Dual-career Lawyer Marriages
By Micahel E. Hall, Ph.D.

The Complaint  “All we need around here is a boiler [furnace] that works, and we’ll be fine in the world we’re in,” replied the pastor to the angel sent to grant whatever deemed necessary for the cleric’s career and minister-marriage to succeed.  (The movie: “The Preacher’s Wife”)   What do lawyers need to win at law and love?  This article, limited to the spring season of marriage, examines expert (mental health practitioners) and eyewitness (lawyers and their spouses) opinion about a particular type of marriage: what makes some dual-career lawyer marriages a “double bonus,” and others “double jeopardy?”

            What is a dual-career marriage?  Three core characteristics differentiate dual-career marriages from traditional marriages (e.g., single-earner, two-job, and one-career-one-job couples).  In dual-career marriages, both partners are…

Discovery  Lemuel and Juliana (Julia) Harrison (Columbus, Ohio) reminisce about their dual-career lifestyle, during the “springtime” of their lawyer marriage (up to years 3-5, or birth of the first child).  

            Lemuel, JD: Enforcement Counsel, Office of Children & Family (State of Ohio)

            Julia, MSW: Child Welfare Supervisor/Professional Development Trainer (Ohio)

Deposition #1

Julia: “When we got married, there was massive change.  Having just moved from out-of-state, beginning a new job, it didn’t make sense for me to pick up, and move again when Lemuel—shortly after we married—gained admittance into a full-time law school program located in a city two hours away.  Instantly, we set up two households funded, essentially, on my full-time salary. 

“With Lemuel away at school during the week, and planning for children only later in the marriage, I enjoyed the freedom to do what I was doing, immersed in my career’s issues—children’s welfare.”

Expert Opinion: The Harrison marriage depicts a primary relationship goal of springtime marriages: bonding deeply, to form a distinct couple identity.  Remarkably, this transpired in spite of being in a “commuter relationship” during the early portion of the formative years of marriage.  They gave each other space to pursue individual career development during the week, but consistently reserved the main part of the weekends for their blossoming marriage.

            For many couples, particularly among high-achievers, “joining” is more difficult.  According to marriage experts, tension naturally results early in marriage because of the  struggle to maintain separate identities—“his and hers”—while simultaneously striving to achieve a new collective entity.   For dual-career couples, a pressure point manifests as both persons, compelled by the perceived importance of establishment of  “presence” during the early stage of professional life, focus on their individual career identities.  However, when successfully integrated, as did Lemuel and Julia, a distinct couple identity—“us”—emerges as well.

Deposition #2

Lemuel: “What stands-out in my mind is that we were tenacious about our commitment to stay together.  Those long conversations where we honestly discussed what the dual-career lifestyle could cost—for example: should I voluntarily become a workaholic for 7-9 years in order to make partner?—helped us make mature decisions, ones where our marriage remained the highest priority.   Being very tolerant of each other played a vital role, too.”

Julia: “The major struggle in the early years was being separated and waiting for each other to finish school.  It was not without ups-and-downs.  When he became a lay leader in the church, there were many discussions about spreading himself too thin.  Initially I thought, ‘Do I dare say anything?’  Later, realizing I wasn’t being selfish, I thought, ‘I need to say this (have a corrective conversation about balance).’”  

Expert Opinion: Another major challenge frequently encountered by dual-careerists is equity.   Like the animals in George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, many high-octane couples wrestle to make real the veracity of the axiom, “All animals are equal; but some animals are more equal than others.”  Unlike Lemuel and Julia, other dual-career lawyer marriages find that working 8-10 hours in the sometime seething, competitive, and routinely adversarial environment of law, inadvertently precludes the adoption of  a similar atmosphere at home, the antithesis of the collaborative, mutually supportive communication style characteristic of high-quality marriages. 

The culprit is often power:  “[A]s I look at all the different problems, in all the different colors, in all the different views, …somebody [is] on the top and somebody on the bottom,” noted the renowned marriage and family therapist, Virginia Satire in Barbara Jo Brothers’ book Power and Partnering (1995, Haworth Press).

The sine qua nom of egalitarian marriages, shared power is becomes operational via mastery of three primary relationship skill-sets:

1) boundaries around,

2) priorities in, and

3) expectations for the marriage.

Enrichment workshops, such my “He Works, She Works; but do THEY Work?” is a kind of  “moot court” where couples learn how relational boundaries, like fences, insulate the fledgling relationship from excessive interference from well-meaning but misguided family and friends.  Priorities act as fertilizer; they nurture the couple’s budding potential.  Realistic expectations are like de-weeding; they supply the pair with space, so growth is toward, not away from, each other.    

Summation

Similar to the minister and his wife in the movie, “The Preacher’s Wife,” couples in dual-career lawyer-marriages may say, “we’ll be fine in the state we’re in.”   In lieu of miracles wroth by angels, couples in the springtime of marriage use their power to shape priorities so the new relationship is protected from competing demands (other relationships, work duties), and achievable expectations for each partner are freely selected. 

Michael E. Hall, Ph.D. (counseling psychology), is in private practice, and helps lawyers and other professionals enhance their dual-career relationships. To learn more, contact him at 704.858.2984. (A version of this article appeared as “Winning at Law and Love,” in The Mecklenburg Bar News, April 2006).