When Problems in Your Marriage Cannot Just Be Put on the Back Burner at Work

What happens when your marriage is imploding, while your business is experiencing growth pains and needs every waking hour of your attention?

Welcome to Eric and Michelle.

This is a true story. Their names have been changed because holy shit they’d kill me if I didn’t.

Eric and Michelle are both doctors and work together in an expanding practice.

When my phone rang, it was Eric pulling his hair out not because of problems with new patients or handling staff, but hold on...because his wife was driving him crazy.

What kind of business problem is this?

It’s the kind of “business problem” no one talks about because “it’s none of your business.”

Well, actually it is your business.

Because I’ll bet a dime against a dollar, that if you’re reading this you’ve had some kind of personal or marital issue affecting your business and/or your own performance at work some time in your life.

And from my forty-plus years of experience, easily ninety-percent of the businesses I consult have some personal or marital situation adversely affecting their work.

See, it’s not completely true that there is such a thing as a “business problem.” It’s an easy catch-phrase that everyone has co-opted to describe problems at work.

It’s lazy.

So, what if you and your spouse are going through some serious marital issues? Where is this located in your business?

“Well, it’s understood that you don’t bring your personal issues to work. That’s left at the door.”

Really?

That sounds like a good rule. Kind of makes sense. 

But when you inspect it, it has very little common sense.

And almost no workability.

Because in truth, you are a being with multi-dynamics in life.

So, Eric and Michelle leave home with an imploding marriage, come to work, and as soon as they pass through those doors, the problems in their marriage go on pause, like hitting the Pause Button on your remote while watching a Netflix movie.

Have I got that right?

Yeah, that’s why I said it was lazy. That’s just lazy-ass-logic. Like you nod your head when you agree to it because it “sounds right.”

Eric and Michelle’s life is not a sound bite.

And neither is yours.

While getting ready for work, Eric is in the kitchen finishing his coffee-in-a-hurry. He is yelling at the top of his lungs at Michelle who is upstairs putting on her lipstick. As she looks in the mirror with seething suppressed anger, she whispers under her breath:

“I have had enough.”

Michelle finishes her make-up and in a silent rage, charges downstairs mad as a hornet in a hurricane. Eric is still blasting her for no orange juice in the frig and last night’s dirty dishes left undone in the sink. Michelle walks into the kitchen with authority, and proceeds to slice and dice Eric with a slew of profanities to tell him in no short order to, shut-the-fuck up.

As the verbal sparks fly, they somehow make it out to their respective cars with no driveway stabbing, and drive off to work.

Then somewhere along their twenty-seven minute drive, they each hit the Pause Button on their Life Remote, and magically morph into Academy Award winning Best Actor and Best Actress in a doctor role, seemingly without a problem in the world.

Does this sound familiar?

How often have you presented your award winning smile and a cool demeanor at work or in life when the wheels were coming off?

The thing is we’ve all learned long ago to sell it. To walk through those doors like we’re perfect human beings. Like our marriages are perfect and our kids are straight A students and it all looks good. A Mercedes and a Lexus parked out front proves it.

The only thing it proves is that we have watched enough movies directed by Martin Scorcese, that we too, can act when life yells “Action.”

This “rule” that “you leave your personal stuff at the door,” is a probably a necessary requirement for work, because without it your work space becomes, “As The World Turns.”

But the fact is, your world is always turning.

But when your world isn’t just turning, but in fact is imploding like Eric and Michelle's, that world does not have a doorstep.

When I was done hearing Eric’s side of the story I thanked him and told him I needed to talk with Michelle. He was happy to hear this as he was confident from work I’d done with him, that I would “fix Michele.”

I called Michelle. I caught her with a twenty minute window between patients. She’s in her office with the door locked. She gets on the phone and immediately asks,

“So what did Eric tell you?”

I told her the bullet points from what Eric had related and that I wanted to get her side of the story.

She immediately went into grief.

She told me her side and the entire time she was in heavy grief grabbing tissues about every minute that ticked by.

And Michelle’s proclamation when she was home upstairs putting on her lipstick, was not just a momentary flash of her female temperament with her husband.

She related that she was in fact done with this shit with Eric.

Now, how well do you think this family practice is going to do when this marital problem has literally hijacked every ounce of their energy and ability to focus on the actual expansion of the practice?

And oh...yeah...this happens to others, not you, right?

The problem is most everyone has put these other dynamics “on the back burner” for so long that they forgot that even on simmer, something is eventually going to boil over.

Back burners are for spaghetti sauces and your grandmother’s soup.

They are not for marriages or relationships where the wheels have come off the train track.

Okay, well, Eric and Michelle were at a real crossroads.

How Did They Get From “I Do” to “I Don’t?”

The Eric and Michelle story is real. It happens every day, somewhere across the world. You may be experiencing it at some stage in your own relationship or know someone who is.

And you may also think on your drive to work “It’s not that bad,” or “Things will get better,” or “We just gotta hang in there.”

All of those statements, although admirable, are symptoms of cope.

And “putting it on the back burner” is a default setting that eventually comes to the front burner by life spilling over the edges.

When people go out of communication with each other, there’s been a violation of the very formula of communication itself.

Did you know there was a formula for communication?

Well, there is. We teach it to couples and it’s tremendously successful.

But that’s not the subject of this article.

The question is how did Eric and Michelle get from walking down the aisle and being in love, to now throwing zingers at each other and contemplating ending their marriage?

Many will chime in here with, “Well, that happens to everyone. You know, the romance is over and real life sets in.”

I always find it interesting that some people in this culture come up with these zippy instant answers that are supposed to explain behavior that then everyone agrees to.

I don’t agree.

The life or elan vital or love and joy that existed with Eric and Michelle when they said “I do,” has never changed. Not one iota. All of their love and life force for each other is still there.

So what happens?

When each individual is in great communication with their partner, there’s enormous understanding.

Phrases like “She gets me” or “He really understands me and loves me for who I am,” and others, are quite common.

And this is the essence of being in communication.

So, if communication and understanding are the foundation for a great relationship, it stands to reason that there has to be a violation of that foundation of communication---a mis-communication, that then brings about a misunderstanding or even no-understanding.

Stop and think about this for a moment.

You’re going over your finances and you see a sizable extra expense from your wife’s shopping trip at Nordstroms. Sizable enough that you feel she should have told you before or certainly after.

It’s not the new shoes she bought that bother you.

It’s the fact that there was withheld or no communication.

Your husband says he has to work late which is often the case, and in the background you hear his attractive young secretary giggling. It immediately pings in your world. He doesn’t say anything and neither do you, but right there, you go out of communication.

And when he comes home this turns into a heated argument.

It’s not about the secretary.

It’s about withheld communication or no communication leading to a miscommunication and upset.

As these seemingly “innocuous” events occur, they build up like tiny black marks against the very love and life force that you enjoy with each other.

Well, here's an analogy for you. If you’ve ever seen barnacles on the pilings of a pier, eventually the pier piling disappears and all you see are the barnacles.

The question is, has the pier piling itself changed?

No.

And this is what happens to couples. They begin to suffocate from the cumulative effect of the barnacles, and the love they have for each other seems to be disappearing right before their eyes, so they start pointing at the barnacles.

Like this is somehow describing their partner.

These barnacles or black marks are simply this:

They are the mis-communications, withheld communications, no-communications, secrets, and white lies that were used at some moment where one or the other felt they could not just communicate the truth.

If you take Eric and Michelle from the point of being in great communication when they first met, then fast forward to where they are now, it is simply the antithesis of this. It does not lay in hidden receipts or women at work or any number of deeds done.

It is the actions withheld from one’s partner that puts that person out of communication with the other.

When you get each couple to confront these withheld communications and no-communications, you in essence wind the video tape back to the original state they were in before they made these missteps.

And yes, it’s magical.

But it is not easy.

Eric and Michelle jumped train tracks way back. All they saw were the offensive characteristics or barnacles of the other. 

And each had their assessment of how the other had to change, or it was oversville.

The truth is, each had their own no-communications, withheld communications, and white lies towards the other.

And it took someone skilled in a methodology to help each of them not only confront their missteps, but take responsibility for them, and not put it on the other.

We helped get Eric and Michelle get back in communication like the day they were married. And now they have the tools to help them when they hit some rough waters.

The tools and understanding of the formula of communication are much more valuable than a scripted cliche of “putting it on the back back burner” or “leaving it at the doorstep.”

Life is not scripted. It’s raw. It bleeds. And there are a gamut of emotions and ups and downs that have to be navigated in real time.

If you are interested in learning more about these tools of communication and what I do, feel free to send me an email or click the link below for a free phone consultation.

If you are interested in finding out more about what I do and how I might assist you, please feel free to email me at daveworthen@gmail.com or please click on the link below for free phone consultation.

Free Phone Consultation with Dave Worthen