About 10 years ago, I had a internship at Newell Rubbermaid. As part of the experience, the entire group of interns across all the brands got to have lunch with the CEO and basically ask him anything we wanted.
At some point, someone asked about his biggest regret. We all expected some business blunder, but he said that he was offered an executive position by Kraft to lead their Asian segment, and that his wife really did not want him to take the job because it would require them to move to that region. He regretted not listening to her, because it ended up being the catalyst that dissolved their marriage.
We were all stunned silent, and you could tell that he was genuinely remorseful and so vulnerable in that moment. There are only a handful of moments in that internship that I vividly remember, but that was by far the most impactful one.
Reminds me of a class I took at the University of Illinois, it was a seminar in entrepreneurship for engineers, if I remember correctly.
I believe a CEO of a $100M+ company came in and gave a speech. His first slide had a PowerPoint, on which he put something like, "3...2...1." Then he said, "3 wives, 2 divorces, and 1 heart attack. That's the real cost of entrepreneurship." I've remembered it ever since.
a CEO of a $100M+ company came in and gave a speech. His first slide had a PowerPoint, on which he put something like, "3...2...1." Then he said, "3 wives, 2 divorces, and 1 heart attack. That's the real cost of entrepreneurship."
Plenty of people who were never entrepreneurs suffer the same or worse.. and do so while earning a tiny pittance of what CEOs make.
Lack of money causes all sorts of additional stress on families as well... including health issues from not being able to afford health care, or only getting poor quality healthcare, or not being able to afford preventative care, eating poorly, living in dangerous/polluted areas, not being able to afford to send your kids to college, not being able to afford vacations, etc..
Not to mention the stress of being treated like shit or replaceable cogs by the people above you in work environments that are unhealthy or unsafe.
One of my favourite books is called, "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much" (2010) which is the true story of a high-end book thief.
There's a scene in the book where the author is interviewing the thief in prison during one of his (several) custodial sentences, and the conversation goes something like this:
Author: You're intelligent, erudite, charming. Why don't you become a lawyer or something?
Thief: It takes about 10 years to become a lawyer, with undergrad, law school, articleing, etc. I don't want to do any of that. But say I did, a partner at a top firm makes what, $600k? That's around what I'm alleged to have made this year
Author: But what about the strain on your family?
Thief: Because lawyers don't get divorced?
It continues like this for awhile as the thief very persuasively argues the risk adjusted returns of high-end larceny
Yeah but the (insert suffering in group) had it tougher than (out group). We can always compare and find someone or something that has it worse. What’s the point in bringing it up, that we can’t feel sorry for someone who has suffered because someone else has perhaps suffered more in our estimation?
No one has nor should have a monopoly on sympathy.
Presumably said CEO wasn't in much danger of poverty though. The entrepreneurship caused his troubles. That other things also could is beside the point.
Well, we can quote statistics and cite studies, but the point is that the entrepreneur himself attributed his failed marriages and heart attack to the entrepreneurship.
"the entrepreneur himself attributed his failed marriages and heart attack to the entrepreneurship"
Of course he did, as it made his enormous wealth seem like the result of great sacrifices.
You see this all the time.
Why do the rich deserve all their money? Because they made such great sacrifices and took all those tremendous risks. It's self-aggrandizement and self-justification.
Low wage workers make sacrifices and take risks just as great (or greater) all the time, but no one is going to pay hundreds of dollars a plate to hear them give a keynote speech humblebragging about how they worked so hard they had 3 heart attacks during their minimum wage jobs (from which they probably got fired for having to miss work), or how their marriages broke up... which happens all the time.
FWIW, I remember him sounding quite dejected and sincerely questioning whether it was all worth it. It didn't seem like a "I failed big time and now I'm living on top of the world" kind of opening. I still feel sad when I think about it.
That's not to disagree with you, we often overlook the struggles and challenges of people in lower economic classes or less prestigious positions. More just to say I didn't get that humble brag vibe at all.
Oh, and I also don't know if he got paid, as I think he was an alumnus and it may have just been a volunteer speech. Again, I know there are other speeches in which people do get paid and follow the pattern you outlined, just saying I don't think this was one of them.
Many would argue that material poverty is less important than poverty of the soul. This is why poor countries are often much happier than rich countries.
Solitary confinement is one of the worst punishments you give to a human. As you get richer your status will isolate you from other people because you don't share their particular kind of suffering.
One of the biggest problems is the fact that anything you can do can be done better by paying someone else to do nothing but the thing you want to do yourself.
It's hard to sympathize with people feeling isolated because they're rich. They could at any time remedy their situation and return to the world of normal people. They choose to be in that situation.
Mark Cuban had a different perspective when he was younger.
“I went through girlfriends (who threatened) — ‘It is your business or me,'” the Shark Tank investor recalled. “And I was like — ‘What is your name again?’ It was just non-stop.”
I'm not endorsing that comment. I just thought it was interesting to see how a notable entrepreneur approached relationships. He did later get married after achieving financial success, and presumably knows his wife's name.
To me, statements like this perfectly illustrate a situation where at least one side wants a form of companionship besides "potential life partner", and that is totally ok if everyone involved is aware of that.
In the US our culture tends to really emphasize dating as a step towards finding the mythical "one" and getting married, and it's "bad" to have sex or really any form of intimacy unless you are in a relationship.
When you are younger this is normally the assumed basis for a relationship, and complicates having any form of companionship that is not based on "Maybe we should tie our lives together forever!".
Obviously as we get older and gain experience with the varied forms relationships can take it's easier to realize (and even admit/discuss!) that one partner is really looking for more of a good friend with benefits situation than a "life partner audition".
I translate "It is your business or me" as "I require more of your attention than I have been getting to continue investing myself in this relationship" - which is also very valid.
If sex work was not so stigmatized, arranging the attentions of a high class escort for a year would probably leave everyone involved much happier.
(I am not talking about simply sex here, but talking, attending parties, all the normal early date stuff, but starting from a position of "I want a companionship, but I can't invest my time in a relationship right now. I do happen to other assets I can invest instead if you are interested? )
I appreciate this comment. Something I've currently struggled with is the tension between a private life (romance, family, etc) and a public life (running a business, podcast, politics). I find that sometimes a private life wants me to care about those few people more than all the other people and a public life wants me to care about all people equally. Maybe that story of the CEO stuck with me and has added to the fear I feel about becoming too public (will lose my romance and family), and may be why I've hidden more and more from public life.
Anyway, I'm grateful for you showing another side to this, thank you.
The people I know who have been successful at both simultaneously have extremely rigid boundaries between their business and personal lives, to the point of being different people at work and at home. Even they almost universally eventually discover they're not as available to their children as they thought they were, however. Caveat emptor.
It's a question of what you live for and where you find your worth. If you live for other people, and you find your worth in them, then you will direct your path accordingly.
If you find your worth from within, or perhaps from without in a very broad sense (making something big that the world needs/wants/admires), then 1:1 is not so important.
This reminds me of big law firms - I briefly worked at a gigantic law firm and it seemed the closer to partner an attorney was the more divorces, mistresses, and extreme health problems that attorney would have.
I keep this in mind too when cancelling plans or trips in order to do 'important' corporate work. The business will never remember you did a day from now; but your partner sure as hell will.
Thanks for saying this. I spent years worried if I took an hour or two or a day during 'busy' times, and it turned me into a liar, because I said I do things or be somewhere and often times I did not because of work. It is always a 'busy' time.
It took years, several jobs, and therapy before my eyes were open. Nobody cares, you are a human and have a life, if your employer does not understand that you need a new one.
I see my friends do this all the time and I just want to slap them in the face and tell them to snap out of whatever trance they are in. They work long hours, they are no longer making the time to take care of themselves, or keep up with people they love. They complain how terribly they hate their situation and how depressed it is, but they continue working those 60 hour weeks and bending over backwards to terrible bosses as if that is how it simply is and there is nothing better. It's making me depressed just seeing them slide off like this, all because of these shit jobs they put themselves into. And its not like they can't find other work either, they have good experience, but are so beaten down by the current job that they can't muster energy to commit to a job search on top of that 60 hour work week. You almost have to rip the bandaid off and just quit with nothing lined up.
I'm in my notice period with nothing concrete lined up right now. (I'm job hunting - in the middle of several interview processes - but no offers yet.)
I am lucky enough to have savings and a very supportive partner, and even so it is stressful. Certainly without either or both of those things I would likely still be sticking it out at the current job (especially with the various things that were offered when I handed in my notice). I sympathise with those that feel trapped.
It's a challenge to recognize those times that your need to work constantly is what you want to do (excited about a technical challenge, avoiding something at home, on an ambition kick), and your boss wouldn't blink an eye if you took the week off rather than work 80 hours.
This hit me when moving from a start-up to a FAANG. There is effectively an infinite amount of work for me to do on any given day, so at some point I just have to decide to stop - if I don't, I'll just end up tired tomorrow with an equally infinite amount of stuff still to do.
Depends on the business school. At INSEAD we had a whole elective class devoted to personal psycological decisions like this to get people thinking about what kind of trade offs they wanted to make.
I wish that had been an option for me as a CS student.. it was hard for me to learn it in the real world where you get lots of "work hard, play hard" speeches.
Marrying a successful and ambitious 20-something in no way commits one to be fine with the same ambitious person uprooting family’s life a decade or two later and moving to the other side of the world. Family is about shared sacrifice for its well being, and sometimes (in fact, usually) one needs to sacrifice their career for the family. That’s life.
I can share the converse example. My uncle had a once in a lifetime opportunity to get training in the US and get a promotion at his company. His wife did not want him to leave for 6 months. He did not get the training or the promotion. He fell way behind his colleagues that did. Fast forward 20 years, and he was unable to give his children a good education, whereas his colleagues who got promoted, did.
He gets really sad and jaded when he talks about that decision.
I put this real-life story in contrast, just to prove that it's not just about "Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable". For the trivial stuff like putting away your shoes or your socks, fine. But some decisions make a career and determine the future success of your offspring.
> "Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable"
My father gave me one specific piece of advice that stuck with me through the entirety of the time I can remember, and it also helped me out quite a lot in life. The advice wasn't directly related to marriage or anything like that, it was about making major decisions in general. I didn't truly understand what it meant at the time, but once I realized it, it hit me like a truck and put a lot of things in perspective.
He said "Always listen to everyone's opinions, but always make your own decision."
Being a teenager at the time, I misinterpreted it as "listen to what everyone else says and then do your own different thing." A very typical non-conformist teenager take. But much later on, I realized that it meant something entirely different.
What he actually meant: "You should consider others' opinions when making a major decision, as it can let you make a better and more informed one. If you picked a decision that aligned with what someone else advised, that's absolutely fine. But, in the end, you own that decision and the consequences. You cannot hide behind a 'so and so advised that, which is why I made it' excuse. You are responsible for it, and you cannot blame people who provided their perspective for the resulting outcome."
Thinking about this piece of advice when making major life decisions helps me a lot. Both with pulling the trigger on it in a more informed way and accepting the eventual outcome.
> I put this real-life story in contrast, just to prove that it's not just about "Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable". For the trivial stuff like putting away your shoes or your socks, fine. But some decisions make a career and determine the future success of your offspring.
The advice is good but is lacking. It should have been
"Always listen to your wife, she is always reasonable. But in the end, you have to make the decision yourself and take responsibility for it".
I remember reading about this in David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man.
I agree, of course, but I never meant to imply that the answer here is “always do what your wife tells you to”. My point is simply that one should be prepared to sacrifice career for family. Sometimes, as in your uncle’s example, it might turn out that a better decision for the family would have been to make a different sacrifice instead. But that’s just another life’s lesson: hindsight is always 20/20.
>Marrying a successful and ambitious 20-something in no way commits one to be fine with the same ambitious person uprooting family’s life a decade or two later and moving to the other side of the world.
Oh please. The writing was on the wall. If he's playing the "climb the corporate ladder" game nobody should surprised when he draws the "manage the Mongolian division" card. Expecting him to give that up when climbing the corporate ladder is the life he's chosen is somewhere on the spectrum from foolish to selfish.
Likewise if your boyfriend is mechanically inclined don't wake up one day complaining about the fleet of project cars and the heavy equipment that are cluttering up your property. You knew that was the life you were signing up for looked like.
There's a reason literally every culture has a litany of proverbs for women about not trying to change their men (and there's similiar but different proverbs for men).
Marrying a successful, ambitious man does not, in any way, mean that a woman should defer completely to every single career decision a man makes. I'm sure this executive's schedule was already plenty demanding without the burden of moving to another country.
Haha the parent post literally said that it was ironic that a woman would marry an ambitious man and then complain about said ambition. The ambition, implicitly,
being wanting to move to Asia for a job. It seems to me if a woman isn't allowed to complain about moving continents for a job, she's not allowed to complain about anything, and this is, therefore, not a strawman.
So with that logic... if he gets a huge opportunity to run the Asian division which he feels compelled to take despite her objections, then she is not allowed to ask for smaller concessions such as "hey, can you turn off the work phone on Saturdays"? You linking those together doesn't make sense.
I don't see any problem with that, I'm not the one who said it was ironic that a woman would marry an ambitious man and then have problems with moving to Asia. I don't see any conflict at all between loving someone's ambition and also wanting other things from the relationship.
Supporting one's spouse does not mean acquiescing to every opportunity afforded the other. Things are a little different when we're talking about matters of shelter/food/health, but in this situation we're talking about an international relocation of an already successful businessman. He was pursuing personal career and experience outcomes, he wasn't trying to drag his family above the poverty line.
And besides, it's pretty clear HE regrets the decision. Maybe learn something from the person who lived the experience.
> Everything changes all the time without exception. Getting used to change serves everyone.
This statement is meaningless. Change in life is constant, but everything doesn't change all the time. You weaponize this statement as if to say we - or at least one spouse - should abdicate their agency in their own or their shared life.
I find your comment pretty agressive ("Maybe learn something from the person", "This statement is meaningless")...
Which is pretty ironic because if saying "everything changes constantly" is meaningless, what about your advice to "learn" from a comment on the internet about a man he doesn't know at all that "regrets" something neither of us really know about ?
One example has zero value as a "life changing lesson" and one can regret objectively awful things (regretting the feeling while high on drugs, etc).
> Which is pretty ironic because if saying "everything changes constantly" is meaningless, what about your advice to "learn" from a comment on the internet about a man he doesn't know at all that "regrets" something neither of us really know about ?
The OP's statement was a truism used - in this instance - to critique the wife for not "adapting to change". I think I made that pretty clear in my comment. If you can apply that BS truism here, why not elsewhere? Why not just always go with the flow, never have desires or motivations of your own? Why ever object to undesired life changes?
It bothered me, as you can tell. It's not advice based in the reality of a shared life. Telling someone unhappy with the direction of their life that "getting used to change serves everyone" is terrible, borderline offensive advice. The worst takeaway is to blame the woman for not going along to get along, which dijonman2 sure seemed to be doing to me.
I'll take the critique of my own comment, though my point remains: the person who wrote the article was trying to impart a life lesson they learned a hard way, and I encourage that user (and all of us) to reflect on it and potentially learn something. My "maybe" wasn't passive aggressive by intent, it was meant to be interpreted literally, albeit not expressed in a very considerate way.
I get your point better now, thanks for the clarification.
I agree we should try to improve things that can be improved, but I guess this example's extreme nature (international relocation) makes it difficult to have a nuanced talk about couples' intra-dynamics...
The thing is, he was likely already providing incredibly well for the household and didn't need to move the whole family to Asia. If I pulled some crazy shit like that, I'd hope my wife reminds me who I'm working for and why.
Money isn’t free. The person earning needs to be supported. Running a house is work but I wholeheartedly reject the notion of someone both working and supplicating their partner. This is abuse.
People also change and / or realize what they thought they'd like turns out to not be what they like. You can't know you will like a situation until you are living it.
I think entering a new job is similar, I may think I'm going to really like the job, but then when I'm actually doing the job I realize there are things I didn't consider and don't like it. Luckily, I can quit a job easily. In a marriage - you have to grow together if you want it to work.
There is a book which describes exactly what the author of the article realized too late, it's better to learn it via reading than in hindsight:
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
Believe it or not, some people enter enter into marriage as equals, and view each other as teammates working together and respecting each other’s input into major life decisions.
It's ironic to me when men marry for any reason besides wanting a docile helpmeet and then complain that their partners have real ambitions, opinions, and goals.
People seem to gloss over the fact that while she married an ambitious man, he also married her. If he did not want her to have equal say in their life (note this is his and hers life being impacted!) he should not have married her.
Marrying someone with ambitions doesn't mean the ambitious spouse gets full control over where the other partner lives and the relationships the other partner can have. A partnership is not a contract to have the needs of one partner subsumed by whoever happens to be more ambitious. You don't know what they communicated before deciding to get married. Strange to not be able to imagine being on the other side of it
> Marrying someone with ambitions doesn't mean the ambitious spouse gets full control over where the other partner lives and the relationships the other partner can have.
Not the OP nor GP, but I think the person who sought after an ambitious spouse is equally responsible for understanding the trade-offs.
The term “married to their career/job” was an old term when I was a child growing up in the 1970 and 1980s.
That ambition comes at a veey well-known cost.
I’ve also read and heard more than my fair share of dissolved marriages, because the main provider was always working; but how many spouses are willing to live far beneath their means, to accommodate for a better work life-balance?
> how many spouses are willing to live far beneath their means, to accommodate for a better work life-balance?
Approximately zero spouses who complain about glass-dishwasher-alignment will sacrifice by lifting the breadwinner's burden. Sorry, folks. Everyone is entitled to self-realization and higher meaning, however, if you're being supported by someone who works 40, 50, whatever hours per week, suck it up and move the glass. Any other position simply is a symptom of major problems further up in the paragraph and has nothing to do with glasses, dishwashers or anything else.
> Approximately zero spouses who complain about glass-dishwasher-alignment will sacrifice by lifting the breadwinner's burden.
There, the fault lies
with the provider in either choosing the wrong spouse; they should have been pickier.
Or being an unaware jack-ass. For the latter, it helps to list out the responsibilities, to make sure the division of labor is equitable.
Or marriage counseling.
> however, if you're being supported by someone who works 40, 50, whatever hours per week, suck it up and move the glass.
An ambitious worker—the topic I’m responding to—isn’t putting in a mere 40 hours a week. More like 60 to 80 hours if not more.
Those workers also face divorce for being inattentive, but they’re also playing catch-up for the house; car; private schools and the general lifestyle that comes so easily to compensate for the extra income.
There is no “sucking it up” unless you have a time machine or don’t need to sleep.
This does not sound like trade off for ambitions. More like ignoring her strong preference and then being shocked it turned out to be straw that broke camels back.
Maybe this is my pessimistic view, but most relationships don't last. Some of the ones that do last only because of complacency or discipline (but they arguably should dissolve).
Conscious memory seems to favor the positives. Unconscious memory favors the negatives. If you quickly raise your hand near a person who has been physically abused a child, even as an adult they may instinctively recoil. But if you ask someone about their lost relationship, they will often speak of the great things of their partner, ignoring the (perhaps incomprehensible or inarticulable) negatives.
Life is hopefully quite long. Relationships involve 2 (+?) people. During one's life, one hopefully changes a lot. Picture vectors in two dimensions. People who pair up are vectors that cross at one moment (brief) or run somewhat parallel for a period. Try as we might, adjusting our trajectories, it's practically impossible to maintain a parallel path without giving up some or all of our own development.
So realistically in our modern times, relationships are based on a period of relatively parallel trajectories. And when the distance between those vectors becomes to great, it's time to stop trying to maintain a connection. That involves some feelings of sadness, but it also offers new possibilities.
Valuable lesson for all of those interns that....there may be a million other things going on between two people. Unless you get both sides of the story, you only have one side of the story.
Applies to CEO's as much to janitors.
I mean, moving whole family without consent of partner indeed tend to break relationships. Not being able to take major promotion do cause resentment too, but damm, if my partner moved me to region I don't want to, I would be pissed.
But still, I can't imagine not being willing to move to any first world country that my senior executive spouse got transferred to -- as a senior corporate executive they've have a ton of resources at their disposal to make the move as easy as possible.
I have a good job that I like, but if my wife told me her company was moving her to Japan for a while, I'd jump at the opportunity.
We live where we live because we're 10 minutes from my wife's two sisters, my wife's parents, and 3 cousins our kids love to play with. Generally, I think the only way we're moving is if they move first. Because my wife's whole family is here. And she spends multiple days per week with them. As do our kids.
The idea that she should be supportive of me tearing her away from this support structure is questionable.
Obviously if something came up we would discuss things. But I don't expect her to like it. Even if it involved a pay raise. Even if it involved moving somewhere she would love to live. Because these people aren't there.
The idea that a well compensated, educated adult can't survive without an extensive support structure for a few years is questionable. Hell, I haven't had a support system at all - my family was actively abusive and antagonsitic to me, and yet I was able to successfully build a career, family, and so on.
It's just as likely codependancy as it would be support.
>The idea that a well compensated, educated adult can't survive without an extensive support structure for a few years is questionable.
Financially, sure. In terms of mental health and feelings of isolation (especially for the wife, who won't have a high-flying career to distract her/build new contacts in), it's absolutely a problem.
It sounds like your old "support system" wasn't actually that supportive for you? That isn't the case for everyone. I'm glad you were able to make a big improvement :)
>I have a good job that I like, but if my wife told me her company was moving her to Japan for a while, I'd jump at the opportunity.
Do you have kids? What's your relationship with your family like? How good/irreplaceable are your friendships?
For a lot of people, dropping all of these things are inconceivable. I know my aunty was reduced to tears when her son (who is expecting a baby) moved from Woodend to Canberra. To her, it meant seeing her grandkids a couple of times a year rather than spending time with them every week.
> I can't imagine not being willing to move to any first world country that my senior executive spouse got transferred to -- as a senior corporate executive they've have a ton of resources at their disposal to make the move as easy as possible.
I can see it easily. After move, all your friends and all your life are far away. You have to change habits, language, adjust to different culture. You are very likely to be super lonely most of time. And you loose actual support network where you live. You can get some paid one, but that is something different. If she worked or had other ambitions (entirely possible she did not), those are likely gone after the move.
Many people like and have build their lives. And many if not most don't want to uproot and change everything.
At some point, someone asked about his biggest regret. We all expected some business blunder, but he said that he was offered an executive position by Kraft to lead their Asian segment, and that his wife really did not want him to take the job because it would require them to move to that region. He regretted not listening to her, because it ended up being the catalyst that dissolved their marriage.
We were all stunned silent, and you could tell that he was genuinely remorseful and so vulnerable in that moment. There are only a handful of moments in that internship that I vividly remember, but that was by far the most impactful one.