My client is in the horns of an uncomfortable dilemma.
Here’s the scenario:
He and his wife are both in law, and both want out. Resources exist to permit one to escape. The other must remain behind to pay loans.
Who makes it to freedom? Who gets left behind?
Arriving at that decision can wreak hell on a marriage.
A successful partnership requires an alliance, which depends upon shared goals. If the primary shared goal was being wealthy, powerful lawyers, and that goal cartwheels in flames into the tarmac at three hundred feet per second… the alliance fractures. Sometimes the alliance transforms into opposition.
You do law. No, YOU do law.
That kind of opposition.
My client met his wife at a first-tier law school. They were in the same class, and their shared dream was simple – they would graduate at the top of their class, join powerful, big-name law firms, and make a lot of money. They would have a nice house, maybe a couple of kids, fabulous vacations – and a kitchen with granite counter-tops and an AGA stove.
This was a simple, bourgeois dream – stability, money, family. Naturally, they were intellectuals, so they’d have a subscription to the local symphony – but their dream was about making it, in predictable, concrete terms.
Then reality hit.
They hated their firms. He got laid off, which came as a relief. She went in-house, and to her surprise, hated it even more than the firm. She ended up quitting.
They relocated to another city, where he found a job at a smaller firm. He hates it less, but still basically hates it. She’s still out of work, dragging her feet. He’s paying both their loans every month – and resenting it.
She says she can’t do law anymore – it would crush her soul. She needs to go to grad school and study art or she’ll go crazy.
He wants to go to grad school and study history – or he’ll go crazy.
They both think the other should stay and do law to pay the bills.
Remember the old shared goal? Charred embers. There are new goals – and they’re no longer mutual.
When he’s not slaving at the firm, they’re fighting. That’s driving them both nuts.
This week’s question comes from “S”. Here’s a lightly edited version:
Most of the Western world seems to have had a good laugh this week at an unidentified Arab ambassador to Dubai.
The worst part is that couples often become hyper-focused on the wedding itself. These affairs can be enormous undertakings nowadays, which grow into monsters that gobble your life. The wedding -essentially a big party for your relatives – can become the shared dream.
Instead of bemoaning the death of family – or whatever you want to call it – how about we face the fact that you can’t judge the quality of a relationship based upon its longevity. You might spend a marvelous three years with someone and decide that it’s time to move on. Or you might stay together for sixty years and be totally miserable.
An adult is a whole person, not a half person. And if the other whole person leaves to try something different, he remains a whole person.
The People's Therapist 