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Managing a Career and a Marriage

Getting married remains one of the most important decisions a woman can make. I had been engaged twice before meeting my husband during my first year of graduate school. Those broken earlier engagements were about me not being marriage-ready. I knew I’d come late to marriage compared to my girlfriends who had married shortly after college and started their families.

I needed time to deal with old self esteem issues, fears about marriagiability, and to prepare for and launch a career. So I embraced time as an ally rather than an enemy. I believed that I could create a fulfilling life for myself as a single woman or married. However, I truly felt my life’s path would include marriage, family, and a career. There’s never been a time in my life, in fact, when I didn’t envision this particularly demanding lifestyle for myself.

Intent on succeeding in marriage, I set out to learn what I could for myself, and in order to help others. Being a reasonably bright and determined person I felt confident that I could carve out a fine career, but lacked the confidence to believe I could create and sustain a successful marriage as a career-minded woman. And, I had no role models for the type of marriage I believed I needed. Thus began my academic career and practice as a therapist. It astonished me to learn how little it took to create successful relationships, and how unwilling people are to take the small, consistent steps to succeed.

Like many career women today, my biggest worries were about making a career and family life work well. My approach was simply to do what I learned to do well—ask questions.

I asked myself tough, probing questions about what was most important for my happiness and fulfillment in life, the health of my marriage, and the wellbeing of my kids. Since research on marriage and family life is both interesting and enjoyable to me I read leading publications on these issues to better understand the challenges and possibilities for success in marriage.

We now have a compelling body of studies which show that couples in stable, healthy marriages enjoy an authentic friendship with each other, good communication, and emotional closeness. They tend to have greater problem solving and communication skills than couples in less satisfying marriages.

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