The Five Tasks: #3, Your Significant Relationship With Whom You Are Building the Future
Build a strong relationship to build the future with
As we said in the Introduction to the Five Tasks, the 3rd Task is working with your significant other to build your late life stages together. When you have someone at home who you plan and execute plans with, it helps ground your dreams right there together.
Roger
Years ago, I had a job search client I’ll call Roger. Roger was an engineer with terrific experience and only lost his job due to his company merging with another. Every time Roger came in to work on his resume, he’d bring up how unhappy he was in his marriage. I would say, “I don’t do marriage counseling. Let’s work on your resume and get you back into a good job.” And he would say, “Oh, yes. OK. But I’m really unhappy and my wife and I aren’t getting along.” And this would go on for his entire appointment time.
After three weeks of no progress, exasperated, I asked Roger, “If you go home today, and your wife says, ‘Honey, I want a divorce.’ What would you say?” He got really animated and said, “Oh! I’ve worked out the money. We have to sell the house and here are the things that need to be fixed before we put it on the market. I’ll get an apartment up the street so I can stay close to my daughters, and I’ll get a ‘maintenance job’ to keep some money coming in while we get everything worked out. I know a grocery store where I can be a packer and no one I know will see me to impact my job search. My wife is a good mother and she should be the residential parent, but I want to live close by so I am available to help with what’s needed and see my girls often. When the house is ready and everyone is settled, I’ll go back to my job search.” I mean! He had a plan!
Dumfounded, I wondered aloud, “So you don’t want to be the one who says it?”
10 days went by before I saw Roger again. He came back a renewed man. His shoulders were down, he was smiling and relaxed. Of course I asked what changed. Roger said he told his wife it looked to him like they were both unhappy and was there another way they could take care of everyone in their family without unhappiness? His wife was so relieved and grateful to her husband for his leadership, love, and bravery. She had been wanting to move on, too. They worked out what to do together. They made truth-telling and parenting their priorities. They not only gave each other room to be who they are, they encouraged each other. As time went on, they frequently mentioned the other’s strong points, and last I heard they are still best friends.
From that day, in just a couple of weeks, Roger not only got his resume together, his job search sailed along. He got a really good job in less than a month. He never needed the grocery packing job.
Building the future takes commitment
This is what it’s like to work with your significant other to build for the future. It’s happy, even when it’s not what you expected. I love the details of Roger and his wife’s plan. They included everyone’s benefit. They made sound financial decisions together. They made repairs to their home to get the best deal for it, to set themselves and the new owners up for a good future. They talked with their two girls, and they planned for how things would be as their daughters grew older. They worked to set each other up well so they could go on and build for their late life stages.
Loyalty keeps you, and things, together
Another bittersweet, example of this kind of commitment is when a couple is planning for the late stages of their lives. They may have enough money put in savings, or buy life insurance to take care of the other person and their family well into the future, even after they are gone. This is loyalty to the intention of togetherness even if one is physically absent. This kindness can be felt in the parent and children’s generation for as long as the purpose is outstanding. And it sets a warm feeling of regarding throughout the lifetime of all the people in the household.
But this is not how things are in my life!
Sometimes, married or not, couples don’t talk about planning. Sometimes one party would like to plan, but the other isn’t up to the task. In these cases, it can be hard to accrue savings for large expenses and retirement. It’s like there’s a leak in their system and money and career expansion drain out of it. The weaving together of their interests isn’t happening, which discourages growth and participating in the community - or even in their home and friendships. Resentments accrue, and that makes repairing a lot harder.
I’m not saying everyone should get married, or be in coupled relationships. It’s more important to follow your own internal guidance. But I am saying it is harder for single people to get invitations, job offers, and to accrue money. Being a single person, and struggling sometimes, I don’t like this pattern. I have worked hard to a) overcome it, and b) finally realizing its power, find ways to fix my standing, at least to make it better.
As best I can describe this phenomenon for now, picture two people in a couple as 5-pointed stars. They are both shining because they are both sharing their interests with people. There are magnets in those stars that are especially strong when they are both shining. When a couple is planning for the future, they are attracting their joint dream into their relationship, grounding it in their home, as well as their wish for the other’s dreams to come true alongside the joint dream. That’s why married people get jobs faster than single people. And why they get more invitations. They are WithStanding. There’s more signaling by more magnets.
In the case of building for the future, energy (and money, career success, friendships, and sometimes health) is stored up between their stars, held there and increased by their magnets. That is why “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”[1]
What if I’m single?
Complicating my discovery is that some single people are quite well to do. As far as I can tell, they are happily engaging in the community and are well known. Many of these truly lovely people are members of prestigious families. They have standing with their family and the magnetism/attraction property of their family is strong enough to carry on through the single person. They are WithStanding other people, financial planners and foundations.
Another kind of maybe-prosperous single person is the one who enters a mentoring relationship early in their career and they stand by their mentor as their career grows. This kind of WithStanding is especially strong in the career and financial realm, but may not lend itself to friends-making and other joys of life, unless the mentor encourages other interests. As we all know, having money and a prestigious career does not make a person happy or fulfilled.
So, what if I, or my significant other, is NotWithStanding?
You can commit to building your late life stages together with a partner or partners. It’s the loyalty of ‘standing with’ that is operating. It requires talking. If you don’t have a significant other, you can still talk, you can still have partners. Either way, single or coupled, get into a relationship with someone who is good at financial planning and tracking, or a coach, or someone who is good at making plans, or all three – and you help them by encouraging their planning, too. Talk with them often enough that you see your resources growing. This is resource-finding.
And finally, develop relationships with people who know you well enough to tell you when they see changes in you for the better. - whatever you told them you are working on or trying to change.
[1] The famous first line of Pride and Prejudice proves my point. Mr. Darcy was first WithStanding his father while he was still living, and for a time afterwards while the elite respected him as his father’s son. But in that society, he needed to join his star to a wife’s to be accepted and to have standing with an heir of his own. Also, to participate in society, he needed to host parties and guests and have his household run. He needed a wife whose star and interests would be WithStanding to join his.