together on this.” As if that weren’t lovely enough, when the taxi cab driver came to return my passport to the agent (a miracle I can only attribute to his generous spirit and perhaps my having bonded with him in Arabic), I pathetically handed my passport over to my husband and said, “You keep this for the rest of the trip. It isn’t safe with me.” With steady eyes and complete confidence, he handed me back both my passport and his, saying, “Get back on the horse.” If that isn’t faith and utter support, what is?
When we returned from Italy and started our Wall Street jobs, our relationship’s rhythm changed a bit. Instead of my workload taking the front seat, as with my dissertation, we both had incredibly intense and competing professional demands. My husband didn’t shy from my ambition, nor me from his; we worked together. I’d give him an outlet for his stress and angst, but more often than not he’d be the one giving. Unlike me, my husband had worked in the ‘real world’ for years before business school and often in incredibly intense fields, including the military. He was no stranger to being accountable under fire or being forced to prioritize an impossibly long list. And the guidance he gave me for my first real job, and all the successes and failures therein, proved invaluable.
Even when my fancy-pants Wall Street job fell apart (a story to tell in another article), he gave me perspective on my seeming failure, loved me unconditionally, helped me pick up the pieces, cheered me on when (and was amusingly stunned by how fast) I triumphed in the face of adversity, and continued to be patient with me when the reverberations of that stunning situation haunted me for years.
When a later job transformed over time from being an amazing opportunity to a not-so-perfect-fit, my husband (now officially my husband) taught me to accept the imperfections and make the best of an adequate situation. He also helped me navigate office politics. You’d think after studying political science for years I’d be well-versed in power, cheap talk, and bargaining. Theoretically I was, but standing in the midst of an empirical struggle required some outside counsel. My husband always managed to step up with keen and sometimes humbling advice. His moral compass is beyond reproach. And he was the one who encouraged me to start teaching again to rebalance myself and my expectations. Sometimes it takes a third-party to state the obvious.
In the midst of all these career fits and starts, I ended up earning extra money on a side project I’d worked on for years. That combined with my regular income put me as the primary breadwinner that year. Many a man would have stumbled being in the secondary financial position. My husband not only didn’t miss a beat but reveled in his new role. He was proud of me for earning the extra income, not threatened. And he helped me celebrate my victory with giddiness and glee.
As if all this isn’t enough, my husband ultimately gave me the greatest career gift of all. After the birth of our first child and the problematic signals my firm gave me about my career trajectory as a working mom, my husband helped me muster inner courage to follow my gut. He emphatically supported my decision to find my own way as a working mom – if that meant working full-time, so be it; if that meant working one day a week in a fulfilling but financially meaningless job, so be it; if that meant spending several years sorting out the rhythm of my career, so be it. My husband stepped up and said he’d provide the safety net for our family until I could get my feet on the ground and be both the mom and professional I wanted to be. And that wasn’t without significant personal cost. My husband’s job wasn’t his calling, so staying put while I got settled was a big give – more romantic and loving than any diamonds, vacations, or sweet whisperings could ever be. Without his openness to my being a working mom or his willingness to take the lead on finances and stable employment, I might not have been able to take the big risk of leaving my less-than-stellar job to find my near-perfect jobs. These jobs (I have three) are the culmination of years of education, professional experience, and maternal ambition. Just recently I have had the tremendous honor of returning the favor as my husband embarks on his own new and entrepreneurial career.
I’m not saying that I couldn’t have succeeded professionally without my husband. I could have – the fundamental tools of my career success are deeply embedded within me. But, without my husband, I certainly wouldn’t have climbed the professional learning curve as fast and my life would have been less nuanced, less fun, and less abundant. My husband is the place I call home. And that gives me strength, insight, and humor to venture into the big, bad world of work and triumph.
So, Damsels, when you think about how to develop yourself professionally, don’t underestimate the power of a good relationship with a good man. Even Mother Nature finds that some species are best in pairs…