Your answer to this question can
determine whether your marriage communications will be mostly pleasant
or if there will be lots of misunderstandings, blamings arguments ending with an acrimonious
divorce. That is to say, your answer now predicts the future. If you
have much to learn about gender bias, sexism, condescension,
manipulation, and control then it's most likely you'll end up arguing
during an expensive divorce settlement process.
Here's a typical scenario:
A man and a woman fall in love just prior to both of them graduating
from college. They have virtually no money or possessions. Both are
estranged*
from their abusive parents who refuse to get counseling. Upon graduation
the man immediately lands a well-paying job with a law firm so they
decide to marry. The husband brings home lots of money. The wife agrees
to postpone her career and support her husband and accepts
responsibility for managing him, the household and their children. Ten years later
they have two children, a house, a vacation home, two cars, a small
yacht and several substantial financial investments. They become unhappy and decide to
divorce. The wife wants half of everything. The husband is outraged and
without her consent hires an expensive attorney (using money that would
be one half of her portion of the settlement) sincerely believing that
because he did the work he's entitled to more than 50%.
The side you take now in this scenario determines your future; it
possibly determines whether you'll have a happy, prosperous, healthy
marriage or an ugly divorce, at best a mediocre marriage.
If you side with the man then reading this will trigger upset; you will
argue against 50% and have proved my point. Amongst enlightened couples
it's a given that service (in this case voluntary servitude to ones
spouse) empowers; it's every bit as much a skill as any other. The test
of whether or not the wife was in-service is the income, their
possessions, health
and prosperity. Hour-for-hour they both contributed the exact same
amount of time and intention to the success and prosperity the marriage
produced.
We tend to forget that we all have the exact same amount of
support-skills. Some of us use our leadership-communication
support-skills to forward others in winning, and some of us, because we
have a different set of support-skills, unconsciously support others in
plateauing (hanging out in mediocrity), and still others are driven to
support failure and to take as many down with them as possible. The way
to tell how you've been using your support skills is to look at the
results those around you are producing. Seldom is one aware that they
are supporting their spouse/child in failing (doing poorly in school,
health, or work). The mind typically believes it is trying hard to
support success; most partners resist being responsible (cause) for
their overweight couch-potato spouse.
BTW: The "victim" of an unfair divorce settlement is unaware that they
are stuck in lying. They have manufactured all sorts of reasons, none of
which address the truth, none acknowledge their cause in the matter. They
haven't accepted responsibility for masterminding the divorce and its
outcome; typically couples blame each other for the
breakdowns in communication.
For example:
With the above scenario, it's not that the wife didn't know
up front her husband's position about money and possessions, it's that
she refused to discuss such beliefs with him during the engagement; she
arrogantly believed that her marriage would work in spite of the
statistics. Arrogance begs to be humbled. Notice the word "refused."
That is to say, she did have the thought to bring up the subject and
dismissed it, for reasons, underneath which is fear.
Do print out this tip and share it with your partner.