"What have you/me done for you/me lately?" Thank you, Miss Janet.

Thank you, Janet Jackson, for the important, basic question: “What have you done for me lately?” That’s fair, especially if you feel that you are being neglected in your relationship. If you feel you are doing the heavy lifting and the other person is coasting, then you have some confronting to do!

At this stage of my life, after having done divorces for 20 years, that Janet Jackson song got me thinking about how marriage is not just about one’s self. I see marriage as being like a business: two partners that create a business together: the marriage. I know, that’s not very romantic, but stick with me…

Hypothetical scenario: two people get together and decide to open a restaurant. I intentionally pick a restaurant as the business because restaurants are very difficult to keep open. They don’t open a restaurant with the idea that they’ll fail. They enter the deal with the hope of success and fulfillment of running a well-oiled machine of a great restaurant that everyone loves, makes a lot of money, and lasts. When we get into the nitty gritty, the success of the business comes down to the ability of the two partners to have qualities necessary for a successful business. Beyond that, many outside factors will influence whether or not their business experiences continued success.

I don’t have to explain to you how much those partners have to think about in running a restaurant: money, their efforts, the roles they’ll play, the building, advertising, food, employees, management, customers, and the sheer grit to have the ability to consistently follow through day to day to maintain the successful restaurant. Each day money has to get counted, food has to be ordered and prepared, people have to be managed, and the list goes on. See where I’m going?

When you parallel a restaurant to a marriage, you see how a marriage has similar needs. The spouses need to get together to talk about their relationship, their living arrangements, each of their kids, their money, their plans, work, the future, planning, education, religion, activities, friends, and the list goes on. Talking about these issues one time just doesn’t work. It’s a daily requirement to maintain the ‘business.’

High tech companies have 1:1’s, or one-on-one meetings where employees set up these sessions with their superior or another employee to discuss work-related issues. They do these all the time. How often do you have a 1:1 with your spouse? Isn’t your home life important and need nurturing? Imagine this: employees at these companies get rated on different scales as to their work performance, I think at least on a yearly basis. What if you did that with yourself as a spouse? Would you rate yourself the same as you are rated as an employee or whatever your job is?

So, we have one spouse, and the other spouse, and then the marriage. You, as one spouse, control you. You can choose to do your part or not. You cannot control your spouse. They get to choose whether or not they do their part. Last, we have the marriage that is dependent on the two partners, plain and simple.

People come to me, and either they admit they have ignored their business or admit they have compensated for their partner. The restaurant had to close because money was not managed well, someone was passionate about an issue and felt dismissed, attention was always on another employee and not on the partner, etc. Marriages, like a business, are not self-sustaining. They need nurturing. And the best part is that when you have two partners that nurture their marriage then the love just flows. That’s the romantic part…

This is by no means judgment against divorces. I do divorces for goodness sake, so I know they, like businesses, sometimes need to end. Sometimes that is the best business decision. Being a business partner is very difficult. There are some people that have no business starting a business in the first place. And, ending a business does not mean it did not have good years. We all know good restaurants that have closed.

You and I both know success comes with time, effort, sharing, loyalty, humility, education, keeping up with the times, other adjectives you can think of, and lots of love and dedication. Sure, you get your off days, we’re human and that’s life. But here’s the question of the day: “What have we done for we lately?”