How to run your marriage as a business and make it a success.
We sign contracts every day in our lives in business, careers, finances investments and many other circumstances. We hopefully take the time to read the fine print and educate ourselves about the level of the commitment involved and the return on our investment we have the potential to gain once we are willing to hold ourselves accountable.
I have spent the past year drawing up a business plan and finally setting up a company, and something began to dawn on me as to what I must do to make it a success. I had to draw strength from something in my life a situation that challenged me, that inspired me, and indeed troubled me at times but one that made me resilient and grounded me as a person. It was my marriage.
So many don’t know what they are signing up to in business yet alone a marriage what remains long after the confetti’s tossed and the guests fed and entertained is a lifelong commitment that requires service, loyalty investment, and effort.
Are you ready to do the work?
The reality is very few relationships in life, business or marriage are without their fair share of obstacles and lessons to be learned. We have had to fail, learn, renegotiate, rebuild and work hard on strengthening our relationship many times in our 24-years together.
We are business partners we have invested in our health, happiness and success. There has been hardships, heartbreak, dissolving of our partnership on occasions so that we could find our way and discover we were truly meant to be an on each others team. As a business, we are a continual work in progress.
So what can you do to run a successful business in the marriage industry?
Here are some reality checks and questions to consider when drawing up your business plan so that when you sign that contract or are perhaps thinking of dissolving your partnership, it may help you realize there is a bigger perspective and support you to make it in sickness in health till death do you part.
1. Are our ideas about our future goals and plans together realistic and achievable to turn this into a viable marriage and can we communicate this vision effectively to each other?
2. Do we know what we are prepared to tolerate from ourselves and each other in this relationship?
3. What strengths, weaknesses and threats do we face together as a couple in our marriage?
4. Are we emotionally secure enough to finance our future investment, so we don’t become oblivious to each other’s feelings, emotionally bankrupt and have to dissolve our partnership when the going gets tough and hard times are sent to try us?
5. What do we want need and wish for in this partnership?
6. Have we got the capital to expand and add to our relationship in the future?
7. Are we willing to create a strategy together that we enable our growth and commitment going forward?
8. Are we prepared to take advantage of opportunities together and mitigate risks when faced?
9. Is this relationship mutually beneficially?
10. What values do we choose to align this relationship with in order to live by them and sustain it for life?
I will leave you with this beautiful Extract from Marriage Joins Two People In The Circle Of Its Love by Edmund O’Neill.
“Marriage is a commitment to life, the best that two people can find and bring out in each other.
It offers opportunities for sharing and growth that no other relationship can equal. It is a physical and an emotional joining that is promised for a lifetime”
Originally published at medium.com