Your Company Is Safer Than Your Marriage

There is a certain kind of founder that I see all the time, who represents a specific archetype. And he is very, very proud of his company culture, which he has cultivated assiduously in order to create a place where a new employee could speak up in a meeting and say something like "well that's wrong" and not be hurt for doing so. He talks about psychological safety, he's read the literature, he talks about blameless post-mortems, etc. Any of his direct reports who wants to float a half-baked but mostly nice idea can do so, and will be met with nods and encouragement, because that is the kind of man that he is.

He goes home.

His wife talks through a little internal litmus test before saying anything aloud, to gauge if now is a good time to talk. If the idea is going to be something, she wants to know if it will stick. She wants to know, in her head, if he'll fix it or sigh and pull away into his usual corner, where the things that he finds really irritating get parked. By the point that the idea leaves her mouth, half of it has already been edited out. All the needy parts and scared parts, the parts that might require more excavation than she can muster, get pulled back in. She wants to have the logistics version of the conversation, the safest version of the conversation, the one that doesn't risk anything.

He feels the same way, only he never talks about it like this. The company is having a rough week. He doesn't say "I'm just terrified that we won't make payroll in the spring," to his wife. He says "work's busy." He is a man who has created a culture around psychological safety, and who has learned to value not being afraid as the prime facilitator for people doing their best work. He is also a man who married someone he has a little bit of fear talking to.

This is the thing about him that is special, the thing that I feel like I should talk about in the context of this letter. He's not a mean person. He is not a cruel person. He is not some kind of emotionally unavailable robot at the office. He's very good at what he does, and he has cultivated a set of soft skills around noticing when someone else is having trouble articulating something important to them, so that he can gently help them talk through it and get it out in the open. The only place that he has never applied these skills is in his own kitchen, with his wife. That is where the real conversation is happening, the one that is being edited down to the logistics-only, safe, 20 percent version of itself.

The marriage proceeds on the 20 percent version of each partner's thoughts, each assuming that the other is as safe as they feel at the office, with good reason. The two of them can go on for years like this, being nice to each other, dividing up the calendar politely and never really fighting, and slowly becoming unacquainted with the actual people that they married. This is because, at this point, the only way to find the people that they married is to hear them say the 80 percent version of something that they think or feel or want.

It doesn't seem like much while it's happening, and in fact it is pretty remarkable. It's the kind of marriage that looks like it has it all together, like two competent adults who are operating a well-oiled, low-conflict household. It looks like peace, because it is peace, only it is peace with a very, very quiet war being waged at the edges. The unhappy parts of it are tucked inside of the nicer parts, wrapped in soft tissue paper and ready to be discarded. This is the most insidious way that a marriage can unravel, very quietly without anyone really noticing until it is too late.

That's where the almost annoying good news comes in. He has the skills right inside of him to fix this exact problem, because he has cultivated them assiduously in the context of his company, and he is somebody who can recognize the value of cultivating similar skills in his marriage. As mentioned above, the things that make a workplace feel safe are not some innate personality trait, but rather a set of soft skills that most people can pick up with some amount of practice.

The ability to listen to somebody's "hard news" without judgment in order to get to the root of their unhappiness and then respond accordingly. It means asking the right questions and then shutting up long enough for the answers to come out. It means rewarding people for the bravery that they are showing you, rather than punishing them for the ways that they aren't brave enough. It means giving them the room to say the scary 80 percent, because that's where the truth lives.

None of these things means he has to become a different kind of person, only that he has to apply the skills that he already has to a different part of his life. He already knows how to be a safe listener, how to coax people out of their shells and get them to say the things that they need to say in order to feel better. He just needs to start doing those things with his wife, when she is trying to have a conversation with him and can only get 20 percent of it out before the clock runs out.

He needs to apply the skills he has in listening to his company to his wife, the person that he has been married to for a very long time, and who probably has some unresolved issues with him. If she brings him those issues in the logistics version, he needs to treat them like he does at the office. If he wants to hear the scary 80 percent version of the conversation, he needs to ask her to have it like a founder, and not like a husband who is surprised that she hasn't had it sooner.

Because the logistics version of a conversation is a totally fine way to run a marriage, except when you want to know who you married. The scary 80 percent is where the marriage lives, and that's where he has been avoiding it for years in his own household without realizing it.

So, if you are that founder who presides at the head of the table and makes it safe for everyone else to have scary conversations, here is the question for you. When was the last time you made it safe for someone else to have a scary conversation with you, across the dinner table? You already know how to do it, because that's what you do all day for a living.

Dr. Jené Verchick, PsyD, has written extensively about the marriages of founders and high-achievers, and sees couples working through distance, overwork, and quiet disconnection at her Los Angeles practice. A clinical psychologist with 26+ years working with couples, she helps driven partners bring the same honesty home that they built everywhere else.

Your Husband Has 800 Contacts and One Friend

A guy I know well recently pulled out his phone to illustrate a point. 800 something contacts. Investors, his extended circle of colleagues, a plumber, three "Mike (LinkedIn)"s.

I asked him who he would call if he needed someone to talk to on a Tuesday. He hesitated, then gave me her name. His wife. The only name he gave me.

On paper he was the most connected guy in the room. He had built an entire company, after all. His phone was perpetually lit up with texts, and he preferred it that way. But somewhere between the series A and the birth of his second child, every real relationship had disappeared down the memory hole.

College buddies: a fantasy football league that emails once every six months. Work friends: people who were friends until someone got promoted. He had meant to have a beer with them all, more than once, but life had intervened. He was always busy. Always.

His wife became his sounding board, his strategist. She took his fears, his worries, the 3am questions that no one else could hear. For a long time she was happy to be his confidant, trusted advisor, emotional support network.

What many people don't realize is that she was also his entire department. Every worry that might have gone to his colleagues, every celebration that might have gone to his friends, every question that might have gone to his mentors, all of it went to her. Because there was no one else. He never realized it, but she was stretched thin, overburdened, drowning in a 24/7 support role.

She never told him so. It wasn't the sort of thing a wife said to her husband, was it? Not if she wanted to stay married. It was lonely, yes, but it wasn't a ringing telephone in the middle of the night. It was the feeling of being a customer support rep with one particularly demanding client, and no time to clock out. You feel it in your bones, but you can't put it into words. If other people have a similar problem, they likely don't realize it.

Meanwhile, the loneliness metastasizes, taking up residence in the places that only husbands and wives can see.

Most men, when asked the question, would say "I don't feel lonely." Maybe they feel busy instead. Maybe they feel frustrated, or sad, or like punching their boss. They can't explain it, really, so they lash out at the nearest available target. Either way, the marriage suffers disproportionately. That's the dynamic here as well. This is a man who feels alone, but can't quite put it into words. He thinks about it as frustration at missed opportunities, at a busy schedule, at the unfairness of life, and the marriage bears the brunt of it.

It's understandable, really. What makes this case particularly sad is that the drive behind his creation of the company was the same drive that caused him to neglect his other relationships. He wanted to optimize everything, to make it count, to make sure that he was spending his time in the most productive ways possible. It all makes sense. It's a noble approach to life, really, until you realize that it makes you unhappy. The costs outweigh the benefits, not always immediately, but eventually.

The remedy doesn't sound very exciting. It doesn't involve a personal trainer or a new vacation destination, but it would make a huge difference. He needs to find some people he can be a friend to. Just be a friend. Show up, however unremarkable he is as a conversational partner. Schedule regular meals, even, that accomplish nothing except being there. Nothing has to be gained by the friendship, nothing has to be put into it. It just has to happen.

It sounds small, perhaps, but it's vitally important. It would free up his wife to stop feeling like the entire staff of his emotional needs. She would gain an outlet, a sounding board of her own, someone to talk to about the little things. Someone to share the burdens that she had been shouldering alone, without complaint.

She should not be the only person in his life. She should not feel like she's the staff of his entire emotional being. She is his friend, not his therapist, counselor, or support network.

In fact, she should get to feel like his friend. His teammate, perhaps, his equal. The two of them should be able to meet as peers, as companions in life, rather than as client and employee.

If anyone can be successful at this, it's him. After all, he created a company out of thin air. A friendship isn't much different. It just requires showing up, putting in the time, effort, and energy, before there's anything to be gained from it. It's a strange reversal, that he of all people would have to relearn it. But it's the thing that will save his marriage. It's the thing that would let him stop feeling so alone, and give the one person who has always been there for him a teammate at last.

So if you're reading this on the couch, next to him, and you've just glanced over at the man whose only late-night confidant is you, then you know what to do.

About the author

Dr. Jené Verchick, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist (California Board of Psychology) based in Los Angeles, with 26+ years working with couples. She holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and two master's degrees, and draws on the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and CBT. She writes about marriage and the patterns that pull long-term relationships apart.

About Dr. Verchick →

Hiding Money From Your Spouse

Almost everyone does a little of it. The Amazon boxes brought inside before your partner gets home. The rounded-down number when they ask what the golf membership cost. The sports-betting app checked in the bathroom. The "treat yourself" purchase that quietly never comes up. A small savings account one of you keeps, just in case.

Most of it is harmless. Some of it is not. After 26+ years working with couples, I can tell you the line between the two has very little to do with the dollar amount, and almost everything to do with the hiding.

You are not the only one

If you have kept a money secret from your partner, you are in a very large club. In a recent Bankrate survey, about 40 percent of people in a relationship admitted to hiding a financial secret, a purchase, a debt, or an account, from their partner. More than 2 in 5 said hiding money is at least as bad as physical cheating.

So this is not a rare character flaw. It is one of the most common things couples do and do not talk about.

It is not one gender's problem

The stories rhyme across the board. One partner hides the shopping: the clothes with the tags cut off, the packages timed to arrive while the other is out. The other hides the hobby: the betting app, the golf weekend that cost more than admitted, the crypto account opened during a slow afternoon, the gear bought and quietly absorbed into the garage.

Different props, same move. Spend, then manage what your partner knows about it. I have watched husbands and wives do every version of this. Nobody has a monopoly on it.

Why we hide it

Here is the part that surprises couples. The person hiding is almost never a schemer rubbing their hands together. Usually they are a little ashamed.

They overspent, or bet more than they meant to, or bought the thing they said they would not, felt embarrassed, and could not figure out how to say it out loud. So they hid it. Then they hid the hiding. It grows less out of greed than out of a very human wish not to be seen at your worst by the person whose opinion you care about most.

Sometimes it is quieter than shame. It is a small act of freedom in a relationship where one person feels they have no say in the money. A secret twenty dollars can be a tiny protest.

When it is fine, and when it is a problem

Plenty of couples keep a little discretionary money and are perfectly healthy. If you both know it exists and you both agreed to it, that is not a secret. That is an arrangement.

It tips into a problem when three things show up: the amounts grow, the hiding takes real effort, and discovery would genuinely hurt your partner. When you are deleting confirmation emails, intercepting the mail, or bracing for the day they find out, the money stopped being the issue a while ago. The secret is doing the damage now.

And the reason it lands so hard when it comes out is that it is not really about the purchase. It is the discovery that you were managing what your partner knew. That is the same wound as any other betrayal, which is why "it was only a few hundred dollars" never calms anyone down.

How to come clean without blowing up your marriage

If you are the one hiding, you do not have to march in and confess like it is a courtroom. You do have to stop the drip of small revelations, because trust cannot rebuild while new information keeps arriving. Put the real picture on the table once, and lead with the honest part: "I have been spending on this and not telling you, and I do not want to keep something from you anymore."

If you are the one who found out, try to separate two things: the money, which is usually fixable, and the honesty, which is what actually hurts. Both need attention, but if you only fight about the dollars you will miss the part that matters.

Then build something that makes honesty easier than hiding: shared visibility into the accounts, and an agreed amount each of you can spend without a conversation. Not surveillance. Just enough openness that neither of you has to sneak.

One line worth drawing

All of this assumes two partners who both want the relationship and can speak freely. That is different from financial abuse, where one person uses money to control or trap the other, cutting off access, sabotaging a job, running up debt in the other's name. If that is your situation, this is not a repair project, and your safety comes first. In the US you can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

The good news

Couples come back from this all the time, and they usually come out more honest than they were before the secret. What predicts it is not the size of the number. It is whether the person hiding is ready to be open from here on, and whether you both treat it as a trust thing to heal rather than a math problem to solve.

The goal was never to track each other's every dollar. It is to make honesty the easy choice, so neither of you has to hide again.

About the author

Dr. Jené Verchick, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist (California Board of Psychology) based in Los Angeles, with 26+ years working with couples. She holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and two master's degrees, and draws on the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and CBT. She writes about marriage and the patterns that pull long-term relationships apart.

About Dr. Verchick →