To this day, we?re still roommates. We operate somewhat like a brother and sister would. She has her room and I have mine. We wash our laundry separately. We take turns doing the chores. We have a dry erase board in the living room.?I write words on it and Sheila draws amusing pictures.?Sometimes, we share meals?and sometimes we don?t. We come and go separately. Breaking our engagement may have been the best thing Sheila and I ever did for our relationship. We get along much better now than we ever did when we were planning to walk the aisle.
Recently, we?ve begun to discuss the subject of dating (as in, dating other people). We have signed a full year lease on our apartment, and we?re planning to continue as roommates through January of 2014, barring any unforeseen disruptions. We?re just beginning to work out the logistics of what it will look like to start new relationships. We?ve decided that our cohabitation agreement is an asset. It will give us an effective way to filter out prospective boyfriends (for her) and girlfriends (for me). Neither one of us has the time, the energy, or the patience for relationship drama, so we?re both going to be highly selective about new mates.
So, to recap?I?m living with my ex-fianc?, and we?re discussing ways to help each other find new significant others. I would trust Sheila with my life. In fact, she is still the only person in the world who has the password to my personal bank account. Since we untied the knot, the relationship has continued to grow. The experience has taught me that I spent most of my life thinking about marriage bass-ackwards. There is one fundamental truth about marriage that I wish someone had explained to me much earlier in life:
Marriage is a business partnership.
Think about it for a second. When you marry someone, you are essentially binding yourself to a body of financial agreements. You agree to pool your material assets. You agree to be next-of-kin. You agree to have a different section of the U.S. tax code applied to you. You agree to the possibility of paying child support and/or spousal support in the event of divorce.
Business partnerships are not based on romantic feelings. When you get married, you are not agreeing to continue to have the butterflies for your spouse. In fact, you are specifically promising to remain loyal to the marriage regardless of how you might feel about the other person at any given time. Business partnerships are built on the basis of what will effectively serve the mission of the business.
It took me until last year to realize that one does not enter into a marriage on the basis of romance. Passionate feelings come and go. If you marry someone based on the way they make you feel, you will have created a shaky foundation for a relationship. I will not be making that mistake again. Sheila and I have discussed this at length. But?and this is a big ?but??is it possible to create a marriage on a more solid foundation and still have all of the warm fuzzies for the other person? Is it possible for one to have one?s cake and eat it too?
We think the answer is ?yes.? Actually?we KNOW the answer is ?yes.?
We have not changed our decision to stay split as a couple. We are more confident about that decision than ever. We really made a good call last year. If we?d gone ahead with the wedding, we?d be approaching our one-year anniversary and possibly pretending to be the happy newlywed couple. That would be Hell on Earth. How do we know this? We decided to evaluate our relationship the same way we would evaluate a business partnership. At the end of the day, it came down to this: the life that I?m building is wholly incompatible with the life Sheila is building.
I want to build big businesses. Sheila wants to live in the mountains. I thrive on Type-A environments. Sheila is laid back. I love being around driven and ambitious people. Sheila loves to chill with laid back people and listen to hippie music. When I look at my picture of the ideal wife, I see a type-A woman who can get excited about business deals. I find business transactions sexy. I get excited about marketing strategies. I have fun in conference rooms. Sheila recharges outside around campfires.
When we got honest and took stock of our visions, we came to realize that if we were to marry, we would spend our whole lives trying to pull in opposite directions. At best, we could have hoped for a compromise that would have been marginally tolerable for both of us?but wouldn?t have been what either of us wanted. We aren?t going to make that mistake again. I?ve decided to begin to design my next relationship from a different perspective. I will create a long-term win-win with a female strategic partner.
Isn?t that a bit un-romantic?
Not necessarily.
If I?m going to marry a woman, there has got to be electricity between us. We?ve got to excite each other. I will, of course, factor romance into the design of my next relationship. However, I will approach chemistry differently. Rather than decide to become involved (or not) on the basis of whether I feel immediate chemistry, I will look at the likelihood of long-term sustained attraction. It is possible for two people to develop an attraction over time?as many long-married couples will attest?even if they don?t feel attraction right away. In other words, if two people put rigorous effort into making sure that they are the right match, they can make a concerted effort to fall in love later. In the meantime, they will have built their relationships on solid ground.
Sound impossible? Remember what Henry Ford once said: ?Whether you think you can or you think you can?t?you?re right.? Walt Disney already proved that it is possible to engineer a magical experience. Disney continues to deliver a magical experience every day with their theme parks?and this is possible because they have relentlessly perfected the science behind it. They keep the parks clean, they keep the lines moving, and they tend to the un-sexy business structures that guarantee the space for magic to arise. They have learned to embrace childlike playfulness while at the same time exercising scientific discipline. They have created an enterprise where the heart and the mind work as a team.
That?s what it takes to create a great marriage.
Have I done it yet? Nope. But Sheila and I are working on it. I?m thinking about how to package a marriage solution that I can sell. In fact, my relationship solution could very well end up becoming my Shark Tank product. On that note, I won?t be revealing any details just yet. But in the meantime, if you?re single on Valentine?s Day (like Sheila and I are), take comfort in the fact that you?re not stuck in a bad marriage. (If you?re stuck in a bad marriage, I may be working out a product to solve that problem also.)
In the meantime?happy Valentine?s Day!
Photo credit: Parvin ?( OFF for a while ) / Foter.com / CC BY-SA
from your own site.
Source: http://www.dave-baldwin.com/how-to-have-the-broken-engagement-of-your-dreams/
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