I want to get married because...

“He asked me to marry him! I’m so excited! …. I am in L O V E love!” / “We work well together.” / “I’m at the age I should get married…” / ”She’s pregnant so…”

There are a variety of reasons people get married. In this blog I want to discuss the new enterprise people create when they get engaged: their marriage.

In law school you have required courses plus electives. One required course is business law. I am not some savvy business attorney, but one point you learn is that if you work for a company or have a business with a partner, there’s these duties that get created: duties of loyalty and as a fiduciary. This is heavy stuff with serious responsibilities. Your loyalty is to your business partner. Do your job, and they have to do theirs. You don’t, then chances are the business cracks, dissolves, inconsistent checks and balances, goes bankrupt, stock drops, or they do secret side deals with other people, people get angry if you don’t pull your weight…. sound familiar? But, for those business that thrive, though never perfect, they tend to know what their job is and do it, they talk about what they are doing, they have regular meetings, they work on problems that exist, they are consistent, reliable, and the list goes on.

I was exposed to family law in law school through classes and internships. Those laws about loyalty, fiduciaries, and confidentiality exist with married couples. For me the parallel of marriage being a business started then. If you want the marriage to work, you have to treat it like a business. Water the plant and it will grow. But if you are inconsistent then you risk the plant not growing, staying limited, or dying.

The art of marriage and separately the business of marriage: two animals coexisting as one. I think companies have the same thing. You have the art of interpersonal relationships separate from the job you have to do at work. Offsites and after work events, and then the job you have to do. Work and then fun. Someone has to crunch those numbers, make that money, raise them kids, stock that house. Or not, and you see how that goes. The cool part about picking a spouse is that of all the humans you regularly are around, you decided on that one person. Maybe there’s something special there…maybe it’s just another job…maybe it’s what you make of it.

If you want to get married, then maybe learn about it. I’ve never known educating oneself to backfire. Plus, those extra smarts just might make your business grow and blossom into the prettiest greenest most beautiful vibrant plant you’ve ever seen in your life!