I got married the first time when I was 22. It was very quick; within a year of meeting each other we were engaged. He was 15 years older than I was and he turned out to be a bit of a narcissist.

The more successful I got, the more difficult the relationship got. He would put me down and I started believing him. It wasn't good for my head. But you choose these things; I definitely chose him.

But then I chose out. I decided I wanted to be happy and I wasn't going to compromise any more. We broke up after nine years of marriage and everybody thought I was crazy. But I think the partner you're with should think you're the best thing in the world.

Florian was so different. He was raised by a working mother and he's got two sisters, so he's open-minded about gender roles. He thought it was great that I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mom. He really wanted to have babies. You just know when you know. Florian's perfect.

I'm talking about marriage in this chapter because I'm married and a lot of people are. But I just mean a significant relationship where you share a life and home and you're committed to one another. Whether it's heterosexual or same-sex, whether you have kids or not. and whether you've had an actual wedding ceremony or not, you know the kind of relationship I mean.

You might be reading this chapter as a single person. You might not plan to get married, or want to get married, or you might just think it's never going to happen for you.

Or you might have been married already, and think “been there, done that.” I did.

Sooner or later most of us, for some significant period of our lives, are going to find ourselves partnered up with another person. And if you're a self-supporting, rising woman who knows her values and knows her value, your life is probably pretty full. Arranging it around somebody else is a huge ask. It's not easy, and it's worth thinking about what you're prepared to put into it and what you want to get out of it, before you dive in.

If you've already got a partner, there's always room for change; it's inevitable in a lifelong relationship. If there are areas in your relationship that aren't working—aren't aligned with your values, aren't serving your personal pie—there are ways to shift them. You're only ever one decision away from changing your life, or one conversation away from changing your relationship.

When I met Florian, I said I didn't want to get married. I'd been married before, and to me the premise of marriage and what society classed as a wife was something I didn't want to buy into again. I assigned a certain meaning to marriage, and it was a life that I didn't want to live. I ended up getting married again after I realized that I could actually just do it my way. Marriage is different for everybody and this chapter is about the way that my marriage works—and it does work.

I've noticed in some marriages that people seem to feel like they can't evolve, like “this is how we were when we got married, so this is how it stays.” But people keep changing constantly, so your marriage should, too. Through your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond, what's important to you and what you enjoy keep shifting. The marriage needs to keep up if it's going to survive.

So I don't think you should get married based on things that will change. Don't choose him because he's got a good job and he provides a great life for you to have together, because that could all change in a second. It's not in your control. My marriage with Florian is based on our values. We both agree that that's why we want to be married: we want to be married to each other's values, and to who we are as people, but we have no idea where we're going to end up.

When we first got married, he was a 100% stay-at-home dad (I chose to have kids with him before we got married because I thought that was a bigger commitment), and he thought entrepreneurship was the scariest thing in the world. He'd look at me and say, “I'm so proud of you, and I'm never going to do that!” He was so adamant. Now, 10 years later, he's got the bug and there are days I think he's more interested in business than I am. Nothing's shifted for us as far as how our marriage works, because our values are still the same. But he's been invited to experience something through witnessing it in me. His perception on entrepreneurship has changed because I've shared my experience with him—which is really cool, right?

It's not as if we're now both high-flying businesspeople and our family life will take a backseat. Neither of us is concerned about where this might take us, because we both encourage each other to do what we want to do, and we know our values mean that we'll prioritize the life we have together.

SUCCESSFUL WOMEN INTIMIDATE MEN

That's what we've been taught to believe, right?

For a long time I downplayed my success. I think we sometimes put on an act in order to not intimidate people or make them question their own lives. Isn't that all we're doing? People go straight to comparison, and you want to protect them—and yourself—from that. At some point I started trying to own the fact that this is my life and this is how I choose to do things. I decided I wasn't going to apologize for my success, and more than that, I was going to own it.

Ironically, the day I started owning it was around the time that things started to fall into place for me. It felt like it lifted a fog and started attracting the right sort of people and opportunities into my life. I suddenly had an influx of people who came into my life and became my tribe. I don't think that's a coincidence; I think you attract what you put out. And all of a sudden I wasn't an alien any more. I didn't have to worry about intimidating the people around me, because they were all owning it too.

If you're in a heterosexual relationship where the woman is more “successful” than the man, it can feel really uncomfortable, because we've been told that there's a certain standard for each gender: men work, women look after children. Men earn more money than women. We accept that as the truth, and start to conform to it from a very young age. If you're going to do things differently, you need to recondition yourself. It's almost like a detox of the thinking you've been raised with. Start questioning it: Is this my view? Is this what I chose, or has this view been chosen for me? Is there somebody else out there having a different experience that resonates with me more than the “normal” I've been shown?

The beautiful thing about Florian is that he's never once been jealous or intimidated by my success. He's just riddled with happiness and pride. He also knows that what he's doing, raising the kids, is so important. He thinks of it as a job. When we go to business functions where I'm not known, everybody talks to him first, automatically assuming that he's the business owner and I'm the spouse. He's completely confident in delivering that line: “I'm a stay-at-home dad.” He owns it. They usually don't realize it until some tie-in, which is fun to watch unfold.

When we worry about our careers “intimidating” our partners, we're actually not giving men very much credit. To some degree they have the power to create their own options and choices; they could probably choose to earn more or pursue more ambitious career goals if they really wanted to. There are two people in the relationship, both of you making the decisions together about how you're going to run things. If he's 100% confident in what you chose, you should be, too. And remember, above everything else, he chose you.

SETTING EXPECTATIONS

My relationship is based on a whole lot of spoken and unspoken expectations. (All relationships are.) Some of them are things we've decided together, and some are things that one of us has just assumed, without verbalizing it.

If you've set an expectation together, you should keep that promise to each other for as long as it works. And if it stops working for you, you can't just stop doing it, but that's when you can go back to your partner and renegotiate. Otherwise they're still operating under the original expectation, and if you don't let them know you want to change it that's when you get conflict and breakdowns.

If you never talked about the expectation, you can't assume it's set in stone. Sometimes you both want the same thing and you don't need to talk about it, which is great. But if one of you is not happy, they're allowed to put their hand up and say, “Hey, I never agreed to that!”

We used to have this arrangement where my parents came and stayed with us every second weekend until Florian said, “Why do they have to come every second weekend?” I responded with, “That's the weekend Dad's home from the mines,” and he said “Yes, but when did I agree to give up every second weekend to spend with your parents?” I realized I'd never asked him to agree to do that; I just assumed he would.

Our strategy is to renegotiate our expectations every 12 months. We sit down and each write a big list of all the things we feel obliged to do, that we're not happy about. I think of it as a spring cleaning for our mutual obligations. People talk about the seven-year itch; I reckon it's more like a seven-year list! If you let it all go unspoken, you end up getting stuck with things you didn't agree to and you resent your partner. After seven years the list can be long and ugly.

So once a year we write it all down, the big things and the little things, then we go through each other's lists and we renegotiate. We acknowledge that we've got a finite amount of time and energy and resources to share with each other, but we can always negotiate a deal that works for both of us.

For example, a few years back I said to Florian, “You're not keeping the house clean. I like it clean when I get home, I can't stand getting home and picking up after two kids after a day at work. That's really important to me.” He said, “Okay, but you have to understand that it's really hard to do that with two toddlers. I could do it with one, but two makes it a lot harder to keep that commitment. So I need you to give me an hour's warning before you get home. It won't work if you show up without warning and expect the house to be clean. And you need to be a bit more relaxed while we've got toddlers, until they can start picking up after themselves.” That was the deal we made: he would do his best to have the house clean when I got home, if I gave him an hour's warning that I was coming. And if I didn't give him any warning I wasn't allowed to be upset!

Writing down a list of all your grievances and then presenting them to each other sounds like a recipe for the biggest fight of your marriage, doesn't it? Here are some rules to keep the conversation on track:

• When you're bringing up a problem with your partner's expectations, first take responsibility for letting that behavior form, and accepting it. Two people created these circumstances, not one. The other person might have inflicted it on you, but you probably sat back and didn't say anything—otherwise you wouldn't have gotten to this point.
• When it's your turn to present an issue, calmly state the problem, how it impacts you, and what you'd like to renegotiate it. Keep it simple and don't let it spiral: when you bring up a problem, suggest a solution, too. This isn't a forum for complaining.
• Neither of you is allowed to argue with the other person's feelings. If somebody says there's a problem, it's a problem. It's your job to work together to fix it.

Once you've negotiated and made new agreements, you can hold each other to them through the year.

During one of those sessions we made a rule that we wouldn't commit to any regular activities on weekends. We decided that if we were going to free up those weekends by not seeing my parents, then we shouldn't fill them up with other shit. So the kids have to do all their activities between Monday and Thursday, and we both agreed to that. If Florian booked the kids for something on a Saturday, instead of starting a fight I'd just say, “Hang on, that's not our agreement. You'll have to call and cancel.”

Having preexisting agreements we can point to makes it so much simpler to resolve things when they come up, because we've already decided—together—where we stand. Alternatively, you can have a discussion about a change to the arrangement before it happens and decide together on whether to break it on this occasion.

This is the absolute core of what keeps our marriage together: knowing how to have conversations, negotiate with the resources we have, and set expectations. And once we've decided something, we have to stick to it or come back and renegotiate.

CONDITIONAL AGREEMENTS AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

The danger with making agreements is that it can become a point-scoring game. “I kept all my agreements but you didn't keep yours.” “You didn't come to my awards night so I'm not going to your sister's birthday.” “You didn't do the laundry so I'm not cooking dinner tonight.”

The thing is, two healthy individuals should each be capable of meeting their own needs without help. You don't need to do things for each other, but you've chosen to enter into a relationship where you offer to do those things. When one of you lets down their side of the bargain, the other one should still be able to operate independently, without heaping guilt on the other person.

This is why we like to talk about relationships being 100/100, not 50/50. Thinking of it as 50/50 places conditions on love. It demands that the other person puts in their half all the time and that everything is scored, fair and equal. It's saying that I'll do something nice for you if you do something nice for me.

But if both people bring 100% of themselves to the relationship, they can love each other unconditionally. You're each 100% responsible for yourselves and the way you interact in the relationship; you're not dependent on how the other person interacts. So you can choose to keep your agreements, or not, regardless of how the other person upholds theirs.

Some agreements operate on conditions, like “I'll have the house clean if you call ahead.” That's fine if the conditional agreements are made from a place of unconditional love. If your partner breaks the conditions of the agreement you might withdraw your side of it, but you won't withdraw your love.

Upholding your side of the agreement is just as much about respect for yourself as it is about the other person. Your promise to keep your agreements, and keep loving unconditionally, is a promise that you make to yourself. Fulfilling it is a way of expressing yourself as a 100% whole, rising individual.

CARRYING YOUR OWN BAGGAGE

Loving unconditionally is not the same as meeting all of your partner's needs, all of the time, whether they're doing anything for you or not. Making healthy, conditional agreements gives you the freedom to say “no, thank you” to things you aren't prepared to take on.

For example: We have a rental property. We were thinking of selling it, but Florian wanted to keep it and said that he'd take care of all the property maintenance. So I agreed that would work. Now that he's started working on his own business, that maintenance stuff is annoying him because it's taking him away from his key focus. He doesn't want to be around there cleaning the pool and talking to tenants. That's understandable.

So I said to him, “Okay, you don't want to do the maintenance any more, that's fine. What are the options? Do you want to sell the units or can you afford to outsource the maintenance?” He came back to me and said that he couldn't really afford to outsource it because his business hasn't taken off yet, but he's hoping it'll be making good money in about a year's time.

So I offered to call the bank and change our payments on the property to principal-only for 12 months, and we could use the difference to pay for the maintenance. It's not coming out of my earnings, because the maintenance is his responsibility. But that's something I can do for him to give him an extra 12 months to find a way to afford it. In a year he'll start paying for it, go back to doing it himself, or we'll sell the units. I'm not willing to pay for it myself because that means I'd have to work more hours. I could easily push myself and keep piling on more shit I need to pay for, but our agreement was that if Florian wanted us to keep the units he would take care of the maintenance. So we come up with a way to meet that obligation without impacting me, because I wasn't the one who changed the agreement.

As soon as you feel like you're carrying somebody else's bags, that's when things go sour in the relationship. So just define what your luggage is. What are you willing to carry? If you want to pack 20 fucking suitcases to go to Bali, you'll end up lugging them up a sandy hill and not having fun. Don't turn to him in that moment and say, “Oh honey, could you help me with my 20 bags?” Not if he decided to pack light. You chose your own bags. You packed them. So unpack some shit, make a decision to get rid of some stuff, or hire a porter. But don't expect your partner to carry your bags.

PROBLEM SOLVING

When times are tough, that's the best time to build culture. That's true in business and in marriage.

They say it's a lonely job being the CEO. I think that's an old-school saying, said by stale CEOs. In my businesses, I'm pretty transparent with my team. They know what we're making, when we're winning, when we're losing. That means that when something goes wrong I don't have to yell. Most of the time they're disappointed that they've let me down, because they've got the full picture of what's going on and what it means.

If you didn't have this transparency, it would be lonely to be the CEO. That's how businesses used to be run (some still are). Employees never knew if things were going badly. The executives would maintain this image of being in control and being untouchable. Then people would turn up to work and the doors would be closed and they'd be out of a job, and they'd go “we didn't see that coming!” My team would see it coming. We'd have so many conversations about how to fix it, and whether we wanted to keep going.

It's the same in marriage. You don't want to come home one day and find that the locks have been changed and you didn't see it coming. You want to be super clear so there are no surprises. But you need to create a safe environment for talking about problems, the same way you do in the office. My employees know that I don't mind if one of them brings me a problem. They know that I'm a problem solver and that's what I do. If a staff member comes to me and says “I've made a mistake and I don't know how to fix it,” I'm not going to yell at them. Of course I have to hold them accountable, but then I need to help them figure out how we get out of it together.

There are going to be times in your marriage where there's more bad than good. Your partner needs to feel like they can tell you things that are probably going to hurt you. At work these conversations aren't as emotional, but at home it's really hard. It's very difficult to be disciplined, think logically, and work through it as opposed to just losing your shit. But I'd rather my husband came to me and told me, for example, that he wasn't finding me attractive any more, than if I came home six months later and found the locks were changed. That's why it can be helpful to have personal rules and policies, just like you'd have in a work environment.

For example: In my marriage we have the “jealousy rule.” We're both attractive people, we both spend a lot of time hanging around the opposite sex, and we know that we're constantly going to find ourselves in situations that present an opportunity to be unfaithful. We're both in different countries, on planes, on different time zones all the time. We know that if either of us were to have an affair it'd be easy to do it without the other one finding out, but we also know that we don't ever want to be without each other. And we've agreed that infidelity would be a dealbreaker.

So having acknowledged that we both have the opportunity, and knowing that it'd be a dealbreaker, our rule is that we just don't make jealousy part of our relationship. We don't keep an eye on each other or get concerned about that, because it's exhausting. If one of us is worried, we say to the other one: “I've noticed this. Should I be worried?” And we can reassure each other, but that's as far as the conversation goes. There's no checking up or obsessing or jealousy.

I don't hold anything sacred when it comes to other people's marriages; you have your own rules. If you know each other's values, you know the things you need to share with your partner. You know what shit's going to worry them and upset them. You know when you're doing something wrong because you get that feeling in your gut. That's just a warning sign to say that something's not right.

If you're committed to the relationship, you need to have a proper conversation and it needs to be mediated. I'm a huge believer in facilitators and coaches and mediators when it comes to having hard conversations in business. Your marriage can benefit from the same things.