Your Career and Your Marriage

Your career may play a pivotal role in the success of your marriage.

If you want to start a business career, you must have your own innovative ideas that make you “think out of the box.” To turn your business into success, you must demonstrate your passion, your motivation, and your perseverance. Starting a business also requires some cash too, as Warren Buffett once said: “Cash is to a business as oxygen is to an individual.”

So, do you have what-it-takes to become successful in your business career?

Pursuing a business or professional career has many setbacks that an individual must be prepared to confront—just like a marriage couple will have to face many challenges along their marriage journey.

Growing up into adolescents and young adults, many may begin to have their own dreams, goals, and passions for what they’re going to do with their own lives. To many, growing up is apparently all about success and failure—that also, paradoxically, defines the meaning of life for them, including the meaning of marriage. In other words, their success in marriage is contingent on their own success in their career pursuits.

The reality is that a very successful career doesn’t guarantee a good marriage; as a matter of fact, the reverse is often true.

The successful

A successful career takes up much of your time. That means you’ll be spending less time with your marriage partner and your family. Are you prepared to do that? Which is more important to you: your career or your marriage? Are you always time-stressed?

Career success is also instrumental in increasing one’s ego—making one more self-centered, more controlling, and more demanding. An inflated ego may adversely affect marital relationship in many ways.

So, always seek balance and harmony between career and marriage, if both are important to you.

The less successful

To pursue a successful career, you must be motivated, persevering, and not comparing with others.

The reality is that many pursue their careers with many setbacks, falling short of their high expectations. That often leads to depression, which may affect their marital relationships. In addition, it‘s not uncommon that many also tend to compare their own accomplishments with those of others—leading to the sin of envy, or their feeling of the need to do much more to enhance their success. The sin of envy is often the source of seeking control, power, or even “illegal” means to guarantee their anticipated future success.

The unsuccessful

Many pursue their careers with little or no success at all, always experiencing intermittent employment or unemployment. But that’s the reality of life.

The unsuccessful may originate from the sin of sloth—not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. They may feel low self-esteem, isolation, and separation from others. To them, life has little or no meaning, so they just drift in and out every day without a purpose—that may also adversely affect their marital relationships. Worse, some may even become vulnerable to committing crimes and violence with no accountability.

The good news is that some can still transform themselves, turning their failures into successes.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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