What No One Told My Husband About Marrying an Ambitious Woman
Episode 960: Show Notes
Today’s episode is a little bit different. It’s a vulnerable, intimate conversation that I just happen to be letting you in on. I’m having my husband on the show today, to talk about something I see more people than you might imagine, navigating. We’re talking about what it really looks like to be married to a strong, ambitious woman, but more than that, I hope we can have an honest conversation about confronting cultural norms, redefining roles, and getting honest about the stuff we wish someone else told us sooner!
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How Vastly Different Our Lives Look Twelve Years Into Marriage
After twelve years of marriage, life looks completely different to what we expected. When we first got married, Jared saw his career as the primary focus, and my pursuits as something to fill in the gaps. I thought I was marrying an architect, and that would be his focus for years to come. We both thought I would quit my job once we had kids. After spending five years with a corporate firm, Jared was in bad shape, mentally, dreading waking up to do his job each day. At the same time, I was busy building a business that brought so much joy.
The Ways Jared is Using His Skill Set Today
For nearly six years, Jared’s been home. We have so much flexibility and so many opportunities to say yes to things on a whim! There have been questions from Jared’s family about why he suddenly stopped working in the career he trained for. It’s taken a lot of perspective for Jared to be appreciative of the things he learned in corporate architecture that serve him very well today. He’s found ways to flex that knowledge set, project management skills, budgeting, and more, by being on a building committee and volunteering in various outside organizations
‘She Works and You Play’ and Other Reactions to How Our Lives are Structured
It was during some of my early launches that Jared started to realize I was not only ambitious, but I was going to be the breadwinner. While I was creating Trello for Business, we started to see the sales stack up. Then, I was creating courses, and sales exceeded Jared’s salary plus benefits, over a period of only two weeks. He started to believe that what I was doing could and would work, and that it would set us up for success in the future. That was all before he even quit his job! So for four years, he’s been working behind the scenes for Boss Project.
People have varying reactions when Jared tells them he works from home, for his wife, and that she owns the company. From ‘Must be nice’, to ‘Oh, she works and you play’, to assuming that I’m ‘the boss’ at home as well as at work, responses are varied, and some of them are wild assumptions.
What the Biggest Challenge We Face at Work Actually Is
It’s difficult not to take feedback on your work personally when you’re married to the person giving it to you. Frustrations in our work can spill over into our marriage because there is no off-off. It’s a delicate balance between married Jared and Abagail, and work Jared and Abagail. We’ll often preface a question during the workday by first saying it’s marriage-related, and vice versa. Jared places tremendous value on the flexibility that us working together allows each of us. His advice to others in a similar position is simply this: as long as you have the energy to work with your spouse, and the grace and the flexibility to figure it out, let the opinions go!
Breaking the Preconceived Notions of What it Means to Work with Your Spouse
The more that Jared is vulnerable and authentic, the more he has been able to show other people what it can look like to work with your spouse, run a small business, and run an internet business. It’s been an evolution of emotions, thoughts and preconceived notions. Jared shares that our business dynamic has challenged where he finds his sense of worth, and the currency he wants to operate in. It’s challenged how he communicates what he needs in business, when he needs it, and how processes work. Jared shares how powerful it has been for him to hand over the reins on the financials, because money is such a trigger for him, weighing in only on specific concerns when he’s asked to.
The Real Hardest Part of Reversing Our Roles
Lately, we’ve been talking about the future. We went through a season of caregiving, we have this house, and we both work from home. Our house is pretty quiet, and we’ve been having the conversation about children, and what that could look like. Emotionally, he says the hardest part has been to appreciate and have gratitude for the thing I have built and he has been invited into in order to provide and help us to be successful in all the other areas of our life together. We also feel that working together has created space for more vulnerability in our relationship.
Jared also shares that the greatest gift a wife can give to her husband is the ability to dream. I hold some of his desires at the core of my ambitions. My direction is not just based on my own needs and wants, but instead what we see as partnership in a marriage, and having a good one.
Jared’s New Observations From Working With His Wife (Me)
Just a few weeks ago, Jared noticed something new about me: what he calls my ability to commandeer a room, and really get people to get vulnerable. That’s always been the goal, to make people feel they are in a safe and welcoming environment, and it means so much to me to hear Jared say it.
His advice for couples who want to work together?
Figure out what you typically outsource to a VA, and ask your partner if they can take those on. Jared is literally the only person on the planet who has had a front row seat throughout me building my business. What he wants other men to hear from his perspective? Trust your wife! He adds, if you don’t trust your wife, that means you don’t trust yourself, and you need to do the inner work.
If you have any other weird questions about our relationship or our dynamic, feel free to send us a DM over at @abagailsays on Instagram, and we might just hop back on here and answer them. Thank you!
Quote This
The greatest gift a wife can give her husband—especially when building a business together—is the ability to dream.
-Jared Pumphrey
Highlights
How Vastly Different Our Lives Look Twelve Years Into Marriage. [0:01:11]
The Ways Jared is Using His Skill Set Today. [0:17:52]
‘She Works and You Play’ and Other Reactions to How Our Lives are Structured [0:21:25]
What the Biggest Challenge We Face at Work Actually Is [0:27:53]
Breaking the Preconceived Notions of What it Means to Work with Your Spouse [0:34:55]
The Real Hardest Part of Reversing Our Roles [0:39:38]
Jared’s New Observations From Working With His Wife (Me) [0:45:05]
Key Topics:
Gender Norms, Marriage, Masculinity, Entrepreneurship, Business Building
