How do you stop work-related issues impacting your marriage? Photo / Getty Images
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My husband and I have owned a business together for years and up until recently it had always worked well. Last year however, out of greed he made a really impulsive and bad business decision that he didn’t run past me. It nearly wrecked our business, damaged our reputation and cost us financially. I’m trying not to let it impact our marriage but I can barely look at him let alone touch him at the moment. He’s obviously picked up on this and is accusing me of sabotaging our marriage over work-related issues, but the whole thing has made me wonder if I even know him. How do we work through this? - Marie
Dear Marie.
It is entirely understandable that you are distressed about this major breach of trust. When our spouse violates an agreement, it matters more than if it was “just” a business associate (though in that case, you would still be hurt and angry). We expect our life partner to be reliable, to consult and be considerate, and, most of all, not put us at risk.
We’re curious about where the two of you got this idea that what happens in your business partnership shouldn’t impact your marriage. That’s unreasonable and unrealistic. You may have had an agreement to try to separate your business and home lives, but that doesn’t mean what happens in one doesn’t impact the other. At the core, your relationship is simply how you treat each other in all circumstances. Being in business together amplifies the importance of your behaviour towards each other because there is even more at stake than for the average couple.
So you have a serious issue to address. However, things have gone pretty pear-shaped in that you are both talking rashly and unkindly to each other, making sorting things out difficult, if not impossible. We’re sorry to say that you come across as judgmental and disparaging of him, and he sounds like he is trying to paint you as unreasonable for being upset over his breach of trust. Anxiety can tip this apple cart over: your anxiety that he is somehow no longer the man you thought you knew or his anxiety that you no longer respect him and see him as greedy and impulsive.
If you seriously want to sort things out, we suggest you begin by backing off from the critical and judgemental language and attitude and see if you can approach the issues with curiosity and goodwill. Of course you are upset that he acted in a way that cost you money and negatively impacted your business’s reputation. But are you willing to slow down and hear and understand what that mistake was all about for him and how he sees it?
Your partner is likely embarrassed by his mistake. If he is normal, it will activate his deep insecurities about himself (which we all have) – what many people refer to as shame. As adults, we are responsible for our actions, but if we are full of shame, we often struggle to own our errors because we fear they confirm our insecurities about ourselves.
Your partner must own what he has done without minimising it. He needs to be willing to discuss what happened with you in a non-defensive way that shows what he learned from his mistake. He needs to address why he acted the way he did and, especially, how he came not to involve you in this significant decision.
As Ziad K. Abdelnour said, “Your past mistakes are meant to guide you, not define you”. Rebuilding your trust will involve him demonstrating an understanding of the deep psychological forces that drove him (e.g. fearing failure or feeling unworthy) to break his contract with you. Then, he needs to have a clear plan about how he will manage those forces in the future (they will not go away).
If you want to restore your relationship with and desire for your partner, supporting this process is in your interest. That way, you will get satisfactory answers to how he was able to hurt you so badly and to know what actions he is taking to protect you from similar pain in the future. Allowing your hurt to make you blame and punish will make it more difficult for you to get the answers you need to rebuild trust in him.
Try to be a partner who offers a place where your partner feels OK about opening up with you, where he can unpack how he came to make that mistake. If he can own his mistake, take responsibility for it, and learn from it by working out how he came to make it, then your respect for him can likely be restored.
It may also be worth checking the strength of your reaction to your partner making an upsetting mistake. You say you can barely look at him, let alone touch him. It is very understandable to feel disappointed when something hurts so much. On top of these understandable reactions, you may have an extra layer of upset response to what has happened that may be linked to your past. For example, past situations where people have broken your trust or let you down significantly. Just as you should expect him to own what’s going on for him at a deep level, if some of your reaction belongs to past hurts, you need to own that and not make that hurt his responsibility.
Intimacy is uncomfortable quite often. Sometimes, its very discomfort is a marker of how important it is: the awkward intimacy of talking with our partners about our unhelpful behaviours and mistakes we have made.
A situation like this does not need to be a deal breaker unless you cannot tolerate him making a mistake like this, or he cannot face it and have the humility to learn from it. It can end up being a point of deep intimacy between you if you both share what you have learned about yourselves.
Of course, if he cannot own that he crossed boundaries and acted rashly and take responsibility for it, that is something that you need to pay attention to. This will likely cement a dangerous loss of respect for him and trust for you in this relationship.
Dealing with significant breaches of trust is one of the biggest challenges a relationship can face. They generate high emotionality and a reflexive desire to protect yourself. Yet people do work through these situations and come out the other side feeling more connected, safe and loving. But you only get those outcomes from doing the hard work of vulnerable engagement.
• Verity & Nic are psychologists and family therapists who have specialised in relationship and sex therapy for more than 25 years. They have been working on their own relationship for more than 40 years and have two adult children.
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