How to Handle Divergent Career Paths in a Relationship

Making Compromises

Discuss your career and family goals with each other. Try to be honest and realistic with each other about how you want to live your lives. If you’re just starting out with each other, talk about whether or not you want kids, if you see yourself buying a home, and how you envision your career taking shape in the future. Getting to know each other’s priorities as early as possible will help you decide if your goals and career ambitions are compatible with those of your partner. For instance, if your career path will always involve spending 75% of your time traveling, it might not be best to settle down with someone who doesn’t believe long distance relationships work under any circumstances. Do your best to make sure you and your partner are able to make compromises. If you both are unwilling to compromise about your differing career paths and incompatible goals, it’s better to end a relationship sooner rather than later.

Choose your priorities. Remember that your relationship with yourself should come first, and then your relationship with your partner. Decide what’s negotiable and what’s non-negotiable. Try to prioritize your career and family goals and decide which compromises you’re willing to make. Ask yourself, “Am I willing to put my partner’s career goals ahead of my own? Which compromises can I make without disappointing myself or creating internal conflicts? Is having a long-term relationship and a family more important to me than professional advancement?”

Accept your partner’s priorities. You and your partner won’t see eye to eye on everything. If you have different visions for your career paths, try not to be dismissive or to devalue your partner’s values. Embrace your differences and decide if you share enough priorities to make a life together. For example, suppose you have a well-paying office job with a set 9 to 5 schedule and always envisioned settling down with someone similar. However, you fell for an artist who prioritizes creative expression over financial success and consistent work hours. If you want to maintain a healthy relationship, you’ll have to work together to keep your individual priorities on equal footing by balancing your need for financial stability with their creative needs.

Decide how and when your individual careers take priority. Work together to address specific events that call for one partner to make sacrifices in order to allow the other to shine. Do your best to take turns making compromises that benefit each other’s careers. Try to evaluate opportunities based on practical considerations, but avoid letting practicality completely outweigh happiness. For example, suppose your partner has a once in a lifetime professional opportunity that will require you to relocate to another country. You’d need to move far away from your family and friends, quit your own job, and learn a new language and culture. Work with your partner to weigh the pros and cons. There are no universal solutions, but it’s essential that you discuss how the decision will affect both of your personal and professional lives. Evaluate the situation by asking each other, “Will their income be enough to support you both if you’re unable to work due to language and cultural barriers? Are there possibilities for you to pursue your own interests? Will putting your career on hold create lasting professional disadvantages from which you’ll never recover? How can your partner make future sacrifices that will prioritize your career?”

Being on the Same Team

Create a dynamic team mentality. Approach all difficulties by acting like a team. Make decisions based not on what will benefit an individual partner, but on what will benefit the team as a whole. Since life is constantly in flux, try to think of the word team as an active, dynamic verb instead of a static noun. This means you should both be adaptable and open to different positions within the team. Encourage each other rather than compete. One partner having a higher income, for instance, should be a source of esteem and value for your relationship instead of a field of competition between the two of you. For example, if children enter the picture, your roles will change. Try to shift your roles based on what’s best for the family as a whole, like choosing a primary caregiver or stay-at-home parent based on your incomes instead of based on societal expectations, like gender.

Strategize together. View your resources and obstacles as shared, rather than only belonging to one partner. Designate a regular time, whether once a day or once a week, to build strategies for solving specific problems. Examples could include financial dilemmas, scheduling conflicts, or personal disagreements. During your brainstorm sessions, identify a problem, brief the other about it, and discuss practical solutions. For example, suppose your company has offered you a travel opportunity and your partner is concerned about the financial and personal strains it will introduce. Give them the opportunity to voice their concerns, then relate to them how the opportunity is vital for your career goals. Work together to identify ways of addressing the financial issues, like how you can decrease your own cost of living while you’re away, asking your company for a higher relocation allowance, and choosing which non-essentials your partner can cut to decrease the financial strain. Talk about how to stay in close communication, like video chatting regularly, deciding how often you can talk on the phone, or finding ways to make visiting each other affordable. Finally, discuss ways that you can make comparable future sacrifices that will benefit your partner’s career goals.

Set clear, flexible roles and duties. When both partners have their own careers and professional goals, household management can become a source of constant conflict. To avoid disagreements about who does the cleaning or who cooks dinner, designate chores and duties for each partner to complete on specific days. Be open to switching up the schedule if necessary, like if your partner can’t cook dinner on their designated night due to a work event. For example, you cook dinner on alternating days, and whoever doesn’t cook cleans up and does the dishes. Try developing an alternating chore roster elsewhere, like you clean the bathrooms one week and your partner cleans them the next. Try not to come down too hard on each other if one of you doesn’t puts off a household chore. Try to have realistic expectations of each other and to be empathetic when it comes to household labor instead of being each other’s bosses.

Identify your shared values. Your careers are obviously individual priorities, but do your best to find common principles that deepen your relationship. Examples could include character traits, a genre of art or literature, religious faith, music, or health and fitness. Try to remind yourselves of the things you have in common rather than focus solely on the conflicts your divergent careers generate. Once you’ve identified those values, be sure to take time away from work to pursue them together. If you both value cooking, take a cooking class together. If you both love being outdoors, hike a different trail every Saturday.

Improving Communication

Be clear about needs and expectations. If you have certain expectations of your partner or relationship, make sure you express them clearly. You can’t hold your partner accountable for failing to meet your expectations if you don’t communicate your needs with each other. Expectations can involve things like daily routines, like spending time or having meals together. For example, perhaps your partner works with lots of people, but you work alone in your home office. They need time to decompress after constantly communicating all day, but you need to someone to talk to after being home alone all day. Have a conversation about your respective needs and ask your partner, “About how much personal time do you need after your busy day? I know you spend all day talking to people, and I respect that, but I spend most of my time home alone. Does it make sense for you to take an hour for yourself, then for us to have dinner together so we can talk?”

Offer each other emotional support. Making compromises and developing a team mentality often involves giving up something valued or important. Do your best to understand what you have both sacrificed in order to make a compromise. Be sensitive, empathetic, and offer each other emotional support in order to avoid latent conflicts or resentment. Emotional support can involve more than just being empathetic about your individual professional compromises. If you’re both career driven and have challenging occupations, try to come up with emotional strategies that will work best for your relationship. For example, some partners offer each other emotional support in the form of advice, validation, and critical feedback about difficult decisions at work. Other relationships work best when partners leave work at the office and rely on each other to compartmentalize work and home life. Talk to your partner about what’s best for your particular relationship.

Spend quality time together away from all responsibilities. Try to sync up some vacation time or take a long weekend together. If you have children, consider hiring a sitter or ask a friend or family member to watch them for an overnight period, at the very least. Take some time to enjoy each other’s company away from your responsibilities, whether you take a road trip or just stay home doing nothing. Try to devote a regular block of time to spend together and try to use that time to see each other as more than just a professional being. Stress-free quality time will help you focus on each other as complete human beings instead of letting your diverging careers steal the spotlight.

Consider seeing a couples counselor. Talking to a couple’s counselor can help you gain an objective perspective and develop solutions for your particular difficulties. When choosing a counselor, look for someone who will remain objective and avoids taking sides. If you or your partner feel ganged up on, find another therapist. Go for a counselor or therapist who is future-oriented, suggests practical and fair ways of compromising, and helps you set clear goals in the first session. Word of mouth is often the best way to find the best counselor, but it might be an uncomfortable subject to bring up with family and friends. If you’re hesitant to ask someone who know personally, you can ask your primary care doctor for a referral. Try calling your insurer and asking for a list of nearby in-network therapists covered by your plan. You can also search online by running a general search for “couples counseling near” your location, or by consulting Psychology Today’s find a therapist tool: https://therapists.psychologytoday.com/.